Azealia Banks’ album was playing on repeat the night you came back to the apartment after breaking up with that one guy and asked me to dye your hair midnight blue. We had moved on to her deep cuts by the time we realised it looked closer to purple. The afternoon Sylvester and Frankie Knuckles stayed in our kitchen, blessing our collard greens and keeping an eye on the turkey, we didn’t have to say “I don’t want to go home this year” or “they told me not to come” because our apartment was already full of friends, fam, play-cousins and kin. Maybe that was the first time we realised for sure that, blood be damned, we know our family when we feel it, just like we know our music when we hear it. You just have to be there, in the love, to understand. The night I threw myself on the couch and said I just wanted to cry with Meshell Ndegeocello sitting on the other end, you gave me permission to feel my feelings for a while, then put on “Love Is the Message” and said it was time to sway until I felt something other than grief, so we swayed until we twirled. Frank Ocean was our on-again, off-again roommate for months at a time. We’d never know he was coming until he had already arrived. We always found a way to make room for him when he needed us. Who could say “no” to a voice like that? And, thinking back on it, it’s just as likely he arrived when he knew on some level that we were the ones who needed him. That’s just how it is with fam sometimes. Unspoken need honoured by a loved one who shows up. The home-cooked meal you didn’t know you needed until the plate has been licked clean. The tequila shot placed in your hand the moment your nerves wobble. The bright green fur coat placed on your shoulders just when you need someone to remind you that you’re the darkest star alive. —Saeed Jones, award-winning author of How We Fight for Our Lives: A Memoir, a series of vignettes that trace the journey of a Black gay man from the South, available now on Apple Books.