Since I came out three years ago, I've been consuming a ton of entertainment of all sorts in the LGBTQ+ category. Books, movies, TV shows, graphic novels, eating it up because that part of me was unknowingly starving for years. And time and time and fucking time again the stories are more often than not tragic and emotionally devastating. Whether it's the coming out story in a small town where no one will understand me trope or the much loved I'm in the closet but in love with someone who ultimately leaves me because I just can't come out trope or any number of other stereotypical tragic versions of the queer experience, it all starts to run together in a muddy rainbow of sadness. And yes, I know the comedies are out there. Listen, I'm honestly eternally grateful for Bros, Fire Island, and Heartstopper. We need the lightness and hopefulness.
And I get why the leaning toward drama exists. We often create what we've experienced and the LGBTQ+ community is no stranger to heartbreak, tragedy, and loss. Our screens and pages are full of stories of hiding, rejection, violence, and stomach punches because that's what so many of us have lived through, and so many haven't survived. My own story is that of hugging the back of the closet for the majority of my life because I truly believed thanks to the religion I grew up in that I was a broken creature with no hope of peace until I was healed through a vague prescription of praying and reading the bible for a hopeless indeterminable amount of time.
That is our history. That is our past. I guess I wonder, what's our future?
I appreciate authors like Robbie Couch, author of Blaine for the Win and The Sky Blues, whose YA books lean toward a smile-inducing gay rom-com. We need more of these. I want to feel hopeful, I want to smile and want to experience the lightness of our beautiful lives as much as I need to sit in the hard times, the messiness of life, and face complicated truths. I'm grateful for the people who have gone before, who have fought like hell. I get to sit in a movie theater and hold hands with my boyfriend while the uber-romantic film, Oppenheimer, plays out before our eyes. I get to sit at brunch with the gays and laugh while one of them regales us with the tale of getting intimately lasered. I get to watch as my queer students walk our halls, openly themselves, paving the way and doing the work for an even deeper level of authenticity and acceptance.
So for my part, that's what I'm shooting for. My next book, Aaron Gloria Delfus is Officially Over Pig Warriors and the Color Purple, is a smile book, a roll your eyes and grin book, a shake your head because you know that guy book. It's a first love book, a nostalgia for the 90s book, a what the hell is happening here book. It's a weird critters, lights in the woods, and powers urban fantasy book. Oh, and it's a queer book.
I have another book brewing in the back of my head, one I'm giving side glances at and trying to decide whether I want to acknowledge him or not, one for the adults in the room. A gay romantic comedy. But it'll need to get in line. Next up is The Five and then Aaron Gloria Delfus's follow-up. But they're all rooted in two things important to me as a storyteller: hope and lightness.
What are your favorite queer stories of hope and lightness in the pages or on the screen?