The Shop

The Queerly Complex Shop was launched in September 2021 in partnership with my beautiful husband & dear comrade John O'Reilly after more than a decade of dreaming of making something together. Because of COVID, we were able to finally focus on learning how to work together & not just live together. Thanks to our candor, humor, & openness with each other, we found a rhythm & the fun in co-creating what has become this shop.

John's background in music retail & his love of black tees form the backbone of the Queerly Complex Shop. We aim to provide a high quality tee with excellent printing that feels delightful to the touch & fits bigger bodies well. After months of testing different printers, t-shirt types, & pinks & selecting each with care, we felt ready to build out our shop.

Finding the designs was actually the easy part. I have designs galore, and John's quick wit & eye for detail made coming up with our catalog a breeze. We worried at first that we had too many options -- tees, onesies, totes, mugs, zoom backgrounds, profile squares, digital zines. That maybe we should tone it down just a bit. But after sharing our initial site with comrades & hearing from neighbors we did not know, we heard loud & clear that having as much as we did made lots of different weirdos & queerdos feel seen, heard, and like they belonged. It seems others can relate to being Queerly Complex.

Now, the Queerly Complex Shop is more than just a spot for some Queerly Complex designs. It is a home for weirdos & queerdos to find ways to help express their complex emotions & radical beliefs, all with a splash of pink. We believe wearing or broadcasting Queerly Complex designs can help you find your comrades amidst this chaotic & confusing world because boldly proclaiming what you believe & how you feel attracts others who believe the same things or feel the same way. It's how we found each other & it's how we love each other.

And coming this July 7, 2022, we celebrate 15 years of being married. While we are legally married, we got married when it was not legal because we wanted to make a commitment to each other & to our community that we would be loyal, honest, and loving to one another from that day forward. We recognized then, and still do today, that we are not in this struggle or life alone and only with our comrades can our love continue to grow.

The world is a much better place when we are free to be our full, gloriously, queer selves.