Brian Sims

🏈🏳️‍🌈I’M FROM DRIFTWOOD👶🏼🏈Well…apparently there was a time when I looked impossibly young. Baby face aside, this I'm From Driftwood flashback stirs something much deeper than nostalgia.

Long before most of us had platforms, or audiences, or any real sense that our stories deserved to be told, Nathan Manske built something remarkable: a sanctuary where LGBTQ+ people could share our truths, preserve our histories, and remind one another that we have never been as alone as the world wanted us to believe.

I am profoundly proud to be even a small part of that legacy.

Storytelling has always been one of our community’s most powerful acts of resistance and resilience. Nathan’s vision ensured that voices which might otherwise have been lost to time, to silence, to shame were instead seen, heard, and remembered.

So yes, go ahead and enjoy the throwback. The baby face was apparently real.

But what I’m sitting with today is gratitude: for Nathan, for I’m From Driftwood, and for the enduring, defiant power of q***r storytelling.