Hauntology - OutWrite Newsmagazine (Fall 2023)

Table of Contents Letter from the Editor All the Futures Behind Us

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A Queer’s Guide to Fears: Top 10 LGBTQ+ Horror to Watch During Spooky Season

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Baby Blue

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Contributors in alphabetical order

Editor in Chief: Rainer Lee

Managing Editor: Christine Kim Developmental Editors: Brenna Connell, Bellze T, Jericho Tran-Faypon

Graphics Head: Brenna Connell

Copy Chiefs: Emma Blakely, Bella Hou Layout Director: Giulianna Vicente Writers: Emerie Avila, Emma Blakely, Brenna Connell, Rainer Lee, Bellze T

Artists: Maya Balakrishnan, Marc Cabilangan,

Brenna Connell, Soren Kaur, Steph Liu, Len Park, Kaden, Catherine Zhang

Copy Editors: Zora Alexis, Emma Blakely, Gwendolyn Hill,

Bella Hou, Maya Parra, Ava Rosenberg, Michel W

Layout: Sarah Belew, Ellie Chun, Mia D, Christopher Ikonomou (guest), Ruth Torrence, Giulianna Vicente

Front Cover: Steph Liu

Back Cover: Marc Cabilangan Ghost Graphics: Marc Cabilangan

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, When I joined OutWrite last Fall, I was fresh out of my conservative Christian college. Transferring to UCLA so I could transition openly was not a foregone conclusion but a difficult choice at the time. I’m so glad that I transferred, but like many queer people, my life trajectory has been a branching one. On one hand was a life of suppression and conformity; on the other was an uncertain glimmer of hope which has thankfully blossomed into a life-saving queer community.

Because of society’s cisheteronormative expectations for us, many queer people carry the ghost of miserable conformity and the potential of queer futures. Many of us have been called less-than or monster for stepping off the beaten path towards happiness. Still, the trappings of cishet timelines or perceived monstrosity have never limited us.

Claiming queerness began as radical disidentification with what society calls normal. We’ve learned to inhabit the alternative, the scorned, and the frightful with pride and joy. We’ve seen the societal timelines expected of us and chosen different ways of wandering through life.

There’s love and power embedded in intentionally choosing to forge new trails or following the forgotten ones left by the queers who came before us.

We’ve chosen the theme “Hauntology” for this Fall print edition because of its investment in ghosts, hauntings, and the lingering of social and cultural pasts. You’ll find the ghosts of queer pasts and futures, the hauntings of queer monsters, and the queer joy we’ve found along the way in the following pages. I hope our words grant you the strength and hope to follow a freer path.

With love,

Rainer Lee (he/him) Editor-in-Chief

All the Futures Behind Us

Written by Brenna Connell Illustrated by Maya Balakrishnan Layout by Giulianna Vicente

adolescences. There are many different theories of queer time and how to make sense of the fact that queer people live outside of a societal notion of time, within disruptions created by their own queerness.

Theorist Lee Edelman wrote a book called “No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive” that brings up the concept of the “Sacred Child.” This idea is taken from the work of another theorist, Lauren Berlant, in order to define the Child as an ideal of innocence that the U.S. is determined to protect at all costs.

Edelman posits that “[t]he queer is constructed as the end to order, the threat to the Sacred Child,”1 the opposite of innocence and futurity.

His take on the future is essentially that queers can’t have kids or participate in reproductive futurity; queers are symbolically the opposite of kids, so fuck reproductive futurity, anyway; there’s no hope or future, so just do whatever the hell you want and let the straight people carry on.

What Edelman seems not to realize or acknowledge in “No Future,” and what José Esteban Muñoz, as a queer Brown man, criticized, is the fact that “the Child” only really includes white cishet children. The United States as an institution has never focused on making the future a safer place for Black, Brown, AAPI (Asian American and Pacific Islander), or Indigenous children. The allegorical “Child” that this colonialist, cisheteropatriarchal society tries to protect has always

I want to read about queers who were vikings and witches and pirates. I want to read about queers across the world from before any colonialism tore apart their cultures.

I want to read about queers who travel at faster-than-light speeds in rickety spacecrafts and seduce every hot sapient alien they find. I want to read about queers who have crafted artificial intelligences and artificial bodies to survive in far-off futures.

Instead, I’m mostly stuck reading about queer people who are stuck within the same several-decade, Eurocentric spread of time, cut off from any pasts and refused any futures.

