Now more than ever, we need spaces for LGBTQ people to find joy
Being in community with other LGBTQ people for the first time, or the first time in a while, is like realizing your jaw has been clenched all day. You may have been doing fine when it was clenched, the discomfort fading into the background as you go about your life. But the second you release that pressure, you realize how much it was affecting you.
Even though society has gradually become more accepting of the LGBTQ community, not every space is welcoming for gay people, much less actively working to ensure their comfort. That’s why gay bars, gay clubs and gay venues have been such important spaces for the LGBTQ community over the years.
It is what makes the shooting at Club Q in Colorado Springs sting, even for those of us across the country. These places are where LGBTQ people can just be, and even those spaces can be violated. We are all forced to remember that there are people who wish people like us didn’t exist.
These tragedies make these spaces, and the joy they afford us, more important than ever.
Raleigh has always had a small gay nightlife scene. Legends Nightclub and FLEX opened in the 1990s. Ruby Deluxe opened in 2015. Other venues, bars and clubs have come and gone. Then FLEX’s building was scheduled for demolition, and the building Legends is in was bought by a developer, but the scene was still needed. Enter: GAG!
GAG!, a “quarterly queer party” that has held pop-ups in Raleigh and Durham, is absolutely fantastical. But decorations aren’t all that make a GAG! party. It’s just as much about the people: about my coupled friends being able to kiss without attracting stares, and my single friends being able to talk to and dance with other LGBTQ people without second-guessing.
It’s finding peace in the beat of a song and the exhale I realized I’d been holding in for too long. It’s the comfort found in letting go, because you can, because you want to.
But comfort isn’t baked into every night out. Daniel Thomas Abbott, a DJ and one-third of the trio behind GAG!, notes that planning your night at “regular bars” is completely different depending on the venue and who is in those spaces. Dealing with bullies as a gay teenager, Abbott notes, means figuring out how to protect yourself in unfamiliar territory.
“When I walk in a room, I have scanned everybody, I am deciding what the vibe is, I know where the exits are, and I figure out how long I have to be here,” Abbott says.
There have been three GAG! parties since June 2022. I attended GAG! To Death, the Halloween weekend party, at The Fruit. There were two DJ sets happening in the warehouse venue. There were elaborate photo backdrops set up in different side rooms: one was decorated with camping gear and a sign that said “Welcome to Camp Crystal Lake,” while another looked like the site of a haunted house. It’s the party you dream about as a teenager in rural North Carolina.
“Living in isolation, you kind of create this fantasy world in your head of what you would like to see in your life, and I feel like that’s what drives everything that I do,” says Trey Roberts, one of the co-hosts of GAG! alongside Abbott and Breniecia Reuben. Roberts grew up in Hollister, about 70 miles northeast of Raleigh. and described the “delayed adolescence” he experienced moving to Raleigh in 2016. At that point, Abbott and Reuben were mainstays in the local scene.
The first GAG! party was held June 24, the same day the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the federal right to an abortion. It was a few days after Beyoncé released “BREAK MY SOUL,” the single for her critically-acclaimed album RENAISSANCE. Abbott, Reuben and Roberts are all huge Beyoncé fans, and the album itself is a love letter to house music, gay clubs and Beyoncé’s Uncle Jonny, who died of HIV complications.
Hundreds of people were on the rooftop of The Dillon that night. Reuben was DJing for the biggest crowd since the start of COVID. When the proverbial needle dropped on “BREAK MY SOUL,” Roberts says, the crowd went crazy. There was a rush to the dance floor. People danced and sang along: “I’m on that new vibration. I’m building my own foundation. Baby, you won’t break my soul.”
This story was originally published November 23, 2022 at 10:12 AM.
