I am Jordan’s date to the Met Gala. I would not be invited otherwise. I go to enjoy Jordan’s enjoyment of it and to hold his handbag and to put his hair back in place and to unhook his dress from his boot’s heel when it catches and to make sure he doesn’t topple.

This was our eighth Met. I am no more versed in celebrities than I was at my first. Jordan and I keep a running list of stars whom, over the years, I have spoken to without knowing who they were – J.Lo, Miley Cyrus and, added to the list this time, Katy Perry.

I respect the people who chose to boycott this year because Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos were honorary chairs. I didn’t because I would not be a credible boycotter. While I did cancel my Washington Post subscription after Bezos killed their Kamala Harris endorsement, I still watch the NBA on Amazon Prime. Going into the Met Gala hosted by the Bezoses felt like when we have to go into the David H. Koch Theater to attend the New York City Ballet.

But from my perspective, this Met was no different than any of the others I have been to. Rather than the Bezoses coming in and taking it over, they were dwarfed by it. Even tech bros can’t dim the beauty and reverence for history of The Costume Institute’s exhibition “Costume Art”. And given the current harsh climate for inclusion, the exhibition’s spotlight on diverse body types is daring.

The Met Gala always cultivates queerness, and this year was no exception. Luke Evans in his Tom of Finland-inspired look; Troye Sivan as Robert Mapplethorpe; trans model Alex Consani on the host committee; Black, trans, disabled model Aariana Rose Philip posing for one of the mannequins in the exhibition and her being the first wheelchair user to ever attend the gala. Queer designers stretching cis straight men’s sartorial limits – Dwayne Johnson in Thom Browne, A$AP Rocky by Matthieu Blazy for Chanel.

And all the queer hair and makeup artists laboring in the rooms at The Mark, The Carlyle and The Pierre adding their artistry to the looks.

The Met Gala celebrates fashion, and you can’t celebrate fashion without celebrating what a haven it is for queer people. The misfits who harness their creativity, finding their superpower in their queerness.

The last moment of the night for us was standing right behind Beyoncé as she swayed and sang along with Stevie Nicks. Talent celebrating talent. So in the end, the Met Gala felt fabulously itself.

I am not always accepting of sharing queer culture with straight audiences. I want to keep what’s ours ours. But after seeing the thrilling new Broadway shows Titaníque and CATS: The Jellicle Ball, I felt like I was part of an exuberant, radical resistance. Come for the entertainment, stay for the revolution.

Titaníque (hilariously campy) and Jellicle Ball (brilliantly reset in New York’s queer ballroom scene) now playing right across the street from each other started downtown, off of Broadway, and neither of them straightened themselves out to make it on Broadway. In fact, uptown, their queerness is especially amplified.

As I watched the extraordinary Layton Williams play the iceberg in Titaníque, I thought about the crisis rapidly coming straight at our community. Currently, over 500 anti-LGBTQ bills are pending in state legislatures spanning over 40 states. “Don’t Say Gay” laws have been enacted to ban discussion of LGBTQ people in schools, teachers are being forced to out their students, parents and doctors are being criminalized for providing trans youth gender-affirming care, drag queens are being labeled more dangerous than guns. State governments are telling trans people which bathrooms to use and revoking their licenses that properly mark their gender, and the U.S. Department of State is now only issuing passports with a sex marker that matches the applicant’s sex assigned at birth.

The Trump administration is demonizing DEI, and corporations and universities are sickeningly following suit; lemmings Gavin Newsom and Rahm Emanuel, trying to burnish their images for a 2028 presidential run, can’t shake off our community fast enough; Pixar has exorcised queer characters and stories because, as Pete Docter, their Chief Creative Officer, explained, “We are making a movie, not hundreds of millions of dollars of therapy.”

But Broadway is audaciously bucking this disturbing trend, standing proudly as a queer bulwark with these incredible queer shows with queer creatives and diverse queer casts. (Wait till you see the extraordinary “Tempress” Chasity Moore as Grizabella.)

Titaníque and Jellicle Ball join Broadway’s storied canon — La Cage, A Chorus Line, Rent, and its newer sisters Hedwig and Oh, Mary! — shows that prove when you put the marginalized center stage, see the world from our lens, sing and dance about what we care and obsess about, you’ll have your hit, turn a profit and improve the world.

I know that shows have long, often treacherous trajectories to Broadway and sometimes the timing is just luck, but I am grateful these newcomers came this season. I am grateful to the producers who didn’t check the climate and postpone, I am grateful to the theatermakers who didn’t soften the edges of their work in order to gain easier acceptance, I am grateful for the performers who every night represent the very best of us.

Our adversaries don’t understand we aren’t going anywhere. Queer is now and forever.

I don’t like being sent Reels on Instagram. I don’t want other people’s rage or randiness to screw with my algorithm of basketball and Roman trattorias. But I couldn’t help but watch this week’s unsolicited clip. It was Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent being interviewed on Fox News’ The Will Cain Show. I am, after all, still that 22-year-old gay kid who, on October 11, 1987, attended the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights and who dreamed one day of gay people being in positions of power.

