cosmolinguist | Queer Club (Reply)

When I asked for nice things the other day, a local person who randomly found me on Mastodon and knew D very slightly for the most random reason sent me a photo of a sign for a local "queer club" that happens once a month.

Also it's in a community centre, not a pub/bar so it doesn't cost anything for attendees and it isn't based around alcohol like so many queer events are. And you don't even have to go In To Town! (Though it's east of my house, and east-west routes are so poorly served by public transport here that I walked to and from, which my ankle did not thank me for last night or this morning!) It wasn't even all white or all people under 35, which is a big deal for queer stuff.

There was an activity, making fabric or paper flags to save at our local pride in August, but there was no compulsion to do it: people could just chat and have tea or biscuits if they wanted.

I made a lot of flags. I can't draw and I like words (see evidence passim), which was quicker work than people painstakingly making art, working on their progress pride flags (there was only one brown and one light blue/gray sharpie, so there was some marker-stealing between the tables), and so on.

Slogans I enflagged:

give us meds but give us roses too (stolen from a friend's report of a trans protest in London last year); I actually tried to draw some pink roses and some blue bottles of testosterone gel like mine undermeath that
goblin pride (D calls me a goblin all the time so I feel like I did this on his behalf)
short king himbo pride (this partly based on a recent conversation where I'd described myself as the himbo garden worker; MB has the knowledge/skills/eyesight, I literally do the heavy lifting, and suchlike chores that are too demanding for her)
trans disability immigrant solidarity (all written inside a heart), with "no body is illegal" on the other side of that flag; this is a repeat of something I chalked on the ground while protesting a TERF event last year)

After that, a friend of my Mastodon acquaintance called my name as I was leaving, asking if I wanted to go to the pub. I didn't really; it was already late and I'd had a long day and people had been nice (someone said to me at one point, "You have an infectious laugh, has anyone ever told you that?" and I could honestly say that no one has! wild!) but I didn't really know anybody...

But then they said "I've never been to [Erik's old local] before" and I brightened right up. I absolutely wanted to go to the pub. Half a dozen of us did, and we had a very silly fun time. The landlord came out and was his usual warm, charming endearing self. When I said I used to go to the pub quiz all the time, he remembered me, which is pretty impressive considering me and the shifting group of friends I went with were never exactly regulars and weren't the most memorable people. He's getting on -- he told us they've just celebrated 18 years of running this pub. He and his wife are retirement age now but I can't imagine it without him.

Wild to think I was going to the pub quiz in the first half of their time here. It felt very weird to pay with a card there -- I don't know if I'd ever done that before! And now I never do anything else...

My three flags and I got home late enough that it disrupted Gary's routine, oops. But it was such a fun night and I'm so glad to be making a little progress on the seemingly-hopeless goal of meeting new people and replacing the queer community that ghosted me in the last four years.