00:00:01.800 - 00:00:49.100

All right, everything's recording, okay. First, I gotta like, say my name and what's going on. So, I'm Corinne Davenport, today is October 26th 2022 and we are doing an interview over Their Story, so I'm sitting in my apartment right now. Do you want to introduce yourself? Sure, I'm Mariah Barber, I go by they and she pronouns, I'm a non-binary black woman, and multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary artist, and I'm here today to share my story. Marvelous, and do I have your permission to record the interview? Yes, you do have my consent to record the interview.

00:00:50.000 - 00:03:57.600

Thank you, thank you. Um, yeah, so we already kind of did an introduction, anything more you want to share about who you are, what you do, anything like that, maybe how long you've been in D.C.? That kind of thing. Yeah. So I've been in D.C. for the last, going on five years, which is crazy. But I've been a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary artist for the last, I guess like at least 17 years. I love the mediums of spoken word poetry, from writing articles, writing prose, and I also just love performance, comedy, hosting shows. And the really cool thing is my master's in public health, and I love to talk about queer issues, health issues, social justice in my work because I consider myself a culture worker, which basically means that I'm trying to reflect the culture with my work, and I'm creating art intentionally to say something, to be able to speak about my human experience and uplift unheard voices. My mantra that was started by my great-great-grandmother was: "some people do, some people never do, some people overdo, how do you do?" And so I try to do things that do uplift the communities I'm a part of, whether it's the disabled community, the non-binary woman community, the black community, the queer community. So, excited to talk today. I am the recipient of a few D.C. artist grants, so I appreciate the city for helping to keep me afloat as a practitioner, especially as my last year being a full-time artist. Nice. So, let's start with some nice backstory. Where all have you lived, where did you grow up, all that? I grew up in Matthews, North Carolina, it's a small town outside of Charlotte, so shout out to 704. That was definitely huge because I used to run to the city—since I lived 15 to 20 minutes away—as many times as I could throughout the week, and I started performing slam poetry, which is like competition poetry where you can only perform for a certain time limit, three minutes, two minutes, one minute, depending on the rules of the slam and then people score your poems from 1 to 10. And I just got enthralled in that scene at the Blumenthal Arts Theater, which was the biggest theater in Charlotte, and once a month, they would have a poetry slam for like $400. So as somebody in high school, a youth, I thought that was a lot of money. And so I was competing against grown men and famous poets such as Ed Mabrey blues(??) and they're still performing today, but I just noticed it was a scene normally of men and there weren't really many women performing poetry, especially spoken word and slam poetry. So, I just fell in love with the art form.

00:03:57.900 - 00:07:22.360

And after I graduated from high school, I went to undergrad at East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina, and I continued with poetry, I actually was the president of the poetry club there called Word of Mouth—I liked our name anyway, I thought it was kind of clever—but we competed at the College Union Slam International, which is an international poetry slam for college teams to perform and compete. So, we competed at that three different years in Denver, Colorado; Richmond, Virginia; and I can't remember the third place off the top of my head, but they traveled with that competition all over the country. And so through that one year actually, I was the coach of the slam team, and, you know, I also really loved coaching. I loved hosting slams for other, North Carolina-based schools and just in our region. We won a lot, but we did a lot of group pieces as well, and that was my first exposure to doing collaborative work. So we did group pieces, actually, with documentarians, sometimes we would record for film festivals. I started working in radio because I had this raspy voice and they were just like, "come on," and I needed an on-campus job, so I started getting into radio and music. I was in this group called Cypher Univercity, which we would do hip-hop ciphers across the North Carolina system at different universities, so I really fell in love with making music and interviewing artists, kind of doing similar things to what we're doing now: documenting art and also activism. I was organizing a lot in college around HB2 or House Bill 2, which was known as the Bathroom Bill in North Carolina, and it was trying to keep trans people from being able to use the bathrooms—this was before I even identified as gender-fluid or anything—but I just don't like injustice. And, I came out in college when I was 18, actually through a poem I wrote about a girl who, I was like, "I've never written a poem about any of the boys I've to spent time with, this feels like a stronger emotion!" and so, you know, college exposed me to a lot. I found my artist community, I found my activism, I found other identities that I wanted to protect and uplift in the world. And then I went to grad school in New York, in Albany, so I went to SUNY Albany for my master's in public health, and I was in a master's international program—which was a program that Peace Corps phased out—but it was where you get your master's and do Peace Corps Service in tandem. So I was focused on global health—and I don't know if I said it during undergrad, but my focus was anthropology, international studies, and public health, with the intention to do global health. I always have been really passionate about women's reproductive health around the world, specifically indigenous and Black or Afro-descendant groups. So that was my focus, I did some work in Peru and Latin America, and wanted to go back through Peace Corps with my master's, because I wanted my master's but I wanted to travel.

00:07:22.360 - 00:11:14.700

So I went to New York for a little bit, was still doing poetry there, was running some poetry open mics. That's when I started to explore comedy more, I continued to host a little bit more, was in a collective of artists and on the New York slam team, we would travel throughout the region and it was just great to be able to see different regional artistry. And then I went to Nicaragua for my Peace Corps Service. So I was abroad for a little bit, and actually they loved poetry too, so I ended up doing a little bit of poetry reading and I was doing HIV education—which is something that is also a theme. I've written poems about HIV and uplifted that kind of thing as well. I think it's a great medium to get health messages out there. But in any case, did that for some time and then we got evacuated due to civil unrest, and I came back to the United States and they actually did a physical on me, and found out I had a vision disorder where I needed some emergency eye surgeries. So at that time I was supposed to go back abroad, but I ended up staying. And when I came back to the U.S. they dropped me off in North Carolina because that's where my parents stayed, you know, that's where my flight went back to. But I realized I had lived in these different places and I wanted to be able to be out, proud, I was coming up on being a queer woman for, I think at that time maybe, at least five years. And I was like, I want to be in a place where there's a lot of black folks, there's a lot of folks doing health policy, organizing justice work, and also that there's a lot of queer people because I exclusively date women of color. It's a choice for me, just of someone who shares my experience and—mainly black women, if I can, if I can find them, you know. And I knew in my hometown, though I had been able to go to a lot of queer clubs and things—Charlotte's changed a lot now—it was still very Southern and I wanted to be able to express myself fully. I loved D.C., I'd come up here to visit family, and this is where I landed. There's a lot of global health opportunities as well as a lot of artistry. Busboys and Poets, I had featured a lot, a friend of mine was the director of poetry events. He said, "if you move out here, I'll give you your own open mic to host at Busboys," and I found that I could find a job once I got here before I started doing full-time artistry. So, that was my story about the places I've lived. Little bit of New York, little bit of North Carolina, mainly an East Coast girl. But yeah, that and some Latin America and some International as well. And everywhere I go or visit, even when it's West Coast, I try to perform. I love just being able to see the different scenes and ecosystems of artists across different places, because it's always different. I've never performed one piece the same way, even if it's just a change in the inflection of my voice. That's what I think is so cool about spoken word in particular, you can change up the performance. But yeah, that's just a little bit about me. Nice. So you mentioned coming out while you were in college with that poem, and also mentioned, I think gender-fluid was the word specifically—although if there's a different word used for for your gender or words to use for your gender, totally let me know—so what was that experience of coming out, and how did you come to understand personally and then come to publicly sharing that queer, those queer identities?

