(Images via The Cutting Room)

Monday night at The Cutting Room was the highly anticipated concert to benefit GLSEN staged by my pal Wayne Laako and featuring some of the cast of FX's just-renewed series Pose.

Thrown together quickly for a good cause, it was a total smash, a seamless event packed with fans and filled with great performances and affirmations.

Burnside knows how to hold a stage. (All event images by Matthew Rettenmund)

Dyllón Burnside, Ricky on the show, was the emcee and main performer, and let me tell you Pose-finale watchers: Al B. Sure is no longer the #1 panty-dropper on the scene. Cute and confident, he sang his heart out eand commanded the night with his personal coming-out story and by introducing his “father,” history-making Vibe co-founding EIC Emil Wilbekin. Together, they spoke about the importance of safe spaces for LGBTQ people. The concept of a safe space is often ridiculed, parodied to mean that those who seek it expect to live life in a cocoon. In reality, it's about allowing marginalized people a shot to live their lives, not free from stress and struggle and hard work and emotional ups and downs, but free from targeted abuse and intolerance and hate.