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And they’ve offered a cure for the loneliness and isolation that have characterized so much of queer life over the past century. They have been secular churches for people rejected by organized religion. Gay bars helped birth the fight for LGBTQ rights, and they provided meeting places for AIDS activists. They’re havens for strangers, places to make new friends, anchors of community, and oases of safety in a hostile world. This is what gay bars have done for people across cities and generations. Tuesday was their day off, so they invited me to go out with them the next night. By the end of the night, I felt like I’d made new friends.
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I turned right, grabbed a stool, and chatted with the bartenders. Walking through the front door, I saw to my left a dark dance floor with platforms for go-go boys, and to my right a bright-white, futuristic-looking cocktail lounge. I decided I’d earned a night out, and so I made my way to a nearly empty gay bar. On a Monday night in Orlando in late 2004, I had just finished a story about bald eagles rebuilding their hurricane-shattered nests-very on-brand for public radio. I covered whatever news the state offered up, whether hurricanes or politics. And I brought a unique set of experiences to this particular story.Ī decade before, I had spent almost a year living in Florida, filling in for a colleague. But lived experience can be worth something too. That’s where I sit for lots of stories I tell: on the outside, looking in. As a journalist, I understand that there can be value to approaching a story as an outsider. I knew that any of my colleagues could have covered the tragedy. After every interview about trauma, loss, and death, we closed the car doors, heaved a big sigh, turned the keys in the ignition, and heard those familiar bells, followed by I don’t want a lot for Christmas / There is just one thing I need … Each time my producer and I climbed into our rental car, she plugged in her phone and the car stereo would start to play the first song in her iTunes library, which was sorted in alphabetical order. I had volunteered to fly to Florida to cover the massacre for NPR. E very December, when Christmas rolls around, I hear Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You” and I think of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, five years ago in the middle of June-literally as far from Christmas as you can get.