Dear Jews,
What a messy, complicated, glorious, tough, lovely thing it is to be Jewish. Family dinners, orthodontia, summer camps, a shared sense of history, destiny, and endurance amidst impossible odds. So much of it’s just swell. Then there’s the other stuff: exile, persecution, pogroms, genocide, the many horrors that are as much a part of our narrative as parting waters, burning bushes, and coats of many colors.
My dearest, sweetest Sarah,
As I write this, you're wandering around the apartment in a half-awake stupor, sipping your green tea, watching the Graham Norton show, or whatever DIY YouTube channel has struck your fancy this morning. We're doing good - more importantly, you're doing good. These first three months of marriage have been, in a word, real. I love you more than ever. And it's so good to see you up and about and smiling.
Hey Gaybies,
How are you? No, it’s OK — I know how you are. Things aren’t great. I’m not feeling great either. But, you know, it’s OK — we’re all freaked out. And it just means our eyes and ears and all of our head holes are taking in information accurately, and our poor little aching hearts are processing that information appropriately. And all the resulting fear or despair or fury or crippling anxiety — that is all fully warranted. So at least we aren’t all depressed for no reason! We’ve got really good reasons! We are united in sadness and terror. And we have been before.
Dearest Queer Family and Our Beloved Allies,
We are heading into unknown and potentially dangerous times. Everyone with a liberal mindset, everyone living any sort of marginalized life is responding with great apprehension. Yes, it’s likely that many of the freedoms we take for granted will be rolled back. The usual suspects will most likely be targeted for further marginalization: women, children, people of color, the working class, the elderly, and of course anyone who falls outside of cisgender heteronormativity. I’m so, so sorry.
Dear Brother,
And so, the rest of our brethren have come to know a thing we’ve been telling them for centuries. They have come to understand that perhaps their country does not love and hold them the way the rhetoric of their movies with their perfect endings suggests. They have come to understand the possibility of siege. They feel the raised edges of the crosshairs on the bridges of their noses.
Colonize – the co-optation of a body for purposes not its own
Dear Darlings All,
The night of the election, I watched the results roll in from one state after another, turning a red that seemed bloodthirstier with each passing result.
I said aloud, “The course of my life changes tonight.”
Dear women who felt like I did on November 9,
If comedy is tragedy plus time, 2016 felt like the year time collapsed and those two tropes became indistinguishable.
Dear Baby Queers Everywhere,
First, are you okay?
That's important to ask because you're important to me, and though it may seem hard to believe lately, you’re actually important to lots and lots of people. And we all want you, before anything else, to be emotionally and physically healthy.
That matters just the same way that you matter.
Dear Revolutionaries,
So what now? That malevolent orange spectre who’s been awakening us to night sweats these past months has proved that nightmares sometimes do come true. It all turned horribly real on the evening of November 8 when the electoral map of Middle America flooded to a sea of hate-hued red. And there on the winner’s stage he stood, the perfect antithesis to honesty, compassion, and service—enemy to every principle of decency we had presumed our republic to be built on. Not in our sickest of dreams could we have built a better monster.
Dear friends,
I was 22 when Reagan was elected, and seven months later AIDS began. I understand the pain, the devastation, and the loss. This is what I have learned:
