[Upbeat theme music plays]

Gabby: On this week’s episode we’re sitting down with one of my favorite Instagram Queer historians, the Gran Varón himself, Louie Ortiz, and we’re talking about the joy in Queer Latinx History

[Arrow sound effect]

Louie: Even in the midst of the AIDS crisis we were still dancing, we were still singing, that’s why I love 80’s music. It is the most joyful of all decades [Gabby: Yes] and we were surviving the assault of crack, we were surviving Reagan, we were surviving severe poverty and we were surviving AIDS, and yet we were still making Dreamboy and Dreamgirl.

[Arrow sound effect]

Gabby: [giggles with joy] Hello I’m Gabby Rivera! I’m your favorite butch Tía, the one who paints her nails black, only wears black t-shirts, has tattoo’s all over her arms but she hugs you like she never wants to let you go. And this is Joy Revolution!

The podcast that asks: How do you prioritize Joy?

[Theme music ends]

Gabby: My next guest is an award winning HIV activist and artist, he is the 2015 winner of the Hispanic Choice Awards for Creative Artist of the Year for his story-telling project: The Gran Varones.

Louie is currently the Senior Program Manager of LGBT health and rights at Advocates for Youth and the creator of Kiki’s with Louie. A Youtube series featuring honest deep conversations about challenging issues Queer youth face.

Oh my Gosh let’s give a big Joy Revolution welcome to Louie Ortiz-Fonseca. Louieee!

Louie: Hey! That is a great great intro, can I have a copy of that so I can play it to myself to sleep?

Gabby: [laughing] Yes!

Louie: And every morning

Gabby: Tell us a little bit about the identities you inhabit like who you are, in your own words, which if any pronouns you’re using today like, the context of that story and who you are definitely will flower up the more our listeners get a sense of who you are.

Louie: Um, I use He/Him pronouns, right, cuz that’s what I feel comfortable with. Don’t necessarily feel as masculine and never attracted- that was never attractive to me, being overly butch. I was always a femme little boy I could not hide that I was gay. Cuz if I said “I have a girlfriend” people would laugh at me. I mean I sound like this now, can you imagine the timbre of my voice at 5 or 13?

[Gabby laughs]

And you know, I’ve always had a beard and I think, you know, also we grew up- my family is Afro-latina so we grew up very black, right? I didn’t grow up watching Sabado Gigante, we didn’t grow up bilingual, I found out who Selena was the day that she died. Even though- like those things just weren’t part of our upbringing. Like, I didn’t get into freestyle music until long after radio decided that it wasn’t a thing.

Gabby: [giggling] Well, welcome

Louie: Which is by default anti-black and there’s a cool thread on Gran Varones about it.

Gabby: We’re gonna talk about that too, that’s one of my favorite threads of all time. Yes, yes yes yes

Louie: So I think that, you know, and I was a 7th grade drop out and my mother and father struggled with addiction. My father passed away when I was about 19 from complications of AIDS, so I think that going into spaces even to work in professional spaces, I always struggled, right? I struggled with code switching and I think part of that was how I showed up in a way that I think my coworkers saw me very guarded.

But also very full of love and fighting. So I think that I equated fighting to joy and fighting to self-expression of love. And while that can be a manifestation of joy and love it can’t be the only manifestation of it. I think that joy is unlimited and I think that I was living very limited that way. So I think that’s how I moved in a space if that gives it more context.

Gabby: I mean it does, like you just opened up a whole world of conversation, like. Let’s talk Gran Varones. Let’s talk Gran Varones because there are so many moments since you developed that project that I have just stopped whatever I was doing and been present in the history that you’re sharing.

And if I didn’t have a physical memory in my body stop me, then I felt like I had an ancestral memory stop me. Because you’ve written about, you’ve posted about Pedro Zamora who was one of the first Latino men living with HIV that I ever saw, that the nation ever saw on television and Gran Varones is just this incredible project and Louie can you speak on that? On gran Varones?

The impetus, the origin of it, the root of it for you and what it is.

Louie: Well, it’s a story-telling project that amplifies the stories of Queer, Trans, Bi, and Gay Latinx and Afro-latinx men. And also, tells the story of Queer history, pop culture but also AIDS History. And it started in Philly because Philly-  I love Philly, shut out to Philly, my hometown. I can’t believe I’m saying it, I always imagined, [Gabby: Hi Philly! You cute Philly!] if I would ever move out of Philly and say that’s my hometown, allas here we are.

