Category: Queer Art

  • 10 Questions with Justy: Queer Tenderness through Music

    10 Questions with Justy: Queer Tenderness through Music

    Justy, an independent queer artist, makes music at the intersection of alternative R&B, indie soul, jazz, and hip-hop. With her new single, “Traer(te) la luna,” set to be released on August 28, we were eager to ask about her musical inspirations and how she expresses queerness through song.

    10 Questions with Justy

    1. You’ve said that your upcoming single, “Traer(te) la luna,” which roughly translates to “Bring you the moon,” highlights the impossibility of giving someone everything because of how they feel. Do you feel queer individuals are more uniquely susceptible to this feeling of impossibly high standards–in life, romance, love–than straight counterparts? 

    That’s a great question. I don’t think impossibly high standards are exclusive to queer people, but I do think queer people can experience them in a very specific way. Many of us grow up without seeing our love reflected back to us, so when we finally find someone who makes us feel understood, that connection can carry an enormous amount of weight. It can feel rare, almost miraculous, and that rarity can make us want to preserve it at any cost.

    “Traer(te) la luna” lives inside that feeling. It’s about wanting to offer someone something as impossible as the moon because ordinary gestures no longer seem big enough. But underneath that devotion is the realization that love cannot always overcome timing, fear, circumstance, or the way someone feels. You can give someone your patience, your vulnerability, and every version of the future you imagined, but you cannot love them into being ready.

    For me, that is where the song becomes especially connected to queer love: not because queer people love more intensely than anyone else, but because our relationships can carry the additional pressure of scarcity, secrecy, delayed discovery, or feeling like we have finally found something we were once told was impossible.

    1. Your work crosses multiple different genres–alternative R&B, indie soul, jazz, and hip-hop. What gravitates you towards a specific genre, and how, as an artist, are you able to find harmony between these multiple genres within a song or album? 

    I’m usually drawn to a sound based on what the story needs. I don’t enter the studio thinking, “This has to be an R&B song” or “This needs to sound like jazz.” Sometimes an emotion calls for the warmth of live instrumentation and jazz chords; sometimes it needs the intimacy of indie soul, the rhythm of hip-hop, or the freedom and atmosphere of alternative R&B. Genre becomes another part of the language I use to communicate.

    Finding harmony between those influences feels natural because they all shaped the way I hear music. I grew up loving artists who refused to stay in one lane, from Lauryn Hill and Amy Winehouse to J Dilla, Noname, and Anderson .Paak. Their work showed me that contrast can create cohesion when the artist’s perspective remains consistent.

    Across a song or album, my voice and storytelling are the connecting threads. The production may move between genres, but the emotional world stays intact. I’m not trying to make different styles compete with one another. I’m interested in the place where they meet and become something that feels distinctly mine.

    1. How have your experiences as a lesbian artist shaped the themes and ideas within your works? 

    Before I had the language or confidence to express who I was, songwriting became a place where I could explore desire, uncertainty, intimacy, and identity honestly. That is why so much of my music lives in the space between what we feel and what we are able to say.

    I want to write about more than the struggle to be accepted. Queer people also experience so many facets of life that we don’t have nearly enough forms of representation for. Those stories deserve to exist without always needing to explain or defend themselves.

    At the same time, I understand the importance of being visible. I did not always see people who looked or presented like me occupying space in the genres I loved. By writing openly from my perspective, I hope another queer person can hear my music and recognize that their love, vulnerability, and contradictions are worthy of being documented.

    Every project I’ve dropped, from my debut [album] Pain With Benefits to now, aims to be a transparent representation of my experience. 

    1. Who have been some of the greatest queer inspirations in your own artistic endeavours? 

    Some of my greatest queer inspirations are Syd, CHIKA, Joy Oladokun, Arlo Parks, and Orion Sun. I’m inspired by the honesty in their work, the individuality of their sounds, and the different ways they represent queer experiences through music. Each of them creates without being limited by genre or expectations, while remaining authentic to who they are. Seeing queer artists take up space and build meaningful careers has encouraged me to trust my own perspective, experiment with my sound, and create the kind of honest representation I would have valued when I was younger.

    1. You focus on queer tenderness in your works. Why do you think it’s important to look at queer tenderness specifically in art? 

    I think queer tenderness is important because queer stories are often framed around struggle, rejection, or the need to fight for acceptance. Those stories are real, but they are not the entirety of our lives. We also experience softness, safety, longing, quiet intimacy, and the feeling of being fully understood by another person.

