The Queer Love Podcast

In this episode of The Queer Love Podcast, we tackled one of the topics that continues to confuse and trouble so many people: religion. Our guest, Dr. Harry Tanner, has written a fantastic scholarly book, The Queer Thing About Sin, that will get you thinking differently about so many of the myths and misconceptions that persist—from ancient Greek and Roman beliefs to Christianity and our current debates.

As always, thanks to all who are supporting The Queer Love Project, which helps make the podcast available. We’re keeping it free for all since it offers valuable teachings. If you have the ability to upgrade to a Catalyst Member level, not only will you support this podcast and the rest of our mission, I’ll send you a copy of the QLP Quarterly zine and a T-shirt with our logo!

Harry’s personal history is the emotional core of his search for meaning. In it, he details his transition from a devout teenager seeking to cure his sexuality to a scholar of ancient Greek, which provided the lens through which he examines historical homophobia.

For those who’ve read Jeanette Winterson’s trailblazing memoir, Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, you may already be aware that England has its own evangelical religious environment. But many others may be unaware of the power of Christianity in the UK. As Harry helpfully explained:

“So the UK does have an established church. It does not have separation of church and states as the United States does. The King of England is also the head of the Church of England. And although it’s a smaller group of people, you do have spots of evangelical Christianity throughout the Church of England. It kind of depends church to church where you are. They’re slightly better at hiding in Britain, I would say, than they are in the US because they have considerably less power. Despite officially being the Church of England, the church in Britain has much, much less power than it does in the United States. That’s probably a function of it being an official part of everybody’s lives and therefore essentially forced on the people rather than being something that people opt into, which you have in the US.”

As Harry details in his book, he entered a conversion therapy as a kid hoping to “cultivate a numbness,” something I think a great many young people may still experience to this day. As he detailed:

“When I was very young, I lost my dad and that made Christianity really, really appealing to me. And I spent a lot of time at prayer groups, which are essentially unregulated in the UK. So you can get pastors and you can get lay preachers who come in under the guise of looking after children and they will come in and they will seed their ideas. And I was particularly seduced by an evangelical group I was a part of.

“As I started realizing that I was gay, I felt sufficiently safe that I could talk about this and explore this privately with certain senior members of the group. And it was not quite fire and brimstone, as I think it can be in the US, but the response to me was very clearly: ‘It is a mortal, grave sin. It is not something that you can ever practice in your life and you will have to do things to stop yourself feeling these emotions and these desires, or you will go to hell.’

“And it was said in that very calm, matter-of-fact tone, I think if they had shouted it from a pulpit, I might have been inclined to disbelieve it. There’s something about a very calm tone of voice which really made it seem incredibly final. It took me not too long to become really very mentally unwell following some of the practices that had been suggested to me and also following a lot of literature online as well, which was also suggested to me. These are sort of in the days before internet filters came in for teenage kids. And I wanted to end my life, which I think a lot of your listeners may have similar experiences of in dealing with evangelism. Fortunately, I had a very good support network around me. I think one of the terrible things about evangelism in the US, as I see it anyway, is it tends to be your whole community, and that was not true of me in Britain.

“So there were plenty of people who I was able to turn to, who when they found out what was happening, thought that it was not only ridiculous, but actively egregious. And I was saved by those people, but also by the real privilege of being able to study the ancient world, of being able to study the languages of the Bible, Greek and Hebrew and later Latin. And though that turned me into a very angry atheist for a period, I devoted the next few years of my life to the study of the ancient world such that I could do something about this, which that is the substance of the queer thing about sin, which is, I mean, you all go ... I went looking for a book that I couldn’t find and that book was why is it that St. Paul is so vehemently anti-gay? I wanted to know why. What was the reason? If I knew the reason, I felt those calm, voiced evangelicals would lose their power over me. And I have advanced a reason in the queer thing about sin, which I could not find. I could not find that book, so I wrote it.

I’ll let you listen in on this fascinating conversation to learn more about why The Queer Thing About Sin is such a vital new text that I think a great many people will benefit from.

Harry’s path to healing came from learning ancient Greek and learning how to read the Bible and reinterpret it in a more, let’s just say, “correct way.” It reminded me of a book that was very popular in the ‘90s when I was a teenager. What the Bible Really Says about Homosexuality was a bestseller at many a gay bookstore I visited. Everybody talked about it because they were searching for some empirical framework to help them rationalize the pain they were facing. I feel Harry’s book is better on a great many counts, and it’s certainly important for our current debates in the 21st century.

