Catherine Gigante-Brown

I sat obediently in her chair atop four ancient copies of the Yellow Pages. Crossing my fingers, I prayed Catholic schoolgirl prayers.

erotic. intimate. unapologetic.

sex sage. fetish specialist. author.

I realized my father was from a generation that never said those three little words. He was saying he loved me without them. But I didn't realize it then.

I try. I really do. But whenever I attempt to embrace my husband Peter’s Cuban culture, I always screw up.

The Ultimate Counter Culture Diva

BCBs are loud and proud and refuse to go down easy. And quietly. We have things to say. We have things to teach. We still have life to live. And damn it, we are and we will. With one breast. With no breasts. With reconstruction surgery.

I was 21 –– a Catholic, heterosexual college student, living at home in Brooklyn and still trying to discover who I was. At the crossroads of her life, Lorde knew exactly who she was. She was waging a war against cancer and sharing an old house in Staten Island with her kids and partner. But maybe we weren’t so different after all.

“It’s almost as though this niche was patiently waiting for us to find it.”

"Sometimes David wore his hair spiked like a cockscomb. Others, he wore it feathery like a baby chick. He wore his Mohawk to summer camp (exchanging encouraging head chucks with another older camper who sported one, too) and even to Vacation Bible School—no judgment there."