But about five years ago- a little over five years ago, you know Philly is a major city, beautiful city but it’s also very racially segregated. And I just saw varones on the block who just never left, right? You know Boricuas and Dominicanos who were on the block being Queer as hell but didn’t partake or participate in the mainstream gay culture, right? And because they didn’t those stories were left out.

And it was like “Well how can we”- me and my best friend Anthony who had just moved to the city and was searching for a space too, well we know they’re out there so “how can we create a space that we can tell their stories. I had no idea what storytelling was. I did not know it was a thing. I just knew that we could do it with pictures because I had just, I was obsessed with Instagram. So that was the connection. And it just basically grew from there.

I had never anticipated that asking 10 people to participate in the project would lead to me talking about it 5 years later on a Podcast with you, like that wasn’t even in our trajectory, it was just like; we just wanted to create a digital space. And our hope was that we’d get 100 people to like the page. Just 100 right? [Gabby: That’d be cool] Like that’d be cool, right? And then when we started sharing the stories and sharing the videos we would get emails from people in Jersey or Delaware. Cuz it was just supposed to be Philly

Gabby: So this was, just to be extra clear, these are pictures of like you said LGBTQ Afro-boricua men of a particular time period or how did you select?

Louie: We selected- well I [chuckles] the selection, because I didn’t have a lot of Latinx friends, right? So I had to go on Facebook and like, look at people who, like it was Rodriguez, Gonzalez, and if they had a rainbow flag I would request them on Facebook.

Gabby: Okay

Louie: So it was like, learning to build-

Gabby: That stealth network that we have to build sometimes

Louie: and also, again, this is 5 years ago and 5 years ago to tell someone you know, Queer Latino, Gay man from north Philly who’s never been asked to tell his story, to ask him as a stranger “Can I take your picture and share your story online?” sounds mad creepy, right?

Now it sounds like “wow that’s so beautiful” 5 years ago that was like wha- I don’t even know you, right? So, we had to be really intentional about building those relationships and sometimes congratulating them on graduations. Or showing up to parties or events that they had. So it was showing up in their world before we asked them to show up in ours [Gabby: right]. Cuz again-

Gabby: You gotta meet people where they are, you gotta build trust.

Louie: Yes, so the reason why we take pictures is because when I was growing up I would always have older women tell me “Oh my God you remind me of my uncle but he passed away” And of course the subtext of that is: He passed away from HIV.

Gabby: Yes

Louie: So it was like “You remind me of him, you’re funny like him, you’re courageous like him, you’re stylish like him, you’re handsome like him”

[Gabby laughs]

But no one had pictures of these men!

Gabby: Yeah, wow damn

Louie: So it was like, when we do this we have to have a picture, we have to visually document that these [Gabby: that you were here] gay men existed.

So that if anything, they’re not just stories. And not that stories are not enough, it’s that we have a visual representation of it. And again, this is 5 years ago, now everyone takes pictures. But I grew up- I have like 3 pictures of what i looked like between my birth and 16 years old. [Gabby: right] so that is who we- that is what we take pictures of people. And it’s really of anybody who wants to participate in the project. It is not a what do you call that… not idol but a “role-model” project. It’s not about stories that inspire-

Gabby: Are gonna make you feel like” look at these magical queers saving the world”

Louie: “I was a high school dropout and now I have a masters degree” it’s not about that.

Those stories can be that but it can also be like “I live with my grandmother and I work part time” and that’s it. Those stories need to be heard just as well.

So that is like, the impetus of Gran Varones. But of course, over the past 5 years we’ve broadened that to include stories from the past. People can submit stories about someone who passed

Gabby: I mean listen, we went through a genocide right? Especially of black and Latino, Afrolatino men from the AIDS virus. Even just watching season 2 of POSE let’s say you’re young or whatever. Knowing, right- I knew about the AIDS crisis, I grew up in the AIDS crisis, lost relatives to all of that. The same uncles, Tías making quilt pieces for the AIDS quilt to remember cousin Jose and all this stuff. And still, never knowing that they buried us in droves in unmarked graves.

Louie: I mean how could we know. When it’s all that is happening… there’s no way to understand the gravity. Every time I do something around a historical piece, the gravity always hits me every time. Every time.

Gabby: It is astonishing. I mean and not that- cuz I don’t recognize the violence of a white supremacist culture it is just astonishing in the way that it can be done so deftly and right in front of our faces.