But Harry is also pretty blunt about one thing: “We do have to accept that these biblical texts are really homophobic. The question is why?”

As he explains, once you understand the reason it’s homophobic, “you understand the societal pattern that caused it.” For him, that's the real “cure.”

“If you can understand why something is, you can rationalize it, you can make sense of it, you can put it into a box and it stops being that thing that you are so frightened of every day because in moments of doubt otherwise, at least this was true of me, you'll be thinking to yourself, ‘Well, what if they were right?’”

Harry then shared a personal story about when he was hooking up with a lot of guys and feeling unhappy and wondering if he’d ever find a sustainable, happy relationship. As he explained, he kept thinking:

“This is making me miserable. Were they right? Now I can say to myself, ‘No, they were not right.’ But without that clear answer of why homophobia emerges, why it’s in the Bible, you’ll always have that ghost over your shoulder, wondering in the dark times, ‘Were they right? Did they get it right?’ We have to separate out those fears and the only way to do that is a rational explanation of what they were doing.”

I had also just finished reading Peter Ackroyd’s Queer City—a popular history that details London from Roman to contemporary times—and it also gets into similar themes that Harry’s book does, so I asked him what he thought. In particular, I was curious about Harry views on the idea of self-restraint and that framing queer love as “excessive” or “lacking control” is part of the issue. As both Peter Ackroyd and Harry Tanner point out: Whenever people feel that there’s too much excessiveness, then a certain segment of the population (primarily, straight cisgender men) feel like they have to restrain it. It’s one reason why so many people who are into the Stoics, and they are promoting the teachings of Marcus Aurelius and saying, “Oh, we need to have more self-control.”

Harry agreed that this concept of “self-restraint” is at the basis of much of homophobia and also much of the misogyny and hatred of women. But he reminded me that our next question has to be: “Why. Why do humans do that? And why is it that conservatism—which is essentially the politics of self-restraint and stoicism and all of that stuff—why is that so popular in the times we’re living in?”

“There are some very good answers to that. The primary answer is that when things get really complicated, we want simple answers. The second answer to that is that when people get poorer, their sex drives go down. This is well established in the cognitive neuroscience literature and anybody who is seen to be having deviant sex or having sex for the purposes of desire rather than merely for procreation under those circumstances becomes a real outlet for the hatred of the rest of society, which is poor and angry. And particularly so because you would have thought that that poor and angry society would be really, really against the super rich, right?

“No, because to be angry against those people is to remove aspiration. Everybody wants to have the supercar. Everybody wants to have the island and the yacht, but not everybody wants to have sex with another man or with another woman. So it becomes that perfect outlet for that rage. There’s a lot that we talk about in the media where we seem to think that this anger is set up as a sort of scapegoating exercise. People aren’t that stupid. This is really important to underline: People are not that stupid. You don’t just sort of set up a scapegoat and then everyone goes running at it. It’s not like that. There has to be a foundational reason why it works. The foundational reason why it works, why the attacks on queer people work is, again, people are poor, people are poorer than they felt before, people feel they have no hope. So they cling to self-restraint as their means to preserve themselves in these hard times.

“And anyone who they see as not exhibiting self-restraint, they are going to attack—and violently. And that is the only possible reason why someone would attack a person wearing a dress or doing something as harmless as kissing another man or another woman. That is the only reason why that would take place, because there is an underlying envy and hatred about something else which is coming out.”

We went on to discuss how transphobia existed throughout history, and that there is more evidence of trans people in antiquity than homosexual desire. We also talked about the need to “nobilize” homosexuality (the way Oscar Wilde did during his infamous trial) and much more before we eventually got the “how do you define love question.” Harry gave a very in-depth explanation to this.

“I think that you have two types of romantic love, and this is often talked about in the venue of Plato's Symposium, but this is not the two types of romantic love that I mean. … I think that you get very ‘idealistic love,’ which is based on fragments of a person, little snippets of things that you hear… It's sort of, if you ever listen to Taylor Swift's Red album, [that kind of love]… And I think queer people are very prone to that kind of love, and it becomes unrequited and it becomes painful and awful.”

So what about the other type of love? Let’s call it “real love”?

“Real love is much less potent, but much more powerful—if that distinction can be made. Real love is about acceptance of who a person is and all they are in all of their facets. It is a much more sitting back form of support and the one can transform into the other, but with a great deal of humility and patience.

