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Warning: Full spoilers for the film follow.

It seems as if Abraham Lincoln is having a bit of a queer renaissance. A few months ago he was the subject of the documentary Lover of Men and, in Lovell Holder’s new film Lavender Men, he is once again center-stage. Adapted from Roger Q. Mason’s play of the same name, the film largely focuses on Taffeta, a Black, nonbinary, queer stage manager who, fed up with the ignorance and carelessness–and sexual violence–of the men around him, indulges a fantasia about Honest Abe, in particular his relationship with his law clerk Elmer (played by Pete Ploszek and Alex Esola, respectively). As the film goes on, however, Taffeta also has to grapple with the elements of their own life and identity that have caused them pain, leading to a remarkable moment of reclamation.

Taffeta is, I think it’s safe to say, a truly terrific hero. They’re sassy and bitchy and deeply flawed, and they view the world, and the men who inhabit it, with a jaundiced eye. It’s for this reason that they are often so searing and bitter about the fact that Abe and Elmer were able to have at least a glimpse of happiness and physical/sexual intimacy, things that Taffeta have always seemed to lack in their own life. They are, after all, nonbinary and Black and fat, three things that are anathema to many queer men when it comes to the objects of their desire, and one of the film’s most haunting moments involves them reflecting on their own friendship with a ruggedly handsome man who, upon learning of Taffeta’s feelings for them, rejected them, relegating to that dreaded friend zone.