The Queer Love Podcast

After reading Lester Fabian Brathwaite’s recent post about the gay cheerleader Les in the Bring It On movie—which debuted 25 years ago this month—I knew we had to hop on a Substack LIVE and kiki about more gay s**t.

We started off discussing the new “story” published by New York magazine’s The Cut titled, “We’ve Reached Peak Gay Sluttiness,” and how Les was enjoying his own “slutty” summer. We moved on to his views on “Bizarro Hayden Panettiere, Riley Gaines,” the shooting at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis and what it meant that it was a trans woman who was responsible for the murder of innocents, before moving on to some lighter topics.

Turns out Les has written the first five chapters of his novel as a follow up to his debut nonfiction/memoir, Rage: On Being Queer, Black, Brilliant… and Completely Over It, that was published last year.

Watch the full conversation above and let us know what you think!

Thank you Clint Collide, Emillio Mesa, Rande Iaboni, Lee Tsiantis, and many others for tuning into my live video with Lester Fabian Brathwaite! Join me for my next live video in the app.

In the latest episode of the Queer Love Podcast, trans pioneer and gender outlaw Kate Bornstein speaks with host Jerry Portwood about the reissue of her book, Hello, Cruel World: 101+ Alternatives to Suicide for Teens, Freaks, and Other Outlaws. The second edition now includes 20 additional alternatives and Kate’s urgent new essay, “Hello, Cruel Gender.”

At the top of the pod, Kate addresses the hate messages coming from the Trump administration and beyond and what it means living a world when “cruelty is in power”:

“That's not gonna stop us. We are a culture; we aren't a bunch of disjoined bunch of people. I was fortunate to be in the position of a gardener and plant some seeds along with some other folks of my generation and they have been watered and we have entire garden now. And you can't mow that down!”

Kate also explains that she originally wrote and published Hello, Cruel World in 2006, before Obama was running for president, and things quickly became polarized the following year.

“What I didn't know when I was writing Hello, Cruel World was how to deal with a bully who said, ‘Don't cross this line. Once you cross this line, you're on the other side. You are other. That makes you bad. Other is evil.’

“And I didn't really address that as deeply as I wished I could have in the first edition. That's why the 20 new alternatives to suicide deal mostly with the idea of good and evil culture—which is what we've become.”

Listen in as Kate narrates one of the new “lessons” in the book: “Stay friends anyway.” Kate and Jerry also discuss how “stepping into the world of BDSM dykes” gave Kate’s writing a “rocket booster” when she was working on the Gender Workbook, her new theory of “gender in four dimensions” and how queer love is something not static. As she explains, “when you answer what is love, you've lost it. You know it when you embody it.”

Plus, find out what to expect in her queer romance novel, Nearly Roadkill, which is being reissued in September with an expanded narrative and a new, nonbinary character.

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

On Sunday, July 13, Troy Ford joined me for our second QLP Book Club hosted via Substack LIVE, to discuss his debut book, Lamb.

It felt especially appropriate to finally talk to Troy because, when I launched The Queer Love Project last summer, he was one of the first people I reached out to since he also hosts and runs Qstack, which is an invaluable resource for all the LGBTQ+ creators on the platform to find and support one another. He also answered the QLP Questionnaire! By now, it feels like we’re old pals, but it’s only been emails and DMs—so this was our first time officially talking.

We discussed the many autobiographical elements that informed Lamb, including Troy’s time attending a California prep school and the friend of his who inspired the character of Lamb (aka Willam Broeder) and the the great line by D (the narrator of the novel), who stated: “I guess we all look at our friends through the lens of me.”

In particular I was intrigued by the erotic and platonic love between D and Lamb and the elastic nature of gay male relationships. As Troy writes from D’s perspective:

“We fooled around a couple times back at Wolcott, but having to hide that we were gay from everyone just sort of sealed this bond between us. In some ways, it was more intimate than sex—I didn’t need a f**k buddy, I had a hand for that. Two!”