“And I think that I have only quite recently, in my gay life, come to understand that the first type—idealistic love—is pretty melancholy and quite dangerous because it will always be the shadow of something that doesn’t really exist. And you’ll always really know that deep down and you’ll always be quite frightened of that. I think that we are more prone to that because we are more desperate for love, I think. And so we want to sort of create it and conjure it, but if we can, we have to try and do the other form of love, which is a sort of acceptance, a sort of going, “Oh, you’re pretty amazing in so many regards and I want to make a life with you and maybe with other people. “ I also think the sex is better and that kind of love.”

It was such a powerful time I spent together discussing these topics with Harry. And I’m thrilled to share it with everyone. I hope you’ll pick up a copy of The Queer Thing About Sin, so you can dive into this rich history. Also, ask your local library to order a copy so that others might be able to find it in their community if they don’t have access otherwise.

Thanks again for listening. And get ready for our next episode of the Queer Love Podcast, when I’ll be chatting with Benoit Denizet-Lewis about his new book, You’ve Changed.

You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms).

We also have an Etsy page where you can find some of our merch!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

With a title like Men I Hate, Lynette D’Amico’s gorgeously written memoir in essays, you know people are going to raise an eyebrow. So when I invited her to join me for a chat recently, we definitely discussed the provocative title—and all the expectations that come with it.

As she explained, many people imagine it will be about right-wing enemies or other detestable people, but the reality is much more nuanced and complicated. Plus, as Lynette pointed out, the cover design also has a shadow title that reads: “men i love…”

By the way, her publisher, if you use Code “QLP” at checkout to buy Lynette’s memoir or other queer and sexuality studies books, you’ll receive 30% off + free shipping.

Some of you may be familiar with Lynette’s husband P. Carl’s memoir, Becoming a Man, which received widespread attention and has been adapted into a play. Men I Hate is Lynette’s side of their story, and is also about the formation of her lesbian identity and how Carl’s transition complicated her identity.

In the essays, she asks herself the question: Can a lesbian who loves a trans man still call herself a lesbian? After surviving coming of age in a traditionally gendered Sicilian American household, how does she make sense of men? What does it mean to love a man?

So I was eager to discuss these topics with Lynette in more detail. It was a fantastic conversation, and I learned so much about the durability and elasticity of longterm queer relationships.

We also spoke at length about another topic that I get asked about quite often: How do you write about friends and family in personal narratives? You’ll want to pay attention to what Lynette shares on the topic. You can also read more of her hard-won personal wisdom about it in this piece she published on her own Substack:

“I started writing these essays to help me clarify my own thinking. Desperation to say everything you need to say about your own story is a good place to start, so in draft stages I just spewed.

Which is what you do in a first draft. Tell the story, all of it. Don’t edit, don’t censor, don’t think how your pages will be received in the world. And be very judicious who you share your first pages with, especially as you are trying to work out your relationship to your subject, your own point of view to your subject. A first draft of an essay or a memoir is delicate, it’s a newborn. Don’t hand off the care and feeding of your pages to a brute of a reader, to someone who will slash and burn your pages and starve your creative energy. Your first reader needs to be generous and encouraging.

The slashing and burning will come. Trust me.”

Lynette generously read from the book, the piece titled “The Stasi Men,” which was also excerpted at Guernica magazine, and is an incisive bit of prose that examines masculinity. Plus, you can read an excerpt from another essay that QLP published earlier this year.

I want to thank Lynette for joining me for this chat, and all of you who tuned in during the live conversation via the Substack app. I’m glad I’ll have an opportunity to meet her and other writers and contributors in Baltimore next week when I attend the AWP conference. Here’s a guide to find out more about the activities, events and signings that The Queer Love Project is hosting. We’ll be publishing a a new essay on Wednesday but you’ll also be invited to join us for some live communications—so I hope you’ll join us!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

For those who may be too young to recall how weird the 1980s and ‘90s were to be gay, you’ll definitely want to read Roddy Bottum’s debut memoir, The Royal We. In it, the musician details what it was like growing up in Los Angeles before moving to San Francisco and forming the band Faith No More. And, believe me, it’s a really gay book!

He recently joined me on The Queer Love Podcast to talk a lot about his loves and losses, as well as his relationship with his boyfriend and bandmate Joey Holman. They formed the band Man on Man in 2020 and have since put out two albums. If you haven’t seen their video for “Daddy,” then you don’t know what you’re missing (and we discussed that controversy near the end of our chat).

