The Queer Love Podcast

Jerry Portwood
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What do we know about love? Find, accept and explore love and commitment among gay, lesbian and trans people in queer relationships through storytelling and interviews with LGBTQ+ folx. queerloveproject.substack.com

  1. Oct 29

    Do Dating Apps Control Your Love Life?

    I reached out to Andrew Restieri, a PhD candidate who shares his writing on Gay Man’s Terms, because he’s demystifying digital intimacy by combining research with personal narrative to discuss how modern platforms—from the curated worlds of Instagram “Close Friends” to the dating and hookup apps such as Hinge or Grindr—actively dictate how queer love, community, and consent are formed today. He’s currently in graduate school at Cornell University, where he has been analyzing the unwritten “rules” of digital privacy, including how nudes are shared and “owned” among gay men specifically. Because he’s enrolled at an institution that’s currently in the news and provoking a massive national conversation regarding sexual violence on college campuses, we also chatted about that topic a little as well (you can listen in at the 18-minute mark). I hope you enjoy this intellectual, deeply vulnerable and essential conversation—one that I think will dredge up questions and memories on multiple fronts. Especially for anyone who has ever felt the sting of app fatigue or the thrill of a digital spark. As Andrew explained at the beginning, he doesn’t have easy answers to settle your debates about the “rules” of online intimacy, but these conversations are certainly ones we’ll keep having for some time. “People hear about my work and they expect me to come back to the community and say, ‘OK, here are the rules.’ I looked into it because none of us know what the rules are, and here I am investigating the rules, but I can’t come back and say, ‘These are the rules, and we’re now bound by them. Because we think, ‘Oh, well, this is my boundary.’ And maybe it’s the boundary I share with some friends or some people with demographic profiles, etc. And so I think this boundary is normal. But both sides of the exchange assume that they’re sharing a boundary that they’re not actually communicating with each other.” Andrew then gave an example about “disappearing” and “expiring” photos and how some folks assume that if they receive a photo that’s not disappearing, it’s “fair game” and can be saved or “collected. Andrew points out that the assumption is invalid. He also doesn’t vilify Grindr (or fill in the blank with another gay hookup app like Scruff or Jack’d) for having “killed gay sex,” explaining: “I don’t take the view that Grindr came in and destroyed cruising culture and hookup culture and made it harder to forge community. I think that was a confluence of factors. There’s a larger societal shift, first of all, towards digital space. It’s not just in the hookup culture that we see people feeling isolated and feeling like interaction is transactional and that it’s harder to find community. That’s just at a baseline nowadays. Grindr didn’t do that. And there’s evidence that a lot of this being reduced to a collection of stats and photos and being measured according to dick size and stuff like that didn’t start with technology.” Oh and… “Spoiler alert: I’m a gay guy and I have used these platforms to exchange nude photos with people. So I was like, ‘There are norms and there’s a culture around this and this is what they are.’ What was surprising is that I was wrong about that: It manifests differently for different people.” Around the 28-minute mark, we pivoted and got into more personal questions and Andrew had some great insights and advice to share, including how there’s a process of self-objectification that happens when you fill out a profile of any type and how this misdirects how we value ourselves and others. But one of the most fun details was when I adapted our QLP Questionnaire question about a first intimate moment to an Andrew-style variant and asked about an early pivotal digital moment—a text, a pixelated photo, a chat room interaction—that felt completely real and electrifying. Andrew told me about a Facebook message group around 2014 that connected him to other gay men in the Tri-state region that was very enlightening (you can find that around the 33-minute mark). “It was called the G-Unit. It was a collection of the gay-straight alliances of all the local high schools. … You got added to it when you joined your high school’s GSA. And it got used for exactly what you’d think it got used for. That’s how I lost my virginity. That is like how I went on all my early dating experiences; they were from people like cold-Facebook messaging each other by scrolling through the members of this group. … Obviously it wasn’t a huge group, so everyone knew each other. Obviously it got exactly as messy as you think it did. But it was also a total lifeline because everyone remembers what it’s like to be gay in their town that they grew up in and to only have so many other gay people in your town. And so it was really cool to get to have intimate experiences that I wouldn’t have otherwise gotten to have in high school. … I was a bigger slut in high school than I ever have been in my adult life so far, because it was fun.” We also spoke about the age-old advice about how, when you stop trying to find a person to date, that’s typically when something has more opportunity to happen. “It's not that you're not trying,” Andrew said. “It's that you're not evaluating people as boyfriend candidates. And then when they're not boyfriend candidates, you’re not discarding them and you can expand your options…” Thanks again for listening and supporting! You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms). Follow us on Instagram for more updates about events and activities. Your support matters! And it helps our larger mission to share more stories and wisdom. If it doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet, would you consider upgrading to a paid subscription? We keep all our words and stories free, and we intentionally keep our annual subscription rate low so all of this amazing stuff is available to people around the globe. Help keep it going for years go come! Looking for more books to read? Check out QLP’s recommendations over at Bookshop.org for curated lists of memoirs, novels, poetry, nonfiction and more! The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  2. Oct 25

    Taylor Mac and Matt Ray on creating ‘Bark of Millions,’ a queer songbook for generations to cherish and share