    Focusing on tenderness allows me to show queer love as something expansive and deeply human rather than something that must always be explained through conflict.

    1. Did your musical journey work in tandem with your own understanding of your sexual orientation, or did one clearly begin before the other? 

    I would say so. For me, making music was discovering parts of myself that didn’t have space to live comfortably. When I started creating, I felt I could finally connect with thoughts that had been building within me. It almost felt as if my identity was flourishing as I continued to lean into my writing process and musicality. 

    1. Along with utilizing multiple genres, you also use multiple languages in your works, such as English and Spanish. How has working with multiple languages shaped or changed your songs? 

    “Traer(te) la luna” is actually the first song where I’ve worked with multiple languages. Collaborating with Kiki Corona and bringing Spanish into the song opened up a new emotional and musical dimension for me. Some feelings take on a different texture when expressed in another language, and Kiki’s contribution allowed the tenderness and longing at the heart of the song to come through organically.

    The collaboration also made me think beyond the literal meaning of each line and consider how language affects a song’s rhythm, tone, and emotional weight. The Spanish does not feel like a separate addition; it is central to the atmosphere and identity of the track. Working with Kiki showed me how collaboration and language can expand not only what a song communicates, but also how deeply it can be felt.

    1. Can you offer some details about your artistic process and how you create a song that is so uniquely Justy?

    My process usually begins with a feeling, a phrase, or a chord progression that stays with me. I tend to write from emotions I have not completely worked through yet, so the song becomes a way of discovering what I am actually trying to say. I’ll record melodies and scattered lyrics in my voice notes, then slowly build the story around the lines that feel the most honest.

    Production is also an important part of my writing. I naturally pull from jazz, hip-hop, neo-soul, and alternative R&B.I love warm chords, layered vocals, conversational lyrics, and small details that make a song feel intimate and lived-in.

    What makes a song uniquely Justy is probably that balance between honesty and restraint. I’m interested in the things people feel deeply but do not always say aloud. I try to leave enough space in the music for listeners to place their own memories and experiences inside it.

    1. Have you felt pressured to change or alter your work to reach larger audiences? And what do you say to people who may themselves feel pressured to change themselves to accommodate heteronormative standards with art?  

    There is always some pressure as an independent artist to make your work easier to categorize or more comfortable for a wider audience. For queer artists, that can also mean feeling encouraged to make lyrics less specific, avoid pronouns, or present ourselves in a way that fits someone else’s idea of what is marketable. Earlier in my journey, I sometimes kept parts of my writing intentionally vague because I wanted everyone to relate to it. Over time, I realized that specificity does not make a song less universal. The more honest I am, the more people seem to find themselves in the music.

    To anyone feeling pressured to accommodate heteronormative standards, I would say that you do not have to dilute yourself to make your art meaningful. There is no single correct way to create queer art, and you should never feel obligated to disclose more than feels safe. But when you are ready, trust that your perspective is not an obstacle to connection. It is often the very thing that makes your work memorable. The goal is not to make yourself smaller for an audience; it is to create honestly enough that the right audience can recognize you.

    1. What would you like to see listeners take away from your work, and especially listeners within the LGBTQ+ community? 

    I want listeners to feel understood. My songs often explore emotions that are difficult to say aloud, such as longing, uncertainty, vulnerability, and the stories we create around the people we love. Even when a song comes from a very personal experience, I hope listeners can place their own memories inside it and find language for something they have felt.

    For LGBTQ+ listeners specifically, I want the music to feel like a space where their love is allowed to be tender, complicated, ordinary, and fully human. Queer stories do not always have to center on trauma or explain themselves to others. We deserve songs about crushes, mixed signals, romance, heartbreak, and all the quiet moments in between. If someone hears my work and feels less alone, more visible, or more comfortable embracing their own softness, then the song has done what I hoped it would do.

    “Traer(te) la luna,” Justy’s new single is described as “A dreamy bilingual indie soul / alternative R&B record about the space between attraction and imagination. Moving between English and Spanish over warm guitars and jazz-influenced production, the song captures the beautiful irrationality of wanting someone so much you’d give them the moon.” The single will be available on all music platforms on August 28.

  • Dr. Jake Robertson on Gulag Theater, Drag, Memory, and the Human Need to Be Seen

    Dr. Jake Robertson on Gulag Theater, Drag, Memory, and the Human Need to Be Seen

    There is a question running beneath all of Jake Robertson’s work: What is it that makes us human, and what happens when someone tries to take that away?