Some of you might remember that Roddy wrote Faith No More’s first internationally recognized song, “We Care a Lot.” He also was behind one of the greatest anthems to blow jobs, “Be Aggressive,” before he revealed he was gay in a 1993 interview with Lance Loud for The Advocate. To put it in context: This was before Rob Halford of Judas Priest had come out; before Michael Stipe of REM or Bob Mould of Hüsker Dü discussed their sexuality openly in the media. Plus, Elton John was only toying with being bisexual and Freddie Mercury never came out publicly before his untimely death in 1991.

Roddy also went on to form the band The Crickets, with JD Sampson and Michael O’Neill, and you might also remember his ‘90s band Imperial Teen, with that hit song on the Jawbreaker soundtrack, “Yoo Hoo.” We also discussed his relationship with Courtney Love and Kurt Cobain, including his “good-bye kiss” with the Nirvana frontman. As Roddy reminded me, his Imperial Teen song “You’re One”— with the chorus lyric “You take it like a man boy”—was inspired by Kurt.

To kick things off, I told Roddy how much I appreciated his frankness. Not only does he share details about his younger days cruising men in the bushes and toilets of Los Angeles, he writes such short and beautiful lines such as: “I didn't realize what a privilege it was to be gay until so much later.”

We also discussed his first boyfriend, Jim Olson, and how that played out since, as Roddy writes: “Our sex was secret and incredible, but I was smitten with his intellect.” He goes on to explain:

“In prison there is love. In the classroom. In the workplace. It happens where it’s not allowed, and it happens where it’s encouraged. Jim and I were in love and in the throes of growing up in a secret place where no one knew that it was…”

Although we didn’t discuss it directly during the podcast conversation, I also wanted to quote this section from the end of Chapter 24 (you can find it on page 154 if you have your own copy):

“What is love when you don’t want it? When you’re scared of it and need to keep it under wraps? What is gay when you don’t want to be? The tedium of not knowing who I was took a toll… What if the hiding place is so good you’re never found? … what if the hiding place is dark and dank and hard to breathe in, and you discover the lid of the box you’re hiding in locks from the outside? The panic. The horror. Being hidden was what I thought I wanted.”

Luckily, Roddy did survive this time and has had an incredibly creative and productive life. As he explained to me during the podcast about that first relationship:

“There was a regularity and a specialness to that particular relationship and to the insanity of what that person was and the drama that it brought to my life. It kind of did form my opinion of what love is, or was, in that context. Love to me was a lot of drama, and I’ve had to sort of readjust my take on what love is in today’s world; in my relationship now. Does it have to be these crazy peaks, these screaming matches and differences and ups and downs? I’ve had to sort of adjust from an early age of what it was to me then and what it is to me now.”

We ended our chat on a positive note, with Roddy urging people to get off their phones and to show up in person to support one another.

“It's always a good decision to go outside and be with people. Even as challenging as that is. And that's what these events that have been happening, the book events that I've been doing, have been about. I always say at every event. ‘Thank you so much for just showing up, for being here physically, for speaking and listening and being in the flesh."‘ It makes such a difference.”

Thanks for listening, reading and supporting all we’ve been doing with The Queer Love Project. Let us know if you have any memories from concerts or events that helped you. Leave it in the comments or amplify this however you prefer. See you soon!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Michael Lowenthal is the author of a story collection, Sex With Strangers, and four more novels. His writing has appeared in a slew of prestigious publications, including Tin House, Ploughshares, The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post, Guernica and The Southern Review. Plus, he’s taught creative writing at Boston College and Hampshire College and, for more than 20 years, he was a faculty member in the low-residency MFA program at Lesley University. He splits his time between Boston and Pittsburgh.

We first made contact when Michael submitted an excerpt from Place Envy, his latest memoir, which he calls a “quest-in-essays.” In that piece, titled “Estrangeiro,” he details a serendipitous encounter with a young man in Salvador, Brazil, while he was on an artist’s retreat. I was excited to discuss that story and the way the rest of the essays in the collection—which span decades of his life—came to be shaped.

The memoir spans locations from a Mexican cruise for blind gay men to a remote Scottish island, so I was curious to find out how traveling to “un-queer” or unfamiliar spaces provides a better “orientation” for his own identity than staying in established queer hubs. Michael had a great response, so I’ll hope you’ll listen/watch to find out more. Then we went deep on that whole Amish experience in the essay titled “Ligature.” You’ll definitely want to hear about how he’s maintained a friendship with his Amish friends since his college days.

Thank you Michael Horvich, Lynette D'Amico, and many others for tuning into my live video with Michael Lowenthal!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It was such a pleasure to read Steve Majors’ latest memoir in essays, Man Made: In Search of Dads, Daddies, Father Figures, and Fatherhood, and an even greater privilege to be able to discuss it with him. He explores the intersections of race, identity and family in his work. In his debut memoir, High Yella, he recounted his experience growing up as a white-passing, mixed-race child in an all-Black family in rural Western New York. Now, he goes even deeper.