    You never knows what to expect upon entering a production featuring Taylor Mac. I’ve seen Taylor play a hermaphrodite sea creature, a bedazzled lovelorn flower, as well as Puck in Midsummer Night’s Dream and Shen Te in Brecht’s Good Person of Szechwan. My first encounter, 20 years ago at a now-defunct arts space in Williamsburg, was Taylor solo on stage playing a ukulele while singing a song, “The Palace of the End,” about a forbidden bond between Lynne Cheney and Saddam Hussein. It literally stopped me in my tracks, and I’ve been a fan ever since. This YouTube clip is still one of the things I return to when I need a pick-me-up. Since then, Taylor’s fame has skyrocketed. The boundary-pushing playwright, actor and singer-songwriter was named a MacArthur Fellow and Pulitzer Prize finalist. That was due to A 24-Decade History of Popular Music (a 24-hour performance piece covering U.S. popular music from 1776 to 2016), which has also been preserved in a documentary that you can stream on HBO. A few years ago, I attended an abridged version of A 24-Decade History of Popular Music when it was staged as part of the Montclair Film Festival. I watched actor Patrick Wilson dance arm-in-arm with a man onstage as Taylor sang a queered version of “Snakeskin Cowboys,” a song by the controversial c**k rocker Ted Nugent that he’s proudly admitted was about gay-bashing. “Go on, I want you to be uncomfortable,” Mac coaxed from the stage, urging everyone into same-sex pairings—which they did. It was glorious. In 2022, as we were getting used to being in theater spaces again after the height of the Covid pandemic, I loved seeing Taylor and longtime collaborator Matt Ray’s The Hang, in which Taylor personified a very queer version of Socrates. Many of those same members of the show are also involved in the latest omnibus. Bark of Millions—which is co-directed by Taylor Mac, Niegel Smith and Faye Driscoll and produced by Pomegranate Arts, who commissioned the piece along with the Brooklyn Academy of Music—had its world premiere at the Sydney Opera House in 2023 and its U.S. premiere at BAM the following year. I had the opportunity to see Songs From the Bark of Millions, a shorter two-and-a-half-hour version, twice this fall. First, outdoors at the Delacorte Theatre in New York City’s Central Park and later in an intimate art deco theater in Boston at the Emerson Paramount Center. Both were stunning productions, a mix of ecstatic ritual merrymaking and, as some have termed it, “queer church. The unforgettable cast of nearly 20 singers and musicians includes Le Gateau Chocolat, a Nigerian-British drag queen, along with Taylor’s longtime costume maestro Machine Dazzle (who nearly steals the show when given a chance to climb over audience members). I’ll never forget the magical sight of Mama Alto keening the lyrics of “Kinnara” under the moon as the wind flapped her pink caftan like an otherworldly deity. But the same goes for hearing Jack Fuller sing the song inspired by James Baldwin or El Beh honoring the phenomenal Chavela Vargas. And Stefan Fae’s rendition of “Prosymnus—in which he repeats the lyric about a phallus made out of clay—made me laugh until I cried both times he sang it. But not everyone is a household name or a mythological character. Taylor also urged everyone to discover poet Justin Chin’s work (he died in 2015) before launching into the song dedicated to him that includes the lyrics: “Angels in the bed / Angels in the pen / Angel sweat / Angel sin / Take me to the angel / Justin Chin / ... Oh you / Freaky geek / Rest in peace / While your poems burn burn burn.” I was gifted with witnessing this stunning and unforgettable performance by the legendary Andre de Shields in Central Park: So, by now, you know that Taylor Mac is a creative hero of mine, so I was thrilled to get the opportunity to talk to Taylor and Matt for the Queer Love Podcast, which is pegged to the release of the two-volume book, Bark of Millions: Queer Songs for the Living Library of the Deviant Theme. This monumental, gorgeous book set serves as a literary extension of the acclaimed production—and it’s an essential addition to anyone’s queer library. As Taylor said during our conversation: “My hope for the book is that it offers an expansion, that everyone who embraces it, that their hearts and their liberation just get a little bigger. And that their life on this planet becomes a little bit more conscious and that their afterlife becomes less divided between a hell and a heaven and more in thought and care and energy with everything else that’s on the planet.” The work is divided into two distinct volumes: Book I features Taylor’s lyrics reformatted as standalone poetry alongside contextual essays, while Book II provides the official sheet music and chords for 50 original songs. Together, they establish a new musical canon celebrating queer history, lineages, and lives. Matt and Taylor want you invite friends over, play it the way you feel like and have a great time together. I know this is a long episode, and I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow of all the amazing stuff we covered. So, I hope you queue this one up and enjoy it as much as I did. I just couldn’t cut anything! Make sure you listen in when Matt shares this moving insight near the end of our chat (around the 1-hour mark): “I’ve been thinking a lot about shame, and what it means and how it’s placed on us. I was raised with a lot of shame, and I think society placed a lot of shame on my plate as well. And it’s been part of my personal journey to, really, living in this world is sort of examining that shame and understanding it. There’s certainly way less of that feeling if we recognize that our experiences are eternal, that queer people have existed forever and the stories are not new. My story isn’t unique in the sense. I mean, it’s unique to me, but how I love in the world and whom I love and all of that: It has been going on for a long time, and it feels really liberating and freeing to just touch in with that. That’s really all that I need is just to say, ‘It’s OK that I have all these feelings—some of which are generated from my body, some of which are generated from culture, some are generated from family history—but, regardless of that, Oscar Wilde existed. James Baldwin existed and continues to exist in the writing that exists.” I guess that’s what my hope is: That this book and the songs and the lyrics that Taylor crafted, and the music, will help people feel connected to things in ways that help us understand ourselves and lessen some of the burden that we carry.” Thanks again for listening and supporting! You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms). Follow us on Instagram for more updates about events and activities. Your support matters! And it helps our larger mission to share more stories and wisdom. If it doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet, would you consider upgrading to a paid subscription? We keep all our words and stories free, and we intentionally keep our annual subscription rate low so all of this amazing stuff is available to people around the globe. Help keep it going for years go come! Plus, before you go, you can read an excerpt from Bark of Millions here: The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  3. Oct 19

    Juliet Patterson on ancestral inheritance, queerness as another way of seeing family

