A kiss: it may have been a kiss that caused all of this; delicate and intimate, most memorable and indescribable.
Do you remember that tender first kiss? The very expression of humanity, empathy, comfort and joy: that first time you kissed a boy or girl, likely in a club. Remember the first time you went to a club?
I had to sneak in the back door of a dilapidated old house in Regina that was only open on Saturday nights. But that’s another story. That’s the story about our clubs and how we built our neighbourhoods around them. They were our sanctuaries, like your churches. Imagine a madman coming into your church and opening fire.
Born out of the summer of love, we showed the world how to be human, to love freely and openly, to kiss who we wanted and wherever we wanted. That seeing a kiss might have caused this nightmare would daunt lesser people, leaving them in bloody and tear-filled puddles of hopelessness and despair.
A lot of us, myself included, have been deeply injured with emotional and psychological shock and left numb by an overwhelming sense of loss after the mass shooting in Orlando, Florida at a gay nightclub called Pulse.
I could not process it; still can’t. It was with me all day and will be for days; forever and a day.
Be angry. Be mad. But remember to come out from that dark coma. Hatred is exhausting. I had to dig deep to keep from raging, smashing my feelings against the wall and falling into a rubble. Hate: it makes you rot from the inside and causes wrinkles.
I cannot explain to anyone who is not gay what this has done to us. It is visceral. They would have had to live our history, share our courage and fight for our lives to get it; and they have never really got us. We have been shunned, shamed, imprisoned, hated, hunted, bashed, murdered and now massacred.
If I have learned anything in this lifelong struggle, it is that we are invincible because we, as a community, no, as a distinct people, are bound together by love. We have to be to survive and, more than that, we want to be.
So kids, kiss more, kiss a lot, kiss anybody and everybody. Kiss your faces off. It’s Pride. Peace.
Dave Brindle is the community reporter for Powell River Peak.
