A person with such insouciant charm and magnetism deserves to have their names in all caps, and today we honor JORDY as Dazzler of the Day thanks to his creative talent and transfixing personality. His website offers more enchantment for those seeking to solve his mysteries, and he was recently announced as one of the headliners for this year’s Capital Pride Festival in Albany. His music, filled with catchy hooks and pop melodies, focuses on love and loneliness, giving listeners just a little bit more to chew on than your average pop song.
When I was growing up, no one talked about being gay, and when you don’t see yourself in the world you wonder at your worth, your value, and your entire existence. #SayGay
Once upon a New York State Agency meeting, I had the privilege of sitting across the room from Nathaniel Gray (he/him), who wowed with his impressive energy and ideas (and hair) at a gathering of the NYS LGBTQ+ Interagency Task Force, on which he was working as part of the Governor’s Pride Outreach team. Since then, he’s been named as the Executive Director of the Pride Center of the Capital Region, and today earns his first Dazzler of the Day. On March 31, he’ll be the proverbial ice sculpture around which a ‘Meet the Executive Director’ event unfolds at the Franklin Terrace Ballroom in Troy, NY – get your tickets here. He recently expressed his hopes and plans for his new role:
“My plans are to establish a solid foundation and resources for the Pride Center that is diverse and provides long term opportunities. I also hope to establish relationships with local businesses and organizations to provide training and consultation on LGBTQ+ cultural awareness and policies; to support schools in creating safe environments for all youth, and to engage community leadership in a dialogue about making the entire Capital Region a safe and affirming environment for LGBTQ+ folks of every age and race; LGBTQ+ Visibility Saves Lives.
I am looking forward to meeting many of you at my first community forum and hear from our region’s LGBTQ+ community.”
It was the mid-90’s, and in the midst of the tattered-flannel grunge muck I was just starting to acknowledge my sexuality. Flickering boldly across the television screen was the audaciously and unapologetically queer character of Rickie Vasquez on ‘My So-Called Life’. He was astonishing to me – so supremely confident, yet so heartbreakingly vulnerable – and the portrayal of such a person by the exquisitely talented Wilson Cruz suddenly made me realize that there might be a place in the world for other queer kids like myself. In the ensuing years, I came out and began to find my way in the world, forever thankful to Cruz for showing me another way, while Cruz forged his own journey in Hollywood, crafting a career in defiance of the typical entertainment rules for openly gay people of color. His trailblazing continues to this day, as evidenced by his current turn on ‘Star Trek: Discovery’, boldly going where no one has gone before as he shares an on-screen kiss with his on-screen husband. That’s courage. That’s bravery. That’s even more than a Dazzler of the Day.
Artists make the most impressive dazzlers, and so this Dazzler of the Day was an obvious and much-deserved choice. Here is Michael Breyette – one of my favorite living artists – and what a thrill and joy it is to be alive when someone so talented is working and producing art that will surely endure long into the future. We don’t appreciate people when we should.
He recently posted the following on his lovely website, offering an inside look into the process of an artist in winter:
It’s great to have a busy holiday season, but it seems like forever since I was at the drawing board. I also have this ‘dream’ of coming up with a whole bunch of ideas and outlines now to carry me through the whole year. The hope would be that I’d be more proficient and could quickly finish up one work and move right on to the next, without waiting for inspiration or taking time to develop an idea. Knowing how I usually work though, I don’t think I’ll make it happen. In the past when I’ve planned out several pieces at once, I’ve only managed to complete a few of them. Maybe I lose interest, my head is just not in the same place it was when I was creating the concept.
How wonderful it is to have him in this world, making it more beautiful, making it more resonant, making it more bearable. Visit his website here for more magic and enjoy the seasonal selections of his work below.
