I did a new thing a couple of weeks ago, and am really excited about it. Forward-thinking minds here at the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette decided to take a chance and give me the green light to start a vodcast, which is like a podcast, but one you can also watch if you want to. So after tons of preparation, I headed to the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette office to record it in their studio.

I had decided I wanted my first episode to be personal, rather than political or educational or any of the other things I concern myself with in my columns. So I asked my childhood best friend, who now lives in Dallas, if he would be my first guest via Zoom and talk about what it was like to grow up gay in Ozark, Ark., in the 1980s. He said he would not. Instead, he paid another doctor to cover for him for two days and drove here to be with me in person. It is this type of response that tells you, more than any other words ever could, the kind of friend he is to me.

I cannot remember us ever not being friends. Our parents were teachers and we both went through Ozark public schools in the same class from kindergarten through graduation. We got into trouble together trying to fill a water balloon in the sink in our third-grade........

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