WE DIDN’T have any LGBTQ+ parties or Kiki Balls in my neighborhood in the Bronx. In general, the nightlife in the area was kinda sad. El Coral could be poppin’ on some nights, like when they’d have a live band or a DJ spinning, but not that many people would come out. Somehow, I got the idea that I could throw a party for us and make it happen.
Paul was the name of the promoter at El Coral, and he was always outside on his phone, doing business. We first met when I was planning my sixteenth birthday, and afterward, whenever I’d walk by, he’d say to me, “Hey, you’ve gotta come check us out!”
Of course, he talked like this to everyone to get lots of people to come to the club, but I liked the attention I got from him. He was tall, probably six-foot-three, with curly hair that was shaped up nice. He dressed very Dominican: buttoned-up shirt, a good belt, pointy shoes, tight pants.
“Okay, cool, cool!” I would say.
One day, I finally said to Paul, “Yo, why don’t you let me throw a party for my people? I can definitely bring some people out.”
When he agreed, I told him that he needed to have karaoke and that we needed to make the little area by the bar more of a club where people would wanna hang out. I started promoting the party on Myspace, telling my friends on AIM, everybody I knew from the LGBTQ+ centers, the Kiki Balls to come. Friends of mine, and even people I didn’t know, commented on the bottom of the flyer, tagging others and saying that they’d be there.
The night of the party was poppin’. El Coral was totally packed, with a line wrapped around the corner outside. After we reached capacity, people started to come through the fire exit to get inside.
Paul looked at me in disbelief. “I did not expect this!”
And, shit, neither did I! I thought about my sixteenth birthday party, how no one showed. How I had hoped for something like this—a crowded dance floor, people celebrating and having a good time. But unlike at my birthday party, that night at El Coral I felt proud: this was the first LGBTQ+ party in my neighborhood, and it happened because of me. People who lived nearby looked out their windows at the crowd, wondering where all these people had come from. After a short time, the party started to look like a ball, with people dancing, voguing, going off!
“Oh my God,” Paul stood off to the side, laughing. “You guys are insane!”
Even some of my family came. Tito, Tony, and Isa all stopped by, and a few hours in, when I was all hot and sweaty from running around and hosting, making sure that my friends were having a good time, Seli showed, too. I’d always loved my sister’s fashion, and I was excited to show her off. That night, she wore a sequined halter top that I adored, tight jeans, a silver belt, and some high-heeled sandals. Her hair was pulled back, with a small rose tucked behind her ear.
Seli and I took a seat at the bar, both amazed at all the people who were there, buying drinks and dancing.
“Can you get me a drink or something?” I asked her. I was only seventeen and had never had a drink before, but this felt like a special night.
“Uh, no.”
“Oh come on! Get me one of those drinks that comes in a martini glass.”
She laughed and ordered two cosmos.
It was the first time my sister and I were out together at a bar, enjoying each other’s company and all the commotion around us. I was proud to have her see how happy and comfortable I was with my people—and I was proud for my people to see me with her! I’ll never forget the feeling I had that night with my sister, drinking that pink drink in a fancy glass, surrounded by my community: I felt fabulous.
I then noticed a guy—a cute guy, who looked a bit like Usher—looking at me.
“Um, do you see that guy over there?”
Seli turned and looked.
“He keeps looking at me! What the hell?”
She smiled. “He’s kinda cute.
“Yeah, right? He is kinda cute.”
I remember being surprised by myself in that moment. This was the first time after that night in the attic that I was open with my sister in such a way. It was also the first time I noticed that a guy was checking me out, and it was exciting. I looked at him, and then I looked away, and then I was mad giggly.
A few minutes later, when Seli got up to go to the bathroom, he walked up to me.
“Hey, how you doing?” He put out his hand and said, “I’m Nathaniel.”
“Oh, hi,” I said. “I’m good.”
We started talking, flirting like crazy. By the end of the night, we had exchanged numbers. It wouldn’t be the last time I saw him.
I WAS happy. I was becoming more and more comfortable being me, especially when I was with my people. Finally, I could be the open, energetic, fun person I always wanted to be. But in the back of my mind, I still thought about what it would be like to live my life fully as Marizol.
I talked to Miranda about transitioning, and she was nothing but supportive. She’d say, “If you really feel that way, do it!”
Or, “I can tell that you really want to.”
Or, “I think you should do it, but I think you’re just having a hard time accepting yourself.”
It was true. But more than that, I was worried about what my family would think. I never told anyone other than Miranda about wanting to transition, and she listened, like a real friend. And then she talked to me about what it was like for her and how she eventually got her family to understand and accept where she was coming from. Miranda not only showed me that my dreams were in fact possible, but she also reminded me that I deserved to live my truth.
Maybe I could do that, I began to think. Maybe I could actually take the steps Miranda took. Maybe I could transition, too.