With a background as rich and varied as Chella Man’s, it’s no wonder he is proving to be an exceptional human being. His social media bio lists him as Deaf, trans-masculine, Chinese and Jewish. He is more importantly an author and artist, known for his work ‘Continuum’, as well as numerous other endeavors so brilliantly illuminated on his website here. Today he is named Dazzler of the Day for so proudly being himself without apology.
It was her scene-stealing performance in ‘Promising Young Woman’ that turned me into a Laverne Cox fan, and resulted in this Dazzler of the Day feature. She’s been carving an unprecedented career in Hollywood, from her star-making contribution in ‘Orange is the New Black’ to her too-long-to-mention lists of firsts as a transgender trailblazer.
Shangela stormed onto RuPaul’s Drag Race in one of the early seasons I happened to watch, and left all too early, only to be brought back. And brought back again. And again, until she conquered with her indefatigable spirit and refusal to be anything but a survivor. Such resilience and defiance, coupled with the tenacious spirit to get back up after every fall and carry on, is why she earns this Dazzler of the Day honor. Nowadays she is starring in the powerful and poignant ‘We’re Here’ on HBO, empowering others to join in her journey, and branching off to things like her very own Shanitizer product in these dangerous days.
It was the fall of 1998. I’d just met my first serious boyfriend. It felt like a giddy time, though slightly fraught with worry, the unknown and the uncomfortable notion of opening up my life to another person, and the vaguest sliver of worry that this wasn’t the one, at least the one who would last forever. And then the more frightening notion that maybe not anyone would last forever.
The job I had was my first brush with an office environment – as a research analyst for John Hancock. Located just a few blocks from the condo, my commute was a seven minute leisurely walk, five if I was rushing, which I never was back then. It was dull and monotonous work, the scope of which was never entirely explained to us (other than a class-action lawsuit was involved and we needed to find duplicate numbers on microfiche) but I excelled and moved up the limited ranks quite quickly. A little over a month on the job, I felt comfortable in talking about my new boyfriend, feeling a relatively new sensation of pride in another person, in being part of a couple. But there were still moments of doubt. We never held hands. We never walked too close. We never kissed in public.
Mother clutches the head of her dying son
Anger and tears, so many things to feel
Sensitive boy, good with his hands
Noone mentions the unmentionable, but everybody understands
Here in this cold white room
Tied up to these machines
It’s hard to imagine him as he used to be…
On October 12, 1998, I walked into the office and was about to begin the usual routine. Co-workers whirled through the microfiche readers, while others ate their breakfast bagels at the center table. I heard the news before I saw it in the paper – back when we got news from the newspaper, back when that was usually the first one would hear of anything. A co-worker blurted out that Matthew Shepard had died. After a few days in a coma, he’d given up his fight. His life was finished. It was the only time up to that day where I felt the wind knocked out of me, and I had to literally sit down at the table in the middle of the room and pretend that I was looking at some microfiche nonsense. Anything to keep from crying.
Many things haunted me, starting at that moment. The image of him being mistaken for a scarecrow at first. The image of his face being soiled and dirty save for the trails of his tears. The image of a loneliness so pervading that the feigned interest of a couple of questionable guys made the danger worth the risk.
Laughing screaming tumbling queen
Like the most amazing light show you’ve ever seen
Whirling swirling never blue
How could you go and die, what a lonely thing to do…
What everyone else in that office saw as just another dead guy – one of probably a dozen in a paper as sprawling as the Boston Globe – I saw as something far more personal. This 21-year-old – just a year younger than myself – had been killed simply for being gay. He was murdered for being what I was. From that point forward the world would be haunted in a way that most of my straight friends could never fully feel. It changed everything in an instant, and the immense sorrow of where we were, and how far we really hadn’t come, took up residence in my mind, the lingering remnants of which surface to this very day.
