Wrestling With Truth: Reflections on the One-Year Anniversary of the Pulse Nightclub Tragedy

       In the same way I consume all current events, I see reactions first. In the social media age, everyone prefaces a story with their feelings and perspective. So before I’ve even read the news, my heart is beating a little too fast.

       49 people slaughtered in a gay club in Florida. Over 50 injured. They’re saying it was the deadliest attack on the LGBT community in U.S. history. One site posted a victim’s final texts to his mother.

       “Mommy I love you,” he wrote. “I’m gonna die.”

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       I push the heavy door of my mother’s apartment building open, and the two of us trudge through the humid afternoon air to the the train. A nearby Temple is holding a vigil in honor of the victims. I can hear the Rabbis of my childhood reprimanding me for even entering a Temple like this one, but a lot’s changed since the last time I heard those words.

       The unfamiliar synagogue is gray and cavernous. I run my fingers along the cool stone walls as my mother and I walk into the sanctuary. We take our seats, and join a prayer that’s already started. I recognize the words, but the tune is unfamiliar. I can’t sing along, so I sit and focus on not crying. It crosses my mind that too strong an emotional reaction might lead to uncomfortable questions, to conversations I thought I was ready to have but now seem impossibly distant.

       A Rabbi I’ve never met speaks about resilience and community. She stands in front of a screen on which pictures of the 49 victims are projected. They look out onto the crowd, and I try to find in them any irregularities.

       Is there anything about them that would indicate something like this was going to happen? I think to myself. But I find nothing. They look overwhelmingly ordinary. The future, it appears, is not written on our faces. There’s no way to know which nights you should brave the world and which nights you should stay safely in bed. I send a prayer up to the ceiling, asking whoever may reside there that they tell me what to do. Tell me if it’s safe. Tell me who to be.

       The room becomes increasingly blue as the afternoon disappears, and I notice a priest in the corner wearing rainbow vestments. The light drapes him in pellucid beams, the way it does in movies about Gods I’ve never met. I can see his slow breathing, the slight raising and lowering of the colorful stripes across his chest, and my eyes start to sting again.

       As we walk out of the impromptu service, we pass a woman in the hallway handing out stickers that boldly state “This Is An LGBTQ+ Safe Zone.” The copy sits confidently next to a Star of David with a rainbow flag running through it. I look over the slogan with tired eyes and shake my head. If there is one thing I learned today, it’s that there is no such thing as a safe zone.

       My mother and I step down the broad gray stairs of the Temple as the setting sun fills my eyes. The clouds above us tinged with pink and yellow, the surrounding trees saturated greens. We cross the street and begin walking over a small bridge. She stops to watch the train below.

       I look at my mother standing beside me, her short brown hair slipping out from behind her ear as she looks into the pale evening, and I consider what I think are my only two options. I can tell her right now, in the wake of a terrorist attack, who I am. I can let her feel an ounce of the fear that I’m feeling. Or, I can stay quiet forever. I can fill the pockets of my true self with rocks and let him sink into the soft New England waters.

       And for awhile, that’s what I do.

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       June comes to a quiet close, and July brings me to New York City. I stay in Washington Heights, three blocks from my sister, with a man we both think she’ll marry in the fall. Back then, we still believed the truth was something to be played with, to be molded into whatever shape we pleased.

       The temperature rises into the nineties, and the subways become hot and humid. I begin wearing navy t-shirts and dark jeans every day. There’s an Israeli restaurant down the street, and I find myself there often, hidden in plain sight among the Talmudic scholars I’ve long since abandoned. I can hear them talking as they eat their food, debating the stances of Rabbis whose names I thought I’d forgotten but now come back to me with utter clarity. I could join in, if I wanted. I could tell them that your menorah has to be placed four feet off the floor, but perhaps that rule only applies to those whose homes are built at ground level. Because that law was written at a time when floors were made of dirt, and skyscrapers like the one outside that door didn’t exist, it must evolve in the same way our architecture has. So yes, four feet off the ground is true. But if you live on the second floor, or the thirtieth floor, then you’re already high enough. Therefore, you can use any table, even a step stool, and your lighting of the menorah will have fulfilled the commandment. But I say none of that. I bite into my pita and listen to them wonder if the flame itself has to be four feet off the ground, thereby including the height of the menorah in the overall sum, or if the base of the menorah is the point from which we measure. I’m not sure of the answer to that one.

       The Orthodox Jewish community in Washington Heights is one I know well. But sitting in the eye of the hurricane, I go mostly unnoticed. Save for the tiny flickers of recognition from passerby that seem to scream, “Don’t I know you? Did I have a class with your sister?” I look down, hoping they’ll keep walking. Don’t ask me who I am, I think to myself. I couldn’t tell you if I tried.

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       Throughout July, the ongoing fight against police brutality continues to escalate. In the first week of the month, news breaks every day of a different Black man executed by law enforcement. Videos of the lynchings are shared across social media like news of an incoming tornado. Tensions are rising, and the city itself seems to grow impatient waiting for justice.

       I join a group of protestors that gather weekly in different boroughs. They trek from neighborhood to neighborhood, chanting, screaming, educating, and mourning the lives lost to the NYPD.

       One night in the Bronx, as the temperature sinks to a cool eighty degrees, one protester screams into the face of a nearby officer, “WE ARE THE PEOPLE.”

       “THE MIGHTY, MIGHTY PEOPLE,” we respond in unison behind him.

       “FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE,” he shouts.

       “FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE,” we scream.

       “AND BLACK LIBERATION,” he screams.

       “AND BLACK LIBERATION,” we reply.

       “AND BROWN LIBERATION,” he screams.