The other day I came across a post on social media of a Brown trans woman celebrating that she had made it to her thirty-fifth birthday. She said that most trans women of color don’t. So many of us aren’t allowed a future. On the other hand, cisheteronormative society acts like we just decided to make queerness up a few decades ago. So many of us have no past, either.

Consequently, queer people function by a different clock than cisgender and heterosexual individuals: no past, no future, just mixed up benchmarks and second 3

been some perfect and beautiful child that simply does not represent many children of the U.S. I think it’s foolish to embrace the idea of “no future.”

It’s a privileged “not my problem” take that refuses the reality of many non-white, disabled, poor, trans, and queer lives.

In my opinion — and I say this from the positionality of a white trans queer person — we need to have fewer white queers steering conversations on queerness, including temporality. There are many intricacies and potentials of understanding queer time that queer white folks miss because of a lack of awareness of the queer and beyondcisheterosexual depths existent in other cultures, many of which have existed since before “whiteness” was even invented as a social and political concept.

With that in mind, we’ll touch briefly on the writings of two queer theorists of color, José Esteban Muñoz and Kara Keeling. Between the work of Muñoz and Keeling, there is an overwhelming focus on futures of hope, liberation, creativity, and connection, rather than the cynical, fatalistic rejection of all

Muñoz says that queerness is coming, but never exactly here; it’s always ahead of us, something we’re striving towards. Muñoz does not seek to posit queerness as hopelessly unattainable, but instead instructs us to “feel it as the warm illumination of a horizon imbued with potentiality,” a “mode of desiring that allows us to see and feel beyond the quagmire of the present.”2 To be queer and live queerly is to engage in a politics of hope.

Kara Keeling’s book “Queer Times, Black Futures” incorporates Afrofuturism with queer theory to dream of futures that promise not only queer liberation but also Black liberation; a world that is anti-racist, anti-colonialist, and anti-heteropatriarchal. Keeling says that our bodies can be subjected to the powers of others, but also can be used to fundamentally alter systems of power: “They are how we

matter in this world—mechanisms from which futures are carved.”3 This insistence that we have the potential to physically mold the future acts as a firm counter to Edelman’s nihilistic concept of “no future.”

futures.

In his book “Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity,” 4

A past isn’t the only jumping off point from which to find a future, but it is difficult to move forward when you cannot acknowledge the ways you’ve already been wounded.

So we as queer people are haunted by the lack of a past.

Young queer people in particular are

I understand it’s foolish to project queerness back thousands of years, particularly when it comes to Indigenous communities, where “queer” remains a colonialist term that does not wholly represent the ways of life of many people who identify as Indigenous and queer.

But, whatever the language, there have been people like us. There have been people who challenged binary views of gender, sex, and sexuality. And we are separated from them, historically, temporally, and linguistically; there’s

haunted by a past that just barely missed nipping at our heels — a living past embodied by older generations of queer people who went through the horrors of the AIDS epidemic that we cannot even imagine. I use haunting here not to make older queer people into monsters under the bed, but to describe the detachment that exists between generations. It requires the negative input of both sides of the gap to give haunting a negative connotation, with younger queers seeing the older as outdated, campy, horror-movie creatures, and older queers seeing the younger as stupid kids in a haunted house disrespecting forces they simply don’t understand. Older generations of queer people exist, but many times

an inability to reclaim any past we might have.

Queer people aren’t alone in this either; Indigenous people, Black, Brown and AAPI people, poor people, disabled people — are all denied access to, and acknowledgement of, a past deemed legitimate or “historically accurate.”

If there’s one thing that the so-called ideal of America is good at, it’s weaponizing a colonialist, ableist, cisheteropatriarchal understanding of “history” as a disabling force to stymie the efforts of marginalized peoples fighting for something better.

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younger queer people are accused of having “suddenly made all this shit up.” That kind of rhetoric further stretches the gap once we start to believe it.

At the same time, regardless of whether the past is left hidden or known, we are haunted by the potentials imagined across past movements. That is, the queer community is haunted by unrealized futures that we could have experienced if things had gone slightly differently. Once again, the particulars of the haunting are shaped by generational status.

