Our Queer Love will Not Die

“It’s still a world with plums in it, my loves, and chamomile, lipstick, and cellos. It’s still a world with us in it. Find a hand and hold on.” — Elena Rose

Two middle-aged, nonbinary, bi/pan white people clasp each other, heads tucked close, joy shining on their faces.

That’s me, the short one in the navy and white polka dot blazer, and my partner, the tall one with the gorgeous make up. We have both been queer and gender fluid since childhood, but, being middle aged now, there was not always the language to describe us growing up.

Sometimes we took questioning or abuse, sometimes we tried to hide. I was never very successful at the latter, being too strange in too many different ways.

We found each other nineteen years ago, and formed a strange, queer family with other people along the way. We formed household with friends, family, and my other—platonic—partner, whose romantic partner lives nearby.

This household has shifted and changed over the years, with people coming and going. Our family, though? That keeps expanding ever outward, whether the people live with us or not.

Because when you’re queer, you make family from the people you find along the way. When you’re queer, family looks and feels like what you make it.

The two of us have supported each other through good and rough times. We married on our seventeenth anniversary in a small, ten-minute ceremony in our back yard, during a bad phase of the pandemic, with around a dozen local friends in attendance. That’s where the photo was taken.*

And we’re surviving in the midst of the rise of fascism and intolerance yet again. We’re surviving in the midst of the murders of trans women, and gay bashings, and club shootings, and bans, and restrictions, and hate.

You’d better believe we have an agenda.

Our queer agenda is: More love. More life. More joy.

Queer love looks like doing the dishes.

Queer love looks like puttering in the garden.

Queer love looks like eating cashew ice cream.

Queer love looks like reading books or watching movies.

Queer love looks like waiting in the emergency room.

Queer love looks like building a fire in winter.

Queer love looks like a child seeing themselves reflected in the world around them, and deciding they are beautiful.

Unfortunately, our queer agenda also includes rage.

Because…

Queer life is wondering whether your partner is safe if they go out en femme.

Queer life wonders which public restroom you’re going to get called out for using.

Queer life is the person at the social security office apologizing for not having a non-binary gender marker box to check.

Queer life is being threatened with violence because you don’t look the way a bigot thinks you should.

Queer life is standing outside a school with trans and rainbow flags because their optional, student led, Pride celebration was canceled because of death threats by right wing bullies.

Queer life is knowing that your loved ones are in danger and that this danger is supported by some of the people who are supposed to love you, but who don’t, really. Because you refuse to change who you are, and for some reason, they can’t love that at all.

To be queer is to feel angry and heartbroken at the way your friends are treated, and at the fact that too many of them are now dead.

To be queer is to say, “fuck you,” to the bigots, and the haters, and those who want you to simply disappear.

To be queer is to shine in our joy, and to know, even though posting a photo of love on the internet might cause disgusting backlash… that it is important, because, to paraphrase Harvey Milk, we have to give young people—in Missouri, Florida, Arizona, Alabama, and Texas—hope.

We have to say, “Hey! We’ve both known we were genderqueer since around age six. We’ve both known we weren’t straight since around age twelve. We survived. We created family. We are living our lives.”

We’re here. We’re queer. We’re in love.

You bigots? Search your hearts and find some compassion instead of self-righteous arrogance. And if you can’t do that? Leave us the fuck alone.

You supporters? Agitate the systems of power that wish to crush your family and friends. Call out bigotry. Offer time or money or space to people needing to flee unsafe situations. Provide a haven when and where you can.

You queer people? Find a friend. Whisper your secrets in the dark. Plant a flower. Dance in your bedroom. Dance in the streets. Shout when you need to. Smash if you need to. Then fall in love with yourself and with this earth.

We are all we have, and we can hold each other, because as James Baldwin said:

“The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.”

Let us be light for each other. Let us find one another like stars shining in the velvet night.

They can kill us, but our queer love will not die.

We are eternal.

T. Thorn Coyle

June, 2023

*photo by Salim Sanchez

---

This is reader funded writing, made possible by my amazing Patreon supporters. Want to join? You get podcasts, stories, essays, poems, process blogs, and Sprint With Me Saturdays!

The Power of Speaking Up

For Jordan Neely

Several years ago, I was riding the BART train one afternoon, sitting and reading a book. A Black man in a jaunty hat and well pressed clothing was singing to himself, swinging and swaying as he stood. He was en route to visit his mother, he said. He seemed happy.

The train stopped at a station and police got on and began to pull the man off the train. He resisted, clearly frightened.

The police said there’d been a complaint of a disturbance. The man began to panic.

I spoke up, loudly, “He did nothing wrong!”