Silence equals death, this is what they say
But the anger and the tears do not take the pain away
How far must it go, how near must it be
Before it touches you, before it touches me
Here in this cold white room
Tied up to these machines
It’s hard to imagine life as it used to be…
The details of the night he was attacked felt eerily familiar in the way it all began. A random encounter at a bar – where we all went looking for love back then – that ended with a drive onto the desolate and cold back roads of Wyoming – some sad American nightmare where Matthew was brutally beaten and tortured by two straight men… and for what reason? For being gay? For being different? For wanting to be loved? How could anyone be so hated simply for loving?
Laughing screaming tumbling queen
Like the most amazing light show that you’ve ever seen
Whirling swirling never blue
How could you go and die, what a selfish thing to do
After we learned of what had happened, when a guy riding his bicycle passed Matthew’s body strung up on a fence, and initially mistook him for a scarecrow, I didn’t think he would die. The world couldn’t be that cruel. It couldn’t be that cold. So when he did, and when someone so flippantly said he was dead, I had to sit down, because whatever hopes and dreams I had secretly harbored since I was a kid were suddenly knocked out of me.
It was an act of hatred that I would never understand, and in the following days and weeks and years I would read everything I could about what happened, trying to come to some sort of understanding as to why they did it, and at every turn and every new piece of information, I failed. Yet throughout all that time, and through all these years, the memory of Matthew has remained alive. I’d forgotten the names and fates of his killers, but Matthew Shepard is indelibly imprinted upon my memory, imprinted on my heart, imprinted on that precious part of life that should have been filled with innocence and hope and dreams.
Did you ever ask those strangers what they’re searching for?
Did they laugh and tell you they’re not really sure?
You were hurt by love but still you came right back for more
Il adore, il adore, il adore…
The older I get, the more I start to see the importance of a day like today, especially when I look back at my own childhood and elongated coming out process. I grew up in the 1980’s, and in a rather sheltered/cocooned household. Raised by strict Catholic parents, I never heard anyone talk about being gay, not in my formative years, not when it mattered and would have made a world of difference. And there was no internet or gay bookstore in Amsterdam, NY to help me see any possibility for all the confusing feelings I had.
If you do not see yourself in the world around you for the majority of the first two decades of your life, you do not see yourself as a valid part of humanity. You feel a little lost, but the truth is there was never a path that I saw, so it’s a sense of being lost that allowed for no way to being found. Looking back at that time, it’s a wonder I wasn’t an even bigger mess than I was. It’s like an orca that has been born and raised in captivity – the dorsal fin droops, there are all sorts of health issues, and the poor little creature doesn’t know any other way of life, so it gets afflicted with all these problems without knowing what its life could have been. Do those animals feel the pull of the ocean, the pull of who they were meant to be? I felt it subtly, without name or explanation, and it mostly came out as me feeling alone and different without exactly knowing why, which only served to feed into my social anxiety and create an absolutely debilitating environment in which to grow up. It’s hard enough for a kid to make it unscathed through childhood – adding these other elements imbued my time as a child with a sense of terror – and the absence of that terror in what I could see in my friends only added to my confusion and feelings of inferiority.
Whenever I wonder whether I should keep this silly blog going, I think back to my twelve-year-old self, and how impactful seeing something like this would have been. Not because I’m so wonderful and fabulous – but because everything I’ve put forth here is a pretty accurate reflection of my mundane, dull, boring, yappy, crappy, sappy and happy life. I didn’t need to see a famous celebrity come out, or a glamorous historical figure outed – I just needed to see the possibility of being gay as something that existed. I needed to see someone simply living their life, being accepted, occasionally celebrated, and working on just being a better person. Instead, I saw a heteronormative world that had no place for me or what I was feeling. For twenty years – arguably the most important years of a person’s life – I did not see myself. That’s something that doesn’t ever go completely away, and it’s the reason that moments like National Coming Out Day still matter.
