Echoes in the Underground
or: parents, prejudice, and the son in the subway
Note: This is narrative nonfiction. The events happened in June of 2019, shortly after the New York City pride parade. It was my first pride experience, and the celebration marked the 50th anniversary of the 1969 Stonewall Riots, also in New York City. It took two years to write the first draft—mostly in the Notes app sometime past midnight—and one more to circle back and finally publish it here in 2023.
With the current regression in queer acceptance, increase in vitriolic hate speech and disinformed media representation, and unprecedented rollbacks of basic rights and protections across all 50 states (co-signed by a minority-ruled, hyper-conservative Supreme Court), my basic human rights and personal/communal safety are under attack like never before in my lifetime. These recent events led me to publish this essay now. I hope it is received with the same care I felt surrounding me when the last day of June, 2019, came to a quiet close.
(c) 2023 Tanner Vargas
“I’m not homophobic, but...”
From “Notes” at 10:08 pm, Sunday, June 30, 2019.
The light streams in on broken bones. I’m the first awake, either from the anxiousness in the pit of my stomach or the stiffness in the middle of my back. The light bathes a lonely houseplant, its leaves soaking up sun rays lasciviously as it bends somewhat uncomfortably in the breeze of a sputtering window unit. The cool breeze gave us sleep last night, but they’ve also lured in the sweaty fragrance of subway. I close my eyes and listen to the mechanical movement below, metal on metal, the nonchalant bustle, almost feeling it in the walls. The plant’s almost frozen by now. This is Brooklyn.
All five of us yawn awake and begin inhaling pancakes with orange juice and wine. I’m wondering if they can hear my anxiety when I chew; I invest all my attention in the syrup.
It’s a sweltering Sunday morning, where anything too far from the air conditioning feels like fading, and we lay out our outfits on the floor to start constructing aesthetics. I just want to be comfortable, but I know it won’t happen. Not today, not yet, not likely.
I finally pick one, though: a freshly thrifted, black-and-white patterned, lightly weighted button-up tee with the top three buttons undone. It was hot; and I overheat easy these days thanks to generalized anxiety and good old-fashioned trauma.
After cold showers, quick changes, and water bottle refills, we’re ready to go and I’m starting to shake. The heat isn’t the root of the problem, but the parade ahead of us might be. I try to hide my chattering teeth; it won’t make sense in the heat. I’m an expert at noticing what people notice, at least by now. I really like what I’m wearing, though, which helps ease the tremors with a cool coat of confidence—retro tee, green shorts, black watch, and faithful white converse. Well, used-to-be-white I guess, but the faith came with some sludge on the bottom. I follow the four of them outside, thinking I’m ready.
We leap downstairs in a prismatic flash—Carla, Kevin, Ash, my partner Dani and I—and head towards the subway station that was calling earlier. The sunlight feels sticky and so do the stares of men on the street. I’m holding Dani’s hand, almost like a dare to myself, as a thousand sights and smells whizz by. I barely see them; too busy scanning.
After a few minutes, we’re passing one of those red-brick complexes that always seem to have a group of men outside smoking like chimneys; my fingers flinch back at the sight, almost like muscle memory. I’m outside my hometown’s favorite chain gas-station-convenience-store-with-deep-fryer, the hair on the back of my neck shooting up with my body temperature quick behind it. I decide against the retreat, gripping the skin that’s not my own even tighter, daring to walk like I believe I belong. Feigning strength. It was a major victory for me, an early triumph; they barely noticed us.
We’re on the subway when glimpses of pride begin to leak into my periphery—vibrant flags, rainbow tulle, fits of nets and shades and skin. Two realizations at once: I am underdressed, and I am hopeful. It’s okay to hold hands on the train today.
The car slows its breathing and opens the doors to a sea of multicolor motion. We’re still underground, but laughter is already leaping around the station. Literally leaping, almost like I can see it, between platform levels and across mosaic tiles in fits of joy and maybe even potential. There’s something different happening—a coded electricity buzzing around. Not everyone sees it, or cares, but whatever it is, I feel a part of it.
I’m turning to take the last set of stairs when I hear it—a bounding cheer, bodies in motion—and immediately bend down to tie my shoelaces in an unsuccessful attempt to delay the inevitable. Bending over in the stairway, I’m forced to take check of myself—heart beating like a pop song, curls leaking into ocean eyes. I notice a new kind of cadence in the background: a beating, a gathering, a pulse of human interaction. I think we’re almost there. I think it’s too late.
