Stasis is something that has marked my life since I was a boy growing up in Pittsburgh with my mother. It was the natural state that we existed in. For one thing, she suffered from a debilitating depression throughout my childhood, and depression is nothing if not static.

There was something so immensely redemptive and exciting for me to imagine that my unknown father was not just a man who had abandoned me but a noble man of adventure who had no choice.

I need to feel as if everything is clean and in its proper place before I can even attempt to write one word. At least, that's what I tell myself. I make the bed, I put away the dishes, maybe I dust, maybe I do the laundry, maybe I go to the post office.

While writing my memoir, 'When Skateboards Will Be Free,' I would sometimes have to pore over hours of microfilm at the New York Public Library in order to try to get one obscure detail right. For instance, was the Socialist Workers Party originally called the American Workers Party or the Workers Party of the United States?

I wasn't rebellious. Other friends had far stricter parents and where there wasn't a relationship of respect and communication, they were usually the opposite; kids go to the other extreme.

With '2 Dope Queens,' we get the opportunity to love and enjoy each other and have fun being best friends and being women of color and talking about our personal experience. Also, we give an opportunity to elevate voices for many different people that otherwise would not get such a large platform.

People can undergo a sudden change of thinking and loyalties under threat of death or intense social pressure and isolation from friends and family.

I grew up with artists and drag queens. These were just my neighbors and friends and the people who are raising me.