    Robertson (They/He) is a Soviet cultural historian, educator, theatermaker, and storyteller. They studied Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton, trained in acting at the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, and recently completed a PhD at Oxford, where they researched professional theater inside Soviet Gulag camps.

    But Robertson’s work has never been confined to the archive. They have taught Russian language, history, and theater to students around the world. Robertson’s scholarship examines the relationship between artistic expression and political control, exploring how culture survives and sometimes resists under authoritarian systems.

    At the same time, Robertson’s career as a theatermaker and drag artist has taken him from Off-Broadway theaters to queer pubs to Shakespeare’s Globe.

    Robertson’s creative projects include Saundra Lezzenbaum: Love in Concert!, a one-woman drag spectacular combining original music, improv comedy, and couples therapy. Love in Concert! was just one of Saundra’s shows. Her current rep is a monthly community mixer called Saturday Night Love. It also combines comedy, cabaret, and group therapy in an effort to foster connections and build community.

    There is also Songbird, a play in development that weaves together the life and music of queer Soviet cabaret icon and Gulag theater star Vadim Kozin with the story of a drag artist facing imprisonment in contemporary Russia.

    On paper, these worlds might seem impossible to reconcile. An Oxford historian and drag performer. Soviet archives and comedy clubs. Gulag theater and queer performance. But for Robertson, they are all part of the same lifelong inquiry.

    “What binds us all together, while at the same time making us wholly unique?”

    Birch bark letter from Siberia.

    The Search for What Connects Us

    Robertson’s fascination with humanity has always existed between individuality and belonging.

    For much of Robertson’s early life, they carried the weight of a divided identity. They describe spending two decades closeted, negotiating questions about who they were and how openly they could live.

    “I began as a nerdy sensitive gay boy in the Midwest and now have broken out of the binary and embrace an expansive queer identity that transcends gender and sexuality, shaping my perspective on almost everything,” Robertson says.

    “Now that I have embraced who I am and opened that up more and more, I have become even more interested in bringing us together and what we all share.”

    Whether sitting in an archive in Siberia researching a forgotten performer, or stepping onto a stage as Saundra Lezzenbaum, Robertson keeps returning to the same essential human longing. To be recognized.

    “There is something magical that happens when you can be seen by someone else,” Robertson says. “We are vast and complex, but in some profound way, we want to be seen.”

    For Robertson, that recognition carries almost spiritual weight.

    “Namaste,” comes to mind. “The divine in me sees the divine in you.”

    That belief may seem far removed from the brutal realities of Soviet repression, but Robertson sees the same human impulse everywhere: the desire to connect and find meaning even in circumstances designed to destroy those possibilities.

    Gulag work.

    The Stage Behind the Barbed Wire

    Robertson’s doctoral research examined one of history’s most unlikely artistic landscapes: professional theater inside the Soviet Gulag.

    The Gulag system was built around forced labor and political control. It was designed to extract productivity from millions of prisoners while attempting to reshape them according to Soviet ideology.

    Yet within that system, something unexpected emerged: Theater.

    “I got into Gulag theater through memoirs,” Robertson says. “Through these experiences in the camps, I felt this connection to the artists.”

    Prisoners who had been actors, directors, musicians, and designers before their imprisonment continued creating. Others found artistic roles within the camps. They built stages, organized performances, designed sets, and produced operas and plays, all while receiving the support and resources of local Gulag administrators.

    Within the very system that sought to destroy their humanity, these artists found a way to preserve that humanity through their art.

    For Robertson, this transformed his understanding of creativity.

    “As a theater maker and a creative, it gave me a deeper reverence for the creative act as an expression of your identity…There is something about revering that act.”

    Art was not simply entertainment but proof of existence. It was a declaration.

    I am still here.

    Robertson’s research also complicates easy narratives. Gulag theater was not simply a story of heroic resistance. The performers often faced impossible moral questions. Some felt guilty because theater offered them privileges unavailable to others. Some prisoners accused them of collaborating with camp authorities.

    “The people who survived,” Robertson explains, “are the ones whose memories we are reading.”

    History, like humanity itself, is complicated.

    “That spectrum of humanity and barbarity is fascinating… The same camp boss who took up the role of patron-of-the-arts, who joyously cheered for the Gulag opera, also oversaw a regime of mass starvation, exploitation and death.”

    The contradiction is unsettling. But it is also revealing. History does not only show us what people do. History forces us to contemplate the contradictory vastness of being human.

    Robertson’s dissertation will be a book set for release in 2028 with Cornell University Press.

    Documents of the Gulag’s victims.

