If Fin Argus, who stars as Derek in the movie “Stay Awake” (MarVista), now available on VOD, looks familiar to you, you may recognize them from their portrayal of Mingus in Peacock’s 2022 revival of “Queer As Folk.” Depending on how old you are, you may also recognize them from the time they spent as a member of “Kidz Bop.”

Expect love and loss, trauma and madness in Sarah Lyu's "I Will Find You Again".

Based on the autobiographical novel by Makoto Takayama, director and co-screenwriter Daishi Matsunaga’s “Egoist” (Strand) is one of the most original and moving gay movies of the year. Slightly reminiscent of Hong Khaou’s 2014 “Lilting” (starring out actor Ben Whishaw), in which a mother and her son’s lover bond following a calamity, “Egoist” finds the perfect balance between eroticism and emotion.

Here’s a funny, gay, “small world” story. In the 1990s, years before I actually met Raymond Luczak, we were both published in the long-running (1976-1995) gay culture magazine “Christopher Street.” In fact, “Lincoln Avenue,” the short story of mine published in the issue of “Christopher Street” which featured Luczak’s “Notes of a Deaf Gay Poet” article on the cover, would go on to be the titular piece of my short fiction collection published by none other than Luczak’s Squares and Rebels Press in 2014.