And when I saw that I was like: look how they erased us, look how they buried us without a thought. And so when you’re doing a project like the Gran Varones, to me that is almost like you saying: No no no, we’re gonna uncover this and we’re gonna take you and your bones and your body out and we are gonna name you and remember that you were here.

And that, what work, what salvation you are offering to folks Louie!

Louie: Wow, thank you… [Gabby laughs] I will need you to do my press for me.

Um, you know again I think- and I know we do that, we do that at parties, we do that at baby showers when we’re remembering folks that we lost to gun violence. Or folks that we’ve lost to intimate partner violence. So this is part of who we are, this is part of our culture, this is part of our storytelling, this is how we remember our ancestors.

And I grew up with that. I grew up knowing about relatives that I had never met, or hearing my mother talk about her friends. That it was taught me, when I think back how to tell these stories.

You know it’s only in the past year that I get wow’d how critical doing this work is because there is a space for people to read at, it is a space where people, to know that these people existed and for these names to exist. And I’m just glad to- I’m humbled to be able to use the small part of this universe that I have to amplify that.

Gabby: Yes. Did you find joy in the sharing of peoples stories? And then also in the sharing of our histories, right? Because a lot of times our histories are these very sad stories right? Literally even just talking about AIDS, there is not a happy ending here my friends. Like, this is a trauma, a tragedy, a genocide. But I know in my heart that where there is us there is always Joy.

So were there any moments where you were like: Yes, this!

Louie: I think that’s every time I share a story that is around the history of AIDS or Queer and Black- Queer and Trans folks from the past. Cuz I don’t frame it in a way that’s completely sad. I don’t hide anything but I don’t just frame it there because like you said, I know that there was joy there.

Even in the midst of the AIDS crisis we were still dancing, we were still singing, that’s why I love 80’s music. It is the most joyful of all decades and we were surviving the assault of crack, we were surviving Reagan, we were surviving severe poverty and we were surviving AIDS, and yet we were still making Dreamboy and Dreamgirl.

Gabby:  [giggling] Yes

Louie: You know what I mean? We were still, had synthy, poppy-

Gabby: [singing Diamond Girl by Nice and Wild] You’re my Diamond girl, yes yes

Louie: For real! So I know that we had joy and I think that when we tell our history I try to remember that. We can feel the pain, we can honor the tragedy, we can honor the trauma but also in that was complete joy and celebration of ourselves and each other.

And I think that is something that is a tradition that we’re still doing. Like, even now talking about joy in these times you know, not to be corny but it is a revolutionary act. And like you have to-

Gabby: Yeah I’m fighting for myself here we are fighting for us so that we know that we are more than the measure of our misery, you know? that we are abundant, joyful humans and we deserve, right here, right now to own that. And not own it like they own it but to embody it, right?

Louie: Yeah and to carve out a space for it even when we’re tired or going back to, going back to Gran Varones, there are times when I can’t carve out that space but there are people who have participated in the project that do that for me or do that for others.

That’s why it is not a project that people submit their stories to, they can submit a throwback photo and tell a story about the photo. But generally I meet and photograph people in person. Cuz that’s important for me to build that connection.

Does that limit the amount of stories we get? Yes. Is it a funded project that allows me to travel the country? No. [Gabby: Not yet] But I think that- not yet- but I think that because people feel that the project is authentic, I think people connect to it and make home for me in every city that I go to and that always blows my mind.

Gabby: It, I mean, it is a gift it is like love in its purest form. You know, we’re talking about joy and I’m curious, I think there’s one piece that I definitely also wanna touch on with you and that is the- your fatherhood, that you share so openly and willingly.

And it connects to all that stuff that we’re talking about when it comes to identity right? Like, if you said Afrolatinx, I feel like I don’t see a lot of queer Afrolatinx fathers like black men fathers being so visible and incredible and joyful and open and out in the world. And that is just something that like… feels like it is both existing in this current reality and something that also pushes forward new realities.

So I was wondering if you would be, if you’re down to talk a little bit about your family your fatherhood and why you decided to share that with all of us.

Louie: Um, you know I grew up without a father and I grew up with, we didn’t have that in our household. Our family is very matriarch- that’s the word right?

Gabby: Yeah, matriarchal

Louie: Yeah, so like, I had my aunts, so I’ve always- that’s what I had I always loved strong women. I grew up loving Wonder Woman, grew up loving Rizzo from Grease. It was like, women who broke the rules, right?

And then I would always- I couldn’t understand when I would watch shows  and I would watch other young boys who were yearning for a father. I never had that yearning. I never wanted to learn to play catch,[Gabby Laughs]  I never- you know what I mean?

