It took me a long time to work up the confidence to be seen with Ellen. It was 2001; we were 18, students at Oxford. We went to the Zodiac, a grungy straight club in town. We danced awkwardly and then kissed awkwardly. My first gay kiss in a public place. Seconds later, another milestone: my first homophobic assault. A girl grabbed me, shoved me, made a gagging gesture, her face ugly with hate. I left the club immediately, gone was the confidence I’d had when I’d walked in. I felt ashamed.



Why am I telling you this? Why am I telling you a story about a girl who was mean to me 15 years ago, when 49 people died violently on Saturday night in Orlando and more than 53 others were badly injured?

I’m telling you this because violence, physical and mental violence, is a regular part of LGBT people’s lives. If you’re lucky, it’s banal – a shove, a girl making gagging gestures – but it’s still corrosive. Don’t underestimate how corrosive it is. You start walking around with a suit of armor on. You wear shame like a layer of skin. You feel out of place everywhere.

I’m telling you this because when I heard about the attack in Orlando and went online to read about it, half the news outlets didn’t mention it was a gay club that had been attacked. The New York Times, for God’s sake, in its original reporting didn’t mention that Pulse was a gay nightclub.

For many people a club is just a club. But not if you’re gay. A few months after the Zodiac incident I took the bus to London to meet up with spacebabe07, a girl I’d been talking to online. We went to the Candybar, a lesbian bar in Soho. The bouncer, taking in our long hair, giggly nerves, wouldn’t let us in at first. We had to answer coded questions, “prove” we weren’t straight. This was only a few years after the Admiral Duncan, a nearby gay bar, had been attacked with a nail bomb. This was when pride was a protest and not a corporate-sponsored festival. The LGBT community was jumpy and protective of its space.

Gay clubs are everything that straight people take for granted, squeezed into four, usually quite sticky, walls.

Eventually the bouncer let us in. I spent most of that first visit staring at my feet. The Candybar wasn’t the most welcoming place in the world; girls weren’t exactly sitting around singing Kumbaya and receiving you into the lesbian sisterhood. Nevertheless I’d never felt such a sense of relief and euphoria. For the first time in my life I felt like I was normal. Like an invisible pressure had been taken off and I could breathe. I became obsessed with gay bars. I spent the next decade bouncing between Candybar, the Ghetto, Trash Palace, G-A-Y bar, Heaven, having a sort of gay puberty. I did the same thing when I moved to New York. Zigzagging between the Cubbyhole and Stonewall. Two places in an overwhelming city where I felt like I really belonged. I’ve met half the people I love the most in the world in those bars. They’ve shaped my life.

Oh, by the way, if you’ve clocked my Arab name and are expecting a tragic coming out story involving a clash of civilizations then I’m afraid I will have to disappoint you. I came out to my parents shortly after that first Candybar visit, when I was 19. My Palestinian father and my English mother were loving and supportive and kind. It was never an issue. I am luckier than a lot of people. But, despite all that love, despite the fact that my home was always a safe space, I can’t overstate how important gay clubs have been to my confidence and mental health.

Gay clubs are hospitals that patch up the invisible wounds you accumulate. Gay clubs are therapist offices. They’re community centers. They’re sanctuaries. Gay clubs are everything that straight people take for granted, squeezed into four, usually quite sticky, walls.

Recently, though, I decided I was over gay bars. Over labels in general. I didn’t want to be gay or bisexual or queer or LGBTQ, I just wanted to be a person. I was finally comfortable with myself, I didn’t need gay bars anymore. The world has changed, I thought. I could kiss my girlfriend at the Zodiac now and nobody would bat an eyelid. Being gay was no big deal anymore, I thought – not in America anyway. And it seems like other people thought the same. The gay clubs I used to go to a decade ago have nearly all shut down. Candybar closed a few years ago: there isn’t a single lesbian-only bar in London now. Lesbian bars across America have also been closing. Why bother with gay-only space when the world is more inclusive?

Well. The last 48 hours have shown us why. Not just because there are hate-ridden people who want to physically obliterate us, but because there are people who want to gloss over our existence, trivialize our lives. People who insist that our tragedy is everyone’s tragedy. People who insist that a gay bar is just a bar. It’s nice to pretend that labels don’t matter but they do. People die because of them. This pride month I think you’ll find a lot of the LGBT community holding tightly to the labels we’ve spent so long trying to shed.