Thoughts from a queer Midwestern teen in love about the DnP Vday video
When I was 13 I shipped Dan and Phil. Hard. Even though they were already out when I found them and I knew Dan’s story, I was too young to truly understand the fear and anxiety he felt surrounding his identity. I never will understand fully even now, but at nearly nineteen years old, I feel it.
I heard about the video from a Pinterest comment. I didn’t know much about it except that it “proved phan” which I highly doubted would be any different from the loosely strung together proof I had seen. Seeing as that loose proof was really all I needed anyway, I decided to watch the video even though I didn’t really believe it would change much.
The video is jarringly personal and even at the time, having never really dated anyone, I could tell that something was wrong. I wasn’t supposed to be seeing this and not just because it was “the forbidden video”. No, there was something in the visible relaxation in Phil’s voice, yet the nervousness in his “I love you”s that tipped me off.
Over the next years the video would live in the back of my head. I couldn’t make it leave.
Throughout high school I watched as the world around me turned violent. There was grace for a child who “didn’t know what they were doing”, but not for a senior who “should know better”.
Being gay started to scare me. Finding out I was trans was even scarier.
At 17 I fell in love with a boy just like me who had been my friend for years. Since we got together there has been an understanding not to share too much to strangers. To post each other as vaguely as possible online. In private we are intertwined and the love in our eyes is visible, but when we are out there is nothing more than a small shoulder bump and a smaller smile.
We are still together as I turn nineteen. We are scared. We are surrounded in a land locked state painted red. While I live in a blue county, next year he won’t be so lucky and I will become his favorite secret. A friend to most, a lover to a quiet few.
I rewatched the video. In some ways I wish I didn’t, but I knew I needed to. I understood the video in a different light. I felt a fraction of the horror and embarrassment they must have felt when YouTube glitched, making it public. Tears streamed down my face as Phil described a relationship not that far from my own. Two men, deeply in love, scared for their lives.
I lay in my bed and wonder how they would feel about the video now. In 2025 they brazenly joke about their love and their intimate lives, revealing bits and pieces to us, their fans. Not because we deserve it or because they feel like they have to, but because they’ve begun to take control of their lives. I believe that some small part of them feels that by showing us how to unlearn fear, some scared queer couple will feel just a little less mortified by love, a little less terrified to be seen, and a little more like a cheesy valentines card.