Queer people who lived through the latter half of the twentieth century witnessed not only the tragedy of the AIDS epidemic; they also witnessed moments of revolution and work towards radical change (think the Civil Rights Movement, Stonewall, etc.). For older queers, haunted futures are the ones they almost had their hands on, time after time. But for younger queers, we’re haunted by futures attached to a past we never knew. A lot of us were just barely teens when gay marriage was legalized on a federal level. The sort of queer politics we were first introduced to were tinged by assimilation, a far cry from the unapologetic radicalism of earlier decades.

Of course, now that we are in the absolute temporal hellmouth that is the 2020s, even a future of passive assimilation is drifting out of reach (for cis gay people, at

least; assimilation has never really been an option for trans people). To me, that’s just further proof that we need to take radical stances of queer liberation that incorporate every other possible form of social justice — assimilation has never been truly safe, and it will never truly be enough. It’s not worth settling for what you can get if it is at the expense of other queers’ suffering.

I want to believe in a queer time that connects people across oceans, across lifetimes, across universes.

I want to believe in a queer time informed by Indigenous theories of relationality and decolonial love. I want to believe in a queer time that allows us to rework and reclaim histories of queerness to live within and alongside us in the present, and in the future.

Why should we have to settle?

1 Goltz, Dustin. “Queer Temporalities.”

Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, by Dustin Goltz, Oxford University Press, 2022, 4.

2 Muñoz, José Esteban. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity. 10th Anniversary Edition, New York University Press, 2019, 1.

3 Keeling, Kara. Queer Times, Black Futures.

New York University Press, 2019, xii.

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Written by Bellze T | Illustrated by Len Park | Layout by Ellie Chun Content Warning: self harm, references to suicide and murder, trauma with compulsory heterosexuality

My life could have been so different.

My house is large, thanks to the expansions in Victorville inviting the foolish into desert suburbs. I lay in bed, alone.

His parents convinced me to become a kindergarten teacher — sure, I got my education at a better college, with a PhD and everything, but it wasn’t my place to work hard. He was an engineer, after all. He promised to take care of our family before we even had one. I couldn’t say no. So I stayed.

My two kids stare at me, like they know they are out of place somehow. Like they are just as surprised as I was that my body was willing to give itself to them. I fear their contempt. I fear that I have given them the parts I have locked away from myself, from the world. I love them the best I can but they ask me: how do I know love?

The truth is: I don’t. I can’t tell them that.

Instead, I tell them love is obligation.

My parents were so happy I married a man. They were so worried about what they could see me becoming, about how long I would stare at women. How I smiled too hard when I texted her.

I got married in winter.

I started sleeping with other men a season after.

I thought that maybe — maybe — if I just felt like I was desired by others, and I

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desired them in turn, it would mean I could still work. That I could still make choices that belonged to me, just me; possibility was still something I could possess.

Instead, when I came home smelling like men, I perfected the art of skinning myself. I would tear at my skin, and when he would ask about it, I would call it eczema.

I imagine women between my teeth every time he fucks me from behind. I imagine a softness wrought from a lifetime of imagining pillowy thighs and chests, and how maybe I would have been better if I had placed my filthy, unworthy hands on another woman — just once, just once.

I hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate you i hate what you’ve DONE to me what i’ve done to myself why did i think this would work every time he touches me the nausea roars, laughing in my throat i’ll kill him i’ll kill myself my children this is WRONG I am at the dinner table, in our house bare of pictures or vases or postcards or snowglobes; no indication that any of us have lived at all.

I cannot resent my children for the closets in me that I’ve filled with resentment for him, for myself. All I can do is hope to teach them a better way of love. In spite of it all, I still believe they can make it out of this.

They are all I have left. It’s not fair to pin my hopes to them, but I’m doing it anyway.

Get out of this house, my children.

Escape the ghosts of my longing for another life that haunt each corner.

(oftentimes) I think about how much better she is. She read my poems — even the corny ones from high school when I I have changed so much.

In this apartment, a tiny place in Pomona, full of memories from the past eight years of living, I think of her often.

She was with me at our first Pride Parade. She was the only one between us who could drive and had a car, but with her, she promised to take me everywhere. I was so, so scared because it would be loud and crowded and I had never been out like that before. She held my hand, told me she would be there. I breathed. I said yes, so we went.

I was so excited to introduce her to the queer friends I made at college. She had long complained about the lack of queer people where we lived, the goddamn suburbs. We were both going to colleges far from what we thought of as our homely prison. We visit each other every week now.

She, my friends, and I often watch ridiculous movies, laughing so hard the neighbors file noise complaints. I watch her talk to my friends, and it feels like taking apart my clothes and restitching them to make something so warm that I forget that winter even exists.

