Indholdsfortegnelse for September/October 2021 i The Advocate

IN WHAT FEELS like a previous life at this point, I was an actor — a storyteller of a different sort. As a sophomore in high school, I auditioned for my first play, Witness for the Prosecution, and landed the lead role I would later learn Marlene Dietrich played in the 1957 Billy Wilder film. During my first go-round at college when I was 18, I played roles in classics like Six Characters in Search of an Author, The Bourgeois Gentleman, and Lysistrata. As a middle-schooler, I fantasized that when I was a bit older, I would star as Angel in a Broadway musical version of Little Darlings — not because I wanted to be Kristy McNichol, but because my preteen brain thought that Angel and Tatum O’Neal’s character Ferris…

Since 1977, The Joy of Gay Sex has educated generations of gay men on blow jobs, cruising, fisting, and gonorrhea — and perhaps just as subversive, it also includes an equal number of passages of a nonsexual nature. Co-writers Dr. Charles Silverstein and novelist Edmund White wanted to create a first-of-its-kind guidebook for every aspect of the gay experience. The book has been seized by customs agents around the world, burned, and banned. But it’s also gone on to be translated into five languages and was revised in 1993 and then again in 2006 (co-authored by Silverstein and Felice Picano). And who can forget the drawings? The biting of a nipple, the curl of pubic hair — no detail was left out. The images were intended to be as stimulating…

FARAZ ARIF ANSARI has a deeply personal relationship with food. After the queer nonbinary filmmaker’s boyfriend died in a “freak accident,” they came out to their mother, who, “overwhelmed,” responded by severing communication for over six months, Ansari recounts. But when Ansari turned 21, their mother cooked their favorite meal — “her way of extending the olive branch,” Ansari says. In another tasteful gesture of affection, the late boyfriend’s mother baked Ansari her son’s favorite cherry pie, which “we cherished as we went over all of [the] memories.” Food is “a language of love,” asserts Ansari, who uses this dialect to powerful effect in Sheer Qorma, their new short about a nonbinary person, Saira (Divya Dutta), who brings home their partner, Sitara (Swara Bhaskar), to their religious Indian mother, Ammi…

From queer coded characters in early cinema to the intersectional visibility on modern TV, we nod to work that changed the game for LGBTQ+ people in pop culture. 1929 — G.W. Pabst’s Pandora’s Box stars Louise Brooks as Lulu, a woman driven by “insatiable lusts” who dances with another woman in a famous scene. 1930 — In Morocco, queer siren Marlene Dietrich (below) stars as a tuxedo-clad cabaret singer who woos both men and women in the audience. 1970 — The Boys in the Band, based on Mart Crowley’s play, is the first film to feature a gay friend group. 1972 — The multiple Oscar-winner Cabaret, starring Liza Minnelli and Michael York, embraces sexual fluidity. 1972 — The “Pope of Trash” John Waters revolts and mesmerizes audiences with his liberatingly…

WHEN LAITH ASHLEY decided to post some sexy snaps on Instagram from a photo shoot he and a friend conducted in 2014, he had no idea it would lead him to making history on the runways of New York Fashion Week less than two years later. Since then, the model, actor, singersongwriter (“Like Me”), and activist has gone on to become the first transgender Pit Crew member on RuPaul’s Drag Race, to grace the covers of British GQ and British Vogue, and to lead major fashion campaigns for Barneys and Diesel (one of the first trans models to do so). Now he’s heading to Hollywood. Ashley is set to portray Ajax, a gorgeous smalltown dancer with a heart of gold, in Desiree Staples’s upcoming indie comedy My Divorce Party. Although…

I NEVER CARED much about acne when the world called me a woman. Back then, I understood 10-step skin care regimens and full-coverage makeup artistry as the domain of an especially girly kind of girl. I was not her. Never would be. No, sir. I got by on drugstore basics: that ubiquitous orange Neutrogena gunk, the once-in-a-while Oxy pad reeking of rubbing alcohol. Acne largely left me alone. My aversion to makeup had to have helped — less heavy lifting for my fragile teenage pores. I didn’t set foot in a Sephora until I decided, once and for all, under a doctor’s supervision, to depart formally from womanhood. The irony is not lost on me. The baseline treatment for transgender men is injectable testosterone. Its most common and visible effect…

IF YOUR RESULT IS POSITIVE… It’s okay to feel overwhelmed or confused. But HIV treatments can help people live longer, healthier lives. Talk to a healthcare provider as soon as possible after diagnosis. There’s no cure for HIV, but by starting, sticking with, and staying on daily treatment, HIV can be a manageable disease for many people. IF YOUR RESULT IS NEGATIVE… There are things you can do to stay that way. Use condoms, get retested regularly, and talk to a healthcare provider about HIV prevention medicines for PEP (Post-Exposure Prophylaxis) and PrEP (Pre-Exposure Prophylaxis).…

