The first thing that hits me when I walk into the basement of the bar is the smell—sweet cannabis smoke twisted with cheap vanilla candles, some trans guy’s random cologne, and the lingering tang of spilled beer that's been hastily wiped up but never truly leaves. It smells like fucking salvation.
"You made it, bitch!" Ezra shouts at me from the beanbag chair in the corner, raising a plastic cup like it's fine crystal. His blue hair catches the multicolored Christmas lights strung across the ceiling, making him look like some kind of punk sea creature washed up on the shore of this shitty shitty bar that I come to like a nightly Mecca.
I haven't slept in three days. The notifications on my phone keep screaming at me—another law passed, another right stripped, another protest turned violent, another comment to my pub, another new user looking for peace. My thumb is calloused from scrolling, eyes burning from reading thread after fucking thread of horror. But here, under the buzzing fluorescent that flickers every seven seconds (I've counted), I feel my shoulders drop for the first time all week.
"Getting Wendy a fucking drink before she collapses," Miguel says, pushing away from the wall where he's been leaning. His fingers brush mine as he hands me something brown and biting , in a red cup. Our eyes meet, and there's that unspoken thing—I see you. I know. We don't have to explain what we're all running from. The weight of knowing presses down on all of us equally, so none of us have to carry it alone.
"You write anything new, mom?" he asks, in the usual sultry but also childlike tone. I’m not his mother , but they all see me that way. I don’t fight it. I really don’t.
"Yeah, I churned one. I got the likes and the comments. Still fucking hurts though," I tell him, taking a hearty swallow of the brown juice, reminding myself that it's just cheap Canadian Mist.
"You still serving the gas station liquor, Migs? Really?" I quip.
"Yeah, I mean times are lean. They all hate us and shit," he snaps back.
I drink the rest down without a thought. "Hit me, Migs."
There, I have the juice of life back once more.
The speakers crackle with a bass so deep it rattles my goddamn teeth. Someone's playlist—a chaotic mix of riot grrrl anthems, hyperpop, and nostalgic early 1980s hits that we all pretend to hate but scream along to anyway. I feel that angst and warmth. Where the fuck is the L7 anthem I need right now? The music tastes like the sour candy we used to hide from parents—forbidden, sharp on the tongue, but somehow exactly what you need.
Fuck this, I collapse onto the decimated leather couch, its surface scarred and softened by decades of fierce lesbians entangling limbs and hungry mouths, by trans folks and queers spilling their raw truths in whispered confessions of perpetual sacrifice, nestled beside that sad excuse for a pool table with its wine-dark velvet shredded like battlefield wounds and cues splintered from too many drunken jousts. No there’s no one home in my house of pain.
"Did you see what those fuckers tried to pass today?" Leila asks me. Her voice is casual, like she's asking about the weather, but her knuckles are white around her glass.
"Yeah," I say, and that's it. That's all that needs to be said. In the outside world, I'd have to explain, educate, justify my anger or my fear. I'd have to carefully construct my response to be palatable, to not seem "too emotional" about my own fucking existence. Here, "yeah" contains multitudes.
The basement is too hot. Sweat makes my shirt cling to my back, salty and slick. The ancient ceiling fan just pushes the humid air around without cooling anything. My bra strap is bugging me (despite my barely B-cup breasts, hard-won through transition, just filling it). But the press of bodies feels like armor rather than claustrophobia. Every shoulder bump is a reminder: still here, still fighting, still alive.
Someone's making grilled cheese in the tiny kitchenette. The butter sizzles and pops, and the sharp tang of cheddar cuts through everything else. My stomach growls loud enough for Leila to hear, and she laughs—a real laugh, not the carefully constructed one she uses at work.
"Fucking eat something, Wendy, you look like a train wreck," Della commands, thrusting a plate of steaming, aromatic sustenance toward me as I wallow on the infamous couch—that threadbare altar of collective heartbreak where countless tears have baptized its cushions. The food's fragrance rises in tendrils, a siren call to my neglected stomach, while Della's eyes flash with that fierce, uncompromising tenderness that's kept me breathing through my darkest nights.