    In her memoir Sinkhole: A Personal History of Loss and Land, Juliet Patterson examines generational trauma, family legacies, and the ways marginalized identities offer alternative perspectives on lineage and memory. In particular, Juliet investigates the tragic suicides of three generations of men in her family, including her father, while utilizing the environmental sinkholes of Pittsburg, Kansas, as a metaphor for hidden family trauma and generational silence. I was curious how her perspective as a queer woman offers unique tools for examining and healing rigid family structures. Below, you’ll find a few highlights from our fascinating conversation, and I hope you enjoy listening into the full episode as well! Juliet didn’t intend to write a memoir “Like any person who survives suicide, you’re trying to answer the question of why. And there is a genetic component. Research on that has developed a lot since I’ve written the book. And there’s pretty substantial evidence of a strong genetic trait. So that was part of what I was chasing, but I was also just trying to understand the emotional landscape. Statistically, also, children of suicide are at much higher risk for suicide than your average person. So I knew this was my father’s largest wound, his father’s suicide, and that was the person I was chasing first. And when I got to this little town... “I just got really interested in this place and encountered a sinkhole across the street from my grandmother’s house. The hole had erupted in someone’s yard and they had picked a house up and put it on crib and beams in the middle of the street. And I had never seen anything like that. “I’d never seen a sinkhole in person. Of course, I was in a very dark place in my own psyche, but the metaphor felt like it was delivered to me in a physical sense. And it became clear to me that I needed to start writing about it. “And so I wasn’t there thinking I was going to write a book. I was there just for my own personal knowledge. And then it was sort of clear, like, ‘Oh. This is something bigger.’” How Juliet’s idea of family become more expansive “I’m an only child, and each of my parents had one sibling with few children. I think one of the things I was trying to excavate, not to tease a pun, is the silence in this very small family—the secrets and the silence. I happen to be the only queer-identified person in this small circle, and I think, while writing the book—although I didn’t really make this a part of the story—I was doing a lot of thinking and sort of meditating about like what queer people do in the world and in cultures and in families. “So the family is just like that little system of the culture. But I think a lot of times we are because of our outside perspective, maybe marginalized perspective, depending on how much privilege you have. We ask questions that are different. We see the world differently. We haven’t fit in to that sort of cultural norm. “And I certainly didn’t even really fit in with the cultural norms of my family outside of my sexuality. … Coming out was a painful process because these people only had one child, but they were about ready to toss me out on my ear anyway. So I think remembering my ancestral line—which I didn’t know much about—and learning about it from that perspective just reminded me of how important it is to know where you come from and to maybe, not reinvent, replace myself inside that story, sort of recreate how I see my family and my role in my family and who I am in carrying this lineage forward. “I was on the brink of becoming a parent and part of what was driving me here was cleaning out the closet so that I wasn’t carrying this silent legacy with me.” Investigating masculinity as a woman and a lesbian “But bringing up masculinity, because that’s the big thing I was trying to unpack about my father. He was a very, very sensitive person and yet came of age in the ‘50s, and I think was trying to fulfill this role that I think he was deeply unhappy living inside. And I even have questions about his sexuality. I think it might have played out that far if he had allowed himself some freedom. “I think that was something certainly I was investigating within this larger whole. And it is the three men, right? None of the women succumb to death this way, and they all come from the same place. So what’s going on? With the men, that’s different from the women, not to overgeneralize gender, but that was at play. “I think that I could see in all three of these men... Ways in which they were different than the cultural norm of what was expected of them as a masculine figure. And yet at the same time, they were all deeply invested in performing the role of a masculine figure. … “I don’t think anyone became more legible. I think I became more legible as the queer figure in this.” Why it’s important to think deeply about “place” “What we haven’t really touched on, and it is a deep thread in the book, is our connection to place. And place can be body, it could be house, it could be landscape, it could be state, it could be city. And I do want us all to think about our relationship to place. … And our families of origin are places, in our psyche, in our emotional bodies. A lot of us who are queer need to do some reclaiming because of the culture and biases that are built in to a heteronormative, patriarchal society and how families act that out. The nuclear family itself, you know, I often quote a writer whose name I always forget and I need to remember it, but it’s like a hostage situation, you know? [Editor’s note: Sophie Lewis speaks on this in Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family.] “I think sometimes queer people are there to help liberate everyone. It doesn’t always play out that way, but I think somewhere deep down inside, that’s what’s happening. So I guess those things. Where is your place? This place, Pittsburgh, became both my respite and place of grieving. I do think we need places to feel our deep emotional bodies. And for many of us, that’s nature. But I also would challenge us to think about places that we are doing that work. On a regular basis. And again, this might also sound a little esoteric, but I think this is one way, one practice, that will help us get out of this place we’re in culturally, which is very polarized, very aggressive. “The rapidity of modern life is very troubling to me. So I think we need to really work on our somatic bodies. To get reconnected with each other. And again, queer people know this better than just about any other group because the iterations of queer life through the modern American culture. “But slow down. Be in your place. Be deeply in your place.” Thanks again for listening and supporting! You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms). Follow us on Instagram for more updates about events and activities. Want to find some Queer Love Project merch? We got you covered! The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  4. Oct 14

    Artist Rashad Ali Muhammad on Finding the Fire Within to Share His Truth in His Work