Here’s how it went:

Will Cain: You are the highest-ranking gay public policy office holder, I believe, in the history of America. And I will bet you there are some people watching that don’t know that, that what I just said, because you’re not a member of the Biden administration. That hasn’t been the top line of your resume. You’re not the first and proclaimed and celebrated because of that fact; that’s been a fact in the background, unimportant to the Trump administration. I’m just curious what that says about you and the Trump administration.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent: It’s what it says about President Trump. That President Trump created the Cabinet not because of who you go home to at night, not because of the color of your skin, not because of your religion, not because of some background, he created it based on merit. So, I go to the office every day knowing that I was chosen on merit.

I do not know anything about economic policy or market strategies. In fact, my husband says whenever the subject of money comes up, my eyes glaze over. But I do know that out gay Scott Bessent would not be treasury secretary if it were not for the decades of gay activism that made it so a president would appoint a gay person to their Cabinet. And by diminishing his gayness, the secretary shirks his responsibility to our community.

Bessent works in the most virulent anti-LGBTQ administration in history. Certainly, his appointment does not pinkwash their atrocities. The only excuse for a gay person working in this administration would be if they were (and we knew they were) working within the system to advocate for gay people and against the policies that endanger us.

But Bessent is only as gay as his co-workers will allow. I can’t imagine him pulling Stephen Miller aside to talk about gay people, can you? Did he argue with President Trump against the ban on trans and HIV-positive people in the military? At Cabinet meetings, does he press Secretary Rubio to fully fund PEPFAR? When he meets with governors, does he urge them to stop terrorizing trans people, or pressure them to veto Don’t Say Gay laws?

Scott Bessent is 5th in line of succession. He is the most powerful gay person in America, but he didn’t rise out of the gay movement, even though he benefits greatly from it. It would take nothing away from his merit if he understood that. Is he doing anything to expand the opportunities for LGBTQ people at the Treasury? Bessent cannot consider himself successful if he isn’t helping other gay people get where he is. Will Cain, his interlocutor, stating that Bessent being gay should not be proclaimed and celebrated is wrong. It should be shouted from atop of the Washington Monument. How else will young queer kids see that public service is a path available to them?

If only Bessent used that seat of power like Andrew Young did his. Young, before he was the Ambassador to the UN serving in Jimmy Carter’s Cabinet, before he was in Congress and mayor of Atlanta, he was the executive director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization of which Martin Luther King, Jr. was its first president. Young brought his experience during the civil rights movement to everything he did. The gays in positions of power now – treasury secretary, Apple CEO, editor-in-chief of CBS News – are not leaders of our community and never were. They aren’t steeped in our struggle, nor did they rise out of it. Sadly, our gay power brokers are of no worth to us.

Does the secretary know when he walks into that office every day, he owes his job to Frank Kameny, who was fired from his federal job for being gay and went on to co-found The Mattachine Society of Washington, D.C., the first gay civil rights organization in our nation’s capital? When he sits at his desk, does he feel a responsibility to all the other gay workers purged from the federal government during The Lavender Scare in the 1950s?

Bessent is just three years older than I am. Gay men of our generation have a shared trauma. I moved to New York City when I was 17 in 1983 to start my gay life. I moved right into the heart of Greenwich Village, right at the dawn of the AIDS epidemic. I am a veteran of a forgotten war. A war all but ignored while it was happening, except for those of us fighting it. My love for and devotion to our LGBTQ community, my distrust of government, my wariness of straight people, all born out of the AIDS war. I’d love to know how those harrowing years affected Secretary Bessent. How has he been shaped by what we lived through?

For those who survived, much is required.

There’s a pang I still get; it comes reliably at 10:30am. The time my sister Linda and I used to speak on the phone. Some days it’s a comfort, most days it’s not. Each day, I keep this disturbance to myself.

I am not unique in experiencing grief as confounding and lonely. And my grief for my eldest sister Linda is especially isolating because the people I happily spend all my time with – my husband and young son – never knew her.

There’s a picture of her and me sitting on my bookshelf, fraying. For me – it is especially poignant because she has all her hair, which means it was before, which means we were happy. But for them, the picture of our smiling faces is as innocuous as a holiday card.

My husband is loving and comforting, but he only knows Linda as one fact of my life. We met when I was 37, he was 27. We each had lives before we came together. His not knowing her is an acute deprivation for me.

Our son Levi is named after Linda. I’d hoped it would be a bond, that her blazing streak of empathy would come his way, and that her temper would not.

For years, I have relied on a bit of wisdom I got from the poet Rimbaud: The only unbearable thing is that nothing is unbearable.

This past January 27th Linda should have turned 69. I posted a picture of us on Instagram and added audio of one of her favorite musicians, Carole King, singing “Holding you again could only do me good.”

When I took my grief to social media, it wasn’t a collective hug I was after. I was placing a marker; this day cannot become everyday.

A kind old friend commented on my post, “I am sorry this is such an enduring pain for you.” Which I read as: “Get some closure, Richie.” Closure, that cloying concept which really means I’m closing the book on you, Sis.

But most of my DMs were filled with people who had also lost a sibling. (Cancer being the prevailing culprit.)

Thus, my post had another unintended purpose. A place for people to share their loved ones with me. I am not the only one with a trove of sibling stories bursting to come out.

Grief is a manageable disease only if we talk about it. So, if you’ve lost someone and you are dying to talk about them, I am here for you.