Sometimes it can be difficult to figure out what to talk about with a person who publishes so much about their personal experiences since it’s all on the page: What else is there to say? But with Steve that’s not the case. Although he explores so many facets of his life and writes eloquently and with great economy, he still has so much wisdom to impart, and I was thrilled to discover that he doesn’t skimp on sharing it.

I don’t often quote from the publisher’s description of a book, but this collection covers so much territory, and they do a good job of summing it up:

“Not all little boys want to grow up to be like their dads. The shy ones, the sensitive ones, the ones people mock as strange or call queer—sometimes they want to grow up to be loved by men who stand in for their fathers. They’ll put up with bullying from an older brother, taunts from the gym teacher, long work hours from a boss, and even discipline from a gay daddy, all as a means to discover what kind of man they truly want to be.

“Steve Majors takes us on a journey of his own self-discovery as he grows from a gay boy in search of a father figure to a gay man grappling with what it means to be a father himself. In doing so, Majors creates various snapshots of time in which his—and the world’s—understanding of what it means to be a gay man changes.”

Yes, yes and yes!

Steve doesn’t shy from the difficult areas of his own life. As he explained during our chat, who he was as a kid is different than who he is was at 20 and who he is today. One particularly poignant moment is around the relationship with his brothers (you can read an excerpt here) and his regret that his gayness probably means he missed out on some opportunities of love and connection with them.

Now for a pivot. I read a section of the essay “Dirty Old Man” that begins with the lines: “When it comes to sex and relationships, men are said to relish the role of hunters. It’s a toxic attribute that applies to some of us, whether straight or gay.” I was intrigued by the closing of the essay that details:

“Like many young men, I first convince myself I am looking for a sexual coupling to bridge the gap in my life. I takes years for me to understand what I need is an emotional connection.

“Like a sixth sense, this man and men like that, have the ability to tune into the vulnerabilities of other men and boys. And when they do, they use psychological coercion, physical force, and sometimes a boy’s drunken consent to fulfill their twisted desires.

“We gay boys and men may think we are the hunters looking for our sexual conquest, but sometimes, all too late, we discover we are they prey.”

That unearthed some vulnerabilities on my own side and I shared a bit about my own tactics to not be perceived as a hunter and how we twist ourselves into curious knots when it comes to hierarchical relationships.

Plus, since he talks about his crushes on several hockey players while in college, I asked him what he thought about the popularity of Heated Rivalry, and the fact that so many straight people are loving the story of gay romance on the ice. I may have met my match with Steve: He seems to obsess over TV and pop culture, and it’s power and influence over us, as much as I do.

Overall, Steve is adept at looking at many of the blueprints and scripts that we are given—by our families, popular culture, historical precedent—and pulling them apart, looking at them closer, questioning and exploring how to rewrite and improve them.

For example, he’s not afraid to reveal that his relationship with his daughters (who are now in their early twenties) is complex and confusing. Although we didn’t have time to go deeper on the topic, he’s shared an excerpt that gets at the crux of the identity conundrum:

“With time, I see the only doubts about my Blackness lie within me, not my kids. To my Black daughters, I am no different than other fathers. As dads, all of us are invariably set side by side against some ideal in our children’s eyes and found wanting. Sometimes, we are perceived to be missing something on the outside: not cool enough, not tall enough, not skinny enough, or not handsome enough. Other times, it’s on the inside, and we’re just not self-aware enough.

Whatever we lack, we cannot convince our kids that we can be anything but who we are. We just have to convince them that we’re just like them — still learning, growing, sometimes failing, and ultimately still trying to find our own identities in this world.”

There’s so much to discover and cherish in Steve’s latest book. I hope you enjoy our conversation and check it out for yourselves!

Thank you The Studio: After Dark, Shant Knows It All, and many others for tuning into my live video with Steve Majors—stay tuned for our next Substack LIVE very soon!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I was thrilled to have Clarence A. Haynes join the QLP Book Club to discuss his solo debut The Ghosts of Gwendolyn Montgomery, which he describes as an urban fantasy and glam horror novel, and is now available in paperback.