    Rashad Ali Muhammad is a multidisciplinary artist whose work brings together Blackness, queerness, spirituality, ancestry, gender, HIV advocacy and healing. I only recently learned about him and was intrigued by how he uses his art practice to interrogate questions of survival, stigma, and what it means to imagine a future rooted in ancestral resilience. He’s preparing for a February 2027 exhibition with SUNY Health and Science University focused on his HIV long-term survivor series. In this candid conversation we discuss art, queer love, and the power of making space for stories that have too often been erased or misunderstood. Before we dive in, a quick content note: This conversation includes discussion of HIV, illness, stigma, grief, suicidal ideation and survival. We approach those subjects with care, while also making room for joy, intimacy, creativity, and possibility. If you are looking for resources, you can start with GMHC Hotline or, if you know of other advocacy groups to recommend, please leave those in the comments. Rashad and I covered a lot of topics, but we started out by discussing how he settled on disclosing his HIV-positive status and incorporating it into his artistic practice as a form of advocacy. “I’ve been positive since I was 21. So that’s 2011, and I’m 36 today,” Rashad explained. “So I started to think about my journey and when I was dating—all the ups and downs of dating as a positive person and what that looks like. … In 2024, it was coming up on my birthday, and I always do a self-portrait. But this year I did a collage piece. So then, from that piece, I delved into a lot of different other conversations around my experiences.” From there, Rashad was inspired by his partner (who is a singer-songwriter) to start doing “shadow work journaling”—the practice of writing down and exploring the hidden, repressed, or uncomfortable parts of your unconscious mind. That led him to explore being infected with HIV and also to ponder the “lost generation” of gay men who were lost to HIV/AIDS over the prior decades. I was very interested in learning about Rashad’s oral history series with people living with HIV. These conversations are blunt, raw and powerful. “I think, as humans, we like storytelling and we love stories,” he explained. “So it's kind of interesting just to be curious and be open to someone else's experience.” In particular, I asked about his feelings around the term “resilience” since there has been quite a bit of debate among scholars, activists and mental health professionals, who are increasingly questioning traditional definitions of resilience. They want to shift the conversation from praising individual "toughness" to critiquing the structural inequities that force survival to be a necessity rather than a choice. In this way, resilience contains a paradox, while the ability to endure and overcome historical and systemic adversity is celebrated as a cultural superpower, it simultaneously acts as a harmful burden that masks systemic failure, minimizes human suffering and exacts a severe physical and psychological toll. As Rashad explained, when he found out he was HIV-positive at 21, he “lost his footing” and felt suicidal. “That’s when life’s happening and life’s starting. Now this,” he said. “So it was mentally demanding. But I was like, ‘B***h, snap out of it! Like, what are we going to do?’ … It took me a few years, but at some point in that mental fog, there was a moment of like, ‘You’re here. … There’s medication. You’re not going to die. Now what?’ So it became more about how do I flip the narrative?” As Rashad shared, he decided to take charge of all the things that he wanted to achieve. “It’s like, take it over. Use it as my superpower,” he explained. “If this was something that was going to take you down, now I’m taking it over. And it’s like, we’re living as a couple now; this is my buddy, HIV. ‘OK, you’re here, but you’re not going to diminish me.’ And so, there’s that.” One interesting segment our conversation delved into how Rashad finally decided to tell his family he was HIV-positive. Unfortunately it was due to a separate health scare, causing him to share the news after keeping it a secret from others for years. As he wrote in an artist statement about an artwork it inspired, titled “Finding Hope in a Time of Despair”: “[It was] one of the most terrifying moments of my life—a cancer scare that left me suspended in uncertainty, trapped in the agonizing space between tests and diagnosis. The fear of the unknown consumed me, forcing me to confront my own mortality.” Our chat then segued into how he met his partner on the Jack’d app and his decision to disclose to people openly before he meets them. As Rashad shared, even though he told people that he’s undetectable, many didn’t understand what that meant and expected him to educate them on the subject—which takes its own emotional labor. Ultimately, Rashad feels like it’s part of his mission to show that he’s thriving—in his art, in his career, in his relationship—while living with HIV. “It's fascinating how many people feel that shame. I don’t go, ‘Woe is me,’ but a lot of the times, I’ve been like that. I talk to them; it’s like, ‘I get it, where you are right now.’ But also: ‘Keep going, because eventually over that hump or over that hill, over the mountain.’ There’s a bigger life. Life is still there. And it’s OK. It’s why I’m using whatever platform I have. And that’s why I do the art: to have these conversations, so that people do feel less shame or less guilt or less whatever negative emotion they have about whatever they have going on. It's like showing people that everyone is going through stuff. Everyone has something. It's all right.” Find out more about Rashad’s work at RAMCreates.com Thanks again for listening and supporting! You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms). Follow us on Instagram for more updates about events and activities. Want to find some Queer Love Project merch? We got you covered! The Queer Love Project is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  5. Oct 9

    Annie Sprinkle & Beth Stephens, ‘Pollen-amorous’ Ecosexuals, on Marrying Fire and Finding Humor in the Face of Disaster