I don’t judge that yearning. I think I got it fulfilled by the women in my life. So when I became a father I think that’s when I started to examine that. Like, why didn’t I? Or was it part cuz it was fulfilled? Yes, it was. Or was it like, I wasn’t going to get it so why even make room for the possibility of hope that you would get it.

Why set yourself up for disappointment? Right? I never wanted a mansion but I don’t know if it’s because I never wanted it or because I was like “I know I’m not gonna get it so why would I even want it?”

Gabby: Right, to even dare to hope sometime

Louie: Right, so when I became a father and then discovered Instagram, part of it was like making it real for me. It wasn’t necessarily cuz I didn’t get the implications.

I get the implications of social media now the messaging. But when I started Instagram that conversation wasn’t as amplified as it is now. Like, how can one post communicate so much. Before it was just the picture.

So I think I just shared it because it was part of my life. I was still trying to figure out what that identity was, what it meant for me, and also healing my relationship to fatherhood. I did not know how to be a father cuz I didn’t have that model to emulate.

It was like, so how do I celebrate Christmas? Cuz we didn’t celebrate Christmas. How do I celebrate, make a big thing about birthdays. How do I learn to play blocks and Legos with my son when I never did that even for myself as a kid. So part of it was just making it real and it feeling, and I think documenting it wasn’t conscious, it was just like you know-

Gabby: You’re gonna live this, yeah

Louie: Yeah and now it has major implications now but certainly I was just trying to figure it all out. And trying to be honest at the same time about it.

Gabby: Right, and it’s almost like sometimes if you don’t- like for me it’s like I have felt like I’ve never seen myself anywhere but in my own mirror. Or in my neighborhood where the other like, studs on the block, you know what I’m saying?

Louie: Yeah yeah

Gabby: Whatever it is right? But in this big picture…

[Laughter]

Louie: No cuz I’m just thinking about my aunt who always lived with her roomate

Gabby: Yo! This is why I’m always so shocked-

Louie: “Is Mari bringing Cookie over again? They’ve been living together for a long time” Yeah.

Gabby: I’m always so shocked when people are so weird about LGBTQ folks cuz I’m like everyone has either a gay cousin or a butch Tía. You cannot tell me. There are so many Boricua women with shaved heads

Louie: Yes. Yes!

Gabby: [Laughing] Gold hoops goddamnit but a shaved, a shape up one mole right here and she’s changing the tire. And you’re mad that I’m gay

[Gabby and Louie laugh]

Louie: Yes yes! That’s facts, facts are facts. Facts are facts.

Gabby: Facts are facts! Okay listen so, all of that joy and energy you’re bringing in leads right into Kiki’s with Louie. Like, this is a generational healing that you are offering at various stages. Like this is cleansing work that you’re doing. So talk to me about Kiki’s with Louie and the energy that- and what you’re intentionally offering Queer kids of color with that series.

Louie: You know, I have Gran Varones and for my professional gig we were just thinking about a new way to meet youth where they are. And my son who is 16 only exists on YouTube. Like, he plays music from Youtube, and I’ve reached that point where a lot of times I’m like: Who is that and what the hell are they saying?

And Gran Varones doesn’t exist on YouTube right? So Kiki’s was an opportunity for me to exist there but also to meet young queer folks where they are. Yeah there are a lot of young queer folks who are on Instagram, and Twitter but they’re all on YouTube. Which is why now Billboard counts YouTube spins towards the Hot 100.

So that is kinda how Kiki was developed and my only stipulation was that it had to center Queer and Trans youth of color and that it had to center Queer and Trans youth of color. This was the audience and the show had to interview and center these people’s experiences. Not just through the lens of influencers because we did interview Mj Rodriguez um-

Gabby: Shangela!

Louie: Yeah so like, those people are amazing and a lot of our young people follow them, but it was also when we travel to each city, we did 7 cities, it was like we had to interview and influencer and also at least 3-4 young people from that city. And those were the interviews that I loved the most right, because they- I learned something from them. I’m kinda like their older gay uncle or that Tía that they get to talk to.

Gabby: Oh my God we’re the same person [Laughs]

Louie: And also it was an entry into a kind of hope and unapologetic vision that I don’t necessarily get with adults.

Gabby: Yes, a billion percent

Louie: So we talk about- I think that for me when I’m with adults we talk about what’s wrong and what needs to change. When I’m with young people they talk about the world that they are creating

Gabby: Yes, yes!

