I've lived in New York a lot longer than I ever planned to. Really... I never planned it. Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, this city was a fantasy.
Don't get me wrong -- I was addicted to New York. When I was 8, I obsessed over Ellis Island creating (and sleeping with) a Harry Houdini doll made of a recycled Coke bottle. My first password was "JonathanLarson!" I stole a Party Monster DVD from the library and fantasized about doing lines of cocaine as a pimpled troll (don't worry I'm clean). I've read four biographies of Frank Sinatra's Jersey youth and by my final years of high school, I was doodling like Keith Haring.
But, to me, New York was fiction.
As the story goes, now that I'm in New York, I have a found nostalgia for Midwest life. The long and short of it is: a queer kid needs New York. As religion needs its mecca, queer people need theirs. New York was mine, and even now I'm grateful for her.
Thankfully, I've grown up, found comfort in my skin, and have been given the gift to ask myself: What else are you? Once you've planted your flag, what's next?
This blog is my attempt to have my New York and my midwest too. I'm 30, you know? Let's get after it.