Chapter 10
SELENIS
I was not okay with Jose skipping school. And though I knew that he was meeting other young people in his community online, I was not comfortable with it. That night in the attic after the Staten Island incident, I said to him, “I want you to be who you need to be. But you cannot be putting yourself in danger.” The internet, chat rooms—it was all new at that time, and I became obsessed with reading harrowing stories about cyber-predators, about young people who ended up missing—or worse—after meeting a stranger. I was terrified, and even more so after learning that being gay put Jose in even more jeopardy. I needed him to realize the dangers of what he might be walking into when he went to meet up with someone he thought was his age, alone, all the way across the city.
I reached out to an NYPD precinct in the South Bronx near Jose’s school and was connected with a female detective in the Special Victims Unit, Detective Flores. I explained to her why I was reaching out, what I feared could have happened to Jose, the fact that I needed my baby brother to be safe. She was immediately understanding. “Just bring him in,” she said. What a difference from those judgmental cops who responded to our call that night.
The day of the meeting, Jose was cranky and annoyed.
“Do we have to do this?” he asked in the car on the way there.
“YES!” I said. “Yes, we have to!”
In person, Detective Flores was friendly but very businesslike. She had a masculine presence—from her husky build and short brown hair to the man’s-style pantsuit she wore. She introduced us to her partner, a white detective, and the four of us went into an interrogation room. We walked through the busy precinct where detectives and officers bent over paperwork, made calls, went about their jobs. No one seemed to look at us twice or show us any concern except for Detective Flores.
The interrogation room was bare, with two metal chairs, a metal table, and a single light hanging overhead. It looked exactly like the sets of Law and Order I was used to working on. It was dreary and cold, not a happy place at all. Jose took a seat, and Detective Flores sat across from him. Her partner stood by, but I got the feeling that he wasn’t terribly interested in sticking around for the lecture that was to come. I felt like we were on one of those boot camp TV specials, scaring Jose into a saintlike life by sh
owing him gory photographs of murder victims or how one bad decision could lead to irreparable consequences. But I didn’t care. I felt like this was the only way I could get through to him.
Detective Flores started to explain to Jose the danger he could have gotten himself into that day, breaking it down into specific cases the precinct had seen. She was direct and to the point, telling him about scenarios of teenagers encountering friends or love interests online, going to meet them, and then ending up missing. Every time it was always the same: teens thought they were meeting someone their age, but when they showed up, their “friend” or “boyfriend” or “girlfriend” ended up being a man twice their age. A man with a criminal record. A man who was a registered sex offender. And then came the stuff of nightmares: rapes, murders, bodies in ditches. Kids who had been bullied at school, who were questioning themselves in some way, or who felt isolated or out of place were especially vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.
“It doesn’t usually end well, like your situation did,” she said.
And then she loosened up a little. She had a tough exterior, but through it I started to see genuine concern for Jose.
“Look,” she said. “You have to be extra careful. People like us, we have got to be really careful. Especially online.”
When she said this—“people like us”—I didn’t think she meant those who identify as Latinx. I think she meant those who identify as LGBTQ+. In that moment, I felt like an outsider, watching this woman trying to have a real connection with Jose. It was so much more than just cop to young man—it was her saying, I care about you, not because it is my job to but because we belong to the same tribe.
After that, there wasn’t much else left for her to say. I thanked her and her partner, who was finally relieved of his duty witnessing this interaction, and then Jose and I left.
At the time, of course, I knew nothing of the broader dangers that LGBTQ+ individuals face, like homelessness or participation in sex work. I didn’t know how vulnerable Jose would be to all kinds of predatory violence. And I had no way of even considering the issues that plague LGBTQ+ youth on the internet today, like cyberbullying, online harassment, and threats or how these particular types of violence can lead to depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), self-harm, and even suicide. And yet, despite these dangers, for many LGBTQ+ youth, the resources and community available online can be lifesaving. It can be their only opportunity to learn that there are other people in the world like them and that things can get better. But that day, I was in full-on protection mode, wanting to do all I could to make sure that Jose was safe.
You see?! I wanted to say on the drive back to my parents’ house. You can’t do this!
But I stayed quiet in the car, letting him process all that had been presented to him.
AROUND THIS TIME, my life had begun to fall apart. My career wasn’t going anywhere, and financially, I wasn’t doing well. On top of that, my husband and I were more roommates than we were a married couple. We were functional, but cracks had begun to form, cracks that quickly made their way to the foundation of our marriage. We’d have one good day followed by a horrible week. Then repeat. I was miserable. I tried to keep things to myself, but my parents knew. They could see those cracks in my marriage well before I could. And when our landlord told us that she was going through a divorce and needed her apartment back, my parents offered us the attic apartment in their home, the same attic where I’d had the instinct to ask Jose if he wanted to be a woman.
The apartment in my parents’ attic was not a place I would have normally felt comfortable living in. It was a studio, with very low ceilings, a tiny bathroom, and a little kitchen with barely enough space for a table and chairs. In the bedroom area, we could fit a dresser, a little bed for my daughter, who was nearing four around this time, and our bed. And the fact that I was back at my parents’ house made me feel like such a loser. But, at the same time, it was comforting to be there. To be home, and to be near Mami and Papi. My mother helped care for Alina, and my husband and I could make what little money was coming in stretch further.