    As you know, I’m always interrogating radical, transformative power of LGBTQ+ relationships. So, I was excited to talk to two absolute icons of queer art, activism, and love, who have been partners in life and creativity for over 20 years: Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle! We gathered together to focus on their joyous new documentary, Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency, which is currently touring theaters. The film follows their real-life evacuation from their Northern California home in Boulder Creek during the massive 2020 wildfires—part of the CZU Lightning Complex fires—that devastated nearly 90,000 acres (roughly the size of the Connecticut). The movie shows how they leaned into art, humor and their community to turn grief into a powerful collective healing ritual. I was so impressed by this gorgeous movie—both heartbreaking and, at times, laugh-out-loud funny. Before we spark it off, let me introduce you to the brilliant minds behind the movement: Annie Sprinkle, PhD, is a legendary multimedia performance artist, filmmaker and sex educator. She got her start in New York in the 1970s, working as a sex worker and explicit adult film star before morphing her experiences into groundbreaking, sex-positive feminist performance art. Over her multi-decade career, Annie has used radical pleasure as a form of activism and education. Beth Stephens, PhD, is an acclaimed filmmaker, activist and a professor of sculpture and intermedia at the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she also directs the E.A.R.T.H. Lab. Her work explores queer ecologies, environmental justice and institutional critique through performance and physical art. She’s also a recipient of both a Eureka Fellowship and a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship. What Is the Ecosexual Movement? Together since 2002, Annie and Beth are the pioneers of the Ecosex Movement. They published the Ecosex Manifesto and began hosting public performance art pieces where they literally “married the Earth,” the moon, and the sky. The Ecosex philosophy urges humanity to stop viewing nature as a mother to extract from, and instead treat it as a lover to be protected and pleasured. Annie and Beth’s book, Assuming the Ecosexual Position: The Earth as Lover (co-written with Jennie Klein) came out in 2021. Playing with Fire is the spectacular third installment of their eco-documentary trilogy, following Goodbye Gauley Mountain (2014) and Water Makes Us Wet (2019). You can learn more about their screenings, art, and legendary love story on the official Sprinkle Stephens Website. Jerry: Annie, can you explain what the ecosexual movement is to. people who might not be familiar with it? Annie: Well, it can be whatever people want it to be, but Beth and I did a performance art piece and married the Earth in 2008, I think. And we woke up the next morning—it was very powerful to make vows to love, honor, and cherish the Earth—and we thought, Let’s maybe we’re ecosexuals. And we thought it was funny, and we thought we’d do a month or two of that. But it really was generative. It just means that you love the Earth, and the nature is important to you. It can be an activist strategy where we’re kind of a queer affinity group or a place where sex workers and punk rockers and people outside the mainstream environmental movement can be themselves. And it’s also a mindfulness practice. We imagine the Earth as a lover and partner and friend. And Beth, why is this the capstone of this trilogy of ecosexual movies? Beth: Well, it’s the capstone in some ways because it’s our most recent film, but it also it also builds upon what we learned in the two other films that we did. I don’t think we set out to do a trilogy, but as these environmental disasters just kept piling up, you know, I mean it’s like Walter Benjamin’s the Ruins of History, you know, and the angel of history is kind of flipping backwards, screaming: “No, we couldn’t believe that there was a this huge fire right at our house.” So it was so stunning that we had to make a film about it. And then it happened to be our third film. It shares certain characteristics with the other films, such as humor in the face of disaster, such as doing rituals to try to change the time, such as the love that Annie and I have for each other. And we just saw the whole trilogy together in Chicago, and they really go beautifully together. Tell me a little bit about the roles that you take—in life and when making work together. Annie: We do butch-femme really well. We’ve been together 24 years, about the same as you. And we just hit it off right from the start and started making art together. And our life is art. We found our perfect match in so many ways. We’re very aligned politically. and artistically. We love Fluxus; we have a Fluxus art movement background, so for us, it really works. We both had solo careers: I toured theater pieces for 15 years by myself, you know, and had a lot of friends meet me here and there (and lovers). But I really love having a full-time, full-on partner to be with. And we’re growing together, and very blessed we found each other. It’s a miracle. Beth: I second everything that Annie just said. Yeah, we have our roles. And those roles—sometimes they’re discrete from each other and sometimes they overlap. Annie’s very good at organizational things, but I’m very good at getting grants. We both love to brainstorm about our ideas just before we go to sleep or right when we wake up. Those are these moments when we’re not in front of a computer, and we can be really creative and open and and have fun. We both love having fun. I mean, making these films was a lot of work. And right now we’re in the middle of a lot, a lot of work—which isn’t necessarily fun—but we’re also able to shoulder the responsibilities of getting this out into the world and trying to get audiences to come see the work. … I don’t know, somehow we just muddle through it. Annie: I like to cook. I’m a feeder, and I like to feed people. I love to do the dishes. Beth’s the gardener because I’m bug-phobic. She does all the money stuff, and I do the housekeeping. You know, it really is kind of stereotypical butch-femme, but we we just have a really symbiotic working relationship and we really, deeply enjoy each other. And I just think she’s the hottest, sexiest person on the planet. Her smile alone just lights my fire! There’s a really wonderful, sexy, erotic scene with you both getting fire tantra work. What inspired that? Annie: One of your neighbors is Barbara Carrellas. She lives up near you in Manhattan. She did the book Urban Tantra, and she’s a sex educator. And she’s really into playing with fire. So of course we asked Barbara to be in our film. And she’s gonna be there this weekend when we’re showing the film twice at Anthology Film Archives. And Saturday night she’s doing the Q&A discussion. There’s also a really powerful scene that is quite surprising. Annie, your mother passed away, and you both were there to witness her body’s cremation. Beth, why did that moment need to be in the film? Beth: So Annie’s mother was being cremated, and we we strongly felt that we needed to be there to witness this final passage of her of her body. And then we thought, “Well, you know, fire has all kinds of uses and functions: from having this horrible event happening here in the Santa Cruz Mountains to cooking our food to, you know, the fire ritual—which is very erotic—to saying goodbye to someone.” I thought it was a really beautiful thing to be there and to film this. And it’s something that so many people in our audiences have said they’ve never seen before. and I’d never seen it before either. So we’re also trying to bring new information to people about the the range of things that fire can do and can be in the film. Yeah. It’s not just a one-sided environmental vibe. Exactly. I appreciated that, too. I think that we sometimes hide those moments that aren’t pretty or that we don’t want to think about or don’t wa… Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  6. Oct 2

    Praying to the Great La: The Queer, Non-binary Writer on Facing Mortality With Love