To dig deeper, I asked Troy to explain Lamb’s sexual dynamics, in particular the fact that he’s a big, 6-foot-6 punk and a bottom, which disappoints many potential hookups.

“I think Lamb being a bottom, and the whole question of gay men and their elastic, fluid relationships is a really rich topic of conversation,” Troy explained. “The tone of the gay community changed significantly after AIDS hit, and sex became a much more fraught dynamic between gay men. After many years when it was gays vs. the world, the does/doesn’t he have AIDS/HIV introduced a gay vs. gay question that severely curtailed the ‘I f**k my friends’ attitudes of post-Stonewall gay liberation.”

We also discussed Troy’s years of sobriety and the continuing issue of substance abuse in the gay community. “We want to present this idea of having it all together,” he explained. “But the reality that is not a lot of people’s experience. … A lot of my fiction deals with the ‘less glamorous’ sides of being gay.”

“Do you think, above all else, your book Lamb is about the need for gay men to shed shame and fear?” I asked.

Troy had a wonderful response, so make sure you watch the video to hear it in his words. (Hint: It’s around the 45:00 minute mark.)

If you haven’t already secured your copy, Lamb is available in paperback or ebook at Bookshop.org, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Plus, as Troy mentioned: If you buy the book—either ebook or paperback—through any retailer wherever you can order or find it, he will comp you a six-month subscription to his newsletter, FORD KNOWS. Same goes if you review it on either Goodreads or Amazon—because authors depend on those reviews!

Big thanks to Clint Collide, The Bathrobe Guy 👘, Homi Hormasji, Kimmy Win, Amarantha, Michael Horvich and many others for tuning into my live video!

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

This is our third episode of the Queer Love Podcast, and I decided to do something a little different. Previously I’ve chatted with authors of essays that we’ve published. In case you haven’t already, make sure you can listen to Episode 1 with QLP co-editorMichael Narkunski and Episode 2 with Charley Soderbergh and Jeanée Ledoux if you haven’t already.

For this episode, I invited Xandra McMahon, creator of How We Met: A Queer Love Archive, to discuss the first season of her podcast. Plus, she also took part in our QLP questionnaire, so we’ll talk about what that was like and go deeper into some of the answers.

Xandra is a journalist and podcast producer and, as she explains, she fell in love with audio storytelling in college, and has been lucky enough to turn it into a career. She's worked in the public radio world, spent years making hyperlocal daily news podcasts, and nowadays produces podcasts for higher education institutions. How We Met: A Queer Love Archive launched in January and shares the real-life love stories of queer couples. She’s currently on hiatus but hopes to begin working on Season 2 this summer and hopes you’ll contact her if you’d like to be considered for a segment.

I had the privilege of being on the finale episode of the first season with my husband, and I wanted to chat with Xandra since our project goals—specifically, as she states, “to amplify queer joy and serve as a historical record for queer people’s experiences, across generations, through the lens of love”—align in so many distinct ways. We had a great conversation about “the wisdom” she’s gleaned from hearing so many people share their love stories and what she hopes to achieve going forward.

You can listen to How We Met anywhere you find podcasts and follow it on Instagram as well!

Thanks for reading and listening and supporting us on our mission!

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 tonight’s inaugural Queer Love Book Club, Rasheed Newson joined from his home in Pasadena, California. And we’re living for his shade of green nail polish!

He’s the author of the national bestseller My Government Means to Kill Me, and his debut novel was a Lambda Literary finalist for Gay Fiction and was named one of the “The 100 Notable Books of 2022” by The New York Times. His forthcoming novel, There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood, is slated for publication by Flatiron in 2026. And we got the deets first, which will be a delicious romp through 1950s Hollywood.

As many may already be aware, Rasheed is also a television drama writer, producer, and showrunner. Along with his screenplay writing partner, T.J. Brady, he co-developed and is an executive producer of Bel-Air. The drama series has won three NAACP Image Awards and has been nominated several times for Best Drama Series. Additionally, Rasheed has worked on The Chi, Animal Kingdom, and Narcos, among other drama series. Rasheed was born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana. He’s a graduate of Georgetown University. He currently lives with his husband and their two children in Pasadena.

