The bass hit before I even reached the dance floor, a pulse so deep it swallowed me whole. I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days. I barely left my apartment. I don’t remember why I was lonely, only that I was. It could have been anything—friendships fading, heartbreak, exhaustion, the quiet weight of being queer in a world that never stops reminding you of it. But at some point, loneliness settled in, and I convinced myself it was mine alone to carry.

It wasn’t. It never is.

Loneliness is more than a feeling—it’s something inflicted. For queer and trans people, isolation has always been a tool of oppression. From criminalizing queer gathering spaces to banning drag shows and shutting down LGBTQ+ youth centers, those in power know that a disconnected, fearful community is easier to erase. But the solution to this isn’t just resistance—it’s showing up for each other in the real world.

That is why queer spaces matter. That is why we must take up space.

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That night, I stepped onto the dance floor at Station 4 (S4), the largest queer nightclub in Dallas, located in the heart of Oak Lawn—the city’s historic “gayborhood.” Bodies moved together, heat rising, sweat glistening under neon. Laughter cracked open the air, a kind of exhale, a release. The first chords of “When Love Takes Over” by Kelly Rowland and David Guetta filled the space, and something inside me broke.

I had been carrying so much weight, and all at once, it lifted. My chest tightened, my throat burned, and before I even understood what was happening, Suddenly tears began to fall down my face. I moved through the crowd, my body surrendering to the rhythm, and as I lifted my hands, someone else reached for me. A stranger. Maybe they saw the tears. Maybe they just knew. Their fingers squeezed mine for just a second, a silent affirmation: You are here. I am here. We are here.

That night, S4 wasn’t just a nightclub—it was a sanctuary. 

I had felt it before, in another place, in another time. Years earlier, I found myself at Kaliente, a queer Latin nightclub on Maple Avenue, just a few miles from S4. My friends had driven from Waco to Dallas on an almost-empty gas tank, desperate to escape the small-town suffocation of being queer with nowhere to go. They barely had money for food, let alone gas to get back. But that didn’t matter once we stepped inside.

The club was alive—sweat-slick bodies moving to reggaetón, cumbia, salsa, the rhythms of home. The air smelled like spilled tequila and cologne, thick with the warmth of bodies pressed close. This was a place where people could speak their first language, dance to the music their parents played in their childhood homes, and exist without fear of judgment or violence.

A full choreographed routine to Destiny’s Child’s “Lose My Breath”—spins, drops, dips, every move performed with the kind of desperation and joy that only comes from knowing you have no choice but to give everything. The crowd cheered, throwing crumpled dollar bills at their feet, enough to fill their tank and get them home.

Even then, I knew that queer people were being pushed to the edges. But I didn’t yet understand how much of it was by design. I didn’t yet see that the same forces trying to erase us from public life were the ones keeping us isolated in our private lives.

That night at Kaliente, my friends didn’t just dance for gas money. They danced for the same reason we have always danced—for survival, for community, for the feeling of knowing that even when everything else is slipping away, we still have each other. 

We cannot let them take that away from us.

The worst thing we can do in the face of attacks is disappear into our rooms, sink into doom-scrolling, and let the weight of isolation settle onto our shoulders. We have to fight the urge to retreat. Because queer joy—queer togetherness—is what they fear the most.

But we are not ghosts. We do not vanish when they erase our names from history books or strip our existence from government records. We do not disappear when they shut down our bars, criminalize our bodies, or turn our survival into a political talking point. We are what remains after every policy meant to push us out. We are the names they tried to forget, the lives they failed to bury, the stories that do not end just because they decide they shouldn’t be told.

We have been exiled, institutionalized, beaten, and legislated out of public life, but we are still here.

And if we want to stay here, we have to show up for one another.

Go out. Meet people. Find your community.

Because when we stay home, they win.

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