First, a bit of background: Clarence also co-wrote Omar Epps’s acclaimed young adult sci-fi/fantasy title Nubia: The Awakening and its sequel, The Reckoning. Additionally, he is the author of the nonfiction work The Legacy of Jim Crow, which provides young readers with an overview of the history of discriminatory laws in America. His new novel, The Broken Hearts Agency, is in the same universe speculative fiction universe as Ghosts of Gwendolyn, and it comes out in June.

Clarence’s family emigrated from Panama, and he was born and grew up in the Bronx during the 1970s-‘90s, and he now lives in Brooklyn, New York. The book is infused with Caribbean culture and is steeped in Afro-Latine traditions, such as Santeria, which focuses on the orishas (deities). His main protagonist, Gwendolyn, was born in Panama and emigrated as well. So I was curious what inspired him to craft this fabulous, code-switching heroine at the center of his novel as well as Fonsi Harewood, the co-protagonist.

Fonsi is a queer Afro-Latine medium from the South Bronx who runs a botanica (a shop selling spiritual goods) called La Playa, and he is involved in a love triangle with a ghost and his mortal ex. Listen in because I play a sexy scene from Chapter 2 that exemplifies how Fonsi is getting his erotic energy from these spicy encounters with a spirit named Amadé.

Having Fonsi as “sidekick” could have easily slid into a “magical queer" trope, where an LGBTQ+ character exists only to help a straight protagonist, but Clarence makes sure Fonsi’s subplot is integral. In fact, both Gwendolyn and Fonsi struggle with “buried” versions of themselves, and they both struggle to find a “mortal” love while dealing with their mystical lives.

Before we wrapped up the discussion, I asked Clarence about meeting the legendary queer author Octavia Butler (which was the subject of a new biography, Positive Obsession, out last year), who’s best known for her books Kindred and Parable of the Sower. He explained that they met at the Borders in Columbus Circle for a signing of her sci-fi vampire book, Fledgling. “I was editing at the time, not writing,” he explained. “She told me, ‘You need to write; we need your voice.’ And there are things in my book, The Broken Hearts Agency, that are my homage to her. It’s my way of honoring her work and saying, ‘I wouldn’t be doing what I’m doing if it wasn’t for her.’”

You can find Clarence’s solo debut here (and pre-order The Broken Hearts Agency now)!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve known Rachel Kramer Bussel for nearly 20 years. She wrote for me when I was editor of the alt-weekly New York Press (RIP), and I read an essay from my memoir-in-progress at her “In the Flesh” event back in 2007 about the first time I went to a nude beach while living in Spain. (Yes, it’s one of my top goals for the new year: to get that manuscript in shape and send it out to be published at last!)

After Rachel launched Open Secrets Magazine, I was impressed by all that she was accomplishing and it inspired me to launch The Queer Love Project in the summer of 2024. I’ve also published two essays with her: One about the shame I experienced during show & tell due to some prized childhood toys with an unusual provenance and, most recently, a piece for the essay writing tips column, titled “When Is Your Writing ‘Good Enough’.”

This month, I also was proud to publish her personal essay at QLP about the elasticity of queer relationships and the grief she still feels since her ex-girlfriend and close friend died, titled “There’s a Hole in My Heart Where My Friendship With My Ex-Girlfriend Used to Live.”

Not only did we chat about all the many highlights and achievements of the past year, Rachel and I discussed what excited us about the year ahead. First, we’re going to be sharing a booth at AWP’s Bookfair the first week of March in Baltimore. The conference brings together writers and publishers—including many excellent small presses—for panels and events. It was one of the most exciting things I participated in this past spring when it was held in Los Angeles, and I look forward to meeting contributors and subscribers March 5-7. This is my first time visiting Baltimore, so if you have any recommendations, please share them in the comments (Rachel already gave a shoutout for a friend’s barbecue joint that I’ll be checking out).

Rachel is also planning the second Open Secrets Live Summit, which will take place May 2 in Manhattan. I’ll be on a panel along with many other writers and editors (40 so far!), so be on the lookout for more information around ticketing and the full lineup in the coming months.

The Queer Love Project will also be hosting its second live reading with Elyssa Maxx Goodman Miss Manhattan nonfiction series on May 4 at Niagara in the East Village. So if you’re in town for the weekend, make sure to join us that Monday night!

One thing that I’m also looking forward to that I didn’t get a chance to mention during our chat:

On January 10–11, Paulette Perhach is hosting The Writing Life You’ve Always Wanted, a two-day live summit designed to help you choose your 2026 project, build a routine you can actually maintain, and create a writing plan that fits your real life. I’m joining Paulette and the rest of the panel of experts.

