The first words I spoke to my wife this morning as she stirred in our bed were: “There was another mass shooting, at a gay nightclub in Florida. At least 20 people are dead.”
Then I headed downstairs, the dogs at my feet, wanting to be let out and fed. By the living room I wished I hadn’t told her right away. What a thing to wake up to. What first words of mo(u)rning.
We went to get coffee and some tomato plants. By the time we got home it was 50 dead, 53 wounded. I don’t even know how to think a number dead that large.
June is LGBTQ Pride Month. It’s also the month we got married. “My wife.” Eight years later, it sometimes still feels new, even risky, to say it. To claim it.
“Come sit in the backyard with me,” my wife says. “Come let’s sit and drink beer.” But I am itchy and fidgety, restless. I keep scrolling feeds. I re-tweet. I write and delete. I water the window boxes and am angry at the wilting petunias. I check twitter and am angry at the politician who campaigned on a garbage tide of queer hate now saying his heart is with the victims in Florida. I am angry at the two boys on a stoop who lowly called me a dyke as I walked the dogs earlier this week. I’m angrier at myself for saying nothing to them.
I poorly plant tomatoes, dirt all down the front of my shorts, and my wife says—“Sit down here with me.”
I don’t. I can’t be allowed time to sit quietly in the shade, time to scroll on my phone.
I am not ready for news that this or that famous preacher has named this act God’s justice for our gay sins. I am not ready to compare this to the shootings that have come before, that will come after. I don’t want to see the face of the shooter. I don’t care what he did or didn’t like or want or think. I want only to see the faces of those he killed. I want to know their names the way I know the lyrics of songs, lines from favorite movies, the fucking Pledge of Allegiance: by heart, by heart, by heart.
I cannot abide the silence from those who are quick to condemn shootings more palatable to their politics. We hear your silence. You can’t hide behind it. And if you can’t see how this act of violence is linked to anti-trans bathroom bills and other laws that allow for queer people to be discriminated against, to be singled out as other, less-than, you’re fooling yourselves. But what’s scariest is that I think you do see it. I think you know that hate is hate. And when you applaud it at rallies and proclaim it on bumper stickers and vote it into office, you multiply it, give it oxygen.
I don’t want to talk about how often this happens here. (All the damn time.) I don’t want to hear about what we could but won’t do about it. I don’t want to hear about how a gun that perpetrated the deadliest mass shooting in US history, by a single gunman, is for hunting and home defense. For hunting queer people: you betcha.
“Come sit with me,” my wife says. “Come now.” It is windy and the maple tree above her bends low its branches, the sunlight shifting over her. Soon she’ll light the charcoal for the grill and we’ll drink beer and talk about the week to come. We are so lucky and our life together is beautiful and and I will try to hang on to that.
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