00:11:15.700 - 00:15:01.200

Oh man, love this question. So, it was a whirlwind, is the real answer. I'm a millennial—and I didn't think that was old until just now—but Gen Z, I love them. They're radical, my brother's Gen Z, he's also queer, he's born a day after me, so we're like twins and best friends and just a lot of queen stuff going on. [laughing] It's a lot Aries energy in the household. But growing up—I'll take it back all the way. My dad and mom were the first generation to really break a poverty cycle in both their families, and they were Black folks who went to PWI, they went to University of Virginia, and then they were in historically Black Greek life. And so they found each other, They were like Mister And Miss, you know just cuties, the quintessential straight couple that just wanted to uplift and were very much about Black Power. My dad used to say Malcolm X's autobiography was on his bedside table like his Bible on the bedside. They're very religious folks, and they very much honor their spiritual beliefs. And so, I just remember growing up, I was in a suburban town where—Matthews is one of the wealthiest towns actually, Weddington, North Carolina if you look it up—but it was very white, and very Anglo- and straight-centered. And so my parents inside of our house, used to have all black Santas, all black art, because my dad was an investment banker and my mom was a physician, but actually both of them were also artists on the side. My mom was a pianist and singer and she used to travel with choirs and sing, when she could do it before med school and everything got kind of busy. And my dad finished his degree in art, and he got the banking job because he was able to talk about the art in the bank. So it's like, you just never know where you're going to go with it. But my dad, he had taken a break from his art, but eventually, when—I remember the first recession, and my dad lost his job because all the banks crashed, he was a bank exec, and he was a black bank exec. And at that time he couldn't find a job. Everybody was like, "he's overqualified," he literally was applying everywhere, even just service industry. This man that was making well over six figures couldn't find something, and there was just no funnel or pipeline for people of color at that level in the banking industry. So, the point was he ended up going back to school to get his master's in business and he figured out how to make art based businesses. So I remember he had a real estate business, he made his own logos and graphics for that, and then, he also did murals all around my town. He would do them for churches, he would do them in our house sometimes, my dad did glass etching, he also built furniture and did landscaping. He's really a jack of all trades, he's just great with his hands, and so he does woodworking, still working, he has a clothing line called Seeing is Believing. And I say all that because I've reflected before and I think my parents think they're really traditional, but at that time I had a stay-at-home dad who was a seamstress! My dad did everything with his hands, an amazing artist, and my mom sometimes was the main breadwinner just because of how things shook out. And so they really showed me about alternative life in their own way. And they were both artists, I just always understood art to be something that's a hobby you do on the side.

00:15:02.300 - 00:18:59.020

And so I was a Girl Scout—I know, a stereotype—and I did my Gold Award—which is the same as an Eagle Scout Award, I'm going to keep saying it because people don't know enough—but Gold Award. So I always did things where I volunteered, and I always, like I said, somehow embedded art into those things. So often times, I would, my parents would make me memorize Maya Angelou poems and perform them at the family reunion, or just telling me about Black history, like Nikki Giovanni and all these huge folks from Harlem Renaissance that had impacted them. The one thing I didn't know was about anything that was queer within that experience. So I knew Langston Hughes, but I didn't know Langston Hughes was gay. He's on my jacket. I knew Zora Neale Hurston, and I knew all these different folks, Nina Simone, but I didn't know that they were queer because it was just a struggle to even uplift Black history when we talk about intersectionality just within my town. So anyway, I felt empowered, I never felt like I was lacking, but when I reflected back on my queer journey, I would see sometimes the little bit of media I could find on The N before they made it a private channel—because we used to have regular cable—The N, I remember South of Nowhere and Degrassi. And, man, I was obsessed when I would see the girl-on-girl couples and stuff, and I didn't know why, I didn't understand because there was no representation of femme-for-femme. And even now as a gender-fluid person, I still very much know society reads me as a Black woman, so I do identify as a non-binary Black woman, but it was just, I didn't see black women who were loving other black women, both feminine, and just living a great life. There was only trauma stories being told. And I knew for me, I was going to have a great life. I knew I was going to live well, I was going to travel a lot, I already loved to travel—16 I went to Costa Rica by myself through a Girl Scouting program—it's just, I didn't see that. I didn't see international, successful, middle- to upper-class black lesbians having a great life together. And the ones that I did see in North Carolina were very—I think part of it is repeating heteronormativity in our community which we're divesting from now—but there was a stud and femme dynamic where it was like a male and female dynamic, and that was something that I really didn't like. I played basketball, and I was very feminine at the time and I just was—I just assumed I'd be the feminine person and the other person would be masculine, But I was like, "I don't want that, I don't want to feel constrained," I didn't have the words for it but it was like, "I just want something fluid." So at the time I was still dating guys. It was funny because my friends would be like, "do you do this with them?" And I'm like, "no, every now and again we kiss and he can do stuff to me, but I'm not really interested in that," you know? There were certain elements of being in heteronormativity that I guess I was already queering that I just didn't even realize. So I went to college, and I'll never forget during orientation and, you know, you meet new people. I always knew queer people around me, and I was always an ally, and I always would fight for them, but I just wasn't attracted to them. I'd never met a queer person I was attracted to, so I just assumed I was straight. That was the truth of it. And so I went to undergrad and the first person I met was a friend I'll never forget named Alexis, who was a very, very feminine black woman who was very, very vocal about being queer. And she was just like, "I'm gay, what's your name?" [laughs] That was how it felt anyway, and I was like, "oh hi, I'm Mariah!"

