• 10 months ago
Do you remember a love like this?

A touching inspiring message from Andrea Gibson about her first love, challenges facing her true self and showing the world who she really is.

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😹
Fun
Transcript
00:00 I don't think I ever really kissed any boys.
00:04 I think my tongue had just been punching their tongues.
00:08 But as soon as you loved me, all my callus went away.
00:11 My hands so soft it hurt to pray.
00:14 You picked me up at my Catholic college and I'd sleep for hours till we reached your house.
00:19 The first time in my life I'd ever rested.
00:22 The first time I didn't have to play a role I'd never wanted to get.
00:26 That's the medicine it is to be finally seen by someone.
00:30 You'd point to my chest and say what just broke.
00:33 I'd throw my body in the river but you'd say my name right and I'd become a stone that
00:38 skipped.
00:39 Do you remember the first record where we didn't have to change the pronouns to sing
00:43 along?
00:44 We'd gone so many years without music that knew us.
00:48 Music that knew you could arch your back and I'd have proof that the earth was round.
00:54 Bless who we were then, bless who we still are.
00:57 My straight friends tease me because all my best friends are my ex-loves but a wise heart
01:03 told me it's the most tender part of queerness.
01:06 How we've all lost so much family.
01:08 When we find people we call family, we'll do almost anything to not let go.
01:13 Thank goodness for that ice storm that trapped us in that cheap hotel where I drank an entire
01:19 bottle of something awful and finally told you I loved you since we were 15 playing basketball
01:26 under a flickering street light beside the poorest part of the sea.
01:31 The ice storm froze the world outside into a photograph of the past while I kneeled down
01:38 and kissed my future onto your kneecaps.
01:40 Two decades talking to Jesus, that was the first time I heard him talk back.
01:46 Months later, church bells ringing through my dorm room, I wrote my senior thesis about
01:52 you and told no one how hard I was praying to stop hiding myself in metaphor, to one
01:58 day find the courage to carve the truth into the chapel door.
02:03 Holy were all the hours I spent picking out my outfit the night you took me to my first
02:09 queer bar in Portland, Maine, the biggest city I'd ever walked through.
02:14 I was so excited and so scared that we'd be spotted or killed on our way inside.
02:21 We sat in the parking lot forever till I changed my mind and you drove me home, mascara pouring
02:28 down my brand new boy shirt.
02:30 I never guessed there'd come a time like the winter we traveled north to visit your mother,
02:36 asleep when we arrived after midnight.
02:39 We lit our room with candles and rested a joint in the center of the bed.
02:44 Neither of us were any good at smoking, but we pulled her welcome into our lungs like
02:50 it was 100 years of oxygen.
02:52 Up until then, we didn't know anyone in the whole world who would celebrate us, wiping
02:58 the steam from the glass to see each other blushing in the same bathroom mirror in the
03:04 morning.
03:05 I was thinking about that last May when I was invited back to my Catholic college for
03:10 the first time.
03:12 You sitting in the front row beside the nuns and the school president and the teacher who
03:19 had given me an A on the manuscript I'd been too afraid to write your name in.
03:25 Mandy, I know so much has not gotten better.
03:30 I know so much has not gotten easier, but that moment knocked the wind out of me.
03:37 Time, finally being the kind of father we all deserve.
03:41 The world, finally turning its porch light on for us.
03:45 It was so bright I could feel the freckles on my 15-year-old face warming in its glow.
03:51 I could feel hope traveling back in time to find us, to whisper into our chests, "There
03:58 will be music for you one day."
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