    Why Authoritarians Fear Stories

    For Robertson, the struggle over history is ultimately a struggle over storytelling.

    “Stories were everything. All human institutions and civilizations are built around stories.”

    Governments use stories to create national identity, justify policies, and define enemies. The Soviet Union carefully constructed narratives about progress and the inevitable triumph of communism.

    But stories are dangerous because they can never be fully controlled. They can also complicate official narratives.

    “I believe official narratives are also a form of storytelling, and a powerful one at that. But our stories, especially those that illuminate the expansive complexity of human reality, can also serve as an incisive challenge to those hegemonic discourses. That to me is the power of queer stories, the kind that refuse to submit to norms, conventions and binaries.”

    Authoritarian systems often demand simplicity: one truth, one version of history, one acceptable identity. But human experience resists simplicity.

    “Reality is more complex,” Robertson says. “That complexity is exactly what my work seeks to preserve.”

    “The story of Gulag theater would have been lost to the snowdrifts of time were it not for the local historians, survivors, descendants who preserved those memories and materials. My goal with my decade of research was to do my part to make sure they did not die and disappear.”

    Exhibition of the GULAG History Museum.

    Historians are trained to analyze evidence carefully. Artists are trained to explore possibility. Robertson believes both are necessary and mutually enriching.

    “I have years of training as a serious historian and as an artist. There is something to be said about the reality and limits of our knowledge, understanding what we can and cannot know for certain.”

    But scholarship cannot remain locked away.

    “It can’t exist in a vacuum. We need to communicate what we learn and share it.”

    At NYU, Robertson went on to create a brand new multidisciplinary course on Soviet Theater. It was called “Soviet Stages: Theatre as Revolution, Repression & Resistance in the USSR.” This fall, they will teach Introduction to Theatre Studies, building the course around the frame of drag and performing gender onstage and off.

    “When we did the scenes in class, we learned much more,” Robertson says, reflecting on Soviet Stages. “We could never get that just from words on a page. The artist enlivens and brings to life so many new things that we cannot do as researchers.”

    That philosophy informs Saundra Lezzenbaum, Robertson’s drag persona.

    saundralezzenbaum.com

    Saundra Lezzenbaum is a fictional character, drag cabaret persona, and self-proclaimed “America’s Queen of Hearts” whose larger-than-life mission is to rescue romance one laugh at a time. Hailing from her “palatial duplex in Ronkonkoma, Long Island,” Saundra presents herself as a world-famous love coach, matchmaker, and relationship expert whose improbable résumé includes a cosmetology background, a lunchtime Emmy-winning television show called Queen of Hearts on The CW, and a collection of wildly imaginative self-help books, including Married to Menopause: Keeping Things Hot Through the Hot Flashes and her love memoire Heart Attack, the Good Kind.

    At the center of her carefully crafted mythology is her supposedly flawless marriage to her beloved husband, Max Lezzenbaum, which she uses as the foundation for her advice on achieving “#PerfectMarriage” bliss. In performance, Saundra becomes a comedic Cupid for the modern age, hosting interactive New York City mixers, cabaret shows, and variety events aimed at solving what she jokingly calls the city’s “Cost of Loving Crisis.”

    Through her one-woman musical comedy spectacular Love in Concert!, featuring original parody “Saungs” from her fictional album Saungs for a Perfect Marriage, and her audience-driven “Love Lezzons,” where she improvises relationship advice based on real dating dilemmas, Saundra blends satire, theater, and audience participation into a joyful exploration of love and the absurdities of modern romance.

    For Robertson, drag is not an escape from serious scholarship. It is another form of historical inquiry. A way of asking: Who gets to be visible and who gets to imagine another version of themselves?

    “By doing drag as a community mixer, it combines celebration of individual identity with a commitment to bringing us together and building real human connection.”

    Remembering People Well

    Robertson’s projects repeatedly return to forgotten voices.

    His genealogy project, Ancestory, transforms family history into narrative experience. It asks people to confront their ancestors honestly, not as perfect heroes or permanent villains, but as complicated human beings shaped by their circumstances. Ancestory weaves together rigorous archival archeology and inspired people-centered storytelling, fostering an accessible personalized journey through your family tree. This unique ancestry experience is curated by Robertson.

    jakeaustinrobertson.com

    The play Songbird continues this work by exploring the life of Vadim Kozin (1903–1994), a queer Soviet cabaret icon whose career was transformed by Stalinist repression. Known as the “Soviet tango king,” his powerful, lyrical voice blended traditional Russian romance with gypsy soul.

