Queer Embraces

Please signal boost or chip in a few dollars if you can! I really want to be able to graduate.

I launched a Patreon to pursue my creative writing pursuits and other creative projects. Please consider singing up for a monthly donation so I can advance my projects in 2018.

(via https://open.spotify.com/user/kbella89/playlist/7zDdUcHO93rTcgJ3oGWOye)

Gose beers are among my favorite styles: tart, salty, all kinds of beach-y vibes in can form. But this variety from Marz is one of the best expressions of the style: a little dank, with the complexity of the hibiscus and pepper of the coriander.

Music has been keeping me sane through all of this strife recently and I've been making weekly playlists on Spotify (just search for me by name and my page will pop up). This week there are some great tracks by Couros (ft Alyss), Oddisee (ft Toine), Kingdom (ft Syd) and Amindi K Frost (ft Tessellated and Valleyz). Get at it.

Back in December 2014 I launched Our Viral Lives as an online platform to engage younger LGTBQ people around the world about HIV/AIDS. Though I haven't gotten a chance to do a lot of the interviews, I've met people around the world and really come to some tremendous realizations, least of which is freeing myself from the fear of HIV. What has been unexpected is how an MA thesis has morphed into a full length book project: an opportunity to use the Internet to prove the emotional legacies of the HIV/AIDS crisis. I finished that final book proposal today and will have a full draft by June 2017.

I’ve been struggling a lot lately looking for work and freelance gig. I wouldn’t normally ask, but if you can chip in a few dollars for food or let me keep doing all of the HIV/AIDS activist work I want, that would be great. Feel free to share if you can’t. I definitely want to stay in NYC.

@gutoggau consitemtly makes some of the most exciting natural wines out of Austria and this not quite sparkling or Pet Net white has the structure, fruit and acid of a great Riesling. These wines aren't the easiest to find in NYC but they're so worth it.

I have no doubt James Baldwin is one of the most gifted American writers and sociopolitical thinkers ever to have lived. Next Saturday I'll be doing a four week course centered around his seminal text Notes Of A Native Son and its legacy in this new Trump era. It will be lead by Asma Abbas, a professor at Simon's Rock where I went for undergrad. I cannot wait to be talking about Baldwin's words in Harlem.

Important to remember.

This Pigalle FW17 collection from Paris Fashion Week is kind of everything.

"To accept one's past - one's history - is not the same thing as drowning it; it is learning how to use it. An invented past can never be used; it cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay in a season of drought." - James Baldwin, as I think today about the myth of the incoming administration's key declaration and the myth of American democracy we are living in precisely because so many white people refuse to accept how we made this country

Color stories: love the red coat from Valentino and the smart color blocking from the Versus Versace look.