When I found out Donald Trump was going to become president in 2016, the first thing I did was head to my local gay bar. The Boiler Room in Manhattan’s East Village is dingy and divey, the type of establishment where drunk people abandon half-finished vodka cranberries on toilet covers and roaches scurry down the walls. I walked in with a friend and we bought a drink before someone walked up to the jukebox to play a Whitney Houston song. The few other people in the bar squealed with excitement and got up. One of them came up to us, took us by our hands and asked us to dance. Little did I know that this would be just one of many times that the queer community would become my lifeline in the years to come.
The Boiler Room was also where I took my first boyfriend when a group of older queens, as they liked to call themselves, gave us roses and slices of cake (it was one of their birthdays) and wished us a happy relationship. I went there again when we broke up. The Boiler Room was one of few spaces where I could express myself without bounds, where I could grieve and celebrate, laugh, cry.