    In 1944, at the height of his fame, Kozin suddenly vanished from public life. He was arrested by the Soviet secret police and charged with homosexuality, which was criminalized under Joseph Stalin’s regime. Convicted and sentenced to hard labor, Kozin became the star of the Gulag Theater of Magadan.

    The details shift but the mechanisms remain. The attempt to silence certain identities is an attempt to decide whose lives are worthy of recognition.

    Vadim Kozin

    Near the end of our conversation, Robertson considers a thought experiment: What if tomorrow every archive disappeared? Every book. Every historical document. Every official record. What would remain?

    Human storytelling.

    What stories would they fight hardest to preserve?

    The stories of connection and creativity. The stories of people who found ways to remain human in the face of inhuman circumstances.

    “I guess what comes to mind,” Robertson says, “is that there is something in us all that connects us.”

    A historian might hesitate because such a statement is difficult to prove. But Robertson has spent their life witnessing it. In Soviet archives and on theatrical stages. In classrooms and in moments of performance and vulnerability.

    “There is something that does unite us at our core. And it can be seen by people of vastly different experiences.”

    Perhaps that is the thread running through everything Jake Robertson does.

    The historian searches the past for forgotten voices. The teacher shares knowledge across cultures. The storyteller preserves complexity. The performer creates spaces where people can be fully seen. And beneath it all is a belief that may be the most radical story of all: Even in the darkest places, human beings continue creating. They continue connecting. They continue telling one another:

    I see you.

  • ‘¡Afuera!’: Historical Queer Publications Showcased at LA Art Book Fair

    ‘¡Afuera!’: Historical Queer Publications Showcased at LA Art Book Fair

    The Queerest attended Printed Matter’s exhibition ‘¡Afuera!: Publishing Queer Liberation’ at its 13th annual LA Art Book Fair, which took place from May 7 to 10, 2026, at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, California.

    ¡Afuera! marked the debut L.A. exhibition of several historical publications and print ephemera published in the 1960s and 1970s by members of three radical coalitions: New York’s Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and Third World Gay Revolution (TWGR), and Argentina’s Frente de Liberación Homosexual of Argentina (FLH). The exhibition’s rare posters, flyers, newsletters, and magazines shed light on the organizing and publishing efforts of a network of determined social, political, and cultural activists of the era. 

    ¡Afuera! highlights the work of graphic artist Juan Carlos Vidal and poet-photographer Néstor Latrónico, gay activists who emigrated from Argentina to New York City in 1968 to find a new community. Vidal and  Latrónico collaborated on illustration and graphic design for the GLF’s newspaper, Come Out!, and for the FLH’s publication Afuera and its bulletin Somos. Examples of their publications, including all issues of Somos and a mock-up cover of Come Out!, were on display. 

    Vidal and Latrónico used visually striking, often colorful publications to draw attention to their queer activism and their messages of intersectional liberation, anti-imperialism, and anti-capitalism. The exhibition highlights the role that artist- and community-run printing projects played in sharing resources and information among queer activists in a pre-Internet age.

    Original cover mock-up of Come Out! Issue 8, Winter 1972, published by the Gay Liberation Front of New York. Courtesy Archivos Desviados.

    The exhibition is drawn from the New York-based collection of Archivos Desviados, which was created by Argentinian-born archivist Juan Queiroz in 2019. The ongoing, independent archive preserves thousands of historical documents from queer movements. 

    Learn more at printedmatter.org/afuera, and follow Archivos Desviados on Instagram @archivosdesviados.

  • QUEER x hope you have a good time: New Art Show in LA

    QUEER x hope you have a good time: New Art Show in LA

    QUEER x hope you have a good time is an art show in Mid-City Los Angeles, bringing together over 20 artists responding to the following quote from Bell Hooks:

    “[queer] not as being about who you’re having sex with – that can be a dimension of it – but queer, as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live.”

    HYHAGT × QUEER explores the self at odds with the surrounding world, featuring art installations from 20+ artists, tarot card reading, community art experiences, donation-based drinks, and a DJ set by Emily Alegria.

    The marketplace and gallery will be open on May 30th from 5-10pm.

    Click here to RSVP

  • L.A. Queer Zine Fest Comes to USC this Sunday

    L.A. Queer Zine Fest Comes to USC this Sunday

    Los Angeles Queer Zine Fest, a one-day celebration of queer and trans zine makers, artists, printmakers, publishers, and performers, is taking place this Sunday at the ONE Archives at the USC Libraries. The event will combine: 

    (1) 45+ queer and trans-identifying vendors;
    (2) live drag performances, music, and poetry; and
    (3) a zine-making workshop. 