Louie: Kiki’s with Louie, I’m the namesake but the magic and what drives it is the young people. I’m just the facilitator, right?

Gabby: The conduit

Louie: And we’ve gotten some great feedback and when I’m talking to adults as a parent I’m like “Watch the show” because it also models how to have that conversation with young people.

It’s not always easy, it’s not always comfortable, it’s sometimes awkward to hear something and not offer unsolicited advice. So I think that it provides that kind of model. So I think that, you know, young people can get something out of it but also adults. And my son loves it and he generally doesn’t like anything that I do.

Gabby: [Laughing] That’s when you know you’re doing everything right, right?

Louie: When he’s 16 he’s not supposed to

Gabby: He is so not supposed to, you know-

To the young queer kids of color that are listening, right? What do you want to offer them in terms of prioritizing their own joy. Cuz I never had that conversation with anybody. I never felt like my joy existed or mattered because I grew up religious so joy was like a God thing or joy was like… corny or something. But no one ever told me to prioritize that you know?

Louie: I would just say all of the weird things you’re doing now or that people think are weird or make you think that are weird are all of your entry points into joy.

Gabby: [Exclaims in Joy] Louie! Wait wait wait say that one more time please!

Louie: All of the weird things, those are the entry points to your joy. So, if you are into anime, drawing anime, doing fanfiction. It may be just something that you do to occupy your time or to escape the world. It may not always make you feel happy in the way that we see happy demonstrated in TV. Like, always with a smile and jumping up and down, right?

Gabby: Right because you’re worried about who’s looking at you, you’re self-conscious. Am I too gay? What if my mother sees me? What if they come home early from work? There is like this coffin of fear sometimes that you’re trapped in.

You’re trapped inside yourself and it is so true what you said about all the weird stuff right? That people used to ostracize you, turning into the things that make you magnificent.

Louie: So, you know, all the things that you do that you love, and that you’re ashamed of, trust me those are joyful things and those will be all the things that will make you a magnificent adult when you get older.

So stay weird is what I would tell them.

Gabby: [Giggling] Yeah stay weird, stay weird. Now, listen, this next question Louie, like, I think this is one of the most important questions I’ve ever asked on Joy Revolution.

[takes a deep breath]

Louie: Take your time

Gabby: I know…

Louie: Safe space

Gabby: Can you talk to us about how impactful Mariah Carey has been in your Joy revolution.

Louie: Let me tell you [Gabby laughs] I’m so glad you asked the question cuz I’ve been waiting to tell y’all, you know. I can remember the first time I heard Mariah Carey’s voice was on Sunday night in June of 1990 on a radio show called Future Hits. And it was a radio show that came on Sunday nights at 11:00 o’clock that would play songs that they predicted would be major hits.

And it was Vision of Love

Gabby: Yes!

Louie: And I knew right then and there that I had found a kind of God. Um, but I think that generally I do, It is kind of campy that I say that I worship her but some of it is not untrue-

Gabby: I was gonna say, speak no lies like, worship Mariah

Louie: I think that she has been unapologetically femme and I think that was cool, and I think that’s why people thought that she was wacky or something to not be taken seriously-

Gabby: Oh my God, I’m in Mariah school

Louie: right? And I think that even when we talk about giving up everything to be who you are. There was white Mariah before Butterfly and she gave us Butterfly and stayed R&B. Even to, what someone would say, to the detriment of record sales. She has never reverted, she’s always like: This is who I am.

And then even during Glitter, how there was this effort, this joy in watching her fall. It’s so weird that while R. Kelly was terrorizing young women that the media was like “Aha, her career is over cuz she’s hospitalized” It’s so odd to think that in 2019 but that was the conversation in 2000 when she had done nothing wrong or problematic but it was like “Oh, it turns out that she’s insane, her career is over”

And even then, has never blamed anyone. Even then has persevered. And even then has smiled and continued to be herself. So I think that’s why I love her, I love her catalog. I think that if people- you know one of my favorite songs is “Close your Eyes”, on Butterfly, I invite everyone to listen to that. Because it tells a story of a young person who grew up knowing too much but still being hopeful and still looking at the orange-y clouds go by and knowing that there was something on the other side of that.

So I think that the people who think that Mariah is wacky are people who don’t get what joy looks like. Who don’t get what unapologetic joy looks like. And I think that’s why, I think she’s cool again but there were years when people just didn’t get it, right?

