(Untitled)

[malakijr]

Comments

[malakijr]

I sometimes think that those people who say things about how it's so much easier to be gay now and we shouldn't have a "victim mentality" well...they don't come from towns like Big Rapids. Seriously. I know what a victim mentality is, I can spot it from a mile away, and I know when I'm having it and when I'm not, and sometimes when I say things and I'm giving a disclaimer ("no, I'm not being melodramatic, it really IS this bad") I wish I didn't have to give a disclaimer, you know? I wish people could just understand that things are harder in some places than in others. I know we've come a long way since 1973, but...ever heard the expression "I have arrived...is THIS where I was going?" Or "The more things change, the more they stay the same"?

The image of flames filling this bar, of it being so hot that some of the bodies FUSE TOGETHER, of the people screaming, trapped in the windows by bars and unable to get out, and then not being able to be identified because they were afraid to bring their ID and therefore label themselves as gay...that makes me think about how I'm afraid people at work will find out about me, or people at churches, or friends from college, or old coworkers, and it gives me a horrific picture of what can happen if I'm so terrified of being found out that I let this happen...I mean, some people who died in that fire were never identified and they lie in unmarked graves, and to this day no one knows them. No one knows who they are.

...

Someday, I'd like to go to New Orleans and visit those graves if I could.

[nabba]

Unfortunately, the way that we all tend to exaggerate things we say, we'll always have to say "No, really, it IS this way"

[malakijr]

That's true. I guess I'm not the only one who has to give such disclaimers. :-p