00:18:59.020 - 00:25:06.850

And I remember asking—because I've now realized my family is very steeped in respectability politics, and that was to protect them. Because as black folks they had just been able to enter into this middle class because of them being able to assimilate into a lot of white supremacist things, one of them being cis, straight culture. And that was barely, there was still anti-blackness there, so they were like, "why would you choose another identity to oppress yourself with?" They had queer people in their life, they didn't know them, that they were queer, because people were in the closet with them—my dad later found out his best friend was queer—but they just didn't know, they had never imagined anything else. So it wasn't that they tried not to expose me, but they didn't know and they were doing the best they could. But basically, I asked my mom and my aunt, I'll never forget calling home and I said, "I met a black lesbian and she's gorgeous. What should I do?" And they were like, "well just know that sometimes people assume you are who you hang around," and I was always a rebel, so I was like, I don't care about that I like hanging out with her, she's cool. And so of course this story ends with us eventually kissing, and me eventually writing this long poem about her—that I actually never even told her was about her—but just made me realize that I was queer. And I really had a crisis about my identity because I was very religious, I was a choir member, the only woman in the tenor section, I'll say that. But I, basically just because of my religiosity, I had been trained that gay was not okay in those places, because I still identify as a queer Christian. And now, in the 2022 and the self-actualized version of me, knows there are queer pastors, there are queer priests, this is a book that has been interpreted in so many different ways and those scriptures are often taken out of context. But I was trying to grapple with it because both my parents were Sunday school teachers, and they weren't the most accepting, I did go through an estrangement period with my family, of them not understanding. And, I feel blessed that eventually they did, come around. And I'm actually proud to say that I have a cousin who's a stud—meaning she's a black woman who's very masc of center—and she married a white woman, this last weekend and my 84 year old grandfather went. And I just imagined his mind being blown because, your granddaughter is marrying someone when gay marriage was legalized in like 2016, and also interracial marriage was legalized during his lifetime. So just to imagine all of that coming to fruition, and you being able see all of this and to support. And so my mom went, one of my aunts went. There are still people who are prejudiced in my family, I'm not going to pretend about that, but it's beautiful, actually, it's a gift that also me and my brother are queer because there's no dividing us. We're both in this life, and when my brother came out, they tried to blame me for exposing him to the lifestyle, and I'm like, if he wants to like men, he didn't learn that from me. I always was an inclusive person, and I was always on a journey and finding myself, and always will be, but the love I had with women, and the emotional connection I cultivated with the women I dated let me know that that's what felt most aligned, that's what felt most beautiful. And I am a gold star lesbian I guess, but I just never felt the connection on a physical, sexual, emotional, mental level in a way that felt so equally yoked and intense than I did with women. So that let me know right there that it's like, I want to eventually have a wife one day. And specifically just loving black women, because really the way we can share the stories of how we're oppressed in the world and kind of make a safe haven together, it's just beautiful to me. So, that's what I love, that's who I am. I've had times where I had to go back into the closet because I did a lot of international work. So I did work in South Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America, and I still do, and I will, but in some places homosexuality is illegal or you can be attacked. It's still one of those identities that, you can't always tell when you're looking at me depending on if I decide to wear a hat that day, but it's definitely a big part of me. So is being Black, so is being disabled, and neurodivergent, and so is being a non-binary woman. So yeah, that was my coming out story, I guess. It was riddled with trauma, but I tried to keep some of that, but it also was riddled with radical love. And I think that for me, queer is a lifestyle. It's not just the identity of my sexuality, but it's also queer as in odd. I'm an artist. I'm a person who wants to impact social change and will. I'm a solution finder and a radical activist, and a spiritualist as well. And so for me once I rejected that heteronormative lifestyle, it made me think, what type of lifestyle do I want to lead? Do I want to explore polyamory, which I did. Do I want to explore different types of spirituality, religious syncretism, like Christianity mixed with chakras? What makes sense to me? And I think that I only have things in my life that makes sense to me and that resonate with my soul and my spirit, and that's a gift because I didn't have these frameworks I had to move through. Once I did reject the framework, of course, I went through mourning that, but I also went through being excited that I get to create whatever I want.

00:25:10.200 - 00:26:09.100

Thank you. That was all amazing. Hopefully it made sense, chronological order is not always the way that I tell my stories but hopefully it still makes sense. It totally did. And so fair, I'm a master of interrupting to interject. I actually do have a twin, and that's how we tell stories. I love that you have a twin too! Me and my brother literally look like twins, I think we were supposed to be twins and something mixed up along the way. Literally we're a few hours apart. Three years and a few hours apart. And we look the exact same, he's just 6'2", same voice, same face, similar queer journeys. He definitely identifies as bisexual and I'm over here on more the queer side, but it's just great to have another queer sibling. I don't think a lot of people get that, so I definitely don't take it for granted.

00:26:10.300 - 00:30:05.300

Yeah, that's amazing. So I want to make sure to get to the questions of space and community space before you have your 10:00 a.m. meeting. So, how long have you been going to and participating in queer community spaces? I started honestly at 18. That's when I came out, I'm now 28, so I've been out a decade, but I started going to—when I started exploring queerness, I went to drag shows or different queer clubs because, I wanted to feel this, I wanted to experience this. Because a lot of my friends, they were very supportive when I came out to them they were like, this make sense. But they would go to the queer things with me. They'd be a little scared because they didn't know what to expect, none of us did, we were just suburban kids exploring, but they were open to it. More my female friends than my male friends, but they would still—if anybody wanted to hang out with us, I was also hanging out with a gang of artists—so they often had questions but they were open to alternative lifestyles, and I'm grateful for having a lot of artist friends because I think that that helped a lot. And just good friends, that it didn't matter what I was into, they loved me still, so that's definitely my chosen family. We would go to clubs, we would go to drag shows, there's different things they would have at the university, but also when I would go back home to Charlotte because it was the largest town in North Carolina. I would always be able to go out there, so part of me going to art events turned into me seeing drag, which I think is an art form as well. But just going and exploring—I had this thing where I would travel a lot for my university because I was on student government, I was on this international poetry team, so there was a lot of things I was traveling for, for conferences and stuff. And any time I would go to a different city—I would go to Seattle, I would go to Texas, I would go to all these different places—I was always like, okay at some point during this trip I'm going to check out a queer scene. Because again, it's just to me, like checking out an open mic in a different city or an art gallery. It's going to have its own culture, and I just think that's really interesting and cool. So I would always go to some type of queer event if I could fit it in, and even better if someone wanted to go with me. But especially when I moved to other towns, even when I was abroad, I have been abroad for Pride sometimes, and I just love exploring what that looks like in other places. Like how you're doing this documentary, I think it's really important to understand that these experiences are global, they're everywhere. they're in every niche, nook, and cranny, it doesn't matter how small the town, it's just about finding it. And just—I guess it's the anthropologist in me—observing how people interact, what's a norm for them, what type of music do they play? And I feel that way about open mics and art scenes, and also about black scenes, and black spaces, and queer spaces. And if I can get all three in one, that's even better. But especially knowing that there is a dearth, meaning there are only less than 20 queer bars even still open in the United States—and when I say queer bar, [I mean] lesbian bars. There's way more gay bars, even though that is still lacking, but lesbian bars there's less than 20, so if there's a lesbian bar where I'm at that's history. I think about Pulse and stuff, and when I get a chance to go to a memorial space like that, why would I not go? It's literally history. That's kind of my feel.