Over this weekend, you will:

* choose the writing project that matters most for your year

* build a routine you can maintain with your real life

* map out your 2026 writing plan

* set up systems that make follow-through realistic

* take your first meaningful steps while you’re still in the room

* complete side missions assigned by Paulette, including a dinner with friends that Saturday evening

It’s meant for writers who want clarity and accountability rather than more information they’ll never use. So, if you’re trying to figure out how you want your writing life to feel in 2026, join me, Paulette and the rest of the

Get 10% off when you sign up today using the code JERRY.

And with that, I want to thank all of you for joining me for this last Substack LIVE chat of the year. Thank you for subscribing and supporting the work that we publish and amplify. We are dedicated to keeping as much of our essays, interviews and other writing free, but if you can upgrade to paid, it helps me compensate contributors and continue to grow our community.

We made it through a chaotic year and kept spreading queer love as a form of resistance against those who may want to quiet us. I wish you all a wonderful 2026 and I look forward to collaborating with you in the new year!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

I’ve done a lot of reading this year. My Goodreads challenge was to read 65 books, which if I’m being completely transparent, mainly consisted of a LOT of listening. As I recently shared via Notes, I used to question what “counts" as reading and what “counts" as writing. Yep, I used to be a snob about both. But my thoughts on the subject of both activities has evolved significantly over the years… Now I do a lot of listening, which means I get more writing and reading done than ever before, and I'm grateful for it.

Some of the reading was to prepare for interviews with authors for the QLP Book Club—including Rasheed Newson, Troy Ford, Andy Jiaming and, most recently, Alejandro Varela—as well as for other conversations and pieces.

For example, I had so much fun interviewing Samantha Mann about her memoir in essays, Dyke Delusions, and the profundity of my conversation with Katie Simon focused on her book about seeking more connected sex after being assaulted will stay with me forever.

So many fascinating chats this past year, such as with Oliver Radclyffe, in which we also discussed his memoir about coming out as trans and how that affected his marriage and other relationships; Greg Bourke’s tale of fighting for marriage equality in the United States; Kelly Lundquist’s new memoir, Beard, about being married to a gay man; and Dale Corvino’s debut memoir, Afterlife of a Kept Boy, in which we discussed sex work and so much more.

Plus, I loved listening to Mike Albo’s audio-only memoir Hologram Boyfriends and talking to him about all the insights he packed into it about how technology has warped our relationships over the past couple of decades. I also talked to my friend Brian Schaefer about his debut novel, Town & Country, which is a sensitive portrayal of rural America and the influence of gay men upon the culture of small towns. And how can I forget my interview with Manuel Betancourt for his book Hello Stranger back in January? It centered on the idea of “elasticity of queer relationships,” which became my mantra for the rest of the year.

Of course, I loved Edmund White’s sex memoir, The Loves of My Life—the last book he published while he was alive—which we excerpted back in the spring. And the archivist/writers who produced The Love That Dares: An Anthology of Queer Love Letters shared some wonderful advice for anyone looking to preserve their correspondence for posterity.

Yet, so much amazing writing remains to be discovered! So I invited my co-editor Michael Narkunski and my pal Amelia Possanza, a literary publicist who has already introduced me to many amazing writers. They are both extremely plugged into the all things going on in the book world, so I wanted to know what they devoured over the past 12 months.

I asked them to share some of the books published in 2025 that they felt deserved more attention, and you might be surprised by some of their picks! Among the many things we discussed, we chatted about these authors and titles:

* Nell Stevens, The Original

* Ariel Gore, Rehearsals for Dying

* Bronson Lemer, The Lonely Veteran’s Guide to Companionship

* Bryan Lee O’Malley, Snotgirl series

* Jacqueline Harpman, I Who Have Never Known Men

* Jackie Domenus, No Offense

* Torrey Peters, Stag Dance

* Caro de Robertis, So Many Stars

One book I forgot to bring up that I absolutely adored was John Birdsall’s What Is Queer Food? I hope to invite him to join me for a conversation in the coming months.

We also discussed these 2026 titles that we’re looking forward to:

* Place Envy by Michael Lowenthal

* Men I Hate by Lynette D’Amico

* Night Night Fawn by Jody Rosenberg

Michael also shared the great news that his memoir, Macaroni Heart, is now under contract with University of Wisconsin press, and it’s slated to be released in 2027. Congrats!

What did we miss? If there are any other books you want to recommend or ideas you want share with us, please add them to the comments.

Thank you to everyone who tuned into our live video! Join me for my next live video in the app on December 28, the last one of the year, when Rachel Kramer Bussel joins me to discuss her latest essay—which we published this past week—as well as all that we’re looking forward to in 2026.