    I don’t remember how I first stumbled upon the Substack for La | queer, non-binary author and began reading the “Queer Old Me” series. It’s one of those serendipitous realities of Substack that I’ve come to cherish. I soon learned that La lives in Madrid, has a tumor they’ve named Bruno and is an incredible writer who is hurtling through life with joy and passion. I recently shared an essay on my Mostly Fans personal Substack in which I explained how impressed I am by those who create in a language other than their “mother tongue” and how author Jhumpa Lahiri called English her “hairy, sweaty teenager” that she’s had to wrestle with (before she embraced Italian as her baby language). Most English speakers (and writers) rarely master another language well enough to be able to write elegantly in it, so maybe that’s why I’m so gobsmacked when I encounter others who appear to navigate the linguistic terrain with such ease. La fascinates me, and I’m so glad I had the opportunity to have this conversation about their writing, their journey around the globe, and their experience with the realities of healthcare during this transformative moment of their incredible life. I knew we were going to have an interesting time; I did not predict I’d be so enthralled by La that I’d want to schedule a follow up as soon as possible! If you haven’t read La’s work, you should start here. And if you’re curious where the moniker comes from, yes it was inspired by Russell T. Davies’ phenomenal television series It’s a Sin. I’ve written about it, calling it the “most important show about queer love that you (probably) haven’t watched),” so perhaps that’s why La found me? I figured we would talk about that a bit more, but La had other stories that needed to be shared first. I was just strapped in and enjoying the ride! In a nutshell, La was born and raised in France, moved to London and experienced the gay frivolities of that city before realizing they didn’t want to get stuck in a rut. So what did they do? Move to Ecuador, of course! They began teaching English in Cuenca, Ecuador’s third largest city, which they described as perfect, perpetual spring weather. While there, they not only learned Spanish, but they embedded themself in the community and helped organize the first Miss International Trans Ecuador pageant. So what does one do after having all this fun? Why, move to Moscow of course! “Who convinced you to move to Moscow?” I asked La. “Nobody did. The plan was I was young. I had hair,” La replied. “The plan was: I didn’t want to be a tourist. I don’t enjoy being a tourist. I thought, I’m going to go to places. I’m going to live there for a year or two, fully embed myself in the culture and the people and what they’re doing, and then help by teaching English while I’m there. … I went, why not? They pay really well. I knew nothing about what it was like to be there. I learned a lot, and I regretted every decision I made while I was there.” Turns out, Russia is NOT a great place for a vivacious queer person to live, so when giving the chance, La moved to Madrid and took up residence in Cheuca, the vibrant gayborhood in Spain’s capital city. If you’ve never been, Madrid is one of the most dynamic cities in the world, has a huge LGBTQ+ population and amazing nightlife and culture. You’ll have fun even if you don’t speak much Spanish (but it will help if you do), so what are you waiting for? I asked La what their trick was to be able to move to foreign cultures where they don’t speak the language and manage to thrive despite the odds. “I think you have to let go,” La explained. “You really have to let go. You have to let go of all the mistakes you’re going to make. The mistakes are going to help.” “People are not going to understand you. I mean, there’s a time that I remember where I mimed a chicken laying an egg in the middle of a shop because they could not understand that I wanted an egg. So I’m like, ‘OK, I’m going to...’ You have to find a way.” Facing mortality Because all of us who’ve been following La’s story are curious how they’re doing, I asked how things are going with their health. La was blunt and honest as always (this begins around the 15:12-minute mark): “I’m doing great, actually. I’m doing really, really well. This has been... I have gone through s**t in my life. My life is just... Aside from the traveling, I’ve got loads of trouble in my childhood. I’ve gone through all of it. And then this has probably been the most transformative experience of my life. “I’m a completely different person than I was when I started writing. Just me six months ago is a different person, completely different person. … “I guess, I mean, you know, in episodes to come, spoilers ahead, I’m kind of faced with death. Like I have, I’m in a hospital bed, 40 fever. I just had another surgery. I’m alone. There’s a heat wave, and I have a doctor who looks at me and goes, oh, this is not good. And I’m just— It’s 3 o’clock in the morning, and you don’t see a doctor, like when you’re in a hospital. You don’t see a doctor at 3 o’clock in the morning. They’re not there. You see a nurse. “So when you see a doctor, you go, ‘Oh, there’s a doctor.’ And then the doctor goes [makes face and bad sound], and then I’m sweating and I’m shaking and I’m in pain. I’m in pain from the surgery. I’m in pain from the fever. I have an infection. I’m like, this s**t has hit the fan. You know what I mean? “And I’m like, ‘Oh, god. That’s it. I’m done. Okay. I mean, I’ve had a really great life. Don’t get me wrong. Like, I’m not afraid to die, per se. But I’m afraid to suffer. I don’t want the pain. I’m okay with dying. I’ve had an incredible life. I’ve made the best out of my circumstances. But pain, I was like, ‘I don’t want pain. Not fun.’ “Then, yes, I spent a couple of days like that, and it felt like facing death. And then I was like, ‘OK.’ But like, properly—I don’t know how to explain it. I felt like I’ve been in life-threatening situations before, but not to that degree. Like it felt concrete. It felt like it was the end. And that kind of, I made peace somehow. I made peace with everything. And then I made it through.” Gender Expression: Finding They/Them I had questions about discovering what gender non-binary is and the birth of La as an identity, and the following explanation was quite beautiful to hear (it begins around the 31-minute mark). “I think for me, the Me Too movement was the first, was something that impacted me significantly. Like it opened my eyes to things I was kind of aware of, but not to the degree of it, because I do not date women and I’m not in the straight world. And then I started having conversations with my girlfriends about being harassed in the street. I’m like, ‘You’re getting harassed in the street? Where you live? What?” And it’s just like, and it impacted me, and I kind of had to look back within as well. I’m like, ‘Oh, is there a moment where I said yes, but I meant no? And have I gone through situations where—within our community—there’s a lot of times, at least in my case, when I found myself in the situation, I’m like, ‘I’m going through the motion here. And I’m just waiting for this to end.’ Or I’m doing this against my will. There’s been a lot of those. So the Me Too really opened something that; it unlocked something. “Then a few years later, I’m lucky enough that I’ve been able to go to therapy. And I have an incredible therapist who’s helped me change my life several times. And then I realized that I came to a point where I realized I had a lot of internalized homophobia still, even though I was a person in their forties who’s always been really loud about being a f****t. I’m like, ‘I’m a f****t! And I want to show the world that I am!’ “Once I kind of started to deal with the internalized homophobia and then kind of deconstruct it, I was able to look at my gender expression and where I sat on the gender binary. And finding non-binariness just was, I don’t know, it felt like an… Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  7. Sep 25

