 I brought all the books to inspire me. Just to show you. I actually got right. Aria, you said some things that, like, I remember, like, over my 11th grade year and, like, the summer from my 11th grade year to my 12th grade year, I just, like, you know, lost the gang load weight. And I remember going back to school and, like, everyone was just like, oh, did y'all hear, like, I heard that Trey got AIDS and stuff like that. So that, so that rings true for me. And also, I've ruined the National Anthem ones at my school too. I forgot a whole verse because I was just nervous in front of the crowd. But yeah, I'm burning Keeve. And a lot of the books that Mason pulled from me, I thank you, Mason, for being such a great help and Huliana for accepting me. But a lot of the books that Mason pulled were just like, like, are we related? Like, I just, like, felt, it felt weird. And a lot of the stuff that I wrote just feels like a... I did release a book. I have some copies if y'all want to buy them at the end of this. Southern Magnet Makes Tape by Nomadic Press. Nomadic Press. And a lot of the stuff I wrote, I feel like I can just add it into, because my book is very much about me being a black queer man from the South and moving out west and thinking I was escaping some of the phobias that I encountered in the South. So the first piece I'm reading is called Two Black Men Who Stopped to Smell the Flowers. And it's inspired by this book called Sweet Tea, Black Game in the South. It belongs right here. And I could not put this book down. Let me make sure I take my journal out of there before I put it back. I could not put this book down. And this first piece is inspired by this guy, Freddie, and he's just smelling flowers. So y'all should check this. The author is E. Patrick Johnson. Sweet Tea, Black Men of the South. And it's like all just narratives of black queer men who survived the South. So inspired by Freddie and Sweet Tea, Black Game in the South. To the black men who stopped to smell the flowers. In the South were broken soft skin made to callus from a paddle meant to beat the purple from their bruises. They weren't supposed to smell nothing sweet. Only the harsh stagnant scents of themselves darkening in the sun. Working in lands that were supposed to keep the flow, supposed to keep flowers near the house. Near spaces that were meant for their mothers and sisters. Hearing, stay out of that kitchen boy on Sundays when peas needed to be shoved. They weren't supposed to smile when birds hummed out nectar or when butterflies emerged from cocoons. They were supposed to remain caterpillars. Keep the bright colors from their costumes and closets. Dressing the darkest shades of stone crushed to make concrete. Brick dust in their clothes. Hardened hands that scratched everything they touched. They were supposed to die suffocating on work that built up their bodies into machines that could lift lawnmowers. Cutting honeysuckle before they could taste them. All because men don't allow flowers to bring insects and rodents for the snakes to follow. Men protect this place from the flight patterns of Jim Crow. The birth of this nation told us that we were meant to hang from poplar trees. But even they grow tulips that were meant to be kissed and sniffed. Not just raked away before the ants followed their sweetness to the house. No one hugs a corpse. Charred from a branch. Charred from a branch. Blackened from the brown that their mothers held close. And fathers shunned to fields. The great migration made them walk to cities where flowers bloomed far less often. Where they snuck kisses just like they sniff flowers down home. And a lot of the books that I read talked about masculinity, especially like these two. Flanted, Queers Organized for Public Education and Justice. Mostly this one, sorry. Which was Gay Voices of the Harlem Renaissance spoke heavily of black masculinity. And this is called to the black men who were hardened. When man thinks of building a tree we strip it of everything that allows it to belong in the garden. We remove its bark and replace its pith with stone. We remove the branches so no leaf, so it can bear no leaf, no flower or fruit. We make it impossible to climb. We erase its roots and weigh it down and place. We make it too heavy. We make it too heavy to move. We shackle it. We make it violent. We fence it off and ask for money to be near it. Then we proclaim to the orchards, look at the monuments that we have built. And this next piece is called to those who were whipped by the Bible Belt. The whipping of the Bible Belt welted the skin raw with thou shot knots. Told church to seize that they were not righteous growing up in the shadow of sermons that threw stones at those who felt the four walls of the church building. Felt the nails and crucification from the stairs of those who were taught to accept all men for who they were. The flamboyant choir directors escaped in robes that flowed with their own expression, flowed the same way as the dresses they wished to wear. Seeking refuge from the gnassing of teeth of the congregants. Soaring on melismas and climbing and falling on runs with voices loved so dearly that their knights in supposed Bible were forgotten by the ears of those who wanted to pray their sins away. Oh happy day when Jesus was Oh when he was washed my sins away. They would sing while tambourines dance the way they always wanted to in their hands. Teaching the children to seek out church for the music. Giving boys like me something to sing for even when