Whether I was watching Heath Ledger press his face into Jake Gyllenhaal’s denim shirt at the end of Brokeback Mountain or else listening to the cast of Rent sing a requiem after Angel’s death, I’d grown accustomed to associating my own queer experience with pain and with loss.
When I was young, I remember sneaking down to the living room in the middle of the night to watch the movies and television shows with queer characters that I didn’t feel safe watching in broad daylight. Those nights, alone on my couch in the blue glow of the television screen, I first realised that the campy threat of conversion therapy I’d seen in But I’m A Cheerleader was a real possibility for my future.