Queer Across America: The Final Chapter

Six years ago, I packed all my belongings into my car and set off on the ultimate queer road trip. My plan was to travel indefinitely, exploring queer cities in each state. Why was I doing this? How was I going to make money while traveling? Where was I going to stay? The answer to all these questions was: I’ll figure it out on the way. Probably. I guess I really couldn’t even call it a plan. All I knew was that I needed to leave Los Angeles to see what else was out there.

LA is my hometown. I know most Coloradans reading this will think “of course” and roll their eyes, since so many of us have made our way here. That’s the usual reaction I get when I’m traveling and tell people where I’m from. However, I don’t blame them. LA is its own bubble of self-sustainability, full of locals that have gotten everything they’ve ever needed from that metropolis and transplants that have sacrificed their worldly comforts in search of an adventure. 

But what was my adventure? Growing up, I never dreamed of leaving the City of Angels, because why would I? It had everything I had ever known. However, the thing with staying in your hometown, no matter how big and self-sufficient it may be, is that you are denied perspective. 

Think about your idea of what someone from a small town in West Virginia would be like if they never explored outside of it. You’d probably stereotype them as a bigot or uncultured. Even though LA is a massive, liberal oasis, if you never explore beyond your hometown, you’re doomed to retain false ideas of the outside world. Sure, there are plenty of people from all walks of life and perspectives living in LA, but the city doesn’t conform to the varying ideas of the people. It’s the people that conform to the ideas of the city, thus creating a singular perspective of the rest of the world. 

I took a weekend road trip outside of California. I didn’t have a destination but decided to travel North. I ended up in Portland, Oregon. That’s when my perspective shifted. Roaming around downtown, I came across an assortment of queer and trans people. I went into women- and Black-owned shops that reveled in a more casual pace than what I was used to. I attended drag shows where performances were much different than those in LA. Artists twirled fire, sang live, and bantered on the microphones with each other. Even queer etiquette was different (don’t throw crumpled dollar bills at performers on stage; it’s considered rude there). 

The moment that my life changed was when I understood that not only were there thriving queer communities outside of LA, but they were different. They catered to the culture and needs of their own queer communities. They didn’t look at LA to see how we did queer community. That’s because it didn’t apply to them. The needs of the LA community weren’t the same as those in Portland. 

I attribute my blindness toward such an obvious idea to ego. I thought LA was the end-all, be-all. It was the ultimate goal for so many people. Countless individuals left the comfort of their hometowns to create a new life in the City of Angels. Since it was so many peoples’ life-long adventure to get to LA, I assumed that it should have been mine, too. And, bless! How lucky I was that I was already from there! So, I must have had everything I could want … right?

My trip to Portland changed everything. If the City of Roses showed me a rich, new queer culture that brought me such joy to explore, what could I learn in other cities? I had to find out.

Nine months later, I was permanently traveling in my car packed with everything I owned. 

I saw the world’s oldest drag queen perform in Portland, picked up a bartending job in a former mortuary in Seattle, moshed to a queer punk band in Vancouver, Canada, attended a queer leadership conference in New Orleans, was forced into an emergency room in rural New Mexico, went to a gay rodeo in Phoenix, got a tattoo on a beach in Florida, fell in love in a cemetery in Salem, and now call Denver “home” as I continue travelling periodically.

The queer communities in each city have been incredible. Some are understandably more hesitant to welcome an outsider than others, but every one of them has made me feel safe. The United States has been a tumultuous place for queer people, especially in recent years, but I find solace in learning that no matter how rural of an area I’ve been in or how major of a metropolis, there is always a queer community close by. Some wave the Pride flag above their doors, while others are more subtle and require a bit more looking, but the community is there. 

I’ve chronicled my travels on my YouTube channel, Queer Across America. Through the channel, Discord, and Patreon, I’ve created a digital community so individuals from each city can connect, and we can break down barriers to learn that there is more than one way to be queer. I recount the travels in my weekly column on the OFM website and recently completed a book manuscript as a follow-up to my debut memoir, The Downtown Underground: A Memoir of My Time with the Underground Drag Queens of Downtown Los Angeles. 

I was wrong about my judgments of cities outside of L.A. Even the biggest hometowns can skew one’s perspective of the outside world. I continue to witness, firsthand, the beauty of having such diverse queer areas all around the country that focus on the needs of their communities. I’ve learned the importance of exploring outside my hometown and the significance of pursuing my own adventure instead of conforming to others.  

During this time of uncertainty in the U.S., it’s crucial for us to understand that, wherever we are, there’s a queer community for us.

Photos courtesy of London Alexander