The holidays are coming, and this is the time of year when every magazine, ours included, turns to gratitude. Fair enough. Here’s ours.
None of us expected to be starting a media company. Not one of us could have predicted it, and if you had told me a few months ago that I’d spend this fall wrestling with InDesign through the wee hours of many mornings, I would have laughed. We also couldn’t have predicted the support you’ve given us. We’ve been out and about, on photo shoots and at fundraisers, and people have been generous with us in ways we’re still wrapping our heads around. So, yes. We’re ramping up to the holidays with much to give thanks for: something we never knew we’d have, and something we never knew we’d get.
The holidays are a mixed bag, though. They hold so much to look forward to and, for a lot of us, more than a bit of a challenge. Both are true at once, which brings me to one of my favorite topics: dialectics.
“Dialectics” is a fancy word for a simple idea: two things that seem to contradict each other can both be true at the same time. You can be thrilled and exhausted. You can love your family and still need to step out of the room. You can be fighting for your existence every damn day, and you can still find joy. Neither truth cancels the other out. The work is making room for both. That’s this whole issue.
Start with what’s worth looking forward to. We’ve got a rundown of the season’s stages, from queer ballet to queer choirs to drag shows to queer meat raffles . . . I made that one up. Plus, we’ve got cheap handmade gifts for the exes, difficult relatives, and polycule members on your list. There’s a leather shirt won at a holiday fundraiser that led to a leather title, and a nightlife landmark that could become the country’s first community-owned, nonprofit LGBTQ+ bar and theater. We find community in a beloved basketball team and its fans, and we show support for a beloved television news mainstay.
Then there’s the harder side, and we’re here for it. There are the reasons why we’re showing support for a beloved television news mainstay. A behavioral health professional explains why the holidays weigh so heavily and offers a plan for getting through them. One writer takes on coming out late, what it gave her, and what it cost. Another examines what happens to our economic reality when surveys don’t count queer people and the impact discrimination has on affordability, and another writes about betrayal from those who turned their backs on the trans community. A prose poem about a stranger on a quiet street comes with a content note and grittily earns it. And friends and family build an ofrenda for a dear loved one who was murdered earlier this year, so he’ll be remembered as colorfully as he lived.
Dialectics are hard. And, still, we persevere.
Since this issue is coming out just as the midterms are happening, I hope I have much, much more to be thankful for.
Thank you to our writers, photographers, and advertisers, who keep making this possible. And thank you, reader, for being here for the second issue of something none of us saw coming.
—Andy
