win 2 tickets to Janelle Monáe's concert in LA!
happy nonbinary birthday to me! 🥳
6-minute slow read. There is also a recording of this newsletter above for accessibility. Please let me know if you have any other access needs.
Hello to the 649 hotties subscribed to this newsletter!
Today is my 4th nonbinary birthday, and tomorrow is National Coming Out Day! Time to celebrate 🥳🥳
In case you missed it, I’m giving away two free tickets to Janelle Monáe’s The Age of Pleasure concert here in Los Angeles on Wednesday, October 18th.
To win a free pair of tickets, you have to do three things:
Subscribe to this newsletter (if you’re already here, you’re a third of the way there!)
Follow @queerandtranswealth on Instagram
Tag a friend in the comments who you’d bring to the concert
BONUS ENTRY: Share the same Instagram post to your stories
Good luck, hotties! And now… here’s what inspired me to make this giveaway happen…
If you’re one of the OG’s who have been following me since the start, you might remember that I devoted that entire month of February to getting Beyoncé tickets — and it was an epic fail.
I was one of the lucky souls who got an assigned time slot to buy presale tickets, but… everything went wrong.
I ate a very potent edible while chilling in the hot tub, and I missed my time slot. At first, I thought it wasn’t that big of a deal. I asked my friend Dean, who was in the hot tub with me, to record a video of me logging on and buying my tickets, thinking I still had a chance. Boy, was I wrong…
I tried to log into my Ticketmaster account, but I could not remember my password for the life of me. I also realized that my friends and I hadn’t agreed on a budget or which section we wanted to sit for the concert. It didn’t matter because, having narrowly missed getting locked out of my Ticketmaster account, the only tickets left were for Club Renaissance, which were $3,700+ apiece.
I called my mom right after it all went down, and she told me she went through the same thing. She said, and I quote, “I was mad at Beyoncé so I bought tickets to the next show that Ticketmaster recommended.” She now has 2 tickets to see Seinfeld in November.
I shared this whole interaction on Instagram and TikTok back in February, but I realized I hadn’t actually closed the loop on this… I ended up being able to go to the Renaissance World Tour twice, and it was a life-changing experience both times!
I knew that the concert was going to be spiritual for me, but I didn’t expect it to be such a pivotal moment in my transition.
I’m no Beyoncé, but before starting testosterone 3 years ago, I used to be able to match her range. On Renaissance night 1 in Los Angeles, I listened to myself sing an octave lower than the women in our section, and it just felt so right. It was a magical experience singing along to songs that have meant so much to me with 60,000 other people — of different genders, sexuality, politics, etc — who each have their own relationship to that Beyoncé song.
At her birthday show, I listened to my trans voice sing Beyoncé a happy birthday along with 60,000 other people (including THEE Diana Ross!!!!!!). It unearthed a special memory for me: When I was a baby, my mom threw a birthday party for me each month on the 10th until I turned one. Giving and receiving birthday songs is such a love language for me, and singing happy birthday to Beyoncé felt like opening a portal of abundance and love.
Alongside Renaissance, another album I’ve had on repeat this year is “The Age of Pleasure” by Janelle Monáe. While “Renaissance” gave the masses a musical entry into queer culture, “The Age of Pleasure” is an album created for nonbinary hotties, by an iconic nonbinary hottie.
This summer, after a painful layoff, labor uprising, and general terror from anti-trans legislation on the rise across the country, “The Age of Pleasure” helped me gather courage and lean into pleasure as a never-ending source of resistance.
I wanted to go to Janelle Monáe’s concert because I know I need to fill my cup before the 2024 election cycle, where our precious trans lives will be fodder for political debate. We need to energize and align ourselves with the liberation of Palestine from settler colonialism in the years to come. I know that hearing y’all sing along to Janelle Monáe’s discography will be an exercise in joyful solidarity.
And I want all of you, dear hotties, to have the same experience — and hopefully, without all the Ticketmaster drama.
Please tell a friend about the giveaway, especially your trans and nonbinary friends of color! The giveaway ends on Tuesday, October 17, one day before the concert here in LA.
Onward with pleasure <3