"You can play that old battleaxe toughness bullshit with me, Wendy, all the fuck you want, but you know I see through it. Just 'cuz you're older than the rest of us doesn't mean you can't feel the fucking pain like the rest of us," she says.
She's right. Tonight, the armor I've welded to my skin over decades has cracked open, exposing raw nerves to the bitter air. Tonight, I just don't fucking have it.
The bread is slightly burnt, the cheese oozing over the edges. It tastes like childhood and safety and midnight comfort all at once. Grease coats my fingers, and for a moment, I focus only on this—the simple pleasure of food made by someone who gives a shit about whether you're hungry. I used to be like that , before all this.
"So my mom called today," Della says from where she's sitting cross-legged on the counter. "Asked if I was 'still doing that phase.' Fifteen years of me being out, and she still thinks it's just some rebellious bullshit."
A chorus of groans rises up. We've all heard some version of this story, lived some version of this story.
"Parents are fucking wild," someone mutters.
"Tell me about it," someone else adds.
And just like that, we're trading war stories—the microaggressions, the blatant hate, the exhausting everyday battles, the misgendering and the slurs. But here, they transform from wounds into badges. Every story ends with laughter or emphatic "fuck that!"—not because the pain isn't real, but because here it can be held differently.
The night deepens. The playlist shifts to something slower, something with a beat that thrums in my chest like a second heart. The Christmas lights blur into streaks of color as I close my eyes, feeling the vibrations through the floorboards.
"You okay, mom? “ Miguel asks.
I open my eyes to find him watching me, concern etched between his brows. Outside these walls, I'd say I'm fine. I'd straighten my spine and forge ahead. But here, in this sacred fucking space we've carved out of nothing, truth pours out like water.
"Not really," I admit, the truth scraping my throat raw as it escapes. "But better now. I'm gonna crawl back home to her—where the chaos of the universe somehow crystallizes into perfect clarity—so I can resurrect myself at dawn and march back into this beautiful hellscape tomorrow." The promise of her understanding eyes and the same battle wounds I have make it better.
He nods, understanding completely.
Around us, our makeshift gathering continues their chaotic orbit. Ezra and Leila are arguing over something trivial, their voices rising and falling like the tide. Someone's playing a ukulele badly in the corner, and three people are trying to learn a TikTok dance with varying degrees of success.
It's messy. It's loud. It's so fucking beautiful it makes my throat tight.
This bar with its water stains and questionable smell, these people with their trauma and their resilience—this is where history is being preserved. Not in grand gestures or perfect political activism, but in the simple act of creating space where we can breathe, where we don't have to explain our pain or justify our joy.
"Hey," Della calls out, standing on a chair that wobbles dangerously. "I just want to say—fuck the world out there, and thank you all for being in here."
Plastic cups raise in a toast that feels more sacred than any ceremony I've ever attended. The cheap alcohol burns my throat, but the warmth that spreads through my chest has nothing to do with booze and everything to do with belonging.
As I go to leave to get home , The air tastes different—fresher, tinged with dew and possibility. The world is still broken, still burning in a thousand ways. Tomorrow, we'll don our armor again and wade back into the fight.
But for now, in this liminal space between night and day, we stand shoulder to shoulder, a little drunk, a little sad, entirely ourselves. No explanations needed. No apologies offered.
And goddamn, if that isn't the closest thing to freedom I've ever known.
Beautiful. Reminds me of the first lesbian bar I used to frequent in the late 1980s. It was called Billie Jean's. I was there the last night they were open, in March 1988, bawling my eyes out with the rest of the gals 😂 There have been several lesbian bars in Kansas City since then, although they're all gone now because women don't have the money to spend to keep one open. Hell, I can't drink anymore myself because of the meds I'm on. But I've never felt the same about any of those as I felt about Billie Jean's.
Hugs to you, Wendy. I can't imagine what it's like to be in your shoes right now.
Wendy, your writing reminds me of Jack Kerouac. Real, raw and direct.