“Dating broken white women became a way to reprise a powerlessness that years of sexual abuse and generations of blackphobia had tricked me into believing in. I drowned this feeling of powerlessness in weed and seeking out relationships in which I could engage in yet remain completely hidden from view.”

“If I wear my heart on my sleeve – and I do these days, much to the shock and dismay of a butch gone prematurely tender – then the sleeve itself is my masculinity.”