Hello and welcome to the July edition of Outward. I'm Brian Lauder, editor of Outward, and I just need to give a shout out to the straight woman at Pride, who, in line to a dance party that used to be gay, turned around to me and apologized for, quote, colonizing my space.

We love the self-awareness, straight woman, but we love it even more when it spurs actual action. So maybe next time, don't colonize the space. It's something to think about. Did you offer her absolution, or did you just say, like, thank you, you're right? I said, it's cool, happy pride, I don't know. Like, what are I going to say? Like, don't come inside. Yeah. Oh, my God. I love that. I'm Christina Cauderucci, a senior writer at Slate. And I've got to say, it's killing me that it has been so hot lately because I have been waiting to wear my post-pandemic reemergence outfit. It's a purple pleather strapless jumpsuit.

And I think I would probably die of either dehydration or heat stroke,

whichever came first if I tried to wear it now.

But it's been sitting in my closet since May.

And so I just need to like go to one of those Russian vodka bars where you like drink in an

igloo or a freezer.

The ice, the ice.

Yeah.

Style before comfort, Christina.

You're right.

I should suck it up.

I'm Ramon Alam and I'm on vacation with my family right now and I'm firmly entrenched in hot everything summer.

Hot lying on the beach and reading summer.

If it's a rainy day, it's hot, let's watch a movie all day summer.

If it's any day of the week, it's hot hot dogs and no vegetables for dinner summer.

This is my particular version of cutting loose post-vaax. I love that. I've got to say, your kids are always living my best life. Like, I really want to be reincarnated as one of Ruman's sons. Sometimes they say to me, like, we'll be at the beach, and we'll be playing, and it'll be hot hot and they'll be like, God, I'm really worn out.

I'm like, yeah, we worn out from like relaxing all day. Like, it must be really tough. Imagine being able to spend your summer at, like, Fire Island as a child. Maybe you just wouldn't appreciate it as much, but it just seems so idyllic. So far, so good. It's just no complaints, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

On this month's episode, we're going to be celebrating queer milestones in two different flavors.

First, we'll hear from a few of our fellow queers about the major life events that they marked during the past 15 months of pandemic isolation.

What was it like to get married or to transition largely apart from the

community? And how are we all processing those changes now? Then we'll be joined by the opera singer

...