fathers wanted to replace the tenor of their voices with the bass of what their fathers had taught them. We sang Oh happy day when Jesus was Oh when he was washed my sins away. Hoping that we looked at women the way we were supposed to. But it was the men in the choir who taught us to sing for ourselves even though we were conditioned to believe. It's gonna rain, it's gonna rain You better get ready to bear this in mind God showed Noah the rainbow sign He said it won't be water but the fire next time And it was the choir director who emphasized the God showed Noah the rainbow sign And boys like me listened and took John 316 to heart and we sang out loud even though our fathers never listened. And this one is called to the bees who kept buzzing even after the removal of their stingers. Despite the fight, the disillusion of ourselves and to ourselves, we are the sweet kings from which our fathers wanted ants to devour our honey. Instead of scapefism, we escaped and became the flowers that are worthy to be admired for far more than just our sense. We brought dance into this world to go along with the songs that told us it was okay to be just be. And we still keep buzzing even after we left our stingers at home even after we left our stingers at home. All we ever wanted was to dance with ourselves in the first place. We are the blackberries that grew from vines that drew blood from fingers. And here's my last piece. It's inspired by Voguey, this book right here. Voguey and the health ballroom scene of New York City, 1989 to 1992. And it's called to the men who danced in the darkest of rooms. To the men who danced in the darkest of rooms illuminated by the glitter-glow souls of one another, kissing their lovers away from the eyes of those who loved them until their wrists never grew the muscle to support the worlds that they wanted to blossom within. The parents of the Harlem Renaissance with their plumed headdresses, those who knew that male peacocks were the ones who spread their wings of gold, emerald, amethyst, and lapis lazuli. Those who told me that my exposed skin gleaming with sweat in the night is made from the same obsidian that spewed from volcanoes that gassed the whole planet and gave it atmosphere. Those who knew fear was something that needed to be managed since fathers tried to beat the indigo from their blues. Since mothers stopped trying to tie them to girls as pretty as their sons already knew they were, the wallflowers at school dances who were jealous of the queens they admired who got to dance with Jameer, Dorad, and Michael. The sisters who held their secrets, the brothers who saw their own in them, those of you who birthed the sunrise with festival marched through the empty mornings to shared flats in the Lower East Side where they replaced the families that displaced them from dinner tables, those who migrated to cities where nights didn't hide the men who wanted to merely kill them for their skin. This day is for you, even though those of us who marched freely outside during pride for ourselves ignoring those days when kisses were craved like hugs that they did not receive before they walked over 800 miles gotten onto colored train cars or caught buses to New York for, we don't deserve you. Those who felt the need to whiten their faces to win at Rockland Palace, those who felt white affection validated their extravagance, the wondrous dandies of Atlele Walker's parties during the prohibition who cops thought were cultural experiments. If the cops have their way, the effeminate clan will hereafter confine its activities to the village of Harlem, to the village of Harlem. The magnificent marches of Marcell Christian who staged the first black ball in 1962. The luminous children of Crystal Lebesia who spoke out against anti-black spaces and showed Andy Warhol that artists are activists even though he didn't listen. The house of Cory, the house of Dior, the house of Christian who welcomed birds pushed from their nests because their closets had no doors. The back room choreographers of Stonewall who taught the movement how to move, who defined pride as something one throws bricks for, those who set fire to Paris and ate cake with Dupree, those who threw shade so dark it haunts our language today and tied vogue to ships that carried African artists and chains and chiseled hieroglyphs from Egypt and Kush and their stance and with their hands, those who raised monies for AIDS, those whose dresses faded from ruby to pink before Blanche Devereux told the masses that it affected us all, those who were murdered and still are murdered for being seeds without intention, invasive wildflowers not meant for the confinement of gardens, those who wore high waisted jeans better than their homegirls who sprouted breasts from home-owns that caused their mothers to burn their clothes, caused their mothers to abandon them in the 50s when postpartum depression wasn't recognized, those born in barns with chickens and treated like foul old by white mothers who hated them for being the brown egg out of the dozen that she had laid, those who wore dresses like their adorned aunties who once spoiled them, who once called them their favorites, who they wished to write or call every once in a while but mama would find out, those who made their fashions that silenced the rooms and also made us remember that the dance floor is a walkway too, those who created fashions that were colonized just like everything else that they coined, this day is for you, even though we don't deserve it.