The basement reeks of fear tonight—sour sweat mixing with stale beer and the acrid burn of Sage's forgotten cigarette smoldering in the ashtray. Even the Christmas lights seem dimmer, their rainbow fragments scattered across brick walls like broken promises. The sound system crackles with Kiss’s “Shout It Out Loud” but the sound can't drown out the static tension crackling through every conversation.
Miguel slides my drink across the scarred bar top—a double shot of something amber and angry that burns like the pit in my stomach. "Here you go, Mom," he murmurs, his usually sultry voice cracked raw. "Figured you'd need the strong shit tonight."
The bourbon tastes like liquid rebellion, all smoke and fire with undertones of oak that remind me of coffins. I knock back half of it and survey my domain—my fucked-up, beautiful family scattered across this underground sanctuary like refugees from a war nobody wants to acknowledge we're fighting.
Ezra's bouncing in their beanbag like a live wire, blue hair catching the fractured light as they gesticulate wildly. "You don't fucking get it!" they're shouting at Marcus, who's hunched over his beer like it might shield him from the conversation. "They're talking about camps, Marcus! Actual fucking concentration camps for people like us!"
Marcus's knuckles go white around his glass. "People like us? Jesus Fucking Christ, Ezra, you think they give a shit about some bisexual guy who's been with the same woman for eight years? I can fucking disappear, blend in—"
"Disappear, Fuckhead?" Phoenix slams their palm against the pool table, making the scattered balls jump. Tonight their hair is cotton-candy pink, and their face is streaked with mascara like war paint. "That's the fucking problem! Everyone thinks they can just disappear until the jackboots come for them specifically!"
The room erupts into a cacophony of voices—overlapping arguments about visibility, privilege, passing, safety. River, still in hospital scrubs from their shift, stands near the kitchen doorway with their arms crossed. "You think hiding helps anyone?" they snap at Marcus. "When they came for the drag queens, did your invisibility protect them, asshole? Did it?!!?! When they banned hormone therapy, did your heterosexual-presenting relationship keep trans kids safe? What the fuck Marcus, you need to sit the fuck down!"
"Don't you fucking start to lecture me about privilege," Marcus spits back, standing so fast his chair tips backward. "You think being bi is some kind of goddamn get-out-of-jail-free card? You know how many years I spent hating myself, thinking I was broken because I couldn't just pick a fucking side? YOU DONT KNOW SHIT!"
Bubba's deep voice cuts through the chaos like a machete through kudzu. "Y'all sound like a bunch of squabbling chickens when the fox is already in the henhouse." His massive frame shifts in the corner booth, where he's been nursing the same whiskey for an hour. "I lived through the goddamn eighties in rural Georgia. Black and gay? Shit, I might as well have painted a target on my back. But screaming at each other ain't gonna save nobody."
"Easy for you to say," Renee growls from her perch at the bar, biceps flexing as she grips her beer bottle like she might crush it. "You're built like a fucking brick shit-house, like Wendy. Some of us couldn’t always intimidate our way out of trouble when we were younger."
Brandon lets out a bitter laugh that sounds like glass breaking. "Yeah, intimidation works great until it doesn't. Ask my boyfriend—oh wait, you can't. He's fucking gone because he thought numbing the pain was better than facing another day of this shit with me."
"That's not the same thing!" Miranda's voice cracks as she stands up from the couch where she's been holding space for everyone else's trauma. "Your boyfriend left because of addiction, not because of fucking fascists!"
"Addiction caused by living in a world that wanted him gone!" Brandon roars back, his face red and twisted with grief and abandonment. "Every pill was a fuck-you to a society that told him he was worthless! And when I tried to help, when I begged him to get clean, he chose the drugs over me. Left me to face all this shit alone!"
"Stop fucking weaponizing grief, you Self-Righteous fuck!" Sarah suddenly explodes, her stoic facade cracking like ice. "We're all carrying loss! You think you have a monopoly on grief? Really? Back up!"
That's when Marcus snaps. Maybe it's the beer, maybe it's the months of watching the news get worse every day, maybe it's just the breaking point every closeted person knows is coming. He lunges toward Sarah, shouting, "Self-righteous? You fucking piece of—"
But Ezra intercepts him, their smaller frame colliding with his chest. "Don't you fucking dare!" they scream, pushing Marcus backward. "She's right and you know it! You need to back the fuck up Marcus. It is time for you to calm the fuck down."
Marcus shoves Ezra hard, sending them stumbling into the pool table. The crack of their ribs against the rail echoes through the basement like a gunshot. "Get the fuck off me!"
"Hey!" River rushes forward, medical training kicking in, but Phoenix is already there, grabbing Marcus by the shirt.
"You piece of shit!" Phoenix yells, their voice breaking. "They're half your fucking size!"
