the queer cosmos

“Be yourself and know that that's good enough

Don't try to be someone else

Don't try to be like someone else

Don't try to act like someone else, be yourself

Be secure with yourself"

Thank you Frank, your music and lyrics saved my life many times. Although your lyrics may not have always meant to you what they meant for me, your music helped me relate to something or someone in a dark time when I had nothing else to relate to. If you see this, know you helped me grow in ways I never could have on my own. I want to speak on behalf of everyone else who thinks the same and say once again, thank you.

Thank you Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez for traveling with me two hours back to my hometown only 48 hours after we met to take these amazing photos.

Thank you Caroline Ferguson and Conner Downing for portraying my thoughts through creative writing better than I ever could have myself.

Thank you Lauren Fichten for listening to my story and taking the time to interview people who helped me get to where I am now.

Thank you Manu Koya and Lily Brewton for recording audio to describe the depth and symbolism that went into this photography.

By Lauren Fichten

Gatlinburg, a small conservative town tucked away in the Smoky Mountains of Tennessee, promises visitors “warm Appalachian hospitality.”

Josh Gragg arrived as one out of hundreds of worshippers to partake in Shabbach— a three-day Christian youth conference. Though he had never seen so many churches within such close proximity, Gatlinburg was not totally dissimilar from his hometown of Hickory, North Carolina.

It was his third year attending the conference, but this time would be different.

Toward the end of the service, he was summoned by his youth pastor during an alter call— a practice in some Christian worship services where those who “need” prayer engage in a display of commitment to Christ. He suspected that he had been brought forth due to speculations about his sexuality.

As live music cascaded through speakers and concert-like lights bathed attendees in color, the youth pastor drifted to Gragg, and began to baptize him in prayer. She started speaking in tongues and Gragg, in a sea of youth undergoing the same experience, joined in the chorus of cries that filled the auditorium.

Tears flowed and his legs went numb as an overwhelming sensation took hold. His knees buckled and he collapsed to the ground, where he would exist for the remainder of the service.

Trapped beneath the current of prayer, he awaited the wave of relief promised by his youth pastor— but it never arrived.

“An Interesting Time Period”

Gragg, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill majoring in computer science, realized he was queer around sixth grade. He thinks this could be due, in part, to his fleeting participation in the girlfriend-boyfriend arrangement common among elementary school children.

“I always remember wanting to have a girlfriend and stuff, but then feeling like it didn’t really work for some reason,” he said.

In a school where gay jokes triumph and conservativism is the default, Gragg was beginning to come to terms with his identity. He was also a member of local non-denominational church, “One80” (formerly called “The Favor Center”), which he now describes “manipulative” and “culty.”

He said that while he was a member, he had yet to be exposed to anything else and believed his church’s practices to be the norm.

“I had my youth pastor trying to curse demons out of me for being gay,” he reflected. “It was an interesting time period and I very much believed all of it.”

In middle school, Gragg joined the football team despite having no interest in the sport— a move that he would later identify as an attempt to fit in with his male classmates. It was during that time he was exposed to the toxic masculinity hotbed that is the boy’s locker room.

As the pressure to maintain a façade of masculinity mounted, he continued playing football through freshman year of high school.

“It was a very unfitting environment for my true personality,” he said recalling that he was constantly questioning how much of himself he should show.

This went on for a short while but a few years later Gragg would find himself with no option to conceal his identity.

He was outed his senior year of high school after a private lunchroom conversation made its way beyond cafeteria doors.

Carter Greene grew up in Hickory and is a rising junior at North Carolina State University. He has known Gragg since middle school but became friends with him around the middle of high school.

He enjoyed growing up in Hickory but said that the majority of people oppose homosexuality. Greene said that he knew life in Hickory was tough for Gragg because most people they were friends with during high school failed to accept his identity.

According to Greene, coming out in Hickory is a “huge story” that everyone is invested in.

“There are three or four guys in our friend group that really stuck with him and accepted him for it,” Greene shared.

One80 Impact

Gragg referred to his years in the church as one of the darkest times of his life, describing intense preaching methods and pointed criticism of other churches.

He explained that his church viewed sexuality as a choice— something that one can deviate from if they engage in prayer and other religious practices. Gragg said that there are people in his church who have admitted to feeling attracted to the same gender but claim to have gotten over it.

When Gragg was contemplating attending UNC, his youth pastor, who he described as a motherly figure to members of the youth group, suggested he attend Montreat College— a Christian university an hour from Hickory. Her effort struck him as controlling, but it wasn’t her first attempt to dictate his fate.

During his final Shabbach Conference, she assigned him to a hotel room with younger church members, which Gragg posits is because she believed he would make romantic advancements toward male members his age.

It was during this trip that he began to frequently question his religion. Additionally, Gragg had been told that prayer would transform him and was disappointed to discover that it all seemed to be in vain.

“Nothing was changing, and I was like ‘what the hell?’” Gragg recalled.

Though his relationship with faith was already strained, it intensified when he arrived at UNC.

Giving and Seeking Answers

During his second semester, Gragg enrolled in a class taught by Bart Ehrman, a renowned scholar who focuses on the New Testament and early Christianity. Although he refers to Ehrman as the best professor he has had, the class, which focuses on analyzing Christian texts, took a toll on his mental health.