When spring came and two years of us had passed, I thought about what it would mean to lose her. Sometimes

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thought her my distant Aphrodite — and insisted I write more, to even try the creative workshop classes at my college. I’ve read her novels, the way she has painted our story into prose and poem and thinks of every possibility as eventuality in other lives, in this one.

Her optimism is something I want to pull into myself. She is someone I want to pull into myself, to hold so gently, forever, in every life. If I could carry her, how branches carry fruit and bees and stray leaves from the wind, I could be an immortal artifact of love.

The first time we kissed, I cried and laughed so hard, I thought the soil beneath us could have split. She laughed too.

I thought too much about hurting her, how easy it would be. She is the most resilient woman I know, yet I thought of her as so fragile, so easy to break. That’s what did us in, I think; not me hurting her, but my persistent fear of doing so.

I think of her often. You never forget your first love, as they say. I have no regrets of us.

She was my gateway into a love I never thought existed. I will always be grateful for it. I still carry her with me, with everyone I love.

I feel like, in my cramped apartment, I could make a map solely out of where she has breathed, where she has touched me, and where she has given me her kindness. Her haunt knows no bounds. I would not exorcise her from this place, anyway.

A Queer’s Guide to Fears: Top 10 LGBTQ+ Horror to Watch During Spooky Season

Written by Emerie Avila Illustrated by Catherine Zhang Layout by Sarah Belew

Spoiler Warning!

Horror and LGBTQ+ genres in media haven’t historically crossed paths often, with these scarce overlaps demeaning queer people as the “monsters” or using the “threat” of homophobia as the “true horror” in queer films. But sometimes queer people want to watch silly, scary movies too.

Here’s a list of what I think are must-watches for your fall frights, ranked from seriously-go-watch-this-right-now to yeah-it’s-pretty-good. based off of a book by the same name. Although the premises between the two works are a bit different, both are hauntingly brilliant all the same.

I) “The Haunting of Hill House” “The Haunting of Hill House” is one of those shows that’s worth selling your soul to the devil in order to watch for the first time again. The show follows the past and present of the Crain family, who arrived at Hill House in hopes of fixing it up and selling it for millions.

Unfortunately for them, the house had other plans.

One of its lead characters, Theodora Crain (Kate Siegel), is a lesbian with supernatural empathic abilities who gives Angelina Jolie vibes. The show’s frightening enough to leave you awake at night, yet enticing enough to make you come back for more. If you finish the show and still want more from the story, it is loosely

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II) “Jennifer’s Body”

watch overall. And if you love invincible lesbians who somehow survive stabbings and ghost possessions, you will adore this trilogy.

If you love the late 2000s, horror-comedies, and Megan Fox, this is an obvious choice.

When Jennifer (Fox) follows the wrong band and goes from a simple groupie to a literal human sacrifice, she becomes a host to a demonic possession and is fueled by a new demonic hunger for flesh. Needy (Amanda Seyfried), her best friend (*wink*), must now find a way to end Jennifer’s rampage on the male population of the school. It’s entertaining to say the least, with bits of nostalgia.

Plus, the Halloween costume potential is to die for.

IV) Anne Rice’s “Interview with the Vampire” (2022) The fanon ship between vampires Louis and Lestat is fan-made no more. An adaptation of the 1994 film and the 1976 novel of the same name, “Interview with the Vampire” further explores the intricate nature of Louis de Pointe du Lac (Jacob Anderson) and Lestat de Lioncourt’s (Sam Reid) relationship.

The show ventures from Louis’ perspective during the blossoming of this tumultuous relationship to an interview taking place in the present day.

With stunning performances from both Anderson and Reid, this remake might be one of the few that are better than the original. Its characters and plights are incredibly nuanced, bringing life into this tale of the undead.

III) The “Fear Street” Trilogy Two sapphics. Three movies.

Countless slaughters. From period pieces to killer soundtracks and witchy curses to endless gore, these movies have every lovable trope in the horror buff book. It follows Deena (Kiana Madeira) and her friends as they try to survive and end a series of murders that has afflicted their town for the past three centuries.

Although some moments might have you putting the jump in jumpscare, it’s an enjoyable

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V) “The Haunting of Bly Manor”

Unbeknownst to them, a series of frights and not-so-innocent delights await the chaste pair.