Marcus's face contorts with something ugly—fear and shame and rage all twisted together. "Yeah? Well maybe if they weren't so fucking dramatic about everything—"
That's when something primal explodes in my chest. Fifty-three years of protecting my babies, of standing between my kids and a world that wanted to hurt them, of every maternal instinct I've ever possessed roaring to life like a goddamn wildfire.
I launch myself across the room faster than I've moved in years, my body remembering what it means to be a mother bear with cubs in danger. I grab Marcus by his shirt and slam him against the brick wall so hard the whole basement shakes. A picture frame crashes to the floor, glass scattering like broken promises.
"You motherfucking piece of shit!" I snarl, my face inches from his, feeling every muscle in my body coiled with protective fury. "You want to hurt my kids? You want to put your hands on our family? YOUR FUCKING FAMILY?!?!?" My voice drops to something deadly. "Try me, you cowardly fuck. See what happens when you mess with someone who's been through hell and came out swinging, and that KID LOVES YOU MARCUS!"
The basement explodes into chaos. Brandon jumps up, shouting something about everyone needing to calm down. River's trying to check Ezra's ribs while they wheeze and protest they're fine. Renee's moving toward us but stops when she sees the look on my face. Sage has knocked over their chair, backing toward the kitchen where Della's appeared with a spatula in one hand and murder in her eyes.
"Everybody back the fuck up!" Della roars, her voice carrying the authority of someone who's broken up bar fights with bigger men than any of us. "Before I start cracking skulls with this fucking winco hammer!"
But Grubby's the one who freezes everyone in place. They stand up slowly, deliberately, their usually hunched shoulders straightening to reveal a frame none of us realized was there. "ENOUGH."
The word cuts through the mayhem like a cleaver through bone. Everyone stops moving—Wendy still has Marcus pinned, Phoenix still has their fists clenched, but nobody's breathing.
"You want to know what camps look like?" Grubby's voice is deadly quiet now, each word precise as a scalpel. "They look like this. People who should love each other tearing each other apart while the real enemy watches and laughs."
The silence is suffocating now. Even Marcus has stopped struggling against Wendy’s grip.
"I've been invisible my whole goddamn life," Grubby continues, their voice gaining strength. "Not by choice. Not because I could pass. Because society decided people like me don't exist. And you know what I learned?" They look directly at Marcus. "Hiding doesn't save you. It just makes you complicit in your own erasure."
I slowly release Marcus and step back, my hands shaking with adrenaline and rage. He slides down the wall, his legs giving out, head in his hands. The sight of him crumbling snaps something back into place—he's not the enemy, he's my scared kid having a breakdown.
"I'm sorry," he whispers, the words barely audible. "I'm so fucking sorry. I'm just... I'm so scared."
"We're all scared," Eileen says from her spot near the bar, her flight attendant composure finally cracking. "I've been flying for thirty years, watching this country from thirty thousand feet, and I'm telling you—it's never been this bad. The hate, the legislation, the way they talk about us like we're a fucking disease."
She stands up, her uniform wrinkled from the day's flights. "But fear makes us ugly. Makes us turn on each other instead of turning toward each other."
Julie nods vigorously, her diet soda and whiskey sloshing. "Damn right. I spent seventy-one years being afraid of what people would think, and look where it got me—bitter and alone until I found y'all."
Leila, who's been watching from the corner with the intensity of someone calculating political strategy, finally speaks up. "Marcus, you think you can hide? Fine. But when they come for the rest of us—and they will come for the rest of us—what then? You gonna watch from your suburban safety while they drag away the people who made you feel less alone?"
Marcus looks up, his face streaked with tears and snot. "I don't know. I don't fucking know anything anymore."
"That's okay," I say, holding him gently like I would coddle a wounded animal. "Not knowing is where we start."
I kneel down beside him, ignoring the way my knees protest against the concrete. "You think I knew what the fuck I was doing when I started transitioning in my 40s? You think any of us know what we're doing?"
Ezra limps over, one hand pressed to their ribs, and drops down beside us. "I'm sorry I called you a coward," they say to Marcus. "That was fucked up." Ezra hugs Marcus with a hug strong enough to squeeze the life out of him.
"I am a coward," Marcus replies,now bawling his eyes out, but there's less venom in it now.
"No," Keira says firmly, joining our little circle on the floor. "Cowards don't come to places like this. Cowards don't sit in rooms full of people living their truth. You're here, which means you're fighting, even if you don't realize it."
Phoenix sits down too, their pink hair falling across their face like a curtain. "When my parents kicked me out, I thought about disappearing too. Like, literally disappearing, but it was Mama Wendy who showed up with half the bar family behind her." They look at me with eyes that hold too much pain for someone so young. "You didn't just convince me to come here—you all surrounded me with so much fucking love I couldn't ignore it. You made me see that their rejection wasn't the end of my story."