I tie my laces wrong, begin to rise from the clickety underground, and become enveloped by noise so exuberant I can hear the colors in them. A blue sky welcomes us and the sun strikes our skin with good luck. I don’t care if it’s delusional, I don’t care if I’m finally regular today; I don’t even care to know where we’re going. My fingers fumble for the railing and find no comfort or familiarity there, so I keep my mouth shut and try to keep my heart from leaping out of it. If there was gum on my shoe to stop me, I’d let it.
Rising up and into view, beyond any of my expectations, is a sea of new color. Shades of life I’ve never seen, never held, not even for myself in a dream or a wish. There’s laughter, movement, and a distant drum of shouting bodies now echoed over towering brick. I hear them tell me that today will be different; that it speaks to a different tomorrow. I nod, knowing better, hoping anyway. I grip my lover’s hand, olive-tint in the morning sun, and feel the day completely envelop me. This isn’t frictionless, it isn’t perfect, and it isn’t sameness either—something messy and queer and good. It must be the first time I know I’m in what they call “queer space,” a genuine patchwork of miscellaneous parts that visibly find the family in each other.
I see it all around me, really: friends lounging with carefree laughter, families filing through booths, queer lovers openly holding each other closer than I would ever dream of doing. Everything I’ve never felt comfortable expressing, everything I’ve never seen represented in front of me, is happening between divey cafes and soaring skyscrapers. I’m from an isolated farm town of 10,000 people—I feel small, but bigger than I ever have at the same time.
I’m surprised at the communal nonchalance; like everything was no big deal; like I was the only one feeling transcendence in the streets.
Once we make it to a corner—the first I’ve ever seen of a Pride Parade, and its fiftieth anniversary no less—I feel lighter. Long-held fears start losing their grip on me. No hate crimes, terror attacks, or rude awakenings seem possible here. My stomach rumbles at the thought, realistic as ever, but I couldn’t stand out in this crowd if I tried. Color, and all it has come to stand for, is everywhere—waving on flags in the wind, lighting up faces, gliding down the streets and blanketing every block in shocks of hope.
I wonder: is this how it feels to exist in a world meant for you? To feel comfortable—to simply know your existence is welcome and nothing to fuss about or apologize over—is foreign to me. I have never walked into a space with the inherent belief that I belong there. I have never been able to ignore the realities of my own expression. I have never had the chance to take it for granted.
—
By the time the sun sets, I feel fatigue’s heavy fingers pulling on my eyelids. From the parade to the park, a first peck to real passion, the day exceeded my dreams simply in its reality. We stagger down the steps and hear that familiar echo of shrieking metal. The train lines we’ve taken all weekend are like old friends now. I’m clutching a $1 pride flag, purchased from one of the countless color-drenched tables on the outskirts of the parade, when we trickle into a crowded train car.
Exhaustion grasps me by the feet now, dragging me down after two days of walking and working under the summer sun. I’m in love, for the first time, and take a moment to remember how far I’ve come in the past year. My first partner, my first coming-out, my first public date—and now, my first pride parade. I grip the metal bar and squeeze, feeling the balloon inflate in my chest.
Passengers trickle out with the daylight and a seat opens up after a few stops. I sit down and breathe sighs of relief—all-encompassing, head-to-toe breaths so deep that it feels the sun has set within me, and is letting her last rays out now through the backs of my teeth. Dani slides next to me on the third stop. I lay my head on their shoulder and let my eyes fall under the weight. The man next to us gets up to leave, and I start drifting asleep with the mechanical jostles.
—
I blink awake into some kind of urgency. It’s all over the subway.
Now I hear him, and I see him, but I am paralyzed. Every emotion I’ve felt today is barreling towards me, filling the subway car, drowning out every noise but the man speaking. What did he say?
“Yo, I’m not homophobic or nothing, but—”
Okay. He said it.
“do y’all really gotta be doing that here?”
I lift my head up. Look around. Nobody seems to notice.
“I’m not homophobic or anything, but do y’all have to be doing that right now? In front of my kid?”