Gabby: For sure, and people enjoyed kicking her when she was down and people enjoyed mocking her and like-

Louie: You can watch a video 2019 and watch- you can watch an interview in 2019 and watch an interview in 2010 and you’ll get the same Mariah

Gabby: Yes you will, yes

Louie: And that is not-

Gabby: same side too!

Louie: If that is not joy, if that is not discovering who you are in a world that tells you that you have to be something else, I don’t know what is. And that is why I worship at the [Gabby: altar] altar of Mariah Carey.

Gabby: [sigh] I am sitting in the pew and I’m here speaking in tongues and I’m putting my 20 dollars in the little basket that you’re passing around because I too am a worshiper of Mariah.

I think you’ve expanded that or me, like… I mean to me she was my first concert in 1994 and like, she was this awakening in a sense because I’d never heard a voice like that and I think I was maybe a little bit in love with her. And also… there was just this like, she reminded me of family right?

She reminded me of a lot of the girls that I knew that could really sing. And there she was. And like you said, when she got free of- him who shall not be named, she was like “No I’m here, I’ve always been here”. We’re gonna make songs with De Brat and Snoop Dogg and Puff Daddy and look at me in my heels and you can’t touch me.

Ah, Mariah if you’re listening, and I know you are, I know you are because we are summoning you

Louie: Yes!

Gabby: We are summoning you here. Louie, when Mariah is a guest on Joy Revolution I will be bringing you back [Louie: I will be here] and that will be your interview to conduct, you know as I am sitting on her lap, you may  conduct that interview. When she’s done singing to me [Louie: yes] you get what I’m trying to say-

[Gabby and Louie laugh]

Louie: yeah I get it, I- we gotta paint our future, honey!

Gabby: I think Louie, are you ready to kind of play a game with me?

Louie: I am

Gabby: Yeah, it’s game time okay?

 

[Spacey transition music]

Gabby: We are getting into what we call here…

[“Lightning Joy” sound effect]

Louie you’re gonna have 30 seconds to answer as many questions about joy as I throw at you, okay. Kat Lazo, how we doing on that timer?

Kat: 30 Seconds on the clock!

Gabby: And… Lightning Joy! Louie, what does joy keep in her clutch?

Louie: What does joy keep in her clutch?

Gabby: Her bag

Louie: Umm… a Iphone charger- external Iphone charger

Gabby: What does Joy eat for brunch?

Louie: Pancakes with strawberries and bananas

Gabby: What does Joy sound like?

Louie: Joy sounds like Mariah Carey during the Daydream era

Gabby: What is Joy’s favorite Mariah song?

Louie: Oh my God! Close my Eyes!

Gabby: What famous Queer does Joy have a crush on?

Louie: [Deep breath]

Gabby: Gabby Rivera!

Louie: [Laughs] Yes, Yes! I felt the pressure, that’s real!

Gabby: That’s what we do here, we get you all calm and then we make sure you leave stressed out!

Louie: Now I know what people feel like on the last round of Wheel of Fortune

[Theme music begins]

Gabby: Louie oh my goodness thank you so much for [Louie: thank you!] being here. I wanna let you know that this project is me sometimes feeling like I don’t have any joy, that I’m not sure how to hold on and feeling crushed again by the weight of the world. And I knew and I hope that if maybe I’m just in community with folks that are people of color that are Queer and Trans, maybe when we talk together, some of that joy can rebuild and nourish and grow and so, I feel that and I thank you and I honor you and I’m giving you a big joy revolution hug and love, thank you for being with us today.

Louie: Thank you, I needed this, I needed this, thank you

Gabby: Yeah, Oh my gosh I know you out there listening you are in love with Louie you’re like, please tell me all about Louie! And if you are that person, follow Louie on Instagram @Lou_rock, you can also find The Gran Varones on Instagram @GranVarones, and you can find Kiki’s with Louie on YouTube via Advocates for Youth, anything else Louie? Sound good?

Louie: No that sounds good!

Gabby: All right everybody that’s it for this week’s episode. As always a big big mega thank you to the Joy Revolution family that would be audio god Marcella Carvajal, Yulissa Contreras, Studio Manager, Music genius Angelica M Rodriguez and Producer of my heart Kat Lazo.

I’m your host Gabby Rivera you can follow me on Instagram and Twitter @quirkyrican and if you haven’t already, remember to jump on the joy ride and subscribe to Joy Revolution! The podcast that asks: How do you prioritize joy? Because we were meant to thrive not just survive.

[Gabby and Louie make air horn sounds]

Louie: [jokingly] yeah and follow me on PornHub!

[Laughter]

[Outro music]