Della brings out plates of jalapeño cornbread that smell like salvation, setting them in the center of our impromptu circle. "Eat," she commands. "Revolution requires carbohydrates."
As we tear into the bread—which tastes like defiance and butter and everything good about chosen family—the conversations start again. But softer now. More honest.
"I keep thinking about Anne Frank," Sage says quietly, their napkin art forgotten. "How she believed people were basically good at heart, even while hiding from Nazis."
"Anne Frank died in a concentration camp," Sarah points out with characteristic bluntness.
"Yeah," Sage nods. "But her words survived. Her belief survived. Sometimes that's all we can do—survive long enough to leave something beautiful behind."
Remy, who's been unusually quiet, finally speaks up in his half-French, half-Louisiana drawl. "Maman used to say, 'Cher, the storm don't ask the tree if it wants to bend. But the tree that bends, it don't break.'" He takes a swig of whatever's in his mason jar. "Maybe we need to learn how to bend without breaking."
"Fuck bending," Elaine snorts, but there's affection in it now instead of anger. "I've been bending for sixty years. Sometimes you have to stand up straight and let the storm do its worst."
"Sometimes you do both," I say, and suddenly I'm thinking about my kids and how I'd kill anyone who tried to hurt them. "Sometimes you bend when you have to and stand when you can't afford not to."
Miguel appears with a fresh bottle and tops off anyone who wants it. The whiskey flows like communion wine, blessing this circle of damaged saints.
"You know what pisses me off most?" Julie says, her voice slurring slightly. "I wasted so many fucking years being someone else. Being afraid. And now when I finally know who I am, they want to take even that away."
"They can't take who you are," Grubby says with quiet certainty. "Trust me. I've had people try to cut away parts of me since I was born. But the core of who you are? That's indestructible."
Miranda wipes her eyes with the back of her hand. "God, we're a mess."
"We're beautiful," Brandon corrects, and there's something lighter in his voice now. "We're a beautiful fucking mess."
The argument feels like a fever breaking now—still raw, still tender, but no longer toxic. We're not fixed, probably never will be completely. But we're together, and right now that feels like enough.
"So what's the plan?" Phoenix asks, their earlier panic replaced by something that looks suspiciously like hope.
"Same as always," I say, standing up slowly and helping Marcus to his feet. "We love hard, fight harder, and refuse to let the bastards make us disappear."
"Even me?" Marcus asks, and there's so much vulnerability in those two words.
"Especially you," Keira says firmly. "Your fear doesn't make you less family. It makes you human."
As the night winds down, people start pairing off into smaller conversations. The physical tension has drained away, leaving behind something more precious—the kind of intimacy that only comes after you've seen each other at your worst and chosen to stay anyway.
Ezra curls up in their beanbag with an ice pack River procured from somewhere, surrounded by Phoenix and Sage who've appointed themselves as recovery guardians. Marcus sits at the bar letting Miguel ply him with stories and increasingly elaborate cocktails. The rest of us settle into various configurations of comfort and exhaustion.
"Think we'll make it?" Della asks quietly, appearing beside me with a plate of cornbread that's somehow still warm.
I look around the basement—at this collection of beautiful disasters who've chosen each other against all odds, who've survived families that rejected them and a world that wants them dead, who show up night after night to this underground sanctuary because love is the only rebellion that matters.
"Yeah," I say, surprising myself with how certain I sound. "We'll make it. We're too fucking stubborn not to."
The music shifts to B.B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone," and somehow that feels exactly right. The thrill of safety might be gone, but the thrill of resistance? That's just getting started. And tomorrow, we'll get up and do it all again, because that's what family does—it endures, it evolves, and it never fucking gives up.
Outside, the world might be burning. But down here in our basement sanctuary, surrounded by the smell of jalapeño cornbread and the sound of chosen family choosing each other again and again, we're building something that no administration, no matter how fascist, can ever truly destroy.
The revolution isn't coming. It's already here, in every moment we refuse to disappear, in every night we gather to remind each other that we're not alone, in every act of love that says fuck you to a world determined to break us.
And we're just getting started.
"In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity." — Albert Einstein
Even in the darkest moments, when fear threatens to fracture the bonds that hold a chosen family together, crisis can reveal the true strength of love. Einstein understood that challenges don't just test us—they transform us, forcing us to discover reservoirs of courage we never knew existed. Tonight's argument wasn't about politics or policy; it was about the primal terror of losing each other, and the fierce determination to refuse that loss. Sometimes the most revolutionary act is surviving the storm together, learning that difficulty doesn't divide us—it shows us exactly how unbreakable our bonds really are.
That was an emotional one for me.
Erasure is right. When told you shouldn’t exist, when your government drafts an executive order declaring that you don’t exist…
The only thing that negates their edict is the fact you are still there. ❤️