The self-proclaimed “Sweet Transvestite from Transsexual, Transylvania,” Dr. Frank-NFurter experiments with both the newcomers — or rather, the newcomers experiment with him (*wink wink*). He also dabbles in the reanimation of a himbo named Rocky (Peter Hinwood). The iconic musical film is an entertaining watch for those who prefer having restful nights.

Although it may not directly connect to “The Haunting of Hill House,” it includes much of the same cast, as well as the same magic. It begins when the Wingrave children welcome their newest caretaker, the quirky American Dani (Victoria Pedretti), after the tragic loss of their parents and their recently late nanny. But as the children state throughout the show, “dead doesn’t mean gone.” While “The Haunting of Hill House” features a WLW relationship, the sapphic relationship in “The Haunting of Bly Manor” stands closer to the center of the show. This limited series had me covering my eyes and peeking through my fingers during its most suspenseful moments. I suggest watching it in broad daylight.

VII) “Los Espookys”

VI) “The Rocky Horror Picture Show”

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Frankenstein + musical + = “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” When a mundane, (somewhat) straight couple’s car breaks down, they take refuge in a castle owned by the one and only Dr. Frank-N-Furter (Tim Curry).

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An ideal mix of “The Addams Family” and your typical telenovela, “Los Espookys” has ridiculous shenanigans and dark humor galore. Spoken in Spanish with optional subtitles, this show revolves around an unconventional bunch who decide to make use of their peculiarities and start their own horror business. Two of the show’s creators and half of the main leads identify as queer or questioning. With a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, this series has been praised for its exceptional Latinx and LGBTQ+ representation along with its absurd humor. It’s a perfectly spooky 30-minute break from your horror binge.

VIII) “What We Do in the Shadows” With the essence of “The Office,” this mockumentary follows a group of ancient vampires and their timid lackey as they encounter everyday obstacles for the average bloodsucker. Similar to “Los Espookys,” this series is known for its witty humor, gothic aura, and queer acceptance.

With coming-out hijinks and centuries worth of crazy hook-up stories, paired with a hilarious cast and a unique premise, this five-season series is most definitely worth binging throughout October.

IX) “Hellbent” Often thought of as the beginning of gay slasher films, “Hellbent” follows police technician Eddie (Dylan Fergus) and his friends as they evade a mysterious (and shirtless) killer hidden behind

a devil’s mask. The lovechild of “Scream” and “Fire Island,” this movie is a hidden gem for queer slasher fans. Filled with interesting characters, a romcom worthy romance, and an abundance of gore, the film is a must for your horror watchlist.

X) “Bodies Bodies Bodies” Yes, the one with Pete Davidson. Sophie (Amandla Stenberg) and her girlfriend, Bee (Maria Bakalova), decide to attend a “hurricane party” at a friend’s mansion. Provoked by boredom and restlessness, the group decides to play a murderin-the-dark game called Bodies Bodies Bodies. But when murder mystery becomes their reality, their game goes from shits and giggles to shits and slaughters. Striking a perfect balance between dark humor and suspenseful scares, this horror-comedy is one to remember.

Honorable Mentions: 1. “The Last of Us” - Zombies. Lesbians. Pedro Pascal.

2. “They/Them” - Kevin Bacon runs around and tries (and fails) to murder gays.

3. “First Kill” - A lesbian vampire and a lesbian vampire hunter. What could go wrong?

4. “Thelma” - Another superpowered sapphic.

5. “Psycho” - Queer-coded Norman Bates? That’s for you to decide.

Baby Blue Written by Emma Blakely

Illustrated by Soren Kaur and Kaden Layout by Ruth Torrence Content Warning: mention of character death, homophobia

Five years ago, four of the six queer kids at Westfield High solemnly swore to each other that they would not be attending parties thrown by their classmates. As the self-acclaimed last frontier against heteronormativity and patriarchal roles, they needed to stand up to the consensus gentium that being shoved around by sloppy drunks and watching straight people grind on each other was in any way a fun thing to do. And yet, inexplicably, three of those four kids now stood in the house of Caleb Turner, jock supreme and possibly the straightest man any of them had ever met.

Nico was sulking, but he found that warranted given the circumstances.

“Come on, Nico,” Prisha whined, offering him an orange cup with Sharpie bats drawn in Nia’s hand. It was full of bright green, radioactivelooking liquid that Caleb or one of his idiot friends had definitely stirred with an unwashed hand. He drank it anyway, because how could

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this night get any worse?

