Pulse Nightclub

A minimum of 103 shots were fired.  Probably more.  Probably lots more.

How long was the music still playing before the DJ noticed? How many people were still dancing as they were shot?

In about a minute, I said, and someone felt the need to correct me on my facts.

No more shootings, I pleaded, and someone tried to tell me my reasoning was inaccurate.

No more guns, I cried, and someone quoted a bible verse to tell me that Muslims would use stones instead.

And when I say someone, I mean white men.  Probably straight.  Probably cis. Probably non-disabled.

Definitely privileged.

It is a privilege to think that I’m making a rational argument, when what I’m doing is pouring a little bit of my heart on the page, both because it’s flowing over inside of me and because maybe if I share it, someone else will find what they need in it.  If you think I’m open to discussing it, I didn’t write it for you.

I wrote it for those of us in pain today, knowing that we lost fifty lives, most of them queer, lots of them People of Color, many of them young and finding themselves and ready to great things in and for the world.  They are gone.

And another fifty-three scarred and scared, wounded long beyond their injuries heal. They will never be the same, carefree to dance.  No, they will be wondering who has the nearest gun.

And for Muslims everywhere who continue to live in fear because white America can’t grasp the chasm between religion and terrorism if the people we’re talking about aren’t white.

And for all of us. I feel society forging forth into the future.  And I feel the weights of fear dragging us down, and back, and around and around through the maze to freedom.

I’m going to be in Orlando in two weeks, accepting the first ever ALA Stonewall Award specifically for Children’s LGBT literature.  I was going to be a partying queer.  Now, I don’t know.

I don’t know what comes next.