My Government Means to Kill Me starts in 1985 New York City when our protagonist, Trey Singleton, is 18, and it progresses over a couple of years. Trey is telling this story in a series of “Lessons,” looking back from a future 50 years later. The novel is packed full of information about that time in NYC.

Trey’s parents are wealthy former Black Panthers who have “cashed in,” in Rasheed’s own words, and are now work as lobbyists for Eli Lilly and have powerful connections in D.C. They aren’t approving of his gayness, so he rejects his privilege and trust fund, leaves their mansion in Indianapolis to seek a new life in the big city. He eventually finds himself at the forefront of the Gay Rights movement in the late ‘80s and is even part of the founding of ACT UP.

In a review of the book by The Harvard Review, the critic wrote: “My Government Means to Kill Me marries the radical sentimentality of Leslie Feinberg’s Stone Butch Blues with the jarring odyssey of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man.”

I thought that was great—to yoke those two together—so I asked Rasheed what he thought of these comparisons. That jump started our conversation, which lasted approximately an hour, and here are a few highlights.

Some of my favorite scenes in the book are set at the Mt. Morris Baths in Harlem… Rasheed provides lusty, delicious descriptions of his many sexual encounters. Since I know from experience that many readers can be critical of such joyous descriptions of sex—especially with the specter of HIV/AIDS.

My first question: How did you manage to write about sex in such a positive way—so often it feels like it either needs to be “traumatic” or it gets labeled as erotica—so were you worried people would find Trey’s sexual recreation problematic?

We also discussed his inclusion of legendary Civil Rights leader and political organizer Bayard Rustin being at the baths. This (naked) wise man educates Trey over the course of the novel and becomes a surrogate father figure who encourages him to find a purpose and pursue it.

I’m so happy that more people are discovering his legacy, and hopefully you’ve seen Colman Domingo portray him in Rustin, which is currently on Netflix. Find the book of his life in letters, titled I Must Resist, if you’re interested in knowing more.

Afterward, we discussed the relationship Trey has with his roommate Gregory—which is wild—after they meet by chance. Trey is attracted to him: Gregory is a hottie Haitian hustler. Although they never have sex, they have a very intimate bond. It’s a lovely display of the elasticity of queer relationships and friends—Trey says he feels fortunate that Gregory has chosen him as a friend and roommate. He prays that they’ll f**k and he says he “loves him madly.” Since he seemed “sexy, street-smart and glamorous. Everything I wanted to be one day.” They cuddle and fight and seem bound to one another until it all blows apart.

I played the audio of Jelani Aladdin, the narrator of the book, reading from Chapter 6, titled “Lesson # 6: Romantic Notions Are Delusions.” It begins on page 76 of the paperback version for anyone who wants to read along.

Then, finally, we addressed Chapter 9, titled “Lesson # 9: Touch at Least One Dead Body,” where we are introduced to Angie's home hospice care for many men dying from complications due to HIV/AIDS. Trey feels a kinship and bond to these complete strangers and eventually makes his biggest sacrifice for this woman.

That struck me in particular because many people say gay men and lesbians don’t have a lot in common and, yet we see women sacrificing so much as caretakers. Later on, Trey, thinks "Lesbians had no place in my life," until he meets Angie—who schools him.

He’s scared of Angie—thinks she could throw him down a flight of stairs—but she also is full of a type of love for her fellow man that she’s something else entirely. This type resembles agape love, a selfless, unconditional, and sacrificial love, often considered the highest form of love in Christianity. It’s something many LGBTQ+ people tapped into during the AIDS pandemic and continue to tap into. Rasheed explained why it was essential to explore this amid all the messy stuff that Trey was living through at the time.

We took some excellent questions from those who were following the conversation live, including how to write effective sex scenes. That’s when Rasheed explained that sex is political and important and shouldn’t be negated.