00:30:05.400 - 00:35:23.410

And when I came to D.C. I started going to A League of Her Own. It's funny because I actually met my longest girlfriend there—we broke up since, I've been single for about a year and four months but— it was a special place for me because, not only meeting her, but I remember going there when I would even visit D.C. before I moved here, and I just thought it was so cool because again, there's not that many lesbian bars. I will say, as a black queer person, sometimes queer spaces are not black friendly, meaning they're not playing music to cater to our community and that can be frustrating. I also remember going to Nellie's, and there was a whole boycott Nellie's movement, that maybe you heard about, where they dragged a black woman by her braids from the top of the Nellie's steps to the bottom, and threw out of the club. I hope you check it out, because if you put in boycott Nellie's it'll come up. There's a lot of black community that still won't even go to Nellie's because of that anti-black moment, and the issue was when people released the video and said, "what are you going to respond to this Nellie's?" They said "we're still investigating the story. She may have brought a drink into the club," and it's like, if you bring a drink into the club that doesn't warrant black violence. And so, unfortunately many of these queer spaces, due to the black wealth gap, are not owned by us, they're not for us. I've tried to find my safe havens where I can, but I've noticed as far as the black lesbian and the black queer woman community, and male community in D.C., they do a lot of takeovers. So they'll have their own niche stuff, like there's something called wicked Monday's, where it's for queer women of color, mainly black leaning, and they play a lot of hip-hop, and it's a place where people can feel free to twerk and just have a great time. And they're actually just now able to purchase their own brick and mortar, but before that they would just do takeovers of other spaces that may or may not be queer. Because queer doesn't always mean welcoming to black people as well. Sometimes they don't play our music, or if you're looking to meet up with other black queers, they may not be in that space. It might be a white queer space. So that's also something big that I like to uplift, and I'm trying to create more of those spaces. I actually just started an open mic, we had our first open mic on Monday, it's called Selena's Speakeasy and we're trying to do it after the Harlem Renaissance and just uplift queer people of color. Of course, people are welcome, but that's who the space is created for. And then lastly, I also know the owners of As You Are Bar which is a new lesbian bar in Capitol Hill. And actually a woman that I'm really good friends with now, but we used to talk. She was an organizer of the George Floyd protests during 2020, and she remembered that those two white women who own As You Are always came out to bring water to the Black Lives Matter protesters and stuff, so I like to support them too. For me it's more of a coffee shop vibe, the music's not always to my liking—I just have to be frank, I can't filter anything—but it's like this [unz unz unz] type of music. It's all white-centered music that a lot of bars in. D.C. play, not just gay bars—whether it's male-centered, female-centered, I've gone to them all. It's just not, they purposely don't play urban music because they don't want that type of crowd to come into their space. So that says something even if you're not saying something. I'm waiting for that type of space to emerge here, but until it does, I've been able to go to My Sister's Room in Atlanta, places that are very much black and queer at the same time. And again, these takeovers. And I actually just got to go to an amazing event that made me cry and touched my soul at the African American History Museum. They actually had a Harlem Renaissance night, two weeks ago, where they literally recreated the Harlem Renaissance. They invited famous queer people like Tracy Africa, who was a queer icon and was the first black woman on the cover of Vogue and was actually trans, and when they found out, they ruined her modeling career. But this was in the 80s. They had her in the building, this was phenomenal! They had documentarians that have been documenting queer black history. They also had us voguing the night away, and they had a lot of folks that were featured on Beyonce's album because, if you don't know, Renaissance is actually dedicated to her Uncle Ronnie, a black gay men who died of HIV who used to make a lot of Beyonce's clothes. So she featured Big Freedia, she featured a lot of house music an a lot of—if you watch Pose—a lot of the ballroom scene music on that album intentionally, and so some of the artists that were featured were there talking about that experience. So that was just phenomenal to me because, when are you going to see a bunch of gay queens in the African American History Museum voguing down to the floor?

00:35:23.700 - 00:39:58.600

There's a lot of erasure of queer identity in black history. When you talk about Bayard Rustin who was literally Martin Luther King's right-hand man, and the only reason he wasn't Martin Luther King, lifted up that high is because he was a gay man, and it was illegal. And it's hard to be these intersectional identities because you're oppressed by multiple identities, and you don't have the space. People talk about how minorities police each other more, and it's because we can hardly exist in the small cookie cutter frame society widgets out for us, barely. So when we talk about Marsha P. Johnson who started the Stonewall riots and Sylvia Rivera. They're both queer people of color, and those identities are why they were subjected to police violence. I love talking about it now, and that it's being more uplifted. And even when you go into A League of Her Own, what I do find really beautiful is that the whole wall has a bunch of gay icons, and if you look at that wall most of the people are black and brown. And that's not who's represented in the club—I'm just going to be honest—but just to see them there. I hope that another young queer person can look and say, "oh my God, who is this?" And it just sparks a conversation. So I'm excited for their open mic that's coming up on Thursday [October 27], a friend of mine, Barbi, is the manager and she's Latinx. And you can tell that she's the one managing the bar now, because she's been having Afro-Caribbean nights, she's been having just all these different nights. There are Afro-Caribbeans that are queer and they want to be able to dance to their music and their culture in a safe space. Her creating that that, A League of Her Own has always been friendly to the drag community, so I love going to drag shows there. But just that open mic I went to last month, I saw so many queer women of color, and I go to a lot of art spaces and my work is still appreciated and cheered for, but it's very niche, nobody else is really writing about their queer experiences. My first book was called Of Mics & Pens & Gods & Other College Courses—it's available Barnes and Noble, Amazon, all the things—but I'm going to be doing a lot of pieces and excerpts from there during my show on Thursday. That book was about me coming out, and I was actually really scared to release that book in 2019 because a lot of people didn't know I was queer. I hadn't told them, and I knew my family, my pastor from my church, a bunch of people were going buy the book just because they wanted to support me, but I'm like, when you buy this, you're going see a poem titled "Taste." Just keep turning the page [laughs]. But it's real! I wrote about religiosity, I wrote about mental health, I wrote about sexuality, and I didn't hold back, and I was scared, but it liberated me. I think when I released that in 2019, I was like this is who I am, take it or leave it. I'm showing up as my full self and not a fraction of who I am when I come into spaces. And that means I'm a disabled girl in every space, I'm a non-binary girl in every space, I'm a black girl in every space, and I'm a queer girl, and I can be all those things, and if the space ain't right I'm going to create a new one. So I do feel like ALOHO [A League of Her Own] did give space to that. There were poems about mental health, queer identity, trauma, generational healing. My next book is called Metamorphosis of a Black Butterfly, and it's about generational cycles that I've stopped and cycles that I'm starting, patterns that I'm beginning that are positive patterns, and I think that needs to be discussed more because the pain's got to go somewhere, and if you can't transmute it and heal from it, you're going to be determined to keep pushing it onto the next group of folks. And it's okay to talk about how sometimes white gay males have subjugated me more than straight black women. And I want to say this and uplift this because D.C. is a great town if you're a white gay male, and sometimes people have stopped fighting for equality for black trans women. Their average lifespan is 35 years old. 35 years old! That's literally their life expectancy, because of anti-blackness and anti-transness that's available right now.

00:39:58.600 - 00:43:04.490

There's a lot of popularity of queer folks and queer culture, but we have to look at who's making it. Who's able to get married and run off to the suburbs and live that great life? It's usually white folks from this middle class, upper class background. I still do love the white queers who really are true allies who, I have a few that are close to me, a few, because you have to have the right politics to be in my space. But they get it and they are going to the Black Lives Matter protests and the queer protests. Because if we all aren't free, nobody's really free. But I do think that there's nuance and that's what my art reflects. I'm here for the black queer youth, and I never make any apologies about that. I love to mentor black queer youth, and I'm writing these stories so that some black queer young person can pick up this book and find art that I never found. I'm growing my library, I found out about Audre Lorde when I was 23, and my dream is nobody else still has to do that because if I had read that stuff sooner I could have found myself sooner. I could have actualized myself. I think everything happens for a reason. I'm creating those books I wanted see, and I'm going to keep doing that, and I have several different businesses and mediums where I'm doing that, one of which is called Invisible Strengths. It's an app to help queer black people, queer disabled people, and everybody in between find employment that honors their pronouns and their ability, because we all are very complex people, and we have intersectional identities, and we're standing in the middle of a bunch of Venn diagrams, and every circle could be a layer of oppression and a struggle you've got to work through every day. So, I'm just trying to be more of a bridge and help people to work through those struggles and also make people aware who aren't experiencing it, how they can show up because, I've had to be educated by trans binary folks about what they go through and figure out how I'm going to show up and uplift their issues. There's just no excuse about not giving voice to these issues that we want to make change about. One of the ways I do that and one of the most effective ways that it's received is through my art. And so, I'm excited for the show Thursday, I'm excited to continue with the Speakeasy that we started. Our next show is going to be on the 7th of September, but even just being able to see—it was the first one, but it was a 50-person turnout. And people said the space was affirming for whatever that meant for them. And so, again, just want to continue to uplift the community and see things grow change. Be created. That's amazing. Um, okay. It is 10:05. I do have some things that I will, one second, I'm going to stop recording real fast. [Interview pauses for around 35 minutes for Mariah to take a business call]

