R. Eric Thomas: We Learn About Love By Loving Our Friends

LGBTQ&A

Jeffrey Masters

Society & Culture

4.7 • 703 Ratings

🗓️ 24 May 2022

⏱️ 31 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Grab your best friend and give them the tightest possible hug: this episode is a celebration of platonic queer intimacy. R. Eric Thomas joins us to talk about being married to a pastor (it's fun!), the importance of queer community (also fun!), and his new YA novel, Kings of B'more.

LGBTQ&A is hosted by Jeffrey Masters and produced by The Advocate magazine, in partnership with GLAAD. A condensed transcript of each week's interview is posted on The Advocate's website. Follow us on Twitter: @lgbtqpod

[A portion of this interview was originally recorded in January 2020.]

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello? Our Eric Thomas. Oh my God. Hi. It's Jeffrey Masters. I'm so glad you picked up.
0:10.8	Oh, hello. Of course. Don't freak out what we are recording. No worries. All my phone calls are recorded as well.
0:15.6	Oh, good. That's great to know. So I wanted to call you because we are about to play the interview that you and I recorded in person
0:22.1	when your memoir HereFor It came out. And I wanted to call and check in because you also have a brand
0:27.8	new book coming out, and that is called The Kings of Beemore. I do, yeah, yeah. I love that we are
0:34.2	able to sort of bridge these two conversations because, you know, Here For It memoir and kings of B more is a YAA novel that feels very much in the
0:41.7	same world it's set in Baltimore but you know because it's fiction anything can
0:45.6	happen and it's just kind of like a romp you know it's inspired by Ferris
0:48.9	Bueller's Day Off and I just really wanted to create something a world where two
0:52.9	black queer 16-year-olds could have a magical day-long adventure.
0:57.3	Right. And so at the heart of the book, the heart of their relationship between the two teenagers you mentioned, it's a friendship. It's not a romance.
1:04.9	Yeah. Why did you want to explore that? Oh, I think platonic love is so important. And I think, you know, as much as we see on-screen depictions of first loves, that's wonderful,
1:15.9	that's great.
1:16.9	I think the way that a lot of us learn about love is by loving our friends.
1:21.5	And for queer people, I think that has been the lifeline for a lot of us. Family of Choice is a huge component of queer life,
1:31.2	and Family of Choice starts with finding one person who is your friend and your introduction
1:38.2	to a larger scene or a larger way of understanding yourself.
1:42.2	I think it's so important to see depictions of friends who love each other, friends who
1:47.6	are like, we have thought through whether we're attracted to each other.
1:51.9	We are not.
1:53.3	And that is fine.
1:54.3	And it is not an issue.
	...

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