Prisha pouted when he didn’t respond. “Are you seriously still mad at me for changing the costume? Because you know—” “You’re bisexual and genderfluid, how could anyone expect you to be consistent?” Nico and Nia echoed in a flat monotone, although Nia ruined the illusion a little bit by giggling and saying, “Jinx!”

“You know why I’m mad,” he finished, taking another sip. “This isn’t our scene, and you know it.”

Prisha’s lips turned down in a frown. “Well, that’s not fair, is it?

We’ve never tried before.”

“Well, we’re trying now,” Nico said, spreading his hands in front of him in a wide gesture around them.

“I’m just saying that Theo would have hated this, too.”

The other two cringed, glancing at each other with a look Nico knew all too well. He studied a crack in the caulk just above the drink table across the room and wondered if

it was sprinkling drywall into the punch. He felt a little bad about bringing up Theo tonight but couldn’t regret it, not when he knew he was right. Theo would have hated this.

Before he could work himself up into a fine enough lather to bail altogether, Nico saw a ghost across the room, and all the emotion froze solid in his body. A flash of azure, so brief that he spilled his drink while trying to follow it with his eyes. He started to push through the crowd, ignoring Prisha’s questioning hand on his sleeve and not even noticing how the crush of bodies made him feel unclean just by proximity.

Nico only walked ten feet before he stopped dead in his tracks in the middle of the dance floor. Rather than complementing a familiar sarcastic smile, this baby blue came in the form of wrinkled tulle and polyester silk on the body of Isaac Nichols, one of Caleb’s basketball buddies. Just as quickly as the anguish had replaced hope, anger swept in on wings of fire, burning Nico’s fingertips. Isaac was doing that stupid fucking thing that straight guys do where they dress up as a girl because, somehow, reversing gender roles is comedy in itself. It was always a cheap, demeaning version of femininity; Theo had always liked to say that they were just trying to live up to his standard, but it still never failed to leave a bad taste in Nico’s mouth.

Isaac fell far from Theo’s mark, the

lipstick a dollar-store imitation of Theo’s mahogany and eyeliner a crooked wing that couldn’t hold a candle to his knife-sharp lines.

It was that damn color — almost an exact replica of Theo’s favorite shirt — that made Nico’s feet move, the bright lights flashing off his hands as they pushed people aside without caring for the drinks he spilled or “Watch where you’re going!” thrown at his back.

Isaac turned at Nico’s tap on his shoulder with a grin that quickly faded when he saw the expression on his face.

“Your costume sucks,” he started, taking a nasty pleasure in how his expression fell. “I get you were trying to be funny or whatever, but it’s insensitive and not even clever.

It’s been done a million times before and every time some basic fucking straight guy like you decides it’s going to be the funniest thing in existence to wear a dress and some lipstick for Halloween, I swear to God a puppy dies. And—” A voice sounded from beside him, and Nico’s mouth snapped shut.

“Dude,

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it’s literally just a dress,” Caleb said, eyes shifting around the room and landing clumsily on Nico. Isaac, on Caleb’s right, didn’t meet Nico’s eyes. Instead, his gaze lingered on his hands, crumpling and smoothing out that baby blue tulle in anxious regularity. Good, Nico thought mercilessly. Let him be embarrassed.

“No, it’s not, you fuckwad,” he said to Caleb, whose tentative expression darkened at the insult.

Nico felt like he was digging a hole but kept talking. “It’s sexist and tells everyone who sees it that you think femininity is a joke.”

“Look, you fucking weirdo,” Caleb said, stepping forward, malice working its way onto his face like an infection. “Just because your dead friend looked gay all the time doesn’t mean the rest of us have to.”

Nico didn’t know exactly when or how it had happened, but his drink was all over Caleb’s shirt. It stained the basic white in antifreeze green, and Prisha was pulling on his arms and saying something incoherent through the buzzing in his ears.

She must have rushed across the room when she saw him start a confrontation he was bound to lose, and now he could hear her saying, “Leave it. Let’s just go.”

Isaac had punch on his dress now, and he still had that quiet, somber expression on his face as he looked down at the unseemly splatter. Nico allowed himself to be pulled away before he could wonder why, but

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only because he wanted to avoid a black eye.

“Dude, what the hell was that?”

Prisha yelled in his ear over the music.

“Are you okay? You’re not hurt, right?” Nia added on.