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

It’s that wonderful time of year: When our relationships—whether new or time-tested—can get complicated. So what better time to ask an actual expert about what it means to date in these complicated times? Luckily, I had the opportunity to invite Moe Ari Brown, Hinge’s first Love & Connection Expert, to join me to answer a lot of my burning questions.

To kick things off, we focused on Hinge’s new Gen Z D.A.T.E. (Data, Advice, Trends, Expertise) Report. While the cultural conversation about Gen Z dating often centers around division, Hinge’s report finds that Gen Z are still desiring connection with one another.

After surveying more than 30,000 Hinge daters across identities, the latest report reveals that 84% of Gen Z Hinge daters want to find new ways to build deeper connections with the people they’re dating. However, Gen Z daters are 36% more hesitant than millennials to begin a deep conversation on the first date.

This nugget stood out:

“The desire for more emotional connection in dating is strong, with 84% of GenZ Hinge daters wanting to find new ways to build deeper connections with the people they’re dating.”

In many ways, that’s nothing new. We all want deeper connections right? But the GenZ cohort are still struggling to do so despite so many novel ways of making connections. I asked Moe about the people he’s talked to and the research he’s looked at, why this problem persists. The answer? It often comes down to anxiety around seeming “too much” or “too intense.”

I’ve been asking others about this idea of coming off as “too intense” while also wanting to be authentic and what you think about when connecting via a dating app/IRL after the initial connection, so it was fascinating to hear Moe explain it in depth.

Moe and I discussed:

* The sorts of invisible scripts that queer people who are dating get caught in.

* How people could navigate first dates and being empathetic to the other person.

* The use of voice notes to get a “vibe check” before going out on a date.

* How AI can assist people to communicate their most authentic self.

We also discussed the expectations. You’ll definitely want to hear what Moe said about staying in the moment for that “first kiss” energy.

Although I don’t personally have to worry about going on first dates these days, I hope many people can glean some valuable lessons from Moe and my discussion. Plus, if you haven’t already read his essay that we published earlier this year about dating as a trans man and his journey to granting himself “permission to want what you’re not supposed to want,” I hope you will!

Thanks to all who joined me live during the conversation!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

Alejandro Varela’s debut novel, The Town of Babylon, was published in 2022, and was a finalist for the National Book Award. His second book, a collection of short stories titled The People Who Report More Stress, came out in 2023.

I invited Alejandro to join me for the final QLP Book Club of the year to discuss his third book, Middle Spoon—which was released in September—and details a gay man’s anxiety after his breakup with his boyfriend, while his husband and children and everyone else watch from the sidelines as he unravels.

It’s an epistolary novel told through unsent emails—primarily to his ex-boyfriend Ben, as well as his mother, his child, and his therapists (yes he has two)—since, as Alejandro explained, this framework allowed for the narrator to be vulnerable and say many things that he needed to get out of his system as he dealt with the grief of a breakup.

As I recently discussed with Alex Alberto, few contemporary novels explore poly relationships in a positive light (Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo is often cited as another), and Alejandro’s is an essential new interpretation of modern queer love told with sensitivity. The narrative refuses easy categorization—the narrator is a mess—and is packed with some elegant, philosophical writing.

We covered a lot of topics, and I shared a couple clips from the audiobook narrated by Eddie Lopez during our chat. Alejandro was generous with his insights into so many contemporary relationship issues, including:

* Why public health research has figured so prominently into his books and stories.

* The idea of PEPs—progressive except for polyamory—and why some people just can’t handle the idea of having a non-hierarchical relationship structure.

* The “roles” in gay male relationships—both sexual ones and domestic ones.

* The original working title of the novel was A Children’s Guide to Heartbreak.

Finally, Alejandro’s answer to the question, “How do you define love?” was particularly sophisticated, and one I think many people can appreciate and incorporate into their worldview.

“You can’t prepare anyone for heartbreak... I never talked to my parents about heartbreak. That was never a thing that my mom said, you know, ‘This may happen someday and it’s going to hurt.’

So, for me, love, in this book, is a little bit also transparency, like being able to be honest about your feelings and your fears with people and finding someone who can accept that and modeling it. So he doesn’t have that with his parents, so he tries to model it for his children, even though it’s hard.”

Plus, don’t miss the advice he shared at the end before we wrapped up the session.

Thanks so much to all those who joined us live during our conversation, and I hope the rest of you enjoy our discussion of Middle Spoon!

The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.