00:43:06.900 - 00:45:33.350

All right, part 2, I'm going to do the introduction stuff again, just to make sure I'm Corinne Davenport, I'm here with Mariah Barber. It is October 26th, again. We are on Their Story, again. Do I have permission to record this part of the interview? Yes, you do have permission to record this part of the interview. All right, so we finished up and you were talking about different kinds of spaces and how sometimes it's tough to find spaces that aren't in some way exclusionary of different intersections of your identity. So what has that looked like? What experiences have you had positive or negative with that in queer spaces and especially queer femme spaces in D.C.? A League of Her Own or otherwise. I think I met my ex-girlfriend at A League of Her Own because we were one of 15 black people there that night. And this was before Barbi was managing it, I want to say that because I have seen a change as far as cultural competency, when you elevate women of color to the leadership roles, because they've just naturally got good ideas because they want to see it for themselves. But yeah, it was just the music, again, just not aligning with the type of music I want to hear. Not to say every black person likes hip-hop, I love classical, I've been a radio DJ so I've done it all: country, classical, rock. But there are racist and anti-black policies within a lot of physical bar spaces—not even just queer, forget about that—where they are instructing the DJs not to play certain types of music or not hiring DJs that are going to play the type of music that is going to attract a particular crowd. And usually that particular crowd is black. Even just rules at clubs that stem from anti-Blackness like no hoodies, no white tees, things like that. No bags—that one's not really anti-black, that one is just annoying to me because I usually have a bag [laughs]—that's some of the examples of stuff I've experienced, not to get too much into trauma and stuff. I actually can tell a good one though, I'm going to tell this one because why not?

00:45:34.900 - 00:50:58.900

So, speaking of Stonewall, I was in New York with my then partner at the time, and me and her were there celebrating Valentine's Day weekend. We went to Greenwich Village, which everybody knows is a gay part of New York. That's also another thing that I love going to gay-borhoods in different countries and different cities, because there's always a different feel, I've been in Portland where there's a crosswalk that's rainbow, it's just cool to see. But going back to the Greenwich Village story. So we go to Stonewall, I'm excited because its history. I've never been, I used to live in New York but I just never went to Stonewall specifically. So we go in. we're just relaxing, we're playing pool typical dyke stuff, and we're just killing time after a nice evening out to the theater or whatever, and we're just enjoying our Valentine's. So enter in—I love this story because it also expresses anti-Blackness is global, and anti-Blackness leaks and is pervasive in every culture. So Latinx people can be anti-black, Asian people can be anti-black, Pacific Islander people can be anti-black, black people can be anti-black, because that's how insidious implicit bias and racism really is. So there's an Asian woman—they did identify as she/her—walking around and clearly drunk, with their friends, just kind of sloppy and looking for their bag. They're like, "somebody stole my bag, somebody stole my bag," and so they're just going through and, fair enough, they were doing it to everybody at the bar. They weren't the one perpetuating, the anti-blackness, the owners of—or the bartender's rather—of Stonewall were the ones that did. They're going through everybody's bag, now I told you we were playing pool, so our bag is put up. They start to go through—at the time I was dating a dark-skinned Caribbean woman—they started to go through her bag, this Asian person that's looking for their stuff, and they're like, "my stuff, my stuff!" and we're like, it's not in in our bags, please don't go through our things. And at that point, I escalated and I go to the to the bartender and I said listen, there's somebody here going through people's bags, because she's also going through—we made friends with some like white queer folks that were also in the space and they were going through their stuff too. And people were getting angry. But the thing is, when a black woman gets angry it's perceived differently, so I do appreciate those white allies that they were like, "listen, stop touching our stuff," getting loud, because they can do that and they're not going to be taken out by security. At this point, I go to the person working as the bartender and I'm like, "hey there's someone going through somebody's bags, she's clearly drunk. She's trying to find her stuff, I get that, but she's touching my girlfriend's stuff without permission and getting in people's faces, and being very inappropriate. Can you handle this?" They bring security eventually, after she's done this for 30, 20 minutes, and she just keeps going into my girlfriend's face at the time and being like, "you took my stuff, I know you took my stuff," and everyone who was witnessing it was like, girl you need to calm down. Her friends aren't getting her, they're just letting her—and we're just here trying to shoot pool and have a nice Valentine's weekend. So then security comes and they're like "oh, are you the one getting in people's faces?" and go to almost hold down my girlfriend. They're just assuming, because she's the dark-skinned black woman in this scenario, that she's the problem. You can tell I'm vocal, but I'm like, "no I called you over!" I pointed to my partner and said that me and her were the ones that were the victim in this space, this Asian woman is the one that's causing the problems! They eventually carry her out and get her out of there, but that's just one example, it was a very, very disgusting scenario and we had a deep conversation as partners. My type, I guess people I tend to date are dark-skinned, sometimes self-identified fat, Caribbean folks. I don't know why this keeps happening. I don't ask these questions, I'm just naturally being in spaces and somehow I'm a magnet! But even when they aren't identifying as fat, they're still dark-skinned and Caribbean, and there's anti-blackness, there's colorism, there's all these things at play that I have to be mindful of and be an ally for, because if security or police are involved, they're going to be the first ones that get attacked or blamed. That's just the reality of it. And so, that was one example, and it was really gross. I was happy I was there to advocate but had my girlfriend gotten irrate—which she deserved to because this woman was going through her stuff, accusing her, treating her any type of way, calling her any type of name—she would have actually had the potential of having a police interaction that was dehumanizing. And it's sad that that's happening at Stonewall, but it's not the first story.