       “AND BROWN LIBERATION,” we answer.

       “AND QUEER LIBERATION,” he screams.

       I stop.

       “AND QUEER LIBERATION,” they respond.

       I don’t make a move. My eyes grow hot as the protestors march on. The smooth pavement of the road sprawls before me like a deep and silent lake, still warm from the afternoon sun.

       I don’t want to be liberated, I think. I don’t need to be liberated.

       Wasn’t my family done with liberation? I mean, we needed it in the Warsaw Ghetto, in Auschwitz, in Dachau. Liberation is for my grandfather, for my ancestors. But that’s over and done with now. Aren’t I safe? Isn’t that the story I’ve been told?

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       My sister and I are walking past bodegas and beauty shops. The air is thick with sweat and friendly shouts. Three old men have set lawn chairs in a circle on the sidewalk and settled in. Their music plays loudly as they chat and watch the day slip by.

       The sun shines intrusively on my forehead. I can feel beads of sweat dripping down my temples. The tag on my shirt chafes against my back, and I roll my shoulders in an attempt to satisfy it. The truth is itchy, I think to myself. It’s incessant and agitating. I think about how far the truth has travelled to get here. How many planes it took, how many fire escapes it climbed, how many late nights it followed me through the suburbs of Chicago. All so that one day, when I arrive in Manhattan, vulnerable and confused and at my breaking point, it could ambush me.

       “What’s wrong?” my sister asks, jolting me from my daydream.

       I turn to face her and look helplessly into her eyes that so precisely match my own.

       “I just,” I start. A tear is already finding its way down my cheek, mixing with the sweat of the day. “I just don’t want to be bisexual.”

       She takes my hands and leads me over to a bench, and by now the tears are falling freely. Pedestrians and Rabbis walk by but don’t acknowledge me. So much for being quiet.

       “Hey,” she says, her voice a steady rock in the wasteland of my confusion. “It’s okay. It’s okay to be whatever you are.”

       I nod even though I don’t believe her.

       “It doesn’t change anything,” she continues. “And it doesn’t matter to me. I love you, and it’s okay.”

       “Thank you,” I say. “I don’t know anything anymore. And I thought I knew what I was doing and where I was going, but nothing makes any sense.”

       She nods, and I know she’s hurting with me.

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       I’m in Boston again, sleeping on a brown velvet couch and spending most of my days inside. I woke up today to find it’s been a year since the attack, but it seems the time between me and it has drifted away a little too easily. I evaded autumn by moving south to Georgia. I didn’t see much of the snow, though I know it piled up and melted as it always does. I do recall spring somewhat vividly. I can easily conjure the grass poking out of the southern soil, and something that looked a lot like lilacs sprouting outside my dorm. Now it’s hot again. The sun beats down on me every day, as I know it does on that vacant Florida nightclub, no matter how many mourners come and go.

       I remember how menacing the world felt on that day, how urgent my need to hide was. But in the last few months, I seem to have found my voice. So what clicked?

       I wish I could tell you that my fear has dissipated. I wish I could say that there’s been even one day since the attack in which I haven’t thought about men with guns who don’t want me here. But that’s not the case.

       Rather, I finally asked myself, how long am I going to worry about the opinions of people who don’t call to check up on me? People who have never taken the time to learn my favorite song, or sat with me through the sunrise of a long and melancholy night, when it feels like hope is lost and truth might evade me forever? Because there are those who have done those things, and they are still rigidly and unflinchingly here.

       So enough of this. Enough of the quietness, the shyness, the loneliness. I will invest my time where I see love. And where I do not, I will move swiftly and confidently in the opposite direction. If the people I’ve built my life around can follow me to the other side of this moment, then I’ll welcome them with open arms. And if they can’t find it within themselves to do so, we’ll all be better off. The lives lost in Orlando taught me that the future is far too unpredictable, and I have been drowning far too long, to do anything else.

       I’ll take those 49 souls with me. It’s in their honor that I dance, and sing, and laugh, and kiss, and cry, and love. Because for all the loss, for all the grief, we are still here. We still have a pulse.

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Dedicated to the victims of the Pulse tragedy.

Stanley Almodovar III, Amanda L. Alvear, Oscar A. Aracena Montero, Rodolfo Ayala Ayala, Antonio Davon Brown, Darryl Roman Burt II, Angel Candelario-Padro, Juan Chavez Martinez, Luis Daniel Conde, Cory James Connell, Tevin Eugene Crosby, Deonka Deidra Drayton, Simón Adrian Carrillo Fernández, Leroy Valentin Fernandez, Mercedez Marisol Flores, Peter Ommy Gonzalez Cruz, Juan Ramon Guerrero, Paul Terrell Henry, Frank Hernandez, Miguel Angel Honorato, Javier Jorge Reyes, Jason Benjamin Josaphat, Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, Anthony Luis Laureano Disla, Christopher Andrew Leinonen, Alejandro Barrios Martinez, Brenda Marquez McCool, Gilberto R. Silva Menendez, Kimberly Jean Morris, Akyra Monet Murray, Luis Omar Ocasio Capo, Geraldo A. Ortiz Jimenez, Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, Joel Rayon Paniagua, Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, Enrique L. Rios, Jr., Jean Carlos Nieves Rodríguez, Xavier Emmanuel Serrano-Rosado, Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, Yilmary Rodríguez Solivan, Edward Sotomayor Jr., Shane Evan Tomlinson, Martin Benitez Torres, Jonathan A. Camuy Vega, Juan Pablo Rivera Velázquez, Luis Sergio Vielma, Franky Jimmy DeJesus Velázquez, Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, Jerald Arthur Wright