“It took me 14 years to recognize with certainty that I was a dyke. I wish I could say it was about the intellectual complexities of sexuality and gender, or that I was afraid of being different. Those were factors, but not nearly as pressing as this: I thought dykes had bad style.”

Perhaps he would have loved me enough. I’ll never know, and my eschatology doesn’t include a heaven from which re-embodied souls watch over our earthly lives. All I have is speculation about how he might have reacted to his daughter’s bisexuality, and to his daughter not being precisely a daughter at all.

“To understand my relationship with this symbol of masculinity, we’ll have to start with my journey of queerness I had no idea I had embarked upon until I was turning 28, the sleeves of my buba — the tailored Agbada shirt — all rolled up to my elbows and my fingers rubbing down on the clit of a girl I had only met a couple of times prior to that moment.”

“I’m adult and I’ve never cried over a haircut before and I don’t usually call my mom when I’m sad or frustrated or mad. She asked to see a photo of it. I sent her one and she asked me if the man hated queers, because this was clearly a hate crime.”

Midwestern lesbian fashion — flannel, Birkenstocks, baseball caps — is ignored at best and looked down upon at worst compared to urban, Shane-esque queer style. What happens when it’s given museum exhibit status?

My goal in depicting my sister as a boudoir photographer was to show just how sexy she is — not without her pump, not without her sensor, but with them fully visible, clipped to her lingerie.

“She doesn’t mean to be limiting. She just doesn’t see that the way she feels about her body is not the way that I feel about mine.”

“When I asked my friends from high school if they remembered me ever mentioning my records, most of them had no idea. Just as most of them had no inkling of my queerness before I finally came out.”

I wanted to wear my own history again, this time supported not only by my Jewish ancestors, but by my queer ancestors.

It’s true that queer women and non-binary people are more likely to let their body hair grow than straight cis women are — but a lot of us still take it off.

“I was unwilling to buy a binder. It seemed like a declaration, the kind I was nowhere near ready to make yet. But for that winter, I had the bag.”