CARL CLEMONS-HOPKINS was fast asleep when they made history. As one of the stars of the hit HBO series Hacks, they stole audiences’ hearts as Marcus, the savvy-at-work, vulnerable-off-the-clock chief operating officer to Jean Smart’s Deborah Vance. It’s a role that earned them a groundbreaking Primetime Emmy nod for Outstanding Support ing Actor in a Comedy Series, marking the first time an out nonbinary actor has been nominated in the awards ceremony’s 73-year history. But thanks to Clemons-Hopkins’s seasonal allergies, they snoozed right through it. “I was deep in a Benadryl sleep,” they recall with a laugh. “My partner woke me up, was like, ‘Hey, you need to check your phone right now.’” When they discovered more notifications than they’d previously thought possible, their first thought was that someone had…

NOW HEADING INTO the third season of her popular show, Kelly Clarkson carries on a tradition of inclusivity and acceptance in daytime TV that began decades ago. With Ellen DeGeneres leaving her talk show at the end of the upcoming season, Clarkson, a longtime champion of LGBTQ+ people, has a unique platform beaming into people’s homes daily; she’s already shown her commitment to the community by regularly interviewing out stars, including Dan Levy, Ben Platt, and Melissa Etheridge, on her show. There’s been a “common thread” in daytime TV, Clarkson says. “Whether it was Oprah or Rosie O’Donnell or Ellen or even our crew, all of those people are inclusive.” “That’s why those people have done well is because no one’s in the game to put anyone down or in…

MODEL, ACTRESS, AND DISABILITY ADVOCATE Jillian Mercado first landed on the fashion world’s radar in 2014 when she was featured in an ad campaign for denim brand Diesel, her first big gig. Soon after, she signed with IMG Models, and has since added campaigns for Nordstrom, Target, and Olay to her résumé; been on the runways of New York Fashion Week; appeared on a billboard in Times Square and on the cover of Teen Vogue; and even worked with the Queen Bee herself (modeling merch for Beyoncé’s Formation world tour). Still, there was something else in Mercado beyond her striking beauty and wicked-cool style that the producers of The L Word: Generation Q saw in her. Though she had no professional acting experience, she landed the role of Maribel on…

FRENCH PHOTOJOURNALIST AUDE OSNOWYCZ explores the political movement of La Sape in her series “The New Sapeurs.” La Sape, a movement of fashion and politics inspired by European dandies, was born at the start of the 20th century as a statement against colonial powers. The movement’s members, Sapeurs, are part of the Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People. “The New Sapeurs” examines the paradox embodied by these individuals and their dress. “This series aims to highlight the role that Sapeurs play in their struggle against their predicament,” Osnowycz says. While they dress rich, they live in one of the poorest countries in the world. The Society of Ambianceurs and Elegant People, therefore, offers an extraordinary spectacle, according to Osnowycz. La Sape’s style was at one point thought to be too Western…

Soman Chainani, best-selling author of the School for Good and Evil series, credits Walt Disney and a year of pandemic-induced isolation for his most recent children’s novel, Beasts and Beauty: Dangerous Tales, a retelling of the famed Grimm brothers’ fairy tales, which have been scaring children since 1812. “I grew up with Disney fairy tales,” Chainani says. “I think that’s sort of the common American plight — to grow up having experienced fairy tales through that lens…and so they’re quite one-dimensional in that good looks a certain way, evil looks a certain way. And everything is presented…very black-and-white and quite heteronormative.” But Chainani is changing perceptions of good and evil. He burst on to the scene in 2013 with The School for Good and Evil, the first in a series…

It’s a rare memoir in which one can see themselves — a small-town farm slut turned big city queer journalist, for example — but also constantly pause at the unflinching and powerful way an author recounts their personal journey. Alexander Cheves has offered such a book in My Love Is a Beast: Confessions (from Unbound Edition Press), a provocative and poetic look at one young queer man’s coming of age in rural America. His exploration in the kink and fetish world, his embrace of sex work and recreational drugs, even his move from city to city in search of himself and his people reflects so much of the modern queer experience in the gay meccas of the country today. As Cheves moves from San Francisco to Los Angeles to Atlanta…

“HI, GAY” is how Megan Stalter’s alter ego greets viewers in her faux Pride Month commercial. In the video, captioned “corporations this month,” Stalter’s character sits uncomfortably in front of a wagon wheel, her hair in braids, sporting an off-the-shoulder brown dress as if she’d just walked off the prairie. She trips over her words as she attempts to entice LGBTQ+ customers—a demographic clearly not in her orbit — to her butter-shop with Pride Month deals. Stalter created dozens of characters like these in videos shared to TikTok and Instagram since lockdowns began in 2020. The buttershop bit demonstrates her brand of humor, which leans into her identity as a sardonic bisexual Midwesterner. Already a scene-stealer as Kayla, the chaotic assistant to Paul Downs’s agent on the multiple-Emmy nominated HBO…

Across the country, major cities have become more welcoming to LGBTQ+ people, to the point that queer-run businesses and spaces are often celebrated. That said, many of those businesses, especially lesbian bars, are shuttering. “In the late 1980s, there were an estimated 200 lesbian bars across the country. Now there are thought to be just 21,” according to the Lesbian Bar Project’s website. Many bars shuttered as a result of business closings during the pandemic. But for Jody Bouffard, who owns Blush & Blu in Denver, the extinction of queer bars, specifically bars for queer women, goes far deeper. When Bouffard first moved to Denver in 1996, there were at least six lesbian bars thriving in the city that catered to different queer women’s subcultures. She’s seen firsthand how the…