A huge thanks to Rasheed for being so generous with his time and talent and sharing so many insights with us, three years after My Government Means to Kill Me was initially published in hardback. Be on the lookout for There’s Only One Sin in Hollywood, due out in 2026, which goes deep into queer 1950s Hollywood, and includes Anthony Perkins, Tab Hunter, Diahann Carroll and many more notables of the era. We’ll sure to be reading and telling you all about it as soon as pre-orders are available!

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

In the latest episode of the Queer Love Podcast, Charley Soderbergh and Jeanée Ledoux join host Jerry Portwood to discuss their collaboration on the essay they co-wrote, “Love Is a Warm Curling Iron.”

As Charley explains, he originally wrote a screenplay about his childhood years growing up with his family in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, during the Covid pandemic since he had free time since he couldn’t work at his salon at the time. When he shared it with his friend Jeanée—who he’d met when they both lived in Atlanta (but who had also grown up in southern Louisiana in nearby Opelousas)—she was intrigued by the character of his quirky mom Midge and eventually they began working on adapting it into a memoir.

“There were so many synchronicities around this project,” Jeanée explains. “Out of the blue, I get this screenplay from Charley. I had never heard him express an interest in writing a movie—his frickin’ brother is one of the biggest directors in the world—but I’d never heard this man say he wanted to write a movie! The crazy thing is, I was taking my first screenwriting workshops. So he wanted to know what I thought about it, and I gave him some pretty deep feedback and a lot of encouragement, but I wasn’t thinking, ‘This is something for me.’ I just thought, ‘Good for him. He’s trying something’ And I’d been kinda doing a similar thing…”

Although at that time, neither of them was thinking of writing a book together, they eventually began to work on it approximately four years ago. Since Charley is also an artist, they wondered if they could do some version of a book that combined his artwork with the stories and illustrate some of the scenes. Jeanée had read Alison Bechdel’s graphic novel Fun Home, and she suggested Charley check it out for inspiration.

People are often curious about the editing process, so Jerry asks the duo what it was like when he sent it back with suggestions that Charley do more investigation on how his parents’ relationship may have influenced his internal blueprint that was then applied to his friendships and romantic relationships with men over the years.

“What the essay was missing was Charley’s relationship with Midge and how that affected his grown-up friendships and romantic relationships,” Jeanée says. She explains that she provided prompts in the text and asked him to “vomit” words and give “maximum detail,” which she could then shape and have his voice present in the final piece.

“I joke that I came into this world as a raging empath,” Charley explains. “It’s taken me a long time to realize that, and I think it’s just another part of me that I didn’t know I had to be sensitive to. My impulse is to help, to be a problem-solver, and to be loved and appreciated, of course. Since I had a fractured family, that constantly needed patchwork, so I just took that into my regular life. … It was just second nature; I didn’t even know I was doing it.”

When asked how the collaboration functioned, since it was Charley’s lived experience filtered through Jeanée’s perspective—and included a lot of research—they both expressed an ease to the process.

“I feel like our work together is very much like our conversations,” Charley explained. “Jeanée’s very thoughtful about the questions that she asks, so even if she was trying to tease something out of me, it never felt like she was ‘mining for information.’ … But she’s also a great audience … with big explosions of laughter when I’d tell her a really nutty story.”

Listen in as they tell more stories of how this essay came to be, including the time they employed some implements from a witchcraft shop they visited in Pittsburgh to summon Charley’s mom Midge to ask for her blessing on the project.

Then, if you haven’t already, make sure you read and listen along as Charley narrates “Love Is a Warm Curling Iron.”

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

On the first episode of The Queer Love Podcast, Jerry chats with The Queer Love Project co-editor Michael Narkunski to discuss their vision for QLP, and Michael’s latest essay, “A Pleasure to Have in Class.” Find out why he chose to share this story of a high school crush on his AP English teacher, which is part of his memoir that he’s working on publishing.