The police kept trying to get him out the door. The man began to recite his mother’s phone number to another passenger, begging her to call, because his mother would be worried if he didn’t show up.

I stood and took one step toward the police and the man, repeating myself, “He did nothing wrong!”

Others began to repeat that phrase, or things like it. Others stood, too. Everyone was clearly upset, and not at the man, but at the police.

Several of us were clearly ready to follow them off onto the platform. No way were we leaving that man on his own.

What happened?

The police read the room. They released the man. The doors closed. We went on our way, all of us shaken. We tried to comfort the man.

The train went on to the next station. The man would get to see his mother after all.

***

Jordan Neely won’t see anyone again.

Jordan Neely—a NYC street entertainer—was, by several accounts, in a mental health crisis on a subway car when he was choked to death by one white man while being restrained by two others.

No one spoke up for Jordan Neely, until around two and a half minutes into the chokehold, a Black man stepped back onto the train and calmly explained to the three white men that the chokehold was killing the man on the ground.

By the time they listened, Neely was already dead.

***

It can be hard to know what to do when adrenaline is pumping and a situation seems confusing.

It can be hard to speak up when our current overculture has taught us to outsource our responsibilities to each other to some shadowy “authority,” whether that authority comes in the form of police, or immigration, or politicians… or three white men who have taken over a situation, causing harm.

But sometimes? We have to claim our own authority. We need to take a breath, find our courage, and speak. Loudly.

When we speak, that gives others the courage to speak up, too.

If one person had loudly insisted early on that Neely not be choked? Others may have joined them, and Neely might still be alive today.

I don’t know this, of course. I was not there.

But I do know that we must try to do better by each other.

***

New York City knows what a chokehold did to Eric Garner. Florida knows what vigilantism looked like for Trayvon Martin.

Everyone in the US knows how violent some of our family members and neighbors are. There’s a new story now, every day.

But what we don’t hear or see enough are the stories where crisis was averted because someone spoke up, and others joined them.

I’d like more of those stories.

***

I also wonder what would have happened if a few people had tried to talk de-escalate the crisis. To talk to Neely. To ask him if he needed assistance.

I wonder what would have happened if someone had offered him food. Or asked him to sit down and talk.

That’s hard, and I get it. I have a fair amount of on the ground experience with talking to highly agitated people in crisis. Most folks do not. It can feel scary to try to look beyond the surface behavior and re-humanize someone who is acting in erratic, perhaps frightening ways.

But if we are able to practice this? We can help others practice, too. Because if we’re going to be vigilantes, let’s be the kind who try to de-escalate a situation, instead of choking a man to death.

***

We have the power to help each other. We just have to choose it.

We have to practice when we are not in a crisis situation.

This starts in small ways: We talk to our neighbors. We ask someone on the street if they need help. We share what we have. We stop outsourcing our authority every time we encounter something annoying or upsetting.

We work to unlearn our racism, or our transphobia, or misogyny. We work to unlearn bigotry and fear.

We ask ourselves: “What would I do in a confusing situation where I feel that something’s wrong?”

And then: We practice breathing. We practice speaking up. We practice asking others for help.

It doesn’t always work. I’ve sometimes gone to people’s aid with no back up. But oftentimes, other people join in. And we act as community.

And together, we save this world some pain.

---

A Basic Bystander Intervention Resource

Some De-Escalation Techniques

On Jordan Neely’s Life

---

This essay was made possible by my Patreon supporters. I give thanks for every one of them. Want to join? You get weekly access to essays, stories, poems, process blogs, AMAs, Sprint With Me Saturdays, and quarterly ebooks.

Claim Your Crown

Sacred Crown designed by Karen Bruhin and Ivo Dominguez Jr.

You who long for change, what are you seeking?

Never doubt the power of the night.

Obscure though colors be, your senses heighten.

Gift years slow tumbling with inner light.

Time’s hush. Time’s stretch. Time’s song.

Trust in the birds, to fresh skies yonder winging.

Listen for the beetles scurrying low.

Prick your ears for wind, and rain—what’s coming?

As you light the gentle fire to boil your tea.

Time’s hush. Time’s stretch. Time’s song.

All is ordinary here, and all distinctive.

Every moment’s breath, now seen anew.

Your life, never mundane, is ever sacred.

What you do, and think, and feel, weighs consequent.

Time’s hush. Time’s stretch. Time’s song.

If you do choose, this present now unfolding

Allow your heart to lift and strike a note.

The rhythm of your pulse echoes the spinning

Of every star, each planet…

Claim your crown.

T. Thorn Coyle

October 2010/April 2023

---

This poem was made possible by the generosity of my Patreon supporters.