    Ryan O’Connell: ‘Open Relationships Are Very Personal—Not a Cut & Paste Job’

    You probably know Ryan O’Connell’s work by now. The writer, actor, and creator who has spent over a decade systematically dismantling how the world views queer and disabled lives—usually while making us laugh until we cry. He’s the Emmy-nominated mastermind behind the groundbreaking Netflix series Special—which contained some of the most honest and realistic portrayals of gay male sex and dating ever to appear on TV—and he’s the author of the razor-sharp 2023 novel Just by Looking at Him. This summer, he published a hilarious, unfiltered, and deeply moving new memoir, Inspiration Porn, which reclaims his narrative, charts his relationship evolution, and takes an unapologetic look at the wild ride of disabled queer joy. I’ve enjoyed his work for along time, and I was eager to talk about so many areas of LGBTQ+ life that Ryan navigates so deftly—in particular his open relationship with his long-term partner Jonathan Parks-Ramage (who he met at Grimes’ birthday part of all places), who is also an author and screenwriter (his novel Yes, Daddy has been on my TBR for quite a while and I guess it’s about time I finally read it). We talked at length about his “cumspringa,” as he calls it in the memoir, and the “Slut Diaries” that he’s now adapted into a play. I’ll let you listen to the entire conversation, but this statement from Ryan felt especially important, so I wanted wanted to share a chunk here: “I don’t think a healthy relationship should ever hinder anybody’s growth. Growth outside the relationship is really important, and it allows the relationship itself to grow. “Jonathan knew that I had been kind of wanting to be promiscuous because I’d never had that moment for myself. And Jonathan immediately into our courtship was sort of like, ‘Yeah, you should go f**k around—you never did that. So like at some point you should absolutely feel like you need to do that.’ You know, I started very much in earnest. “My bridge to that was sort of using it through erotic massage and sex work. So that way it was very transactional and it was very neat. And then, at a certain point—it was like seven years into our relationship—I was ready to graduate. And I was ready to actually experience potential rejection and not get what I want. That was an important texture to what I wanted to do. “Look, the decision to open your relationship or not is very personal. It’s not a copy and paste job whatsoever. But I think my own personal belief is that I want to always grow. “And I think that people in relationships get scared of that. I think in relationships, you sort of sign this contract, implicitly, that says: ‘I’m going to be this person for you, you’re going to be this person for me.’ And I think that whenever you seek out growth personally, you threaten that contract for needing to be revised. And I just don’t find it to be scary. I just don’t. I think that, you know, if the relationship is right, it will be able to grow with you. “I’ve seen people sort of flatten themselves in a relationship just in order for it to make sense, because they’re more scared of being alone than having the relationship change. And I don’t want to ever be put in that situation.” Ryan shared some profound insights into how long it take him to love his body and no longer perceiving it as a “foe.” He also said we often construct narratives around ourselves to anticipate how others will perceive us that are entirely fabricated. “With confidence, you really set the tone on how people talk and feel about you. … Confidence is like having a secret that people want to find out about.” He also explained that he now is less interested in “transactional” sex and wants more connection. What we decided should be called “30-minute demi.” Are Straight People OK? Because he has a section titled “Are Straight People OK?” (the short answer: no), I asked if he thought there was anything that he thought people in heteronormative relationships could learn from queer relationships. Here’s what he shared: “You know, it’s hard because I think that the way that gay people do relationships, it’s like, straight people can try, but we’re different. The wiring is different. I don’t mean to be so reductive—it’s giving us “Men are From Mars, Women are from Venus”—but I think that the one thing that they can take from it is communication. “I think that there’s a lot of fear around communicating your own desires in hetero relationships because you’re worried about being judged because maybe you do process sex very differently. And so it’s going to immediately be metabolized as an ‘attack’ or whatever. “And I think that I have found in gay relationships that my friends are in, that I’m in, is that we really do communicate everything. And even though it’s annoying sometimes to process, LOL, like I do think that there are parts of straight people that are just shut off in relationships in order for them to keep working. “I don’t think that you should be afraid of having a difficult conversation, period.” It was a pleasure having such an open and honest conversation with Ryan around these topics. His third book is great, and if you aren’t familar with the two seasons of Special on Netflix (inspired by his first memoir, I’m Special), check out the trailer for the first season below. Thanks again for listening and supporting! You can also like and follow the podcast on other platforms, including YouTube, Spotify, and Apple Podcasts (as well as other podcast platforms). We’re offering a 20% discount to become an annual subscriber. That means you’ll pay $24 for the entire year! **(if you’re currently paying $5 a month, consider upgrading since it will save you a bundle and help keep QLP growing and publishing essays, poetry and supporting queer creativity)** 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. Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

