I’ve been a night owl most of my life. It’s a trait I developed from my grandmother, a wonderful woman who died when I was just 11 years old.
This December will mark three decades without her, a dizzying fact since she’s still one of the most influential people I’ve ever known. She taught me so much about life, well before I really started living.
She also helped me become the writer I am today. As a kid I would spend the night with my grandmother as often as I could and we’d stay up for hours crafting stories together, verbal narratives that would continue well into the night as we created characters and cultivated over-the-top plot points.
I can’t recall much about the stories we shared, but the world-building we did meant the world to me. My grandmother didn’t just feed my imagination, she shaped it, and I’ll always be grateful for our short time together.
I’ll also always think of her when I stay up too late, which is more often than not. It’s something that led me to love late night TV as a kid.
One show in particular was my absolute favorite — a testament to the late 90s and early 2000s, which were incredibly binary when it came to pop culture. You were either an *NSYNC or Backstreet Boys fan, Team Britney or Team Christina and knew the boy exclusively belonged to Brandy or Monica. (I’ve bolded the correct choices.)
Jay Leno and David Letterman largely dominated late night TV at the time, but I wasn’t a huge fan of either. I’d bounce between the two, depending on the episode’s guests, while I waited for “Late Night with Conan O’Brien” to begin.
The writer and comedian was an early architect for “The Simpsons,” a cultural and childhood staple, and I found him surprisingly hip, heartfelt and hilarious. His dry, self-deprecating humor and admittedly divisive wit still cracks me up.
That’s why I was happy to see him host the Oscars, which as a fan of cinema, history and the intersection thereof I tend to enjoy. I found this year’s opening monologue particularly memorable.
It had its timely barbs, zeroing in on Timothée Chalamet’s controversial take on the arts and our nation’s penchant for picking the wrong president, but what really resonated with me was O’Brien’s closing statement.
“If I can be serious for just a moment, everyone watching right now, around the world, is all too aware that these are very chaotic, frightening times,” he said.
“It’s at moments like these that I believe that the Oscars are particularly resonant — 31 countries across six continents are represented this evening, and every film we salute is the product of thousands of people speaking different languages, working hard to make something of beauty,” the host continued. “We pay tribute tonight, not just to film, but to the ideals of global artistry, collaboration, patience, resilience and that rarest of qualities today — optimism.”
Whether or not you like O’Brien or even the Oscars, I think it’s a sentiment we can all get behind. Times are dark for so many marginalized Americans right now — especially our trans siblings here in the LGBTQ+ community — and while we need to center and work to change that, we also need to leave space for joy.
We need to remember to pay tribute to the artistry, collaboration, patience and resilience found in our community. We have to hold onto hope, even when it feels like there’s so little of it, because that’s how our community and country will get through the darkness. Optimism isn’t easy, but it can be built.
Tell each other stories well into the night, watch ridiculous TV together, attend community celebrations and congratulate yourself on every success, whatever the size. We can step into a brighter future if we build it together.
That’s something LGBTQ+ advocates are hoping for in Orlando. In this issue we highlight the city’s significant steps toward a permanent Pulse memorial, honoring the lives lost and impacted at the nightclub nearly 10 years ago.
In other Orlando news, the Headdress Gala prepares to return and Aaron Emmanuel Lewis announces his candidacy for the Orange County Commission. In Tampa Bay news, St. Petersburg welcomes the Queer Asian Museum, Pride of Tampa details its inaugural festivities and the art installation “Embracing Our Differences” encourages everyone to do exactly that.
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