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“Safe space” is a cliche, overused and exhausted in our discourse, but the fact remains that a sense of safety transforms the body, transforms the spirit. So when you walk into the club, if you’re lucky, it feels expansive. You know what the opposite of Latin Night at the Queer Club is? Another Day in Straight White America. People talk about liberation as if it’s some kind of permanent state, as if you get liberated and that’s it, you get some rights and that’s it, you get some acknowledgment and that’s it, happy now? But you’re going back down into the muck of it every day this world constricts. If you’re lucky, they’re playing reggaeton, salsa, and you can move. If you’re lucky, no one is wearing much clothing, and the dance floor is full. If you’re lucky, it’s a mixed crowd, muscle Marys and bois and femme fags and butch dykes and genderqueers. Lord knows.īut inside, it is loud and sexy and on. Outside, the world can be murderous to you and your kind. You learned basic queer safety, you have learned to scan, casually, quickly, before any public display of affection. You have known a masculinity, a machismo, stupid with its own fragility. You are queer and you are brown and you have known violence. Outside, there are more than 100 bills targeting you, your choices, your people, pending in various states. Outside, Puerto Rico is still a colony, being allowed to drown in debt, to suffer, without the right to file for bankruptcy, to protect itself. Outside, there is a presidential candidate who has built a platform on erecting a wall between the United States and Mexico - and not only do people believe that crap is possible, they believe it is necessary. Outside, there is a news media that acts as if there are two sides to a debate over trans people using public bathrooms. There are preachers, of multiple faiths, mostly self-identified Christians, condemning you to hell. Outside, there’s a world that politicizes every aspect of your identity. Pride on Sunday, the LGBTQ community expresses sorrow and stands in support with the victims of the deadly mass shooting that took place at a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Maybe your half-Latin-ass doesn’t even speak Spanish maybe you barely speak English. Maybe you’re flush, maybe you’re broke as nothing, and angling your pretty face barside, hoping someone might buy you a drink. Maybe your boo stayed home, wasn’t feeling it, but is blowing up your phone with sweet texts, trying to make sure you don’t stray. Maybe you’ve yet to come out to your family at all, or maybe your family kicked you out years ago.
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Maybe your Tia dropped you off, gave you cab money home. Maybe she wrapped a plate for you in the fridge so you don’t come home and mess up her kitchen with your hunger. Maybe your Ma blessed you on the way out the door. If you’re lucky, there will be go-go boys, every shade of brown. If you’re lucky, there will be drag queens and, if so, almost certainly they will be quick, razor-sharp with their humor, giving you the kind of performances that cut and heal all at once. I f you’re lucky, they’ll play some Latin cheese, that Aventura song from 15 years ago. Justin Torres is the author of the novel “ We the Animals.”