Dear Karen
An open letter to someone I wish had stayed in my past
Give it up for day 4
I'm not at Gencon, I'm stuck in an internet hole instead
Of course I'm gonna talk about ttrpgs
It is physically impossible for me to avoid
Yeah, this was the right call
local blogger reflects on third blog post of the day
I wish that I looked gayer
last month I took my son to his first ever pride event. He came out to us as a trans boy recently (he had identified as nonbinary since he was 6 years old, so we've known he was trans already, but this was a new shift and he's excited and nervous about the change) and is finally old enough to not scamper into oblivion during large, public events, so I hiked up my chronic illness pants and agreed to take him to a small independent book fair event near our community. I didn't have the energy available to bring him to a whole-ass pride parade, so we compromised with this event on the condition that I take him to another, larger event in the fall. It was delightful. It was also so clear how charmed all of the vendors were to see this kid--four and a half feet of incandescent queer enthusiasm, glitter makeup all over his face, wrapped in a nonbinary flag as a cape, with every pride accessory he has cobbled together clipped somewhere on his person like he himself was a flea market of rainbows. He skipped about to every stall, talking to anybody who would listen. It was incredibly precious. I was following at a distance, weighing my own purchasing decisions and telling everybody how proud I was of my son. "You should be," one vendor replied, "he's incredible." I know. I know he is. And it felt like I was being told that not just because it's true, but because too many parents of LGBTQIA+ children have no idea what an incredible blessing they are holding in their hands. Too many see it as another weird kid thing to indulge instead of a celebration of the beautiful humans their kids are becoming. I wondered, in a selfish moment, what that vendor thought of me--a pudgy Midwestern person in a t-shirt and dinosaur leggings, passing as nothing so readily as a soccer mom, following quietly behind and buying books.
I think I just want to write things again
I used to be a really good writer.