  8. Sep 18

    Edgar Gomez: Finding Joy Amid the Dread

    Before I recap this fantastic conversation, I want to make sure you know about our next live reading event taking place September 20th in the Boston area to celebrate our 2-year anniversary. It is taking place at All She Wrote Books, a queer-owned bookstore in Somerville, Massachusetts, and it will include readings by Lynette D'Amico, Michael Lowenthal, Anthony DiPietro, Jingo Mante and myself. Click here for more details and to RSVP! I first met Edgar Gomez soon after I launched the Queer Love Project, while I was at a book party where he read from his first memoir, High-Risk Homosexual. In fact, he was the very first person who I asked to reply to the QLP questionnaire! So much has changed since. Not only has he released his second memoir, Alligator Tears, but Edgar got married and bought a home with his husband in Puerto Rico. Plus, as Edgar reminded us, it’s Hispanic Heritage Month (which runs Sept. 15-Oct. 15), so we had plenty to catch up about. As Edgar explained: “High-Risk Homosexual, like the title implies, is more about queerness and coming of age in terms of starting in a place of deep shame when I was a kid. To coming to Pride and sort of understanding that queerness actually is a great privilege for me and has helped me throughout my life. … I didn’t really get to delve as deeply into issues of class and the American Dream and just money that I really wanted to. “And so the second book, Alligator Tears, gave me the opportunity to. And of course, there’s still a lot of, you know, gay stuff happening. But it is really more about me trying to claw myself and my family out of poverty and figure it out. “When I read books, my two favorite things to read about within stories are how much everything costs. I’m always super excited when people drop those details. Especially in older books. It’s always like, ‘Oh, that’s how much that cost back then. And particularly because—before I even realized that I wanted to be a writer—When I just knew that there were books out there and authors, I thought they were all rich!” We both talked more about coming from working-class backgrounds and the hustle it took to create a life as a writer and how tough it still is, then we pivoted to the reality of being queer in the world and not wanting to sugarcoat it. “For example, when I’m talking about queerness and coming out of the closet, I have been tempted in the past to get rid of all the moments of suffering in the story and just focus on the joy,” Edgar explained. “But I don’t want to mislead a queer reader because Into thinking, oh, you come out of the closet and it’s going to be, you know, all, you know, sunshine and butterflies and unicorns.” Remembering Pulse 10 years later We then began talking about the Pulse nightclub shooting, which took place 10 years ago. I told Edgar about the essay I published earlier this year about how it compelled me to shoot my first gun. And Edgar reminded me about the the piece he wrote about Pink Pistols for Narratively in 2020: “My Journey Into the Secret Subculture of Gays With Guns.” We both wondered why there hadn’t been more coverage or remembrances for the tragedy that happened at Pulse, which at the time was the worst mass shooting in U.S. history. “I'm not the only person who has, at this point, experienced more than one mass shooting where, you know, it's reached this like absurd place,” Edgar said. “And so I do think that has taken some of the weight from Pulse, where there is just so... There's not much going on that people are frankly overwhelmed.” Then I asked Edgar about race and ethnicity in dating, referencing his Rumpus essay, “My Boyfriend, His Lover, and Me,” which is also included in Alligator Tears, since I think it gets at the heart of the struggle with class and whiteness and many other topics that are not often addressed openly. In it, he details a situationship he was in with a Mexican American guy who was also dating a white celebrity that Edgar was also a fan of. This “love triangle” got complicated, to say the least. But that’s not what ultimately broke them up. Edgar admitted he’s hesitant to write about romantic relationships. “Because, honestly, whether it’s a relationship or whether it’s like some kind of trauma that I’m working through, a lot of times when I write about something, it’s like I’m trying to put a period at the end of that story and just get it out of me. … I was hesitant to write that story because I thought, Once you write this, then the relationship is officially over in my brain. And once I published it, it’s weird. It’s like a flip switches. And I’m like, I’m done with this. I’ve written the end of the story. And all right, it ended in an ambiguous place. And now it is just over.” Edgar also spoke about the diversity of Latinx storytelling available. “Our stories are out there but, oftentimes, there are certain types of stories that are highlighted more than others. Whether it’s straight Latinx people or, under the ethnicity umbrella, it’s usually Mexican stories or Puerto Rican stories. “And I’m half Puerto Rican, so I always felt like that part of me, I had representation. I always had J-Lo! But Nicaragua—which is the culture that I actually grew up more with because I grew up with my mom’s side of the family and going to Nicaragua every summer for months at a time—I just felt like there was really not a lot out there. And so to get a very queer Nicaraguan story out, it just feels very, very special to me. And whenever I see another queer Nicaraguan or even just another Nicaraguan writer, I just get so, so excited. I mean, I would even say a Central American writer. A writer like John Manuel Arias, who just released Crocodilopolis, which is set in Costa Rica. Yeah, it makes me very, very excited!” To wrap things up, I asked Edgar if he had any advice for those who may be searching for love and finding it difficult to connect with others. He shared a really special realization about his mother and how he arrived at his current place of happiness. “I always thought, I don’t want to lose myself in a relationship. I don’t know how I’m going to be able to live with somebody and share that space with somebody for 24 hours a day. And I’ve realized it is a lot easier than it sounds, at least for me. “It might be that, you know, I fell in love with my husband in the pandemic when it was like truly me and him, you know, at the end of the world. And it was just us together in our literal bubble, in our safety bubble. Yeah. But I actually like sharing space with somebody—it’s kind of awesome. You get to be a DINK: double income, no kids. You know about that? And, you know, I have somebody that, you know, I can sort of share my life with and the ups and downs. And I have this support system with me everywhere that I go.” Giving his mamá more credit “And the other fear that I had was that I just wasn’t giving my family, specifically my mom, enough credit. And I always worried about getting too serious in a relationship because I thought, OK, once you start getting serious, that’s when you have to start introducing them to your family and meeting their family. Maybe that leads to a wedding and then that means inviting all the extended relatives and this and that. And because of that fear that I had, I think I kind of sabotaged a lot of my relationships. “Once I started getting serious with my husband, it reached a point where he was like: “Hey, does your mom know about me?” And I had to have this big conversation with my mom. I went to Orlando, and it was like coming out of the closet again. I was so nervous. “I got into bed with her, I was just like, “Hey, just want to let you know I’m seeing somebody.” I told her two things about him. And she didn’t say anything back. And I was like, “OK.” And I crawled out of her bed and I went into my childhood bedroom. And I kind of just sat there, you know, a little bit frozen and was like... I was almost like, OK, I guess you were right. Maybe you shouldn’t have told her about this. “I already had all t… Get full access to The Queer Love Project at queerloveproject.substack.com/subscribe

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What do we know about love? Find, accept and explore love and commitment among gay, lesbian and trans people in queer relationships through storytelling and interviews with LGBTQ+ folx. queerloveproject.substack.com

Information

  • Creator
    Jerry Portwood
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    49
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Jerry Portwood
  • Show Website
    The Queer Love Podcast