27 | OutBoise Magazine | NEWS
Like the friends who helped me then, the people
at Queens aren’t worried about posing along the
wall. They don’t seem to be interested in excluding. They’re jumping in and dancing. Gay guys, gay
girls, and the occasional heterosexual I’m sure, all in
there dancing together or lounging and chatting. No
obvious divisions. It’s not about ignoring those you
think aren’t as cool as you while seeking the approval of the people you want to be as cool as.
Community, at its best, is inclusive.
I’m not naïve. I’m sure there was some exclusion
and pettiness going on that wasn’t apparent to me.
And I was warned before going about the pickpockets and prostitutes. It’s still Eastern Europe, after
all. Community is not always at its best. That’s true
everywhere.
As I travel from country to country seeking out the
gay community, sometimes I lose sight of what we
mean when we use the phrase “the gay community.”
Is it the organizations, the bars, your particular
group of friends? Is it all of the above? Watching
OutBoisemag.com | Issue 13 | December 2015
as the crowd at a gay bar in Bucharest let loose in
one of the few places they can made me think that
maybe community is whatever or wherever or whoever makes you feel reinforced and included – that
makes you feel normal and accepted. That’s why we
try to create community, because these are human
needs that historically have been denied people
like us. So we learned how to provide them for each
other.
Although no place is perfect, it was clear that at
least some gay Romanians were able to fill those
needs in a loud, dark basement in a bleak, dirty
building in Bucharest, for a time. Until they have
to ascend those stairs and walk out into the sometimes stifling fresh air.
Jeremy Quist is a graduate student traveling
through Central and Eastern Europe while performing research on the LGBT community there. You can
read more about his travel experiences at WeTwoBoys.com. When not traveling, he works at the
Lucky Dog Tavern in Boise.