Finding My Home in Queer America
By: Almah Lavon Rice
Tags: America, Perspective, Pride, LGBTQ, USA

In late 2013, I found myself living alone in another small town, this time in southwestern Pennsylvania, just a few miles from the West Virginia border. Uniontown was primarily white and resolutely red: more Trump signs than rainbow flags. Still, my apartment was perfect, and I told myself that, just like that remote casita, it would be great for focusing on my writing. I followed Pride on my Facebook feed, though hitting a cascade of “likes” wasn’t the same as being doused in glitter on the parade route. In my lowest, loneliest moments I called queer friends of mine who didn’t live in “flyover country” — friends in Vancouver, Seattle, San Francisco. One kind friend in Oakland invited to move in with her and her wife. Even with those housemates, my share of the rent would exceed what I was paying for my roomy one-bedroom in the Laurel Highlands. But it was tempting nonetheless. All of the Bay Area opportunities for queer meet-cutes, in my mind, could make daily life into one big Pride parade without end. I wrestled and I wondered.

In the end, illness made the decision for me. I made an emergency move to the closest sizable city — Pittsburgh — to access the health care I needed. There, I got better. I met my partner, introduced to me by a local Black queer minister, no less. Together we went to Pittsburgh’s People’s Pride, a grassroots antidote to the more corporate celebrations. Founded by local Black trans woman activist Ciora Thomas, it’s a reminder that trans women of color were the firestarters of the Stonewall Uprising and the resulting Pride movement. I hadn’t been to a Pride fête in years, but there I was, amid the Mardi Gras beads, feathers, and twerking. It wasn’t New York or San Francisco, but I missed nothing.

And that’s just the thing. Living outside of a supposed “queer center of gravity,” as Samantha Allen referred to urban meccas in The New York Times, can foster a chronic case of FOMO. Did I miss out on too much, living in those small towns in New Mexico, Kentucky, Pennsylvania, and Florida? There were times that the queer event calendar on Facebook was too much to bear — I mean, what I was doing out in the middle of nowhere? Although I traveled often, it seemed like the pulse of the world was always fluttering elsewhere. Then again, there were times when I looked upon the ice-capped mountain range from my house in New Mexico, and I marveled at my luck. When the weather warmed, there were times I would open the window to hear nothing but wind and birdsong, feeling complete and at the center of the only world that mattered.

Now I live a few minutes’ drive from downtown Pittsburgh, but as I write this, I can gaze upon a lush wall of green thanks to the park across the street. I have heard the last-night songs of foxes and coyotes coming from the trees. I have seen wild turkeys. The groundhogs are a constant presence. Hummingbirds still visit every day. I could bear to live in a more remote place, but that nature girl in me is getting fed right here. And so is the Black queer who also needs the nutrients of the city. I’ve talked to enough friends living in those queer coastal or big city meccas to know that community can be elusive, anywhere. I’ve lived in enough places to know that there is not one place big enough to hold all of my queer Black multitude. And maybe those complexities can finally be a source of pride.