Iβve been staring at my computer screen, trying to feel past the understandable dread and sadness of these times and muster up some sort of warmth about Pride. Something. I close my eyes and think about the most recent time I felt Queer community.
I was in a punk house in Eugene, Oregon waiting for a show to start. Cool spring air was moving through the open windows and doors of the house, incense tendriling, Queer folks snuggling with legs tangled together on mismatched couches, leaning into one another on the old wooden floor like human chair-backs, holding each other in long embraces and fiddling with one another's hair and fingers as they talked and laughed. I looked around and time slowed and I wanted to shout, βI love all of you, thank you for this beauty!β
Sadurn started to play.
I have been in countless rooms like this in my adult life. So many Queer-run punk houses with some kind of free chili bubbling in a crock pot, screen-printed merch for sale, posters, and paintings on every available surface, waiting for a show or a meeting of some kind in some small city.
I have heard it theorized that the fascists are afraid of us because we are so free. We are so ourselves. Yes. And. We have also figured out the cure for existential loneliness. It is in the safety and spaces that we create for ourselves.
My thoughts drift to some of the Queer elders from my life. There was the teacher who mentored my GSA* in high schoolβsoft-spoken, eclectic, and intellectual. I wanted to be like her someday. Then there was the cashier at my college grocery store, with hot 80s hair and a nose ring. Did I want to be with her, or did I want to be her? The older lesbian couple who frequented the bar I tended during grad school, nursing a single beer each while we shared jokes for hours.
I snap back to the present, wondering if Iβve become the Queer elder in this room. A little warmth spreads through me, and I shift in my seat with satisfaction.
And hereβs the point Iβve come here to find: Pride is a legacy. Whether you take that first brick from Stonewall to continue the fight, to build a home with your lover, to create art with friends, or to stand on top of to be heardβ¦ We continue it.