Before Prisha’s firm hand could get him safely out the door, a hard weight hit his shoulder, and he turned to see blue tulle flying up the stairs. Something about the bowed posture made Nico follow, promising, “I’ll be back in a second.”

He didn’t know what pulled him up the stairs like a ghost in Isaac’s footsteps; it could have been curiosity, residual indignation, or a mix of both.

Through a door at the top of the stairs, Nico spotted Isaac standing motionless in the middle of the

room, staring at something on the opposite wall. Nico couldn’t see his face, just his back, ramrod straight, and his hands, the only things moving. In restless motion, they ran down the front of the green-stained dress and the neckline that dipped low enough to show the tops of his shoulder blades.

Nico shifted silently to get a better look, bewildered at what could possibly cause such quiet attentiveness in an athlete he usually found to be all brute force.

A full-length mirror hung on the wall, and Isaac stared at his reflection with something like reverence, the hard lines of his jaw softened with thoughtfulness and the shadow of his brow tempered under the lamplight.

Nico remembered his words

from earlier, and a pit opened up in his stomach. With remorse like blood in his mouth, he pushed his way into the room. Isaac flinched harshly at the creak of the door, whipping around with his arms around his ribcage as if flailing would protect him. His brow furrowed when he saw Nico, and he opened his mouth.

“Blue makes your eyes pop, you know,” he blurted before Isaac could say anything. And then, quieter, “Sorry.”

Isaac immediately turned a shade of red that was unbecoming of someone of his stature.

“Whatever,” he dismissively snorted. But Nico caught the way his arms trailed down his stomach and attempted to smooth out the wrinkles in the baby blue fabric.

“Sure. Enjoy the rest of the party,” Nico responded, turning around before he could embarrass himself further. It was still gross downstairs, but Prisha clapped him on the shoulder and suggested in very strong wording that they leave. Nia cocked her head curiously at him but didn’t say anything.

Upstairs, Isaac looked back through the doorway to catch his reflection in the mirror. He smiled, and someone new smiled back.

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Written by Rainer Lee Illustrated by Brenna Connell Layout by Mia D

Content Warning: homophobia, mentions of suicide and murder

W

atching the first episode of AMC’s “Interview with the Vampire” altered my brain chemistry. Never before had I seen such raw queer agony answered with unabashed love. Set primarily in early 20th century New Orleans, the show follows Louis de Pointe du Lac ( Jacob Anderson), as he falls under the thrall of the vampire Lestat (Sam Reid), becomes a vampire himself, and eventually breaks free from their toxic romance. Despite their relationship’s abusive endpoint, like Louis, I was enraptured by Lestat’s initial offer of love and recognition.

Louis begins the series riddled with queer shame. He buries his attraction for men under visits to a female sex worker, and his only gay experiences are “guilt, shame, floating-on-a-sea-of-vodka type encounters.”1 Louis’ shame around being gay is deeply rooted in Catholic disavowals of queerness as a sin. His brother, Paul (Steven G. Norfleet), consistently weaponizes religion to condemn Louis’ queerness. Referring to Louis’ relationship with Lestat, Paul says, “Mortal sins must be confessed,” and he calls Lestat, the object of Louis’ queer attraction, “the Devil.”

Paul haunts him as a physical manifestation of his religious guilt.

Louis loves Paul just as he loves the rest of his family and community, but Louis’ loved ones’ conceptualizations of queerness as a sin

prevent them from embracing him fully. From everyone but Lestat, the resounding message Louis receives is that being a gay Black man is sinful, less-than, and monstrous.

Monstrosity is an age-old theme echoing through Western society’s history. From Grendel in “Beowulf” to real life marginalized groups, there have always been outcasts — those deemed monstrous by society. The psychological result of being othered by your community is often othering yourself. You internalize your identity as the monster that society and your loved ones claim you are.

At first, Louis, like Paul and his community, believes Lestat is the Devil. He dissociates himself from Lestat’s shameless queerness and decries it. For Louis, Lestat destroys the boundary between sequestered gay fantasy and active participation in queer desire and relationships.

He renders homoeroticism synonymous to vampiric monstrosity.

We learn that Lestat is a vampire when he drains a lamplighter dry. The scene preys on the audience’s preconceptions of vampires as heartless killers through its alarming framing. The cheery, whistling lamplighter grows anxious as something continually relights the lamps he puts out. Out of nowhere, an indistinct figure tackles him to the cobblestones, and he tumbles out of the frame. Amid his dying screams and his blood spurting across the frame, we see Lestat’s 21

body cloaking the other man’s prone, convulsing form. The rhythmic motion, the men’s positions, the sucking — it’s nearly erotic.

