It turned out I was mad enough to crisscross the United States over seven years to find out what was happening in gay bars. There was no place for Latino anger in straight shock and mourning, despite a long queer tradition of us being united in our anger. I said something milquetoast about protecting our LGBTQ+ places. Marcelo was incandescent with rage at a country with more guns than people and little value on queer life. We got approached by a local TV news reporter. I changed my Twitter handle to a question-who needs gay bars?-and set out to one of Cleveland’s surviving gay bars with two Latino friends. A murderer gunned down 49 dancers at Latin Night in a gay club in Orlando. I started the morbid Twitter account “Gay bar death watch” where I chronicled gay bar closures around the country. I seethed for months, worrying over the fate of gay bars like a sore tooth. Many locals said that it didn’t matter, as if Cleveland had gay bars to spare- though half had recently closed. Straight journalists had called my favorite corner a “toxic” “nowhere ” some gay businessmen called it an improvement. That didn’t square with life here in the depopulating rust belt. When my favorite gay bar closed in Cleveland, coastal folks agreed it was gentrification.
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