The first thing I did after settling into my NYC hotel was open Grindr. A gay cliché, I know, but it's always fun to see how many gays are around you (especially the cute ones).
As I scrolled through a few dozen torsos and reached the bottom of the page, I realized I was in for one hell of a weekend. A tap on the last profile on the page informed me that the guy farthest away was just 317 feet. At least a hundred gay men were using Grindr within 300 square feet of me. Back home in Texas, the last guy on the page could be as far as 6 miles. The sheer number of gays crammed into that one square mile was probably more than I had encountered in my entire life.
For the first time ever, the U.S. hosted WorldPride in New York City. Over 3 million LGBTQ people and allies flooded the city for the month-long celebration, which came to a head on June 30 with a massive parade through Manhattan.
Thanks to the Curio Collection by Hilton, I stayed at the beautiful Renwick Hotel on 40th street, smack dab in the midst of the celebration.
As my friend and I left the hotel for our first NYC adventure, three men with an assortment of rainbow merch smiled at us.
"Happy Pride," they called.
"You too," we smiled back.
We stopped for dinner at a random pizza joint on the street for a $1 slice and made our way to Brooklyn for Papi Juice, a massive party for queer and trans POCs hosted by Pose star Indya Moore. Never in my life have I been in one place with some many beautiful black and brown queers. I ran into friends from college, people that knew me before I came out at 21. Here we were, partying together at a random club thousands of miles away from the streets of Austin, Texas. We laughed. We had a few too many drinks. All of us felt the magic in the air. That electricity bound us together, a current that swept through each of us. And we couldn't stop dancing.
On Saturday night, my friend and I stumbled back to the subway at 4:30am from the Ladyland party in Brooklyn. A group of ten or so queers stood on the opposite subway platform of us, decked out in elaborate rainbow and neon themed outfits, glitter, earrings, and heels I could never even attempt to walk.
"Can you take a picture of us?" they yelled across two platforms.
"Fuck yeah," I called back.
They posed with their smizes and tongues out. The cackled together with glee when they were done posing, then screamed their phone number at me. As I typed it in the number and sent the pics, they realized they were on the wrong platform and hurried over to my side.
"At least you got some fierce photos," I laughed as they caught their breath.
We got on the train together, all of us smiling and laughing like we were old friends. Joy radiates off of a group of queers free to be who they want to be. I sat down next to a guy named Will. He asked what I did. I told him I was a writer, here to do a piece on WorldPride.
"Are you going to include us?" he asked with a slight smile. A loud bang causes us both to whip around, and we see his friend, a Black girl with braids, in a death drop on the train floor.
"Definitely," I laughed back.
Sadly, my flight back to Los Angeles was in the middle of Sunday's parade. My friend and I dragged our suitcases through the subway and smiled at all the people in their assorted rainbow gear traveling to the parade. Boys and girls and everything in between. Families with their children, smiling dads with rainbow painted faces. Boys with their tits out and rainbow stickers over their nipples. So many queer and trans people, not afraid or anxious or angry. Just...free.
What a mythical queer land. I could've lived forever in that moment.
For so many queer people, we grow up feeling so alone and isolated. So when we can all come together and collectively celebrate who tf we are, it just feels so damn magical.
