This is a random question. Do you find that you're actually attracting a lot of gay men?

Hello, I'm Shannon Beveridge and welcome to The Alphabet Club, a queer storytelling podcast where every other week I will curate a personal essay by someone in our community.

Stories about desire,

heartbreak, gender, sex, friendship, family, and becoming. After the reading, we sit with it together. We talk about what it brings up, what it reflects back to us, and why queer stories

just feel different. Today's essay, oblivious to myureness, is by Maya Maldonado, a content

creator based in San Francisco. She works on the commercial legal team at a tech company and

creates content on the side on TikTok, curating a femme and Latina point of view on fashion,

dating, and culture. This essay explores having multiple competing identities at

different levels of visibility and public acceptance. Maya tells the story of meeting her person

on the dating app, her, and how growing up with that person as a queer Latina first-generation

college student all contribute to her self-conceptance, which is a constantly evolving journey.

Stay tuned after the reading for my conversation with Maya.

This episode is sponsored by her, a sapphic dating app that you should definitely check out.

Mariah Carey, Emancipation of Mimi, Britney Spears Blackout, Madonna, Confessions on a Dance Floor, Green Day, American Idiot.

These were the only CDs in my mom's disc changer growing up, or at least the only ones I

remember.

She drive me to school

every day with any song from each of these albums playing, past the fields that connect to Larry to

Vizelia in the Central Valley of California. My parents grew up borking them, picking walnuts,

oranges, and grapes. I didn't think much about it then. I was listening to give me more.

For Catholic Latinos, my family

was always liberal. By 10, I understood we had different values from even my closest friends.

...