The Light We Carry

In the spring of 1977, Anita Bryant stood in front of cameras and called people like me a threat. A danger to children. To America. She smiled while she said it, wore a cross, held an orange juice bottle in her hand. That same year, a man named Bob moved in with his partner two streets over from where she lived. Quietly. Paid rent. Made dinner. Kept the curtains drawn.

He stayed there for seventeen years.

The records won’t show that. They’ll mention the protests, the ballot measures, the interviews. What they miss is the man who packed up his books, left his hometown, and built a life that no one honored until it was over.

There are thousands of stories like his. Men who brought flowers to hospitals under different names. Women who weren’t listed in obituaries. Kids who changed their voices at school, then cried into pillows with the lights off. All of them carving out space where there wasn’t any before.

Pride comes from them.

Every inch of it was fought for by people who rarely got to keep what they built. The bar that stayed open after the raid. The shelter with a fake name on the lease. The choir that practiced in basements so the neighbors wouldn’t complain.

And somehow, through all of that, they still loved. Still reached for each other. Still danced at weddings that weren’t legal. Still kissed in corners. Still wrote letters and kept them in shoeboxes long after the ink faded.

I think about them every time I walk down the street holding a man’s hand.

There’s a reason we still get nervous. Some of us learned caution early and never lost it. You hear a cough behind you and let go, even now. Doesn’t matter how old you are. The body remembers. And yet you reach again. And again.

That’s what Pride is.

It’s choosing to be known, even when it’s easier to disappear.

There’s a woman I know who came out at sixty-eight. She’d been married to a man, raised kids, buried him. Then one day she said she was done pretending. She goes to brunch with her girlfriend every Sunday, wears pink lipstick and carries pepper spray. She told me she’s never been happier, and never more afraid.

She shows up anyway.

So did the first man I ever kissed. We met on a Thursday. His name was Tony. I don’t remember what we talked about, only that I laughed. We went out later that weekend where we sat too close in the booth. I didn’t care who saw. He did. He kept checking the door. I didn’t understand it then. I do now.

He came out before I did. Lost more than I had. I judged him for being scared. I never told him I was sorry.

Pride is the space between apology and understanding.

It’s the teacher who leaves a book on her desk so a student knows where to find it. The uncle who brings his husband to the family reunion without asking permission. The girl who walks into school wearing the suit she saved for months to afford.

It’s the people who stayed. The ones who endured when it would’ve been easier to leave. And the ones who left, who came back later with scars and stories and arms wide open.

Pride doesn’t just show up in June.

It waits. It watches. It stays.

Even in the quiet. Especially there.