Note: This piece is airing worldwide this week on This Way Out (TWO), the syndicated LGBT radio show. Click here to listen to the entire show.
The Sunday morning, in June of 2016, that I learned of the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, I had a sinking sensation in my stomach.
Unfortunately, that sensation was confirmed when I found out that 49 people were murdered – at that time the largest number of people killed in a U.S. mass shooting.
I was intrigued when I heard about Our Happy Hours: LGBT Voices from the Gay Bars a collection published by Flashpoint Publications in 2017 and edited by renowned lesbian writers Renee Bess and Lee Lynch. This book was both dedicated to the victims of the Pulse nightclub tragedy and born from that tragedy.
Ultimately, Our Happy Hours is a sobering book.
Bess’s introduction resonated deeply with me:
“This book’s expedition grew during the pre-dawn hours of June 13, 2016, when so many of us watched the media’s coverage of the massacre at the Pulse Nightclub. That mass shooting pierced the soul of every LGBTQ person who knew the experience of finding safety, joy, and personal validation in a space where it was okay to slow drag with your same gender partner, or hold her/him/them lovingly in your gaze. For a moment we’d all been in that Orlando club, or we knew we could have been there.”
Co-editor Lynch stressed the importance of bars in LGBTQ culture by mentioning the Stonewall Inn which has been designated as a National Historic Landmark. In 1969, the modern LGBTQ civil rights movement was born at this gay bar when patrons fought back against a routine police raid.
As she writes, “it’s fitting that our monument should be a bar. Human communities form where they can, spontaneously, and eventually develop traditions. Hellish as they can be, at times they were glorious, glorious! The music may have been loud past bearing, but we danced all night. Under the glitter balls we saw ourselves reflected in our peers like nowhere else. I was not the only shy one and eventually a few strangers would become friends, friends grew to circles. With a gay bar nearby, we never needed to be totally alone.”
Despite the fact, that it pays tribute to the importance of bars in our community, the collection does not glorify its origins. More than a few writers talk about the seedy results of alcoholism. But all agree. The bars were a starting point for meeting, often for being loved, and for learning about each other.
In “A Message for Steve” esteemed lesbian writer and editor Katherine V. Forrest writes,
“In the many years since that May night, friendship and camaraderie with gay men have taken their rich place in my life. Our two communities needed that time apart in the seventies to explore our own identities and culture, and then the devastation of AIDS brought us all together. You were the first gay man I ever knew. You were the first to show me the promise of what we have since brought into each other’s LGBT lives.”
Noted lesbian writer Karin Kallmaker writes that she found herself in bookstores but was grateful for the role that bars played in LGBTQ history. In her piece titled,
“My Nose Pressed Against the Glass of History,” she writes:
“The Pulse Massacre at one of our safe spaces, a queer nightclub, was a gut-punching reminder. Yes, we are stronger together. Sometimes it’s not strong enough. When it’s not strong enough, we need each other more than ever. My daughter comforted friends online. I despaired that safe spaces are still an illusion.
And I reminded myself: Safety for our kind was an illusion in the 1950s, and yet we thrived. It was an illusion in the 1960s, the ‘70s, the ‘80s… And yet we thrived.
We thrive.”
To learn more about my novel THEY, a biblical tale of secret genders (just published by Adelaide Books New York/Lisbon), click here.
Click on the following for an invitation to a reading from THEY on January 30th at the Penn Book Center in Philadelphia:
Invitation Janet Mason_Penn Book Center_2019-01-30
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from the Bay Area Reporter
Janet Mason, author 