[Vol. 59] Traveling Isn't the Same Anymore
And that's a good thing 🏳️🌈
Happy Friday, everyone :)
Here I am, sitting in a sun-filled loft in Puerto Rico (surprise!). It’s nice and cool, mostly thanks to the AC we have screeching at us in the background (it’s a loud one).
I flew out here from Manhattan yesterday to visit a friend who’s going to be living and working on the island for the next few months. Yesterday was a blur of Piña Coladas and 2 for 1 beers – my welcome to PR – so forgive me if I’m a little slow to get into it today …
I was all set to talk about the hypocrisy of the Catholic Church today, inspired by the breaking news that one of their top officials has been frequenting bath houses on his “business trips” (this just in: Catholics can be gay! *shock and awe*), but fuck it, I’m going to take it another direction instead.
*If you’ve got the time, you should really check out the LGBTQ+ Nation story on the priest “busted” for being on Grindr, it really sheds a lot of light on just how anti-LGBTQ+ the Catholic Church can be.
Today, we’re going to talk about traveling while queer.
I used to think it was the same thing as traveling while … well, straight, or cis, but now I’m not so sure.
I am no stranger to travel. Before writing That’s Gay, travel content was my first love.
I wrote a travel blog called Barely Grounded and regularly contributed to my favorite travel website, Shut Up and Go. I went on solo trips to Montreal, New Orleans and all the way to Guangzhou, China. I even shifted my schedule around in college so I could study abroad twice.
So, after the worst of the pandemic was over in the U.S. and I felt vaxxed and ready to travel again, I thought travel was going to be exactly as I’d left it.
But even as I’ve only had a few recent travel experiences so far and one night in Puerto Rico behind me, I can already tell it’s not the same – and not because I need to pull my mask down every time I want to take a sip of my in-flight Pinot.
It’s because I’m not the same person I was before all this. I’m queer(er) now.
I know I’ve always been this person; that I’ve always been queer (contrary to what some anti-vaxxers may say, no, the vaccine did not make me gay), but this past year really brought it out of me.
The surplus of empty, unfilled extra time we all found ourselves burdened with during the stay-at-home era was what pushed me to start this newsletter – a newsletter I never could have seen myself writing in a million years up until the very moment where I hit “send to all” on that first volume*.
*”All” at the time being me, myself, and I. Oh, and my mother.
That’s Gay – and you guys, for reading it – has changed me (for the better).
Outside of my familiar Manhattan and down in Puerto Rico for less than 24 hours now, I’ve already found myself looking for queer spaces – gay bars & places that attract other queer people.
I know it might surprise you, but those kinds of spaces weren’t my go-to in the past – actually, they weren’t even on my radar. I didn’t want to be the one to ask, to inconvenience anyone with my being gay, and, quite honestly, I don’t even know if I felt totally comfortable at a gay bar in general.
I wasn’t closeted when I traveled, but I might as well have been. That’s no longer my M.O.
It’s like magnets – the queerer I become, the more queer spaces start to attract me. My queerness will never be all of me, but I’ve grown secure enough with myself at this point that I can say it matters; that I want queer people and queer spaces in my life always, whether I’m at home in Manhattan or traveling overseas.
I guess that goes for everyone, in some way. As we grow and change, so do our travel experiences and our relationship with travel in general; AKA how we move through the world.
Sometimes the way you change surprises you and you’ve got to reorient yourself – reintroduce yourself – so you can keep up. That’s how it goes, at least for me.
From the Caribbean, with love (and sending you a big ol’ Piña Colada),
Till
Find me on Instagram: @till_kaeslin
Check out the newsletter’s home on Instagram to see this post there, and more like it: @thatsgaynewsletter
See you in Volume 60, folks!
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