Somewhere Else, Still Here

Like many queer immigrants in Berlin, I came here searching for meaning, a backbone, and safety. While I knew Berlin was a queer city I was ignorant of the queer history that has enveloped this city for over a century. I didn’t know that Berlin has over 170 queer bars and venues or that the first openly gay and lesbian organization, The Scientific-Humanitarian Committee by Magnus Hirschfeld, was founded in Berlin in 1897. As a theatre queer I am embarrassed to admit that I didn’t even know that Cabaret was inspired by Berlin nightlife and I certainly didn’t know I would meet my future wife in the city I came to to find myself. The freedom I feel here is palpable and yet, ridden with guilt.

I scroll through instagram. Influencers talk about what it means to be proud, the teacher they came out to, the family member who disowned them, and of course, the seltzer water that is gay for the month. I observe the most privileged of the queer community boast a willful ignorance, the total absence of our queer foreparents, and the erasure of the AIDs crisis. I am disgusted and annoyed. And yet here I am, holding hands with my gay best friends, dancing in a club surrounded by trans folks, kissing my lesbian partner on the street, queerness on every corner. I am no better than those people on instagram. I live in a bubble, a choice made possible by the privilege of holding dual U.S. and Italian citizenship. I got out, but not out of it.

So I am living my best queer bisexual Berlin life while  hundreds of anti-LGBTQ+ bills are being introduced across state legislatures (LGBTQ+ Legislation Hearing Dashboard) and the far-right party of Germany, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD), continues to be on the rise. Let’s be clear, Berlin isn’t Germany just as New York City isn’t New York or Atlanta isn’t Georgia. One city cannot stand for a country. We have to realize that this isn’t one country, one law, one vote, or one event. This is the total normalization of debating over whether queer people belong in classrooms, on sports teams, in hospitals, or on government forms. In other words: whether LGBTQ+ individuals have the right to exist. 

What is the illusion of safety I paint when I talk about my daily life? Sure I don’t flinch on the street as much as I did in the states, I can choose androgyny without constantly calculating the consequences, I am allowed to exist. Simultaneously, I still get harassed by men on the street, I don’t walk around with headphones at night, and when I travel to other parts of Germany I put on a straight passing costume and grieve for my queer siblings across the world. 

Living in Berlin hasn't made me stop caring about what happens in the United States. If anything, it has given me perspective, not detachment. Every time I step onto the U-Bahn holding my partner's hand without thinking twice, I'm reminded that freedom isn't always loud. Sometimes it's so ordinary you almost forget you're experiencing it, until you remember that somewhere else, someone is still fighting for the right to call that ordinary.

Berlin isn't perfect. Germany still grapples with homophobia, transphobia, a growing far right, and is drenched in the atrocities of its past. But most days, I'm simply allowed to exist. That shouldn't feel remarkable. I don't hope that Berlin remains an exception. I hope that one day, the quiet freedom I've found here, the freedom to love, to exist, to move through the world without constantly negotiating my identity, becomes so ordinary that no one thinks to write an essay about it.