My name is Crush. I’m from Dallas. 

I grew up in a fairly intensely religious household and did not see queerness anywhere around me. I eventually got to high school where I had my first encounter with another queer woman. 

Once I got to college, it was sort of a, Well, nobody knows me here and I can be whoever I want to be here. At this point in college, obviously, I know that there’s an attraction, there’s a very strong attraction to women. 

Had some relationships, some good times and some, some, some heartbreaks. So there’s one particular heartbreak that sort of was a catalyst to push me into where I am now. And it wasn’t the heartbreak itself, it was what I did after the heartbreak to heal.

Amongst a multitude of things, one of the things that I started doing was saying, I’m gonna take myself out on a date at least once a week. Nobody else. Just me. I’m going to go into a space. Some of those dates were oh, Sunday at the movies by myself. Loved that. Some of the other things were, like, find a random concert at the House of Blues. Loved that. 

The main thing that happened was I found Dallas Poetry Slam and I started going to Dallas Poetry Slam every Friday. They had events and I had never seen poetry in a way that was so intense. Come to find out, you know, these poets are competing all around the nation and winning titles and those sort of things.

So I was so enthralled by that. I was so drawn in. So, I started to write a little bit myself and eventually I got the notion like, Oh, I’m gonna go on stage. I’m going to go on stage and… as soon as I said that out loud and I shared it with a few of my friends… I said, “Hey, I’m going to go on stage on Friday, you know, if you all want to come out, whatever…” 

It’s the night of the show, and my friends are there to support me, which is awesome. But now I’m like really nervous. So probably four shots and two drinks in, they call my name. And I go on stage and I’m shaking, and – but I read the poem and the energy and the applause… the applause that I got after the poem, I was like, Whoa, this is, this is incredible. 

Six months later, they have a slam off where poets in the city can compete to be on the Poetry Slam team for the next year. The first time I tried out for the team, I make it. I’m probably like… 33 at the time. We’re together… the team is together like five or six times out of the night – out of the week. There’s all these things that go into it. So like that is now my life. There’s nothing else happening. I go to work. I talk to my friends sometimes, but usually I’m with the poetry team. 

So we compete, we start traveling around the nation and competing. As I continue to do this and perform, I started to grow a following. And my coach, the Dallas Poetry Slam coach at the time, she says, “Hey, I wanna take one of these Fridays that we do our events and make a queer open mic, and I want you to host. Figure out a name for the show, right?” And so I think on it for a couple of days, and I have a poem and there’s a line in it that says, “Sexuality is fluid. Swallow it.” So I said, Oh, Fluid Fridays. That’s it.

“Sexuality is fluid. Swallow it.”

So that was… that was the start of Fluid Fridays. We actually started at the beginning of COVID, so while everything was shut down, we started the first show in the parking lot of the venue where we used to do every Friday shows. And instead of the audience watching us perform inside on a stage, they’re in their cars in the parking lot and instead of snapping, right, or clapping, they’re now just honking their horns when they hear things they like.

As I continued to grow that, and I mean it was a grind to grow that, the support system in the community was incredible and the people that came out consistently and consistently told me how much they needed this space was overwhelming, but it was so beautiful. And I’m like I know that this is more than an open mic now. It’s a space where the queer people can express themselves safely and be met with love and support.

I didn’t have these spaces or see these spaces when I was younger. I literally had no idea what queerness was. I’m incredibly proud of Fluid Fridays. I’m incredibly proud of the community that I’ve created and super humbled by the people that have helped. And the people that continue to show up for me and for the community.