Leo Herrera x Adam's Nest
As a small queer-owned business, we are always on the lookout for new collaboration opportunities. We've been following Leo's work for some time and often read it and immediately think: this belongs on a shirt. His is the kind of writing that deserves to travel — to be seen on the street, on the beach, in a bar, at a protest. Writing that earns its place in the world beyond the page.
Leo Herrera is that writer.
Leo is a Mexican writer, artist, and activist based in New Orleans whose work centers on queer life — its politics, humor, grief, tenderness, and defiance. He is the director of Fathers, a sci-fi documentary that imagines the AIDS pandemic never happened. His viral essay posts on Instagram have been shared by millions. His words have shown up on protest signs. His books — Post, Sentences, and Analog Cruising: A Manual — are the kind of queer literary artifacts that deserve permanent shelf space.
How We Met
We first crossed paths with Leo in 2016, when we participated in Jordan Eagles' Blood Mirror — a protest piece in which 50 PrEP advocates donated blood to challenge the FDA's discriminatory deferral policy on gay and bisexual men. Leo was not only a participant, but he filmed and documented the day of donations. It was the kind of event that puts the right people in the same room.
Over the summers since, we've regularly crossed paths in Provincetown, followed his work closely, and watched his reach grow. His films, his writing, his Instagram posts — all rooted in the same thing: a deep, unsentimental care for queer community and history.
Cheers to Growing Up Gay
A few years ago, while on a men's retreat, we bought three of Leo's Instagram posts as wall pieces; this season the posts are on display in the shop. One of them in particular stopped us. We thought: this could be a shirt. That instinct became our first collaboration back in 2024; the "Cheers to Growing Up Gay" tee.
This piece opens with a toast and then takes you through everything: the limp wrists visible in childhood photos, the slurs picked up and made our own, the same-sex kiss on TV the camera always panned away from, the humor so acerbic it can melt chrome, and the unmistakable softness that was never the liability the world tried to make it.
It ends where it begins. Cheers to our unmistakable softness.
Our instinct was right to put this on a t-shirt. As Leo's post went viral people started creating posts reciting "unmistakable softness" alongside pics from their own childhoods. Below is just one example from Spencer West.
In 2023, the New York City Gay Men's Chorus performed a choral arrangement of this piece at their Winter Concert. Watch it — it will wreck you in the best possible way.
This summer, Adam's Nest has brought back the "Cheers to growing up gay" tee and added other tees and an assortment of "(analog) cruising" hats. Each item features a specific passage or words that felt too good to leave only on paper.
Gumballs — from Post
"I love the word Queer. Heavy, like a shooter marble."
"Gumballs" is a poem about a word — specifically, the word Queer. Leo moves through it like candy: a jawbreaker, taffy that stretches and rips when it hasn't been earned, a spitball from a moving car, a paper airplane that soars when used as a noun. It's a love letter and a dare and a meditation on reclamation, all in the space of a page.
It comes from Post, Leo's debut collection of essays, poems, and dispatches that began as social media posts during 2020 and became something people held onto through some very hard years.
The Gumballs tee is available in black fitted, black muscle tank, and lilac unisex.
Click on the image below to listen and view Leo's recitation of his "Gumballs" poem
Angry Queers — from Sentences
"Angry queers are the reason we have anything. Our humor is a weapon and our cackle is a rescue flare, see how fast we go from dancing to kicking and screaming."
This one hit us immediately. From Leo's poetry collection Sentences — forty-plus poems written between 2020 and 2025 — this passage says plainly what most people feel but rarely see written down with this much speed and precision. The fury and the joy, inseparable. The dance floor and the frontline, separated by nothing but a moment.
The Angry Queers tee is available in black fitted and berry unisex.
(analog) CRUISING — Hats
(analog) CRUISING is the title of Leo's self-published cruising manual — a celebration of queer connection in physical space, a field guide for a practice as old as queerness itself. No apps. No algorithms. Just presence, attention, and the particular electricity of being seen.
We put the title on hats. A lot of hats. Because it belongs somewhere people can read it.
If you know, you know. And if you don't — go read the manual.
All four collaborations are available now in-store at Adam's Nest in Provincetown and online. Pick up Leo's books at iftheylived.com.