As Lestat drinks the man’s blood, societal fears about queerness as destructive and devilish manifest in the queer vampire.

Yet, in stark contrast to the vampire he is when prowling the dark street, Lestat is tender with Louis. He sees Louis — queer monstrous potential and all — and desires him for it.

Louis cannot resist this method of seduction. All his mortification around being gay, his defenses against social stigma, and his repression of unholy wants dissolve under Lestat’s open interest. Nearly the first thing Lestat says to him is: “I know who you are.” Louis desperately wants to be known and then still wanted, so it’s no surprise that he falls hard and fast for Lestat.

The queer monster is often a solitary figure; Louis is no exception. He avoids intimacy in order to remain closeted. But Lestat’s affection and interest lead him to “for the very first time… confid[e] [his] struggles to another man.”

Queerness and monstrosity intertwine even further the first time Louis and Lestat

have sex. As their bodies meet, Lestat bites Louis, an experience Louis describes as surpassing the best drug-induced high manyfold. The conflicting pleasure and taboo of a vampire bite underscores the conflicting pleasure and taboo of queer sex. In addition, vampiric feeding and queer sex become not only a pleasurable physical experience but a deeply intimate encounter. This intimacy rooted in a transgressive situation terrifies Louis, so he runs from Lestat until he can’t.

Soon afterwards, Paul dies by suicide. Tormented by his guilt over Paul’s death and his longing for Lestat, Louis goes to confession.

The visceral agony Louis expresses is impossible to turn away from as he cries to the priest, “I laid down with a man. I laid down with the Devil.” But Louis finds no absolution in confession.

Before Louis can finish his confession, Lestat storms the church and murders the clergy. Soaked in the blood of holy men, he turns to a shaking, fallen Louis and declares, “I’m not the Devil.”

He cups Louis’ face in his hands and whispers irre-

sistible promises: “I love you, Louis.

You are loved… Be all the beautiful things you are, and be them without apology. For all eternity.”

Lestat sees everything society has condemned Louis for and claims to love him for it. It’s a queer fantasy fulfilled — queer love heals us and washes away our every past hurt.

Louis’ narration summarizes it best, “For the first time in my life, I was seen.”

Paul’s death becomes the catalyst for Louis allowing Lestat to turn him into a vampire. Only after the voices of his religious guilt, like Paul and the priests, are silenced can Louis enter into a queer vampiric partnership with Lestat.

Queer companionship answers and soothes every rejection, every label of monster, Louis has ever received.

Together, they reject society and form their own queer life, rooted in dark pleasures, centered around only each other. For a time, it’s healing, and it’s enough.

Unfortunately, as appealing as the fantasy of ‘us against the world’ is, Lestat ends up becoming another abuser in Louis’ life. More unfortunately, Louis’ experience is reflective of many queer people’s.

In oppressive environments, queer people often seek solace in one another, yet factors, like unhealthy coping mechanisms and a lack of queer community, can turn these relationships into breeding grounds for abuse and codependency.

These harmful relationships can

be especially difficult when one or both people have been formative to the other’s queer journey. The show illustrates how we can hold these two things in tension. We shouldn’t underestimate the life-changing power of being seen and offered love amid overwhelming messages of queerness as monstrous, but the relationships which result are not always long-lasting or healthy.

Instead of wrapping ourselves up in a single person, finding a broader queer community is both healthier and safer.

Still, I’m thrilled queer media has reached a point where queer characters can be both nuanced and evil. Queer media genuinely being queer still feels like a fragile, wondrous thing. Growing up in the golden age of queerbaiting ensured that authentic queer media felt like a faraway fantasy. Nowadays, that’s thankfully shifted. I don’t have to worry about whether the gay vampires will kiss; I just have to worry about whether or not they’re going to commit gay wrongs against one another.

So while it can be useful to critique queer villainy in the media, it’s also fun to let the drama unfold onscreen. And the recent influx of well-written queer media means we can do both.

1 All quotes are pulled from the series’ first episode: Jones, R. (Writer), & Taylor, A. (Director). (2022, October 22). In Throes of Increasing Wonder... (Season 1, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In M. Johnson, A. Rice, C. Rice, & A. Taylor, Interview with the Vampire. AMC.

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