But then when I got home I found out---via snail mail, of all things, in the form of a fundraising ask from the local queer community center---that it's not just the LGBTQ bookstore the guys who own it are selling, after closing it; they're also selling three other buildings in that little cluster of houses around a courtyard that forms the physical center of queer A2, and even acts as the locus of queerness for the larger region. The gay bar & restaurant that anchors it is, like, okay, as a bar and restaurant, but really important for the way it gives us a place to go, when we lose or win a big court decision, when somebody shoots dozens of homos at a club in Florida, or just when it's time for Pride. It seems like the odds aren't exactly high that some deep-pocketed soul or set of souls is gonna move to keep that place the center of Things LGBTQ for us. I can't even imagine the community center could come up with enough money to have a new place even remotely near downtown.
This news comes on top of my once-dear queer chorus having so recently gone to the devil, as led there by some unfortunately narrow-visioned people, some of them seemingly oblivious to the essential thing of community for a subculture that may not still be as oppressed as it once was but isn't exactly okay-dokey-Smokie with, like, 98% of not-queer people or something.
As I stirred my supper in the pan tonight, it struck me that I may well be going back to the way I was in my early days as a queer adult: just an adult who happened to be queer, and had a circle of queer friends, but didn't feel part of a community, per se. And heck, now my circle of queer friends is much smaller than it was then.
I know: all things go. All things go. But geez.