    Per the ONE Archives, zines “have long been a tool for queer and trans people to document our lives, share resources, tell our stories, build community, and create outside of traditional publishing.” Building on this tradition, the L.A. Queer Zine Fest intends to “platform queer voices and encourage participation in the preservation and celebration of queer history.”

    During the 2026 Fest, guests are encouraged to visit NEED ME, or, (de)mystifying the myth of the modern primitive, which is billed as “the first ever public exhibition to present the Western history of body piercing and its roots in queer history.” NEED ME will highlight the artwork and ephemera of queer individuals who were essential to modern piercing history, including Catherine Opie, Ron Athey, Bob Flagan & Sheree Rose, Leigh Bowery, Annie Sprinkle, and Efrain Gonzales.

    Founded in 1952, the ONE Archives is the largest repository of LGBTQ+ materials in the world, containing millions of items including art, books, films, videos, audio recordings, and periodicals. The Fest is presented by TRANS•FORM, a growing programming series of workshops, performances, and community events which “creates space in the world for trans people through art, resources, and collective care.” The Fest is free of charge and open to the public. RSVP is not required, but encouraged. The Fest will take place in the ONE Archives parking lot. Public transportation (Metro E Line) is encouraged. Aside from street parking, a paid lot is a 2-minute walk from the Fest.

    May 17, 2026, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.
    Free
    ONE Archives at the USC Libraries, 909 West Adams Boulevard, L.A., CA 90007

  • For Halloween, I Dressed Up As Myself

    For Halloween, I Dressed Up As Myself

    Growing up, I wanted to dress up as desirable. I wanted to trade in my straight eyelashes for curled ones and change my brown eyes to blue. I wanted to grow four inches in height and lose two around my waist. I yearned for wavy hair that framed my face instead of the stick-straight hair I was given. My eyes were wide enough to see, but not wide enough to be seen. I would have traded them in an instant. When I walked into a room, I wanted people to turn their heads to look at me. I wanted to hear it, the rustling of hair against shirt collars. I wanted the air to shift around me so that the music sounded a little clearer and the drinks tasted a little sweeter. All of this yearning and shapeshifting to be liked by boys. Boys who looked straight through me to get a better glimpse of my friends. Boys who made racist remarks about me as a joke, and friends who let it happen. I knew that the costume I wanted could never be bought online. In a world full of tricks, that was the biggest one of them all. 

    When Halloween rolled around, I was reminded that even on a day where anything was possible, I would never be able to be the one thing I really wanted: an equal. While I didn’t love the holiday, I knew an opportunity when I saw one. Without its quality of childlike wonder, it was a chance to flip expectations on their head. It was the one day a year when the impossible was possible. A nice girl could be a witch and a shy girl could be noticed.

    When I fell in love, things began to change. At last, I had caught the feeling I spent my whole life pursuing. The fog of self-loathing cleared, and I looked around, assessing the damage. I was alive, and other than 22 years of mental turmoil, remained mostly intact. I discovered that what made me undesirable was my environment, not me. And I discovered that the feeling I had when I looked at a pretty girl, the one I had almost convinced myself wasn’t real, was, in fact, the thing I had been wanting all along. With this newfound knowledge, I could start over as someone new, someone who dressed up as the character from their favorite childhood movie, for no reason other than for themselves. How strange and wonderful it was to put me first!

    Now, Halloween has taken on a new meaning. I no longer have to choose between pleasing others and pleasing myself, because the only person I care about is already next to me, holding my hand. Embracing my queerness helped me to accept many things, some more obvious than others, but I never imagined that a holiday that used to symbolize conformity could return to one of storybook characters and laughter.

  • Halloween Photography

    Halloween Photography

    Photography from Halloween 2024 in West Hollywood by Kidmin Bellin and Paul Kneitz

  • I Forgive You

    I Forgive You

    by Liv Gardner

    I forgive you

    For the hurt

    For the tears

    I forgive you

    Whether you want forgiveness

    Or not

    The words you spoke

    Echoing for years

    Deep inside

    I release them

    They belong to you

    Like they did before

    They hold power over me no longer

    And I relieve you of that power too

    Maybe you’ll understand

    Maybe you won’t

    But at last

    We are free

    Unbound

    From each other

  • Playing Dress Up

    Playing Dress Up

    I don’t remember a lot from my childhood. There’s no deeper reason like I’m trying to forget certain events or particular people–it’s not that serious; I simply have a bad memory. However, amongst the collection of things I do remember, like my old childhood best friend’s birthday and Greek alphabet song, are the consecutive Halloweens I spent dressing up as Sleeping Beauty. Everything about the holiday besides my costume is a blur and frankly unimportant. In my memory, it was all about the dress.

