Phase was my first experience of public queer community. My first. The very first. Not the only, and maybe never perfect, but first. And real. And important. For years already I had been IDing as queer, but I was too arrogant, too ignorant, too...active in my own destruction to comprehend that public queer community would have anything to offer me that I wanted. That I needed. And Phase was the first place I learned otherwise. I dont know what to say. This is happening everywhere. The writing is on the wall. Maybe closed indefinitely for repairs doesnt actually mean exactly what we know it actually means; maybe there will be an eleventh-hour save---here in DC. But even if there is, in other cities, in more cities every day, there havent been. There wont be. The tide has turned, past tense. And now I know what it feels like when it reaches my home. Institutions disappear when theyre no longer sustained by the way we live. Record stores, video stores, bookstores, dyke bars. And Im not so naive or nostalgic to think that because individuals or certain demographics experience a loss as sorrowful, that in the big picture these changes arent often mostly neutral. New models for meeting needs come along. Some people, enough people, find them more useful. Old institutions go under. The rest of us...adapt, when we run out of time to hold out against change. Its making me deal with what it means to lose, forever lose, PUBLIC QUEER COMMUNITY SPACE. Phase wasnt my first experience of any kind of queer community. I found that first in Albuquerque through magical accident. But with Phase, it was public community, and that changed things. Changed me. Changed everything. In a way that Im not sure anything else could have. I dont know where we go, now. Literally: where?
Posted on: Thu, 08 Jan 2015 19:35:40 +0000
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