Gavin Grimm, 25, and five of his close friends are crowded around a table, laughing and shouting over each other as they recount the bullies they survived as teenagers.
Seated in the back of a strip mall pub in Newport News, a midsize city in south-eastern Virginia, they recall the boys who spat on them at a pep rally and the time a popular senior threatened to beat up Grimm because he is transgender.
“We were all misfits and leaned on each other,” says Calin Lindberg, one of Grimm’s oldest friends. “These people are part of my fucking soul,” Grimm adds. The group over-enunciates one bully’s name, joking he should be exposed. But they also express empathy for their tormentors – some later came out as queer and trans themselves. They direct more of their ire at the adults in their school system, who made Grimm’s life a living hell.
