Jack Gaulter: The state has erased more than just paint, they are erasing me

Image via Facebook.

On Labor Day, more than 100 people gathered to use sidewalk chalk to preemptively draw rainbows and messages of love and acceptance at the intersection of Central Avenue and 25th Street, where a progressive pride memorial was doomed to be removed by the state, with the city’s reluctant blessing.

It was an act that reminds people like me that there are those who accept us, who still believe that love will win, that humans are humans regardless of gender identity.

But it was an act necessitated by another that puts my community in grave danger, if not physically — though that is too often the case — then mentally and emotionally.

And while the city’s acquiescence was forced, it raises another question about where we draw the line in the sand regarding the erasure of our people and our history.

When I was freshly 13 and freshly out as transgender, I often used to make the long, sweaty bike ride from my home in Shore Acres all the way to downtown St. Pete. I would lock up my bike at the Museum of Fine Arts and walk all the way up Central Avenue to see all the pride banners up in the Grand Central District and to pass the LGBTQ+ Welcome Center.

I never went inside, because I was too scared of being found out. I just needed to see it, to know I had people looking out for me.

These trips were my lifeline back then. Any pride colors, flag, or welcoming sign was like another straw to grasp at. It wasn’t much, but it was a foundation that stayed standing through the hurricane.

That’s what I call those years of humiliation rituals, bullying, abuse and abandonment, all before I considered myself safe anywhere — from myself, from my parents and from my peers. I had a safety net, but it was woven only of other struggling teenagers, also often at risk. And while the fabric tore easily, we did our best to keep each other safe, until we couldn’t. And there was only so much we could do for each other, especially when we were at home.

I will never forget the first St. Pete Pride transgender march I ever saw — the only transgender pride march in the Southeast United States. I wasn’t technically present, because I would never have been allowed if I’d asked.

I was eating lunch at Paul’s Landing with my family, sitting near the balcony while a mass of people like me marched by. Leaning over the railing, my stepfather turned to me and said, “Next year, we should rent a bulldozer and take care of them all at once.”

Immediately, my mother laughed. I will never forget how emphatic that laugh was. I will never forget learning, at 13 years old, that my parents wanted to see me ground into the gravel of 5th Avenue — or at least that the thought was funny.

So it really did mean a lot to me when volunteers painted the mural on Central and 25th. It was personally significant, in kind of a morbid way: If someone were to flatten us, we would not disappear. There would always be an echo of our pride beneath the feet of those who tried to kill it.

During the COVID lockdown, I began biking downtown again, my only reprieve from being trapped with my family all hours of the day. Standing at that corner and watching masked faces nod as they walked by the new street mural was like standing in the eye of the storm before the winds picked up again.

I am grateful to say that, for me, the hurricane has passed. I am grateful to say that my mother and I, after many, many difficult conversations, eventually reached a state of mutual understanding, and now I’m very proud to say she is now one of my biggest supporters.

But she still has to fight her friends and her parents and the rest of her relatives on my behalf and on behalf of my friends.

Still, I’m also grateful for the foundations I did have when the storm got really scary: the Welcome Center, the pride flags hung all down Central in June, the smiling faces, the rainbow Skyway — a source of comfort that has also now been erased.

Even with all of those displays of solidarity, it would be a lot for me to say it was enough for me to fully trust my neighbors.

Queer people in St. Pete surely know what I mean when I say that our neighbors are mostly accepting, until they’re not.

Gentrification, gerrymandering and scapegoating have guaranteed our population is constantly in grave danger of losing its love for good.

And we did have love.

I remember giving a speech for the Transgender Day of Remembrance in 2019 on the steps of the LGBTQ+ Welcome Center and being met with a round of applause and a handshake from our previous Mayor that made me feel, for the first time since I came out, like I had a community I belonged to.

I also remember the tire marks from someone who did donuts all over our soon-to-be painted-over rainbow street mural. I and the entire trans community know and fear who our neighbors have the potential to be.

It terrifies me that people I grew up with seem to be growing unkind and resentful right before my eyes. That hurricane of mine was nothing compared to what I see being dragged along in its wake.

Our state is desperate to retract even the few lifelines that kept me alive as a transgender kid: taking away the right to discuss queer issues in school, which was maybe the only thing with the power to protect queer kids from bullying; taking away access to life-saving hormones; forcing teachers to out children to abusive parents; defunding diversity initiatives and pushing out GSA clubs; and, recently, making it punishable by law for transgender people to use public restrooms.

And now Florida is restricting federal funding for expressions of pride that, in those dark, cloudy days, were already last-resort straws to grasp at.

This is all to say nothing of the outrageous betrayal that was the city of Orlando painting over the tributary memorial for the 2016 Pulse Nightclub shooting, in which 49 people died and 53 were wounded. Residents woke on Thursday, Aug. 21, to find the tribute removed with no notice.

When a tribute to our dead is classified as purely political and thus unacceptable, it is hard to deny that we have entered a new, frightening period of fascism in the United States. It seems that the state of Florida is welcoming it with open arms and open wallets — and now, St. Pete, a city which, as far as I have been told, prides itself on its diversity and queer acceptance, is being made to cave.

Of course, our elected officials were just doing their jobs: the risk was losing our state funding, and this would be devastating to the city of St. Petersburg.

But the position — the city’s hands being tied on this issue — begs the question: What else will the state force us to paint over? To bulldoze? What else will the state demand we shut down, and how many times will we oblige? Where is our line in the sand?

Right now, it seems to me like we do not have one. Our city prepared for this hurricane to completely blow past us, and our meteorological organizations have been so defunded that we haven’t yet realized its eye is bound for St. Pete.

Now the storm is testing our foundations, and I’m ashamed to say, it looks like they’re cracking. We had all better find something sturdy to stand on before the gators get in.

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Jack Gaulter is a recent graduate of St. Lawrence University with a degree in creative writing. He grew up in St. Petersburg and came out as transgender at 13 years old.