Even though I was living in the same house as Jose, I didn’t see him all that much. A distance formed between us, and soon, I started to see a change in him. I didn’t know what was going on in his life exactly, but I did know that he was partying all the time. He broke curfew, coming home at two or three in the morning, totally trashed. My mother found a stash of women’s clothes in a backpack in the basement that she knew belonged to him, but we didn’t know where he was going or what kind of trouble he was getting himself into. Our don’t-ask, don’t-tell situation was getting harder and harder to maintain.
In the mornings, Mami tried to get him up for school.
“Jose,” she’d say, knocking on his door. “Es hora de levantarte!”
But he didn’t go to school. Instead, he slept until four in the afternoon and then went out partying again. My parents were at a loss for what to do. Papi even threatened to remove Jose’s bedroom door from the hinges.
Another time, he brought Jose a suitcase. “If you’re not going to school, then you can get your stuff and get out!”
And then one day, my parents received their monthly bank statement and saw that something was very, very wrong. Mami and Papi were meticulous with their spending, and so the fact that a large sum of money—nearly $18,000—had just gone missing was incredibly disconcerting. Papi went to the bank and filed a report saying that the money had been stolen.
What the hell was happening to our family? I thought. But I wasn’t able to help. I was treading water, barely keeping my head above the mess that was becoming my life. I had struggled with depression in the past, and it continues to be something I battle to this day, but growing up, it was never something I felt comfortable discussing or sharing with others. Unfortunately, this is the way it is in many communities: shame surrounds mental illness, and a constant fear of being judged or stigmatized by others makes it difficult for individuals to seek help, whether through therapy or medication.
At this time in my life, I didn’t have the knowledge or resources I have today, and my depression took a sharp turn. I started thinking about how I could just escape from it all, how I could get into my car and drive it straight off the George Washington Bridge. As a mother, it is hard for me to admit these things. The feeling that you could abandon your child—I have never felt so guilty as I did during that time. I would think about leaving, about how I could die, and then I would see my daughter’s face, and she would smile at me and everything would come tumbling down at once. How could I leave her, this sweet, innocent child? Who would be there for her? I have always loved Alina more than anything, and I knew that I couldn’t do that to her. But the fact that I considered it made me feel worse. If I can think of abandoning everything, I’d think, I must be a really bad person.
It is exhausting to fall into these kinds of cycles. It is impossible to think clearly, to have the mental capacity to piece things together that, in retrospect, were so overwhelmingly obvious.
Chapter 11
MARIZOL
I knew where Mami kept her ATM card: in the top drawer of her dresser. One day, a voice entered my head and refused to leave, no matter how much I tried to shut it out. Take the money. Go drink, go shopping, use it to pay for your transition. I never wanted to hurt my family or to betray their trust. But something snapped inside of me. Eventually, I gave in to its demands.
That first time, I waited until late at night to get the card. It was kept in a paper sleeve, and inside was a little slip with the PIN. I walked down the hill to the bank. I tried not to think about what I was doing. I took the card out of the sleeve and slid it into the reader on the door to get into the room with the ATM. I put the card into the machine, reread the PIN, and punched it in.
Now, I wonder how I could have done such a thing to the people who loved me most. It all happened so quickly that it is difficult to put the pieces back together and re-creat
e what led up to that dark point. Though I was finding myself, though I was having positive experiences that would shape the rest of my life, I was also, at the same time, looking for ways to cover up years of pain and secrets. I thought I was in control, but small, seemingly insignificant decisions quickly snowballed into consequences that were too much for a seventeen-year-old to handle.
ONE DAY, with Melissa, I decided to finally go to the Village dressed not as Jose but as Marizol.
Seli had moved into the attic apartment in my parents’ house with her husband and daughter. I didn’t know exactly what was going on with her, but I could tell by her energy things weren’t totally right. When she was out of the house, I snuck some dark jeans from her closet. But I needed a top, shoes, some accessories. Melissa and I went to our shops on Jerome Avenue, looking for the perfect outfit. I found a black and white top and these cute black flats with a little gray on the toe. They didn’t have my size at Rainbow, so I had to squeeze into a pair a half size too small.
We got ready at Jackie’s house. She was a girl Melissa and I knew from middle school, someone with whom we didn’t have to hide or feel ashamed. Right away, after telling her about Marizol and showing her my page, she started to refer to me with feminine pronouns (she/her/hers). She said to me, “Oh my God, this is you!” Over the next several years, our relationship would be full of highs and lows. We would argue like cats and dogs, with loud fights that sometimes turned physical. But I always felt accepted by her. Like I could just be. That day, I wore my London Girl wig and some of those nineties-style gold bamboo hoops. I didn’t have much makeup on, just some lipstick, mascara, and blush.
“Oh my God, girl!” Melissa said to me. “You look so good!”
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