Back in the mid-80s my friends and I were at the only gay bar within 100 miles in any direction and one of the only five in the entire state of Tennessee. It was the middle of summer and everyone had Saturday Night Fever. Being the only gay bar around it was always crowded on the weekends and everyone was in their groups. The lesbians were hanging out by the pool table. The preppies were in the corner booth. The punk and new wave crowd were in the darkest corner. Alternately the drag queens were in the spotlight. The minorities who felt safer in a gay bar than any straight bar around were there too. And then there was me, the discoholic who only stopped shaking my groove thing to get another drink.

It was a weird setup. Here you had such a diverse group of people in one building all sharing what was usually the high point of their week. Although nobody talked about it we all dreaded when the DJ played the obligatory Donna Summer track “Last Dance” and we would all trudge out the door of this fantasyland back to the real world. A world where most people, although having never even met us, hated us. Growing up, this bar was the only place I could be exactly who I knew I was. I couldn’t do that at work. I couldn’t do that in school. I couldn’t even do that at home with my family. We were all different types of people and for the most part got along because we all had one thing in common. Most of the world hates us.

I was in a disco-trance spinning and whirling to Bronski Beat’s “Small Town Boy”. That song is a personal anthem to me. Suddenly a commotion started in the bar. This happens all the time. The dykes get drunk and start a fist fight and people run over to ‘watch the show’. That’s when I noticed the smoke. Okay, so it’s not a dyke duke out...it’s a fire! I began to proceed with caution to the front door which was barely visible through the smoke. As I got closer to the smoke that’s when it hit me, this isn’t smoke...this is tear gas. Everyone’s eyes started burning, their lungs contracting in pain, everyone coughing and gasping for breath. I distinctly remember at that moment being afraid to run out the front door in fear that we were being flushed out and would all be gunned down as we exited. However, it wasn’t an option to stay in the building.

Luckily there were no guns waiting for us outside. Just doubled over and vomiting drag queens, punks with mascara running, and every face filled with the question, “WHY?” The tear gas bombs were tossed into the bar by three guys who took off immediately. They were never prosecuted, never even sought after. I even heard one police officer say to another, “Why bother? It’s just a bunch of fags. Anyway it’s not like anybody got hurt.”

There were about 200 people in the bar on that night. Sure, the policeman said nobody was hurt. But that’s not completely true. Next weekend the bar was only half full. We had been terrorized. Many were afraid to go back to the one place, the only place for most of them, that they've ever felt safe. Three guys who hate gay people for whatever reason took no regard for us as humans and violently attacked us with seemingly no remorse.

Fast-forward 30 years and here we are again. Someone who hates gays for whatever reason violently attacks them with seemingly no remorse. Only this time many lives are lost. They have been terrorized. The survivors are carrying an internal scar of terrorism. I doubt any of them will be able to walk into that bar for a very long time. I recognize that kind of scarring. It makes me cry to see how much deeper their wounds go than the ones I endured. It gets better...my ass it does.

I now live in San Francisco and gay bars are plentiful. I feel safe in them. I don’t feel as surrounded by the hate as much as I used to. Don’t get me wrong, it’s there; it’s just a lot less visible nowadays. The San Francisco Gay Pride Festival is coming up in less than two weeks. I’ve already had two friends say they are concerned about attending this year. As for me, I’m more determined to go now. I’ve observed the LGBTQ community has been taking a much needed break from politicking after the years long battle to get the right to marry. A constitutional right which still has a lot of people wailing and gnashing their teeth. I intend to go to pride and make a noise about what happened in Tennessee thirty years ago, what happened in Orlando three days ago, and what’s been happening and will continue to happen all over the planet.

It has gotten better, in some ways. We can marry, serve in the military, and in some places we even have discrimination protections. We’ve come a long way baby. In some ways it's getting worse again. Orlando reminds us all that we’ve still got a long, long way to go.