When I was in my early 20s and starving for any kind of professional connections in New York City, where I was trying to make it as a writer, I met a fancy author who miraculously had an aunt who knew my mom through cultural organizing in my hometown of Colorado Springs. We were at a literary conference and I nervously introduced myself and explained the connection. Her nose scrunched up and she looked at my pityingly, “Oh, you’re from Colorado Springs? I’m sorry.”
I was equal parts devastated and enraged. Sure, I had plenty of criticisms of my hometown—what some have described as the “center of anti-gay activism”—but those were mine to have and hold, not hers. I hated some parts of Colorado Springs; I also cherished some parts of Colorado Springs. It was mine and, as is the case with anything that is yours, it was textured beyond anything this fancy author understood.
When I heard about the mass shooting at Club Q—a queer club—last week, I thought of that fancy author (who would, by the way, go on to hold a very prominent position in the literary world, influencing tons of decisions about whose books and what subjects would be taken seriously). I also thought about my high school mentor, Vincent Puzick, who was a hero to me for many reasons, but partly because, when Focus on the Family flooded a school board meeting with devotees and tried to shut our paper down because we were reporting on queer experiences, he stood up for us. I thought of the protestors who screamed at me and my friend as we went into the Planned Parenthood clinic, waving their mutilated fetus placards in our teenage faces. I thought of the Amendment 2 sign in our front yard and the film festival my mom started with her friends to make sure that Colorado Springs got a booster shot of cultural diversity once a year.
The truth is, the older I get, the more grateful I become that I grew up where I did. When I was 18, I fled as far away as I could imagine—trading the orange rock of the Garden of the Gods for skyscrapers, my 1987 Honda Accord for subway trains, too-tight familiarity for epic strangeness. Predictably, I thought I was escaping something boring, backward, small.
Having lived away from Colorado Springs as long as I lived there, I now see it differently. It’s a town that has always been struggling to define its own values, asking itself over and over again: who belongs here? who deserves tenderness? how can we live together when we are shaped so differently?
And as I see it, those are the questions the whole country is asking right now. I am lucky to have grown up amidst those questions—playing out in churches of varying sizes and denominations and the beloved progressive cafes downtown and in theaters on the Colorado College campus. When I interned at The Colorado Springs Independent with the editor-in-chief, a badass woman (shout-out Kathryn Eastburn!) with more interest in shaping beautiful essays than keeping a clean office—I was seized by the romance of being a feminist writer who believed in a different definition of freedom in a city surrounded by the institutions of war, both religious and patriotic. She seemed to be holding a space that mattered in a town shadowed by the soaring architecture of the Air Force Academy and culturally skewed by the sprawling campus of Focus on the Family, both just up I25.
In other words, Colorado Springs was embattled (I can’t speak to what it feels like to live there now). And the older I get, the more I value having been shaped by that embattlement. It was visceral. It was intense. And it was good preparation for the national politics we are now facing.
I wish I had been surprised that a broken man walked into a beautiful scene in my hometown and murdered people. I heard the news and immediately felt heartbreak and something even worse: of course. Not because Colorado Spring is a bad place, not because it is boring, backward, or small, as I thought in the midst of my adolescent dualism. But because Colorado Springs is America. It is a place where real people bump up against one another in all kinds of ways.
Sometimes they handle it with grace and creativity—a human beauty befitting such a beautiful landscape all around. Exhibit A: my mom’s film festival, which just celebrated its 35th year and is filled with challenging, gorgeous art and rowdy diverse women organizers. Exhibit B: my former high school newspaper buddy, Mia Alvarado, and friends make BREAD, a do-it-yourself, micro-granting community feast (in addition to gorgeous community murals like the one below).
Sometimes they fall into the easy romance of hating one another. Weaponizing the latter, of course, is dangerous. Everywhere. Anywhere. I couldn’t possibly know what allowed that gunmen to walk into that bar and shoot perfect strangers because of some heinous idea that had been planted in his head by his parents, by the Internet, by a religious institution. But I have a hunch it has to do with the dehumanization that comes from isolation and the desperation that comes from feeling like you don’t matter in the world.
Colorado Springs is Anderson Lee Aldrich, the alleged shooter. It is also Richard Fierro, the traumatized veteran who was there at his first drag show with his daughter and their friends—the one who saved so many lives. They both matter. We all matter. If only we could hold that with the nuance befitting our broken place and time.
Where did you grow up? What did it teach you about these American times?
Also, event alert: While writing and promoting Learning in Public, I found myself tackling critical questions about the role of White thought leaders with anti-racist messages. Lucky me, I get to explore questions around messengers, accountability, opportunity, and money with two of the nation’s most prominent White thinkers and organizers on racial justice: Kate Schatz, author most recently of Do the Work with W. Kamau Bell, and Garrett Bucks, founder of the Barnraiser Project and author of The White Pages on Substack. This 60-minute virtual live event + Q&A is part of The OpEd Project’s series of Expert Talks exploring aspects of voice, identity, and how ideas come to change the world. Get your ticket here!
I cannot recommend highly enough the book I’m reading right now, The Persuaders by Anand Giridharadas, about how persuasion is at the heart of democracy. I have to believe that the Club Q shooting is a symptom of our inability to hold faith with the power of conversation as the proper place to wrestle over our differences, instead replacing it with a belief that those who “oppose” us are irredeemable and incapable of change. From the latter perspective, everything is war and domination.
I’ve grown up in Texas and currently live in a deeply red, conservative town organizing and trying to expand the area (love the use of cultural shot!). I have so much love for this place and these people and I am forever embittered at the way red places are painted and ignored in the general discourse. humanness is just complicated and trying to boil it down to a dichotomy is never going to work.