    Like many six-year-old girls, my favorite color was pink and this dress was my perfect shade. It had stretchy silk-like straps that looked like scrunchies attached to a tulle off-the-shoulder neckline that revealed my childish decolletage. In the middle sat a pendant with Sleeping Beauty herself. The sleeves were full length and ended at my wrists with a piping of gold stitching. The bodice held the most detail, with a v shape joining in the middle made with that same gold stitching, to create shape where there was none. Fleur de lis littered the top and bottom of the dress and shimmered in the light. I adored this dress, getting much more wear out of it than just once a year. I have a picture of me at six years old wearing it to the mall on a random Monday in August. At the time, I’m sure it was the color that lured me to it, but as I reflect now, it’s apparent that there was a part of me who loved it because I could finally be something that everyone else was. I wasn’t the adopted Asian girl with white parents, I was Sleeping Beauty. I had blond hair and fair skin and a prince who would do anything for me. I may have looked different but my dreams were the same. 

    Eventually, I grew up and the dress was passed on to someone else, and I was still chasing that feeling of belonging. Growing up in a small town meant that I was among only a handful of other Asians. As a whole, I was met with kindness, but to exist meant to stick out, and so I did my best to exist quietly. I fell in with the right crowd: friends from well-known families in the community who were popular but kind, and smart but humble. I excelled in school enough to remain in step with my friends but not enough to be noticed. I participated in student government but ran for historian instead of president, and joined the cheer team, choosing the position that faced away from the audience instead of towards it. I didn’t come out as queer until I was 16, though I knew a lot earlier than that. I couldn’t stand being even more different than I already was, so I sacrificed my love for uniformity. This became my new costume, which I wore comfortably and without hesitation. I didn’t stand out at all, and that’s exactly what I wanted. What felt like a persona at the time became synonymous with who I was. Before I knew it I was floating through life content with being 70% happy, so long as on the outside it looked like I was 100%. I didn’t find that last 30% until I was 22 years old. When I first met my now-girlfriend, I couldn’t believe that life was meant to be this good. The way our lives intertwined so seamlessly made me believe that that’s how it should have been all along. As someone who lives their life with bated breath, I didn’t think I’d ever find someone who felt like fresh air.

    The costume I had eagerly worn to survive had become my skin. It was the good things now that felt like make-believe. I would come home from a day of holding hands and writing love notes and look in the mirror and see a stranger. She looked like me, but there was a quality about her that was different. She shimmered, like how heat radiates off of the pavement on a hot day and how the air almost looks like it’s vibrating. Patches of my old self would reappear in moments of vulnerability or anxiety, but as time went on I started to shed my old skin. 

    It took my whole life to get to this point, but it doesn’t feel like I’m playing dress-up anymore. I used to have to pretend to be someone else to feel like enough, but now there’s no one I’d rather be than myself. I still experience all the hard parts of life, like everyone else, but I can find comfort in knowing that trying to suppress who I am is no longer one of them.

  • Take It or Leave It

    Take It or Leave It

    by Jocelyn Diaz

    I’ve found myself dissociating more than usual. It’s been so hard for my brain to accept that I was in a different country last week, and now, I’m back in California. I went from speaking Spanish in Spain every day, teaching English to young kids, to saying “No, yeah, for sure, I appreciate you asking” when the barista at Peet’s Coffee asks if I want alternative milk. 

    The job search hasn’t exactly been confidence-building, with most companies not directly rejecting me, but simply not responding. I try to tell myself that maybe they’ve found someone already, and simply haven’t taken the advertisement down yet. Then I see the advertisement being reposted a few days later and struggle not to take it personally. Without homework assignments and with no job, I have so much time on my hands, like I’m on summer vacation but it’s January. And I don’t have those anymore anyway since I graduated last June. 

    Even worse, or maybe less ideal, is that I’m back in my hometown. I graduated college a year early for my age, so a lot of my conocidos are no longer on Christmas break and are starting their Winter Quarter. I still get scared that I’ll see someone from middle school or high school, but so far I’ve yet to encounter anyone. 

