We have always been here: Waterloo’s Queer Community
It was raining. It was dark, despite it only being 5:47 p.m. Mid-November tends to do that. The downtown streets flooded by the streetlights—small gleaming pits of yellow a few dozen meters apart pouring onto the concrete road. On my last red light before the parking lot, I watched two people glide across the street, their heads swallowed by a rainbow umbrella.
I came along with a friend. We met last year at my then part-time job. It did not take long for us to form a bond. One of our first conversations was an exchange of our experiences back in high school as Queer kids. We laughed. Mainly because we both agreed who we are now—as Queer individuals—would heal us as kids. To even know how comfortable we have become in who we are would have been incomprehensible. I looked forward to every one of our chats in the backroom, folding clothes, while the same Christmas song looped for the tenth time in our short-lived shift.
Last May, we went to a Girl in Red concert. Girl in Red, a Queer singer who debuted her career with a sapphic single, was my push to Queer expression and acceptance when I came out in the tenth grade.
We waited in line for seven hours. Our bodies pressed against a brick wall and cement all while the constant bathroom trips to the gas station across the street. This typically was not our favourite pastime. Throughout those seven hours, I laughed at the possibility of all the questions of those who drove past us. A line of youth sitting on blankets, often in circles, dressed in white-collar-button-ups and ties, wrapped around the building for half the day. Bergen—in classic Bergen fashion—chatted with the girls beside us. By the time the doors finally opened for the show, there was nine of us who had flocked together. We accompanied one another to get burgers down the road, shared blankets because it was only the second day of the month—still cold in the shade—and shared terrible ex stories as if we had been childhood friends.