A thousand wet thoughts pummel the electric rails with the force of a cumulonimbus, and I’m shocked into stillness. Dani looks at him, ready to burst. Carla, five strangers away, notices something happening. A shift in security. She moves toward us.
“I don’t care what you people do in private, but here? There are kids here, man, come on,” the man broods, gripping his child’s tiny finger. He’s small, about five or six, with a puffy coat and corn rows.
“What the hell did you just say?” Carla’s voice enters now, tremoring not with anxiety but rage. Much scarier. “I don’t think I heard you right.” She steps closer, boyfriend following anxiously behind with a blanket of concern in one hand. The other seems to be holding her back.
My lips start breaking into tremors as awareness dawns across passengers on the other side of the train. Heads turn, eyes blink. Something’s happening, and they picked the wrong car. I study them, some looking worried; some angry; some indifferent. I can’t help but take note, in case something goes wrong, in case my fears of limited acceptance are right and reflecting in their eyes.
“I don’t want him seeing that, man,” he replies with a dismissive hand wave towards the boy. The father throws his head back bitterly, squinting both eyes shut in crinkles. Disgust. Dani starts to say something but I can’t hear. I can’t stop feeling everything.
“He’s tired, what’s the problem?
“You’re doing it in public, man.”
“So what?” Dani says, voice escalating beyond the metal trap. I feel the temper in their heartbeat, filtered through two shirts. I still can’t move.
“Maybe your son needs to see it. He should know there’s all kinds of love, there’s all kinds of people out there. What if it was us doing that?” Carla argues, flashing back to boyfriend. “What if I was laying on him?” I can feel the stares sinking into my cheek.
“That’s different, that would be fine—”
“Exactly. You see my point? You’re being a hypocrite. Leave them alone, you’re scaring him,” Carla finishes, pointing at the child.
It’s a cacophony of sound, of singling out, of reality surfacing. Everyone is looking at us now.
A man reaches his hand out from across the row, saucer eyes over a gray suit, and assures us with unsettling calmness. “You two are fine. Ignore people like him.”
Others join in, yelling at the man now, with a wave of come-ons and what-the-hells barreling at the father whose little shadow is now visibly distressed. Him and I seem to be the only two shaking gently. We catch each other’s eyes.
The father’s foot is tapping insistently, head shaking side to side like a feverish pendulum. The child hides behind his leg. “This fuckin’ shit, man, gotta be all…” he trails off with both feet now tapping. I was beginning to realize the complexity of the situation—his hatred, its origins, the societal support needed to push him to this moment. Then he says it.
“You may not listen to me now, just wait till you have a bullet in the back of your head.”
My heart sinks beneath the sweat in my shirt. The hairs on my neck stiffen, remembering the reality of intolerance I’ve endured every day before this one. I’m from Texas. This is New York. Where do we belong? I feel naive. I feel stupid.
People are shouting at him now, and he shouts back. As the man reaches for his backpack, every hair on my body stands up and I picture tomorrow’s headline: “Pride Community Mourns Subway Murder.” My eyes blink in silence as I stifle back tears, the familiar edges of shame sinking into my back as the world collapses around me. All that exists is my fear, these thoughts, the hateful-man-with-child reaching into the unknown. What is he reaching for? What can we do? Will these strangers actually risk anything to help? Would I?
After what seems like an hour in the clogged pores of the New York City subway system, the train hurtles to its next stop with half the subway car on their feet by now. An MTA worker cuts through the still-blaring crowd, gripping a walky-talky and neon fanny pack with eyes that have seen everything. The man has been going back and forth with misinformed media headlines and creative thinking, repeating conservative talking points and outright laughable lies regarding queerness, children, rightness, still shouting as loud as seemingly possible in an attempt to drown out Carla and her spontaneous militia.
The father drags his child off the train, cursing under his breath as the little body writhes to break free. His small head is yanked back violently as an overhead voice booms and the door closes. The MTA worker spends twenty seconds checking for damage. The train rumbles back to life.
I feel a hand on my shoulder and make out a fuzzy sentence of concern directed at me, but I’m not listening. I’m looking at the child through a grimy window, overwhelmed in tears, the both of us making eye contact as I zoom past him—him and his father, now continuing the spectacle in a new station. The two connected, by blood and twenty fingers, drawing the air out of our platform. One still screaming, one still crying, both hands gripping.
I am weeping. Daniell starts next to me. People stop looking.
—