Yesterday I was out for an evening walk and as I approached the elementary school a block from our home I heard thumping house music and I instantly knew: there’s a drag queen in there. Kids and parents were spilling out the gymnasium door onto the lawn, which is only about ten feet from the sidewalk, no fences or anything to keep me and others from walking right in. It was a Friday evening on the cusp of June, sunny, everything blooming after welcome rain. Sure enough, inside was a whirlpool of people and crowds on the sidelines, two tall queers not in drag but death dropping with verve and excitement, a Black queen in a bucket hat on the mic keeping impressive time with the beat telling those kids to work. And kids they were. It’s an elementary school, and most of the kids were jumping running spinning dancing around while the queens vogued in the middle. There was a palpable feeling that everyone was sort of in disbelief that this was happening, and we were all so grateful. Story hour had been eschewed. They were getting down to business. They were wrapping up as I watched, the Black queen telling everyone on the mic to have a happy pride. “All of you here, I’m coparenting with you and you don’t even know it,” she said, gesturing to the adults clustered around the edges of the dancing. They smiled and nodded along, but I don’t think it really registered to them what she was saying, the radical potential of it. She was saying that these kids, they belonged to her, too.
One kid, maybe 8 or 9, white and tall for their age with a dirty blond mullet, wore some kind of bumblebee costume. Maybe a bumblebee onesie. Their face was flushed from dancing and they stood in the middle of the gymnasium as things wrapped up and they screamed, once, then twice, looking like they might cry or laugh in between. That’s the kid I write for, I realized.