FOR MUCH OF HIS early life, working in politics was never on Roger Montoya’s radar. But last year, he became the first state representative in New Mexico’s history who is both an out gay man and living with HIV. The 60-year-old says he realized at a young age that he was different than his peers. He was labeled a “sissy” early and derided for his attraction to gymnastics. “I tried to suppress it,” Montoya recalls. “But I also felt this joy and excitement for moving in the world.” And he was a skilled athlete who nearly reached the Olympics until an injury ended his gymnastics dreams. By then, sports had taken him to the West Coast. There, when he was 18, he recalls, “I met a man who was 35….…

PrEP PrEP means taking prescription medicine every day before you are exposed to HIV to help reduce the risk of getting HIV. PrEP is for people who are HIV negative and are at risk of getting HIV through sex. PEP PEP means taking prescription medicine daily after being exposed to HIV. PEP must be started within 72 hours after exposure and continued for 28 days in a row. It is available only from a doctor or healthcare center. UNDETECTABLE If you’re living with HIV, a major goal is to get your viral load to undetectable. There is no cure for HIV, but being undetectable means there is so little virus in the blood that a test can’t measure it. How can you get to undetectable? By taking HIV treatment every…

WHEN NONBINARY ACTOR Vico Ortiz was offered the part of Sergeat Valencia, the most loyal soldier of S.O.Z.: Soldiers or Zombies’ chief antagonist, Colonel Murduch, they had an idea about how to expand and enrich the role. “I was like, why can’t a nonbinary person exist in this job?” Ortiz recalls. In an Amazon Prime series that questions what it truly means to be human, Ortiz saw an opportunity to unpack that question. “Whenever someone’s like, there’s a nonbinary character, the industry immediately says things like Oh, androgynous, white, thin, and whatever,” Ortiz says. “A nonbinary person isn’t necessarily androgynous and doesn’t need to act a certain way or behave a certain way, they just are. [Valencia’s] arc has nothing to do with their identity. They’re just simply the same…

NIK DODANI HAS OFFICIALLY queered Dear Evan Hansen. In a major departure from the acclaimed musical’s storyline — which centers on a straight teen, Evan (Ben Platt), coping with mental health issues in the wake of a classmate’s suicide — in the film version, Dodani (Atypical) portrays Evan’s family friend Jared as gay. This change is significant. Dear Evan Hansen has long resonated with LGBTQ+ fans. After all, a “young person who is struggling with their identity and their place in the world…feels very queer to me,” Dodani attests. But they have never seen themselves reflected until the film adaptation from director and screenwriter Stephen Chbosky (The Perks of Being a Wallflower). Queer representation isn’t the only boon. “Jared being gay makes a lot of sense” in Dear Evan Hansen’s…

Brandi Carlile is a troubadour — a lyric poet and storyteller in the truest sense. The official definition of the word notes that most troubadours in the 11th to 13th centuries were also of knightly rank, and it would surprise none of her fans if it turned out she’s a knight as well. As the world shuttered in 2020, the singer-songwriter was on the verge of finishing Broken Horses, a memoir chronicling her life from a near-death experience as a child through coming out as a lesbian in the church all the way to her mainstream music career. The final chapter of Carlile’s memoir details those early days of lockdown and the shift that put everyone’s plans on pause, including her own. Where the book leaves off, Carlile’s new album,…

IT’S BEEN 15 years since audiences were introduced to Andy, Griff, Jarod, and Nico — the queer characters who wager to lose their virginity post-high school in the gay camp classic Another Gay Movie. The 2006 film from Todd Stephens (director of the new film Swan Song) was more than a typical teen sex spoof of the era, like American Pie. For Jonah Blechman, who played the outrageous Nico, the film was a courageous and liberating stand for LGBTQ+ affirmation. “Another Gay Movie was my queer protest film,” Blechman says. “It took an incredible amount of courage from the entire filmmaking team to put something so brash, titillating, and poignant into the world, all wrapped up in a candy-colored comedy. It was an incredibly freeing experience, and I have best…

Every Body Shines: Sixteen Stories About Living Fabulously Fat, edited by Cassandra Newbould, is an anthology with stories that include a cute space romance, fat folks in sports, and mermaids. Some of the best-selling contributors include Nafiza Azad, Francina Simone, Jennifer Yen, and Alex Gino. (Bloomsbury YA) A Marvellous Light by Freya Marske follows Robin, a man who through an administrative mistake is given a government position where he’s charged with hiding magical events from the public. It turns out the former holder of that job mysteriously disappeared, and Robin and his supervisor Edwin attempt to solve the case. The story has murder, mystery, and gay sex, all against the backdrop of Edwardian England. (Tor Teen) Battle Dragons: City of Thieves by bestselling author Alex London is the actionpacked first…