Queer Before I Knew It
In every family, some stories are passed down like treasures, and others we need to look for ourselves. The ones that never made it into a photo album or were never talked about at a family meal. The ones that are only shared in whispers, left unfinished, or accidentally put in the wrong folder. Some people are lucky enough to get a car or jewelry as a gift. I was given the story of a lavender marriage and a series of decisions that slowly defied boundaries.
It’s not easy to explain my story, but I’ll try: my biological grandmother, who was part of a lesbian couple, married a gay Cuban refugee who had recently come to the U.S. via the Mariel Boatlift. He was among thousands who had to leave Cuba because of the Castro regime, and many of them were queer, poor, or politically unwanted. Because the U.S. was not able to manage everyone, he was taken to Fort McCoy in Wisconsin. Like other refugees, he had to have an American sponsor before he could leave. It was at this point that Thom Higgins and Bruce Brockway from Minneapolis started the Positively Gay Cuban Refugee Task Force to relocate gay Cubans held up in Fort McCoy. It was community-based, short-lived, and had its flaws, but it allowed nearly a hundred gay men to avoid being held indefinitely (MNopedia). My grandfather was among them. Higgins was not just an activist; he was the man who threw a pie at Anita Bryant during a press conference and came up with the term “gay pride” (Advocate, Star Tribune). I always felt connected to that history which was usually shared as an anecdote or legend. It influenced the circumstances that influenced the people who influenced me… That’s a lot of influence, but it’s true!
Once my grandfather moved to Madison, he began dating a man who wanted to help him remain in the United States via green card. One evening, that man went up to my grandmother (a lesbian) in a gay bar and asked her to marry his boyfriend for a large sum of money. She accepted it. They made it seem real. In the middle of that surprising deal, my mother was born. Many queer stories focus on the idea of breaking away from family, rules, or what is expected. My story, oddly, is about people finding each other in unusual ways to handle systems that were not designed for them. The paperwork said marriage, but the truth was: people had to survive, make do with what they had, and trust each other. There is more to queer history than just protesting or using rainbow flags. It appears in unusual apartments, in bilingual disagreements, in bar deals, and in people who meet despite language and risk. It exists in the area between what is stated and what is really true.
The identity I have today would have been hard for many people in that story to understand. I don’t have sexual or romantic feelings, I don’t have a gender, I use it/its and they/them pronouns; even my genetics didn’t pick a side. My body and life aren’t a written script, but neither were my grandparents’. Maybe that’s what I really inherited. When I consider queer legacy, I focus on people who faced huge difficulties and still managed to survive. My mind goes to marriages that were based on working together rather than loving each other. I consider how queer individuals have always managed to build their futures, despite the systems telling them they did not exist.
I often wonder how they would have felt to know and see me just as I am today. If they had met someone whose identity came not from love or customs, but from refusing to settle into given roles; would they have gotten it? Even without the words, I think they would have understood the meaning. They didn’t follow someone else’s plan as they went through life. Survival, creativity, and knowledge about how quickly things could turn defined their queerness. I am from people who found an honesty that could be found not in speech but in the way they moved and acted, the names they gave and what surrounded them. It makes me wonder about all the other stories that we’ve thought didn’t make sense because their plot was not typical. It makes it impossible to avoid wondering how many other stories out there were considered uncategorizable because their plot wasn’t exactly what was expected.
Even though they stood by their choices, their resilience also redefined how I view connection, community, and selfhood. I go in my own direction, but I take inspiration from them when I build my own identity. Their impact was about finding a place in society where they were denied it. In other words, my queerness is present in ways that may not be immediately visible. It means choosing to be genuine even when nobody sees and not trying to impress anyone. When I am in queer spaces, I am not looking to find myself perfectly, but to hear bits of my story that others might have experienced too.
I carry this attitude into every queer meeting, discussion, and event. I am not looking for a copy of my story, though I do imagine it would be nice. I search for the mismatched, quiet, and unresolved parts. The ones that show we’ve always been around, making something from the little we have had. Because every story matters, whether it seems likely or not, since it proves that queer life has always existed and kept going no matter what.
We will always be here.
Sources
https://www.mnopedia.org/group/positively-gay-cuban-refugee-task-force