00:50:59.100 - 00:55:57.900

I follow some queer podcasts such as The Read(??) and they've talked about anti-blackness at Stonewall. It's sad because often black queer people put their bodies on the line, they put everything on the line for everyone, but everyone doesn't put themselves on the line for us. That's just an example. There's more that have occurred, but that one I think really needs to be lifted up because it opened my eyes. Remember, I'm the one advocating through the whole scenario, we're basically sober, we're not really drinking like that, we're just playing a game, and for that to happen and me to see that unfold? I'm like, wow, this is how pervasive this is. And I used my privilege as a light-skinned person, and just as somebody who didn't mind really saying it how it is to try to solution plan and try to mitigate as much harm as I could, but there was still harm done ad there was still trauma from that situation. We had never been to Stonewall, we were excited to be in a place of history, and then for that to happen? And I synthesized the story a lot, but there was more things where it was just accusatory and just gross, and didn't feel affirming. I think a lot of white queer folks need to investigate the privilege that they hold. And in general we need to make sure Pride is more accessible, the queer able-bodied folks, there's so much. Also queer folks out there who are living with chronic conditions like HIV. A number of things, how are we creating space for them? And I don't mean a pop-up testing site. You always have to do the self reflection of what's your ways that you're marginalized and the ways that you're privileged? I think sometimes white gays absolve themselves of accountability. When it comes to race, when it comes to ability, when it comes to gender, because they've been oppressed and they've dealt with trauma. And that can be true. Two things can be true. You can have dealt with trauma and also be someone who has perpetuated, and also traumatize folks. And I don't think that it's wrong to say this is closed off, this is a black only queer event. It's just like having a Black Lives Matter movement or having a black student union. We want safety at the end of the day, period. And there can be—I've seen Latinx only, African only queer events, especially in DMV or places where you get into all these niches. I don't feel like I'm offended or want to go take up space. You know, I am the descendant of slaves so originally I'm from Africa, but I don't have those direct ties. So there's a nuance and conversations and jokes and everything else that they're entitled to have. There's AAPI queer only events, and I see more. There can be stuff that's for everyone, but the things that are closed off are closed off because they haven't been able to be safe in other spaces. And often, even these marginalized faces can further traumatize you. That's a conversation I think we're just starting to have, but I will say, especially in the gay male community because I have a lot of friends—some of my best friends are gay males—they'll, on Grindr put no femmes, no fats, talk about people who are called different names. I don't even want to get into all of them, but like race queen and stuff. That's not okay, to fetishize people. And the fetishization happens with lesbians too, it just may not be as overt as Grindr, because women relationships are a little different. But there are transphobic things happening in lesbian spaces. There's biphobia that occurs, there's ableism. And it's like, yes we have been marginalized, but we also have brought some of these toxic traits over to our community and we got to work on that. I think there's a way to work on it and have conversations, but I want more. And also just have it be okay that that's not your space. There's certain things that aren't your space. Sometimes you can come and you can just not take up space there. For example, I went to the Latinx night at A League of Her Own, and I love reggaeton and I speak Spanish, but at the end of the day, I've worked in the culture. It's not my direct culture. I'm not going to dance up on these people that are in all-Latinx groups. If they want to engage with me, they will. I just danced and had a great time still, but there's ways to not center yourself. If there's a trans event, I'm going to go because I still am in the in that umbrella a bit, but I'm not going to interrupt a black trans woman speaking or sharing her truth.

00:55:57.900 - 00:58:19.020

There's ways to do it, and I think it's just figuring out your way. And if you're not sure, read a book, take a class, don't put that labor on that person who's dealing with the oppression to teach you. Unless they that's what they want to do, because I have rates for my DEI trainings, Just, just reflect. I think reflection is key. A lot of people, queer may be their only marginalized identity, and that's some tea. And that's okay! You've been through a lot but imagine what other people have been through, where it's not their only marginalized identity. We have to just keep that in mind. And again, read up on it. Listen to stuff like this, reflect, do what you can, try to divest from these things that we—it's natural to the brain pathways that leaves implicit bias. So it's okay, it doesn't make you racist, it doesn't make you a bad person. But what are you doing to rewire your brain? What active things are you doing to center and create opportunities for those that you can create opportunities for? Sorry, there was a massive bang from above me. I'm in a basement apartment, something hit the floor. Okay. I have a couple of tracks of questions from that actually. I was wondering, because you mentioned transphobia and biphobia in certain lesbian or queer women spaces, and I was wondering about that. Because I know, at least in like the terminally online—I went to Sarah Lawrence College, so lots of— oh my God— —Sarah Lawrence College, online queer spaces that talk a lot about issues of weird exclusionary stuff like that. But I was wondering, in your experience when you're physically in lesbian, femme-based, queer spaces, how much that is actually a confrontation in shared, in-person spaces versus conversation and online discourse?

00:58:19.500 - 01:03:09.370

I actually think it's just as shared in person. Especially when people feel safe, when they let their inhibitions down with the alcohol flowing, that's when the stuff comes to the surface of their true beliefs. And again, it doesn't make anybody a bad person, we're all on the continuum of growth, but I've been in Black queer spaces—and we usually do takeovers, like I said, so it's not a specific venue, it could be a hangout at someone's house, it could be somebody's house party, it could be at a bar takeover where we all say, hey, we're all going to go here and make something this week. Where people just say—they see somebody new to the community and you dated a man before you dated them—and they're saying I don't want to give her a chance, she's not really gay. Which, again, comes from trauma. I get it. We've all been snubbed by that one girl who goes back to men and treated us like an experiment or a dalliance into this community. So it's all from a trauma, but that's why healing is so important. Those sorts of things are said, or "oh, I would never hook up with a man," and also, it's funny but a lot of these people that have been most boisterous about being anti-bi, anti-men, behind closed doors sometimes they're hooking up with men. And it's okay! You just have to accept who you are as a person. We talked about the different forms of attraction—I used to be a sex educator and I do a lot of trainings on this stuff, so I have access to vocabulary that others haven't maybe had a chance to explore. I just find this stuff fun, because I think it's interesting to have terms to refer to the things that I feel inside. But for people who don't have those terms, they're spewing and saying stuff because they haven't had the language to express what's really going on with them. But why I say all that is you might be physically attracted to men, but you're not emotionally, romantically, any of the above. So, sometimes you hook up with guys but you still identify as a lesbian. Or there's been, even heteronormativity, where people are upset about stud for stud, so a masc lesbian for a masc lesbian. Again, it goes to trying to police people. Y'all, we're all women at the end of the day, we've all got these same parts,we're all taking her clothes off. We're all just try to move through the world. Also just my own experience dating femme for femme, when I have my stilettos on and I'm with a woman and she has her stilettos on and we're going to dinner together, people just assume—this is straight people and queer people, and everybody in between—coming up and trying to hit on us or say different things, be a part of it, objectifying us. We're not here for your gaze, we're here for each other's gaze, actually. We think this is hot ourselves, we don't need any outside—and we want to be able to just come out into the world. So it's just not making assumptions. You don't know if it's me with my home girl or me on a date, so don't approach me. I hit on women, so I don't give people a lot of pass for catcalling and gross stuff, because I fully have just said, "oh are you here with your friend or are y'all dating?" I read the vibes before I even go and try to hit on them, and talk to them about stuff. There's ways to check in. There's always ways to check in. And then with transphobia, there are a lot of transphobic queer people. And even in the trans binary community. I follow a lot of podcasts like Marsha's Plate, which is a transgenerational, trans, black podcast—kind of cool—but they have someone in their 40s, someone in the 30s and someone in their 20s. And they're all having conversations about different, political issues, sex work, everything in between. And what I love is they actually talked about how there was actually some hatred towards non-binary trans people like Alok[spelling?], one of my favorite poets, because they purposely wear a beard and a dress. And sometimes for a trans black women that could subjugate them to more violence. And I don't do it in air quotes because it's real, people are like, "oh pick a side, you're making it harder for me because then they're thinking I'm not a real woman," but everyone can exist in these lanes. It's really just society trying to pit us against each other. I have this line in a poem, "we're all victims to the propaganda they perpetuate," and that says what it says. I don't think either side is wrong, but these experiences, there's danger in a single story. So it's not a single story, it's not a single issue, we're multifaceted and intersectional people, and we're all just trying to live and be loved and create spaces where we feel safe. So those are just some examples.

