Thursday – House of YES! Gaga Night
I have to be courageous with my sex. The memory of it sends electricity up my lungs, my mind swelling. This is what I secretly desire. A hill suddenly presents itself.
What is provided at House of YES that makes space to summit these courageous peaks? Is it just reflections of community, life-well-lived, and preparation shedding a warm glow? How do its members fan the flame?
In the main room, two beautiful women danced to me – there was no mistake, not in the mind of a young man. I had to remind myself that this was all new to me, and I need only be present, not cool. One whipped my face with hair five times while I stood in the shallow end of dumbfounded. She smelled like cherries and amber. Colorful men danced feverishly beneath the stage’s proscenium arch; beacons in neon light.
A whisper of a dancer haunted the bar top for a Gaga-slow. In a single spotlight, he was crucified.
Not long after, papery rain flooded the room, slipping through the air and tickling our necks, bathing the floor in green and white. Pierre spoke calmly. Erotica wore black, off the clock. She spoke to my confidante, “I’d wear anything if they paid me.”
Leaving, I knew I hadn’t scaled the totem pole, but I could smell wood. To Erotica, a kiss on each cheek.
The Next Tuesday—Trans Day of Visibility March
It was a protest rather than a celebration. This makes sense. Transgender people are being used as an emotional-political bargaining chip by the Trump Administration. Marchers challenged and subverted ‘mainstream’ norms with their clothes and hair, slogans on t-shirts and signs above head.
The protest met first at Union Square then marched seven blocks south to Washington Square. Along the way, marchers linked arm in arm, groin to traffic, across opposing streets, in an act both symbolic and practical. A buzz of press flurried at the front of the crowd while bystanders pointed phones. In all, marchers took up four to five city blocks.
Intermittent conversations took place between law enforcement and march organizers. A protester with a half-shaven, half-mulleted head and a strong voice, shouted back to the crowd that they had been threatened by police – told to stop using their megaphones – and that consequently, protesters must be even louder.
Two phrases dominated the air:
1) “Trans rights are human rights”
2) “Protect our transgender children”
One sign read, “WE DON’T WANT YOUR CIS CHILDREN TO BE TRANS. WE WANT OUR TRANS CHILDREN TO BE SAFE!”
In Washington Square Park, marchers trickled around the drained fountain. A handful of skateboarders and fútbolers lingered in the fountain, where they had been before the crowd set in. Washington Square Arch towered north. A group of white Hare Krishna’s played hand drums and swayed, selling beads to the side.
Inside the fountain, a brown person spoke to a black person. It was a march organizer speaking to a skateboarder, the same organizer who earlier relayed information about megaphones and the police. With a face signaling defiance, the skateboarder turned and continued rolling circles around the fountainhead, through narrowing gaps in the crowd. That person chose to pursue their own object, not disrespectfully, despite all else occurring around them – a sight common in New York City.
Sunday – Home
In a video online a person spoke of the courage it takes, and the cool it leaves behind, when one endeavors to express themselves truthfully. Inside each of us are desires, fantasies, and intuitions as natural and ingrained as the birthmark on your hip, and they want out.
House of YES, where color and sex and butterflies live, is a safe place to experiment with those innate qualities; to explore a more honest expression of self. For those who find truth there, it is a place to shine brightly and live with integrity.
Protests–byproducts of money, threats, death, and scarcity–are public gatherings of likeminded individuals advocating for those same freedoms guarded between YES’s motherly walls.
On a basic level, the people in Washington Square Park protested because their right to be themselves is being threatened. The persecution of human beings for the hidden purpose of disarray, toward ends of wealth and dominance, is an old and wicked trick. Yet the internal journey toward a more truthful existence, life’s most sacred pilgrimage, can really only be quelled by oneself or their killer.
Written by Aidan F. Dean Dunn
Photographer: Max Garcia Rico @maxg.ricophotography
Creative Direction/Production: Jaiden Blanks @thejaidenalexis
Stylist & MUA: Katelynn Herrera @katelynn.herrera
Production Manager & Hair: Natasha @natasha_teiman
Talent: Gabrielle Clemons @gabriellebiancaa
