I don’t take the time to read as much as I did when I was younger. I don’t know if it’s because adulting keeps me busier than I like or that I actually have plenty of free time and just choose to spend it on Tik Tok or trying to get passed the next level on Project Makeover, my go-to app game on my phone, but the number of books I read in my teens and 20’s slowly dwindled down in my 30’s and 40’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I still read but it was usually two or three books a year as opposed to two or three a month, that is until the great pandemic of 2020. When COVID hit I came up with two goals for myself: 1.) I was going to take up a hobby to distract me from the outside world — thank you, Lego — and 2.) I was going to start reading more. At the time, I had just finished Ronan Farrow’s “Catch and Kill,” his recount of bringing his Harvey Weinstein story on the Hollywood mogul’s years of rape and abuse to light, and prior to that read Bob Woodward’s “Fear: Trump in the White House.”
So I went into the pandemic looking to start reading some books on lighter subjects as an escape from the terror of the real world, that is when I found “Red, White & Royal Blue.” This LGBTQ+ rom-com novel, written by Casey McQuiston, is about the love-hate — then secret love-love — relationship between the son of the first female POTUS and the Prince of England.
I was never a reader of what are commonly referred to as “trashy romance novels” by many I know, but the premise of this one sounded cute so I gave it a whirl — and whirl me it did. I fell in love with Alex and Henry and their relationship. So you can imagine how excited I was to find out Amazon was turning it into a movie and imagine how even more excited I was to get to opportunity to talk with the director of the film, Tony Award-winning playwright of “The Inheritance,” Matthew López. I have been doing this job for many years now and this was by far my favorite interview. He was kind, gracious and fun and I probably came across as a fangirl meeting Taylor Swift for the first time.
We chatted on a Friday and I went into the weekend on a giddy high until I was woken up Saturday morning by our sales director and president of the LGBT+ Center Orlando, Danny Garcia, with pictures of The Center and Zebra Youth.
Overnight a Nazi group had spraypainted over several LGBTQ+ murals with hateful messages and symbols meant to stir up fear and anxiety in the LGBTQ+ community. As I was getting details to that incident news broke that a white man, armed with a rifle and handgun, walked into a Jacksonville Dollar General and started targeting Black customers. He killed three people before killing himself. The shooter had a swastika painted on his rifle, the same symbol that was painted on the murals.
Make no mistake, while these attacks are the fault of the perpetrators, they are egged on by the vitriol and ignorance that has been coming from Florida’s governor and GOP lawmakers who have spent years fanning the flames of fires set by hate-filled individuals and groups who are racist and anti-queer. Particularly this past session where the GOP-led legislature was more focused on editing school history books than taking up gun control legislation. From Pulse to Parkland to Jacksonville this past weekend, the evil on the ground uses their guns to try and erase us in the streets while the conservatives up in Tallahassee use their power to try to erase us from history. It’s enough to make you feel hopeless and defeated, which I know is how many Floridians felt, and not know how to keep going.
As the weekend wrapped up, I was honored with an invite to an exclusive listening session for local singer CeCe Teneal. She is working on an all-new original album and she wanted to share it with a small, select group. As she prepared to sing one of her new songs, she spoke of the love, power and strength she gets from her wife and their marriage. In front of a room filled with about a hundred people in this state, this Black queer woman spoke passionately about the love of her life without changing up pronouns or using words like “partner” or “my special friend.” She looked at all of us and said this is my wife with no fear.
As she sang I thought how in today’s Florida, where Nazis and bigots are literally marching in the streets and killing marginalized people, what a defying act that is of standing in front of a crowd and celebrating your queer love. She reminded me that living as your authentic self is a way of standing up against these people. By not letting their hate take away your love, that is how you keep going.