01:03:10.000 - 01:07:04.000

But people will be like, "oh I wouldn't date a trans woman." Why? Because that's transphobic. I had to learn that myself because I've been one of those people that said, at one point in my life, and then I realized trans has nothing to do with what's in your pants. It's about who you are as a person. I haven't to this day really dated a trans person, but I've gone on a date. If the love of my life is—I find Janet Mock, I find Amira Scott(??) gorgeous. I wouldn't know they were trans by looking at them. So if I hit on them in public, I'm attracted to trans folk. I'm attracted to all different people who I find attractive. So I think that we have all of this language and stuff, and we're creating new terms every day, so it's a lot. I also think there's sometimes a little bit of intergenerational hate too when it comes to like, oh, why are they using zir? Why are they using they/them? Because there's a little bit of anger that those options weren't available to the older community, or the seasoned, I'll give them seasoned. And it's not everybody, some people are really accepting and they're proud. For me, I'm just proud. Resentment does nothing for me. I didn't have The Fosters, that came out when I was in high school and it made me so happy, because I was able to see some type of representation. I'm waiting for a black lesbian family with a healthy life to be shown, because I see it all around me in D.C. Black women are the most educated group, and you're telling me there's not a little healthy depiction out here? I'm going to make it, if I don't see it. But until then I'm not going to hate on other people for getting their shine. I am going to hold them accountable for uplifting. But yeah, I've heard crazy things in safe spaces [air quotes following "safe spaces"] where, if folks aren't in the room—meaning trans folk, they don't think because I have an invisible disability, disabled people are there—they're making jokes, they're doing whatever. No, that has no place here. Hate has no place here. Even if the person's not there, I know I'm the annoying social justice friend, but I'll bring it up. Because if you'll do that when you're not mixed company about that issue, you'll talk about me or you'll talk about something else, and that's not cool. We have to learn it's not cool and nip it in the bud, and really remind folks what space this is, because we bring all that negative and that phobia, whatever it is, from these other cultures into our own culture, just because we're still trying to work on ourselves. And that's okay. And it's okay to also let people know that ain't gonna fly. It ain't gonna fly. Yeah, for sure, thank you for that. I was actually wondering because I haven't been able to go to many queer spaces like that, for a lot of reasons in the last few years. I appreciate the question! Because as a person in tech, of course there's always the anonymous trolls online and I think that that gives people anonynity to do even more, but you'd be some people really will say when they don't think somebody's there. And I've witnessed it so many different times, whether it was overhearing others' conversations, or even just being at a potluck or a cookout. And even in joking matters, certain things aren't okay. And also, you don't know who's there. You don't know who's going to come out as trans later, you don't know if you're going to come out as trans! It's just silly, because everybody's going to be disabled. If things go according to plan, we're getting older, our mobility, our cognition are going change. You don't know what position you're going to be in.

01:07:04.000 - 01:08:43.290

You don't get anything from tearing folks down. You really don't. Kindness cost nothing. And I don't believe in cancel culture, because I believe in restorative justice, but you have to be doing your work. You have to be doing your work. There are people out here. There's queer, disabled, trans models, go follow them on Instagram if you don't have them in your town. There's just no excuse of why you don't know in the age of the Internet. Because if you're invested in it, you've gone on a deep dive on lesbian Tik-Tok for other stuff, for the thirst traps you wanted to see! You can find these niche conversations and you can't be everything or you're nothing to nobody, right? But you can explore things. There's stuff I'm sure I've been brought up, I never brought up first gen queerness, and I know that's not my experience, so I just try to listen, and learn and take in. I have thoughts, but mostly I just try to listen because it's not my lived experience. Okay, the other track on questions is specifically about—there's some overlap with online versus in person—but when I was looking into this project, I saw that before A League of Her Own had opened, there had been a lesbian bar in D.C. that was open from 1971 to 2016 and when that bar closed— Wait, what was it called? Phase 1

01:08:45.000 - 01:09:05.800

Yes! I've heard about Phase 1! I never got to go. Yeah, tragic. When I saw that it had closed in 2016, I was so sad. I heard it was really good, people talk about it. The odler queers here talk about it a lot. Yeah, I'm hoping to get some some stories about it.

01:09:06.700 - 01:12:11.020

If I can think of some other folks that went to Phase 1 I'll definitely try to snowball sample, get you some folks. That would be marvelous, thank you. But because they closed in 2016 and A League of Her Own didn't open until 2018, there was actually a two-year gap in D.C. where there weren't any queer women/lesbian bars specifically. So I was wondering what, in your experience, or what do you think led to both the closure of Phase 1, and also what pressures or demands led to the opening of A League of Her Own that brought back that lesbian space that had been shut down for a coupole of years. Yeah, I was actually coming to D.C. during that time. I was living in New York but my best friend lived in D.C. so I came a lot. I think maybe on a drunk night, maybe I went to Phase 1, I don't really remember because it was before I moved here and went all the time to other spaces, but I'm sure I probably tried. I think that people were still communing and meeting up. There's a lot of, if you go and Instagram there's a lot of D.C. lesbian link-ups and stuff, people will go to picnics in the park and then they snowball invite a bunch of people. Next thing, you know it's 50 black dykes all in the park. So people were still meeting up. People were probably going to drag shows, I don't know if Nellie's was open during that point, I'd be curious, but l know I was going to Nellie's. I was just looking up gay club and going to where the gay boys were. And it's still very male-centered, but at least it's gay people. And at least it was still pretty good music. So I'm sure people were going to a lot of gay clubs. And making their own space, because especially for black lesbians we still don't have a spot. It's apparently coming later this year, but it's not owned by black lesbians, for us by us. And like I said, I think it's in the works. So I think what we've always done: creating our own spaces. Bcause even when Phase 1 and Nellie's or whatever the next thing will be happens, there's going to be some community that feels neglected. There always is. So they're going to start creating their own subculture. So I used to go to a monthly potluck for queer lesbians of color, before the pandemic, and it ran for maybe a year and a half. And there are a lot of queer houses in D.C. too, where it's a group house, and everyone who lives there is queer. So they'll throw events or stuff like that, and there's certain names of houses—I don't remember all of them off the top of my head now because I've never lived in them—but I've heard from other people, this house is doing this. Or there's even houses that I've heard of where it's all drag queens living there, just little stuff. There's Showtime Bar, they have a dyke night on Wednesdays. Wicked Bloom has had a black queer night of color, before they closed during the pandemic, or Monday nights. So it used to be Wicked Mondays. So people would just probably do pop-ups.