He was not mentally prepared for some of the class content, which included discussions about historical contradictions within the Bible and was launched into a spiritual crisis.

“It was a really big battle and I’m still trying to figure it all out. I don’t exactly know what I believe in,” Gragg expressed.

Wrestling with the impact of this newfound knowledge on his lifelong belief system, he would call his mother during moments of distress. Despite his unwavering love for his parents, he found himself questioning why they raised him the way they did.

Gragg came out to his parents after his first Shabbach Youth Conference, where he experienced feelings of guilt and shame. He disclosed his sexuality with the hope that they would help “fix it.”

“Of course, I never got any answers on how to fix it because here I am,” he said with a laugh.

Coming out stories are typically associated with extreme responses: parents lamenting haplessly because their child is gay or conversely, embracing their child and showering them with endless affirmations.

This couldn’t have been further from reality for Gragg, who was simply told by his mother that he would get through it. He wasn’t chastised; he wasn’t championed.

He said that his parents did the best they could with what they knew and how they had been raised.

“No one can blame them for stuff that they didn’t understand completely,” Gragg explained.

New Testament

After being outed, Gragg felt isolated and struggled to find relationships in his hometown, where openly gay people were scarce. So, he decided to download Tinder.

He began talking to Marco Magaña, a resident of Charlotte who said he typically had better things to do than respond to messages on dating apps. But Gragg seemed different.

The pair grew close, texting every day and eventually meeting for their first date, which consisted of poetry in the park.

“He seemed like he had pretty much his whole plan for what he wanted to do,” Magaña said. “At least with school and what he was studying.”

Most messages Gragg had received preceding his interaction with Magaña were sexual in nature, but it wasn’t like that with Magaña.

“We hit it off on so many different levels. Through my relationship with him, I started to grow,” Gragg said.

The connection has helped Gragg accept his identity and prepared him as he transitioned from Hickory to Chapel Hill. When Magaña first met Gragg, he said he had just begun his transition into the person he is now.

“He talks about how he was really religious and more conservative mostly just by association because that’s what he grew up around, but when I met him, I didn’t really see that,” Magaña remembered. “I think he had just started opening up and seeing other points of view and other perspectives.”

At UNC, Gragg found himself surrounded by friends who fully embraced his identity and finally discovered the safe space that he’d never had.

Reflecting on his years in Hickory, Gragg rarely contemplates how the gay jokes might have affected him. He contextualizes his parents’ ideology in light of their religious beliefs, concluding that their difficulty in fully understanding his identity is not mutually exclusive with their love for him.

He has empathy for those who outed him, citing the difficulties of high school and emotional immaturity. And he hurts for those who continue to conceal and suppress their sexuality.

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

innocence is bliss so they say

i was able to walk the hallways aloof from the life i had ahead

words used against me bounced off my skin

those words had meaning i was seldom aware of back then

am i nothing more than a target for the world?

my innocence was defined by my personality

am i simply a label?

my youth ripped away from me

a society not built for me

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

i awoke in sweat-soaked sheets again

i had a nightmare i was falling

down, down into the abyss below

to cries of REPENT, REPENT

the last thing i remember

is the smell of burning flesh

and the sound of balance

being restored to the universe

as it rid itself of me

of us

Location: Josh's Childhood Bedroom

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

i don my stripes

to cover up my true identity.

why must i conform?

hiding myself only to suffocate under my own camouflage

to stop the mental torture

i give in

placing the lock upon my own identity

i fade

losing myself is the true pain

anything to put a pause on the cacophony of berating voices

"That's the way everyday goes Every time we've no control If the sky is pink and white If the ground is black and yellow It's the same way you showed me" - Frank Ocean🏈🌱

Location: Cairns, Australia

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

i often look up to the sky

and ponder if my deepest hopes are heard.

do my thoughts not matter?

kneeling before the pew

does anyone hear me at all?

are my prayers nothing more than a waste of words?

the desire to believe reigns true

yet I wonder why I must bid myself adieu.

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

your words fell like rain at first

gentle, quiet, disruptive to the tender

at times they hit a little harder

and i bowed by head to shield my eyes

but over time, your cruelty grew

to fill the vastness of your misunderstanding

and the rain turned hot like acid

divinely sent to burn away my being

as you unleashed your rage upon me

until the skin i wore had melted off

and i was too sensitive to bear your touch

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

🦆🦆🦆

Photo by Yaeelin Merino-Velasquez

hold me close, don't let go

maybe i'll stay a while

with you, everything feels sweeter

with you, everything is safe

together, we'll roll our pasts up tight

and watch the embers drift away on the warm breeze

because in this moment the edges of the earth

are your arms wrapped around me

as i decide to endure gloriously for these moments

as brilliantly as the sun dies for us tonight

Photo by Joshua Lynn Gragg

"I thought that I was dreaming when you said you loved me" - Frank Ocean

Photo by Joshua Lynn Gragg

today we are alive

we warm our hands over the amber glow beneath us

we are illuminated by its gentle radiance

and we bask in the light it casts upon us

today it warms me from within

and awakens my soul slowly, kindly

this is not the heat of hell

but of the center of the Earth

and She made us in Her image

honest and beautiful and free