All tagged BRIDGEFORTH

THE PRIVATE ACHE

What I’ve come to know is that everybody is carrying something. Some of it is personal. Some of it is political. Some of it is economic. Some of it is racial. Some of it is sexual. Some of it is inherited. Some of it is happening in the body itself. We are trying to survive a culture that exhausts us, a public life that keeps people on edge, an economy that keeps ordinary living under pressure, and systems that make wellness feel like a luxury instead of a basic human right. Even food has become part of the ache. Too many people are trying to nourish themselves in a system that offers cheap convenience, poor quality, chemical burden, and very little real care. People are tired, inflamed, under-rested, overworked, and calling it normal because normal has been distorted.

CHANGE YOUR LIFE

​​I took the year 2021 off. I did not write one thing, give a speech, model in a photoshoot, I barely posted on social media, and I did not release a single issue of this magazine after a decade of faithfully communicating from this medium every season. I needed time to reset my palate, to affirm that my voice was still needed here and that my contribution in this form remains meaningful. I took a break because those who do not become stale, dulled, and burnt out -- losing their command of God within them.

BE LOUD AS FUCK

It isn't enough for us to be proud of who we are and from where we've come. At this point, it is expected of us considering how hard our ancestors fought for us to be able to live in acceptance of ourselves in all the glorious queerness we can muster.

I often think of James Baldwin and who he chose to be in the world of straight privileged folks —as a black gay man who had minimal advantage in some beliefs. If you asked James, he would say he hit the lottery. He walked with an air of importance. His opinion of himself as a queer person was louder than the spoken narrative of those like him. He embodied an audacity—a ballsy willingness to be all that his soul said he was despite any worldly evidence. One could argue, Baldwin thought he was better than his white heterosexual counterpart. In many ways, being gay was the fairy dust that made him remarkable, it was what qualified him as magical.

ORGASM - A MANIFESTO FOR GROWN GAY MEN OF COLOR

Something within me was mesmerized by something within him, and despite all my caution I understood him immensely. Whatever I found in him was special to me, Nirvana at best, and at best was often enough for nothing else to matter after him. We were on the run together on an adventure, and as long as we had each other there existed a fire, a love that would make us invincible against the world. For boys like us, there is not much we long for more than love and acceptance.