01:12:11.020 - 01:16:38.600

As far as why it happened, I'm just guess-timating but there's only so few lesbian bars because I think we have some sense. We're not like the gay boys, we don't run out all the time and just drop money at the club and drink all night and dance all night. I think lesbians like to be in the house [laughs]. You see us in the sweaters in the house right now. They'll go out, and I'm not going to generalize. I know some lesbians that go out a lot. I also know some lesbians that go out, meet their partner, and then they're inside with them until they break up with that partner and they go back out. We're just a funny species. I think we spend money differently, so keeping it open, making sure that enough money is spent and stuff, I think maybe that could be a challenge. Maybe even getting loans. I'm not sure, I've never tried to do it. I'm not a nightlife person. That's the one business I've never done, throwing parties. I don't care to. But I do think it's a lucrative business, and I know a lot of people who are DJs and—sometimes it just goes back to, again, anti-blackness, finding a venue that will allow for a bunch of black people to show up. And even when they do spend money, allow you to keep taking over that space. Because I've seen black lesbian pop-ups get kicked out of different spaces. And not kicked out the way they're like, leave right now, but they can't host in that venue anymore. So that's I'm sure part of it. As far as Phase 1 I don't know the tea, maybe somebody else might be able to share more, but I'm sure people were still linking up all throughout those years and then eventually somebody was able to actually get a loan from the bank and convince people that it was a lucrative business idea, which we know is true because people will come every night of the week in a city like D.C. where there's a huge representation of lesbians, and there is an appetite for it. But getting somebody to believe in your business model, launching, being able to staff, all of that stuff is a lot. It's a lot of labor. So I'm sure that that happened that way, for that reason. I know it's hard sometimes to keep queer bars open just because of wealth gaps and all of that good stuff. So you have a bad season, that might be it for you. And so, especially during the pandemic I'm happy that ALOHO is still open. And I think they had to be creative and maybe start selling pouches of drinks or something, but all these businesses had to be creative, but even more because queer people are more likely to have lower paying jobs, and maybe not have all that flexibility to spend that extra income when economies get hit and things happen. All of these are hypothesizing because I don't know the tea, but when you find it, I'd like to hear the tea. Got it. I'm hopefully going to find out at least a little bit with this project, so I will keep you in the loop. Similar to that, Are there other space—and you talked about pop-up spaces that don't necessarily fill gaps but also serve a similar purpose. Are there other spaces that may be kind of like moving in and filling the same kind of niche that historically lesbian bars have served in your experience, or is there still a very important space for lesbian bars specifically, regardless of other groups that are popping up? I think it's still an important space for lesbian bars, because when you go into A League of Her Own, you know the majority of people you're going to meet there all lesbians or femme identified, and it's a different energy than walking into a bar that is all gay males with a few sprinkles of lesbians. Which, there's a lot of gay male bars in D.C.—Kiki, Dirty Goose, the list goes on. There's so many things, I go with my gay homeboys all the time, but you're still going to be surrounded by men. And sometimes you just want to be surrounded by other girls who are also queer. We party differently, we're different people. So the way that we move in spaces, it's just different. It's a different energy for not only meeting people in a romantic sense, but friends.

01:16:39.400 - 01:21:51.700

So yeah, I do think lesbian bars are needed and we need more. It's a different energy. Divine feminine energy when you walk into that type of space. And of course they don't turn anybody away. You're still going to find a few straights sprinkled about, a few guys sprinkled about. But you are going to see the majority you, and we're usually the minority or underrepresented group in the world. So being able to come to a space where it's insulating, like, oh my God, I'm not an anomaly no more! I want people to still be able to have that experience and so I definitely think that's a reason why, I think there's something called Bloom Bar, where it's being created. I may be able to get you in contact with them, at least through dming the Instagram, and then you can move forward with your own reach out. But they're starting to, they're black queer women who are opening a place basically, for black queer women, by black queer women. And again, everyone will be welcome, but you'll walk in and you'll be like, oh my God cool! I think that it's hard to keep programming running, it's hard to get people engaged, it's hard to keep people coming back, so there's challenges, but there's definitely a need. I think people appreciate going to a lesbian bar. When you type in lesbian bar in D.C. and you—I guess the gaps when there wasn't As You Are and A League of Her Own—I'm sure that's not a great feeling to go to a gay bar because that means gay male, and so there's going to be a lot of gay males there. Still cool, still can have a good time, but there's different interests, we're different people, we have different types of events we throw. Snd so there's definitely a need for lesbian bars, for a safe space, for us by us type of thing. Awesome. I think that's the last of my big questions. So, first of all, thank you so much for chatting with me, I really appreciate it. And before I finish recording, is there anything you want to add about your own experiences, your thoughts, these spaces anything, before we finish up that I didn't necessarily touch on with questions or anything? I think that built and natural environments are really important. I'm an environmentalist—that's another story—but I think intentionality when it comes to a built or natural environment is really, really critical. I have a lot of friends who are urban planners, my brother was trained in architecture. There's so many levels to this thing, but there's been a lot of design of spaces and a lot of colonizing of natural spaces where we are never centered. And when I say, we, I'm speaking for all of my identities. And so I think that this new age is like, we're intentionally creating things for us and by us. FUBU—shout out to that brand—but it's important to have people represented in all levels of leadership, to be able to have public comments. I even know with As You Are Bar, I remember one of my good friends was actually uplifting that they were dealing with an issue with being able to get the permits towards the end of their journey to open the bar. These systems are not accidental. They're created by design to keep certain spaces minuscule, and under the underbellies, and keep other spaces uplifted. And the amount of clubs and bars that we have in these major cities, there's no reason we can't have a lesbian bar in every one. There's no reason we can't have a black-owned lesbian bar in those same ones. There's just no reason that it can't also have a ramp on it. I've wheeled my homegirl into the club. Thinking about these things, we have to do it or nothing's going to change, and there's an appetite for it now more than ever and there's a call for it. So I'm so excited to continue to watch things grow and blossom, and support. That's the other piece. I really try to put my money where my mouth is, so when I see other women in business, when I see other black women in business, when I see other black queer women in business—I just got off the call with you to talk to one—I'm willing to mentor, I'm willing to buy your products. Because when we keep making Bezos richer by buying this stuff on Amazon—of course, maybe still have your Prime account, but in other things you can buy from local folks. There's Femme Fatale as well, which is an all-female product-led shop and putting your money there, so that these places can stay in business, and just be a little more intentional. Even if it's just once a week, you got $15 to give, but it's making sure we're helping to keep folks in business, because they can't do this—and even participating in art-based projects and storytelling. So that's, again, why I'm willing to help, because if I want to see more media, you got to support the folks trying to create the media.

01:21:51.700 - 01:24:20.000

So thinking about, on an individual level, what you can do, because we're calling for societal changes, but those aren't going to happen overnight. But tomorrow, you can pay $15 to a local black queer person that you know manages a bar if they don't have their own space, tip them extra, do whatever little thing you can do and it really does go a long way in and encourages people to keep being able to create stuff. Share if you know, about a grant, that's little things that I like to do. Collaborate on an event. Vend at something. There's also Lady Clippers Barbershop—I'm telling you all these resources so you can go follow up—but they're an all-female, barber shop owned by a black queer woman. So there are other spaces that are maybe not a club, but they're communal and safe spaces for queer people. A lot of queer masculine black women who want to get a shape up, and I have an undercut, and I have to really find, it took a long time to find a good barber that wasn't homophobic, and where I felt safe. Because barbershops are usually male black spaces. So for them to create that shop, you know how crazy that is to have it in the backyard? That's not even my barbershop, I go somewhere else, but I tell people about it because I want to send business that way, because I want them to keep being successful. As a business owner, as a queer person, as a person who just cares about stuff, I'm trying to support and even if that's just word of mouth, you can do that. I encourage everybody to do that. I'm always calling myself in as well. And that's why I never hesitate to pull out my wallet or pull out my time when I can for these types of things, because I believe in them and I want to see them keep going, and so I have to support. And it doesn't always have to be monetary support. You can share it with someone else, you can offer your time or volunteer to help with an event. There's so many ways, I can't do an exhaustive list of everything, but let's keep supporting each other because that's the only way things are going to get better. Fantastic. Thank you very much! I'm going to finish recording it real fast.