Pre-pandemic and thanks to science, post-vaccinations, my husband and I have been known to spend an evening or two hitting up “the scene” on the weekend.
Unwinding at an LGBTQ bar is one of the ways we like to stay connected with our friends and the community at large. That’s because these venues don’t just welcome our community, they cultivate it.
From Stonewall on, they’ve provided a space for us to authentically meet and mingle, something that feels more important than ever after spending so much of the last year apart.
It’s something I think about often. Not just because I spent my college years behind the bar at Hamburger Mary’s in Cincinnati – which taught me to never force a bartender to make a mojito or frozen drink – but because these spaces have helped launch my most meaningful relationships.
In addition to meeting most of our friends-turned-family, my husband and I met while prepping for a party at Georgie’s Alibi, the former St. Petersburg staple. After a few years of friendship and before its own untimely end, we shared our first kiss at Parliament House in Orlando. What can I say? I’m a romantic.
These two locations also provided my introduction to Watermark. Each served as a distribution site for this newspaper for years, which I first fell in love with at Alibi as an Ohio transplant. I later met another friend at the bar who would introduce me to Watermark’s owner and editor. I owe a lot to the scene.
My reverence for the safe space it has always provided the LGBTQ community is a large part of what made the early morning of June 12, 2016 so heartbreaking and horrifying. I’d only been to Pulse once, about six months prior for a friend’s birthday, but had long been familiar with it. I enjoyed the experience enough to follow the venue on Facebook.
We happened to stay in that Saturday evening, but I woke up around 4 a.m. on Sunday morning. Unable to sleep, it wasn’t long before I found myself scrolling through social media. Pulse’s post has haunted me ever since.
The page posted eight words at 2:09 a.m., something I see every year in my memories because I shared it. Many of my friends did, and would do so as the hours went on, unsure if their own friends-turned-family had been inside that evening.
“Everyone get out of pulse and keep running” is all the post said. In the five years since, more than 40,000 people have reacted to it. It’s also been shared more than 14,000 times and has more than 13,000 comments.
The comments can be even harder to read. Members of the LGBTQ community from all over the world express their fear, their anger, their sorrow and solidarity.
I don’t know a single member of the LGBTQ community whose life wasn’t changed somehow by June 12, 2016. Who couldn’t imagine what happened at Pulse happening in their own safe space with their own loved ones.
Many members of our community permanently lost the sense of security we felt in LGBTQ bars and far worse, lost loved ones that evening. In the years since, we’ve worked together to heal but it’s work that continues this and every Pride Month.
On the five-year mark of the Pulse tragedy, we reflect on that work. Barbara Poma, who owned the nightclub and established the onePULSE Foundation, discusses the last five years and the organization’s efforts to establish a permanent memorial site.
Survivor Brandon Wolf also discusses The Dru Project and the responsibility we all share in shaping a more inclusive world. Above all, we honor the 49 lives taken that night in Orlando and vow to never forget them.
In Tampa Bay news, we reflect on our community in other ways. St Pete PrideFest kicks off its month of festivities and the YMCA of Tampa partners with Metro Inclusive Health to ensure youth can attend the celebration’s family-focused outing. In a historical first, the City of Sarasota also formally recognizes June as Pride Month.
Governor Ron DeSantis commemorated June in another way. In addition to signing Florida’s first explicitly anti-LGBTQ bill in 23 years into law, he vetoed funding for LGBTQ youth and Pulse survivors in the state’s budget. We discuss his actions in State News.
In arts and entertainment, we screen the Tampa Bay International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival’s inaugural Queer in Color festival, which elevates marginalized voices. We also pull up a seat for “Daniel’s Husband,” on stage now from the West Coast Players in Clearwater.
Watermark strives to bring you a variety of stories, your stories. Please stay safe, stay informed and enjoy this latest issue.