This rather naked day on the blog feels especially fitting for the Dazzler of the Day, David Pevsner, who earns his first crowning thanks to a decades-long show-business career, as chronicled thrillingly by his book ‘Damn Shame: A Memoir of Desire, Defiance, and Show Tunes’ – which just about says it all. With another penchant for modeling in the buff, Pevsner appeals to the spectacular space where art and beauty and the human body collide. A Renaissance man in the truest senses of the term, Pevsner has just about done it all – and all of it pretty magnificently.
“Never underestimate the power of your story. Everyone has a different story and is living different experiences. Although no one’s life is alike, many of our triumphs, failures, hardships, and successes overlap. For that reason, I believe all of our experiences are important and can impact others. Recently I have been very focused on empowering and helping others share their story. I’ve learned that being a storyteller is sometimes about assisting other people in telling their stories. This realization has driven my work and leads me to want to help others feel empowered and recognize their importance. If you are someone who wants to share their story, go for it – you might be able to impact the lives of so many. If you need some guidance or potentially would like to have your story amplified on my page, feel free to dm the word “guide,” and I’ll try to help you out.” ~ Sander Jennings
As a sibling to transgender trailblazer Jazz Jennings, Sander Jennings has been a bit of a trailblazer himself, as a stalwart and unrelenting ally in the pursuit of equality, inclusion, and diversity. He puts it into words better than I could, and for his consistent and tireless work, he earns this Dazzler of the Day honor.
From Sander: This is important for everyone to know. To this day, I constantly get asked questions surrounding sexuality, so here are my thoughts:
#1. You don’t have to identify as LGBTQ+ to support the LGBTQ+ community. Allyship saves lives and can help create diversity, equity, and inclusion in society.
#2. To people who identify as a man and an ally: Don’t let other people questioning your masculinity or sexuality deter you from being an active ally to the LGBTQ+ community. Being an ally doesn’t make you less of a man.
#3. To everyone: Just because someone promotes pride and advocates for the community doesn’t mean you should jump to conclusions about their gender identity or sexual orientation.
#4. It is best never to ask someone about their sexuality. Create a safe space for someone to share that with you.
#5. People questioning you doesn’t need to make you question yourself. Be proud to be you.
Final thoughts: One of my main goals on social media is to bridge the gap between allies and the LGBTQ+ community. Some of my content is intended to amplify, uplift, and show support to the LGBTQ+ community. Other posts are designed to educate and encourage my cisgender & heterosexual followers to recognize the importance of Allyship. Whether you identify as LGBTQ+ or don’t, we are all valid and can promote diversity, equity and inclusion together. I love you all.
Actor, singer and songwriter Sean Doherty is more than a triple threat – his talents reach into the multitudes well beyond the number three, and his latest exercise in catchy ear candy is the delicious ‘boys in the backseat’. Today he earns the Dazzler of the Day for all the promise and excitement that his career looks to hold. Check out his intoxicating website here for further details.
Continuing his quest for world domination on a Madonna scale, Lil Nas X recently revealed the album art for his upcoming ‘Montero’ opus, out September 17, 2021. He takes up the racy mantle with a naked pose that slightly reminds of Prince’s ‘Lovesexy’ moment, then goes one step further with a fun and enticing video intro. At the present pop culture moment, no one is doing more to so wondrously titillate and gloriously infuriate the masses than Lil Was X, and I am here for all of it. (Check out his Dazzler of the Day feature here.)
Sometimes all it takes to be named Dazzler of the Day is a properly-placed scream of spousal excitement and support. Case in point is Dustin Lance Black, husband to Tom Daley, and quite rightfully a Dazzler in his own right. While his giddy exultations at his husband’s Olympic gold medal moment allowed the world to share in his exuberance, Dustin is also one of the most impressive entertainment gurus in the Hollywood business. He’s a director, screenwriter, producer, and, perhaps most impressively, unrelenting LGBTQ+ rights activist. The list of his creative endeavors and accomplishments is far too long to list here, but a quick Google search will bring you to his many credits, and now he can add Dazzler of the Day to that collection.