    I saw this TikTok saying that when you feel like you’re in a slump, you should try one new thing every day to switch up your routine. I sit in the Peet’s parking lot and lazily stir my iced matcha with oat milk because it’s not my new thing to get matcha, more like a reason to leave the house. As I drive away, I think about what will be my thing today, something that’s cheap or free, if that’s even possible. I don’t want to drive aimlessly without a plan because I don’t have the gas money to do so and decide to make my way back to the house when I notice a sign that says “TAKE A BOOK LEAVE A BOOK.” I do a loop around because I’m genuinely curious about what kind of books the general public decides to donate. Plus, I want to pick up something new to read, while I wait for my library card in the mail. 

    I see a lot of self-help books, some cookbooks, and the book 1984. I was half-expecting to see those cheesy romance books with a Fabio-looking man on the cover, holding a swooning woman with one hand. I kinda wanted to read one of those, just for the fun of it. But before I close the door to the little book nook shaped like a birdhouse, I see a cartoon girl on the cover of a book. At first glance, I think it’s a puberty book titled “TOTALLY ME!” Yet the figure of the girl with a short, yellow bob and chunky platform orange sandals is too familiar, and I suddenly remember the show I used to watch every night with my best friend Mimi, Lizzie McGuire. I was named after my grandmother Elizabeth, so I pretended that I was Lizzie, and she was Miranda because that was her name in real life too. On my eighth birthday, when my parents gave me a cat for my birthday, I named him Gordo. We had our version of the show, and it was beautiful and perfect. 

    Once the wave of nostalgia settles down and my judgment of whoever donated a Lizzie McGuire book, much less who wouldn’t want to take it home, I realize it’s a diary, not a book. I quickly skim through the leftover pages; the missing ones likely ripped out by the previous owner to maintain confidentiality. I imagine using the cover as a collage in my diary, which is good enough for me for my “something new.” 

    When I get home, I set up my desk with my collaging supplies and rip off the journal’s cover, which loosens its spine and causes a few pages to fall on my floor. I grab the last page of the pile and notice the imprint of words left behind by this mystery writer become more prominent through the light from my lamp. Luckily, I remember how popular invisible ink pens were in the early 2000s, as I hold the page closer to the lamp and can make out more words. And as invasive as it feels, I can’t stop reading.  

    Dear Diary, 

    We watched Lizzie McGuire, all night, again. JK! It was like 10 pm. Her bedtime was 8 pm but we wanted to keep watching TV, so anytime we heard footsteps, we turned down the TV and pretended to be asleep. It was so much fun! Lizzie keeps saying that Miranda is so beautiful. That she loves her crazy hair and style. I notice that her saying these words makes my stomach warm and fuzzy. IDK why. Lizzie is my BFF and I am hers. Like when I say my prayers every night, I always pray for her the most. Is this what God feels like when he thinks of me? Mom says that I’m God’s treasure. That I’m his favorite person. I know what he means. Lizzie is pretty, smart, and super cool. I love her sooo much. Don’t tell anyone Diary, but I think I like-like her. What am I going to do? 

    Love, Miranda 

    Tears well in my eyes. I always told her that Miranda was my first TV show character crush on a girl. My Miranda, or Mimi, as she has gone by since high school, had a crush on me when we were kids. I had no idea. Oh my god. Did I like her too? Oh my god. 

    I forget about the collage altogether, and, instead, scurry up to the attic and quickly rummage through box after box, not caring about the mess I’m making right now. 

    Eventually, my hands find the same diary as Mimi’s, as if there was a two-for-one diary discount at the store. I run back to my room to open the diary, leaving the attic worse than before. Again, pages are ripped out for some reason as I frantically scan each page under my lamp with no trace of invisible ink. Until I find one page. 

    Hi,

    Mom says that I need to try journaling for my anxiety. I don’t know why I feel so sad and scared all the time. Watching Lizzie McGuire with Miranda helps me. Just having her next to me makes me calmer. IDK if she knows but watching the show with her is my favorite part of the day. We both have bangs like Lizzie and Miranda, and one time her hair was sticking up like when you rub a balloon on your head. I tried to smooth it down with my hands and then my cheeks got warm so I drank water and looked in the mirror and my face was as red as a tomato. It was so weird. Miranda is my BFF and every time we have a sleepover I always tell her I love her just in case something happens. She always says it back. That makes me happy. Anyways, my hand hurts, and writing in a journal is stupid. And no, stupid isn’t a bad word. 

    – Lizzie 

    I trace over her writing in pen and send Mimi a picture of her diary entry without thinking about how out of the blue it is. Before I can figure out a follow-up text to the picture, she responds immediately.

    Surprise?

    I text her back a picture of my entry, also rewritten in dark ink.

    Surprise.