A 57-hour-long playlist, full of gay hall-of-famers, reverberated in Las Positas’s Cultural Community Center on shuffle. The drone of an art rock classic, David Bowie’s “Heroes,” cued the dance portion of LPC’s Gay Prom. The chorus repeated:
“We can be heroes, just for one day.”
Bodies pooled the dance floor. Wallflowers began to defrost, shaking off shyness and melting between layers of ‘70s synthesizers. The music dissolved the few barriers left in a space designed for fluid expression.
By the track’s halfway mark, Bowie’s declarations escalated to outcries. He practically yelled the lyrics in raw despair. The crowd danced on.
“Though nothing will drive them away.
We can beat them, just for one day.”
The lyrics shout resilience in the face of oppression. For some attendees, Bowie’s words resonated on a personal level.
“Without community, we’re kind of lost,” said Dani Blatter, adviser of LPC’s Sexuality and Gender Alliance Club. “This is a place for queer people to feel like they’re not on the margins of a cis, heterosexual society.”
Queer people may not have the power to beat institutional discrimination overnight. But they can find power in rejecting the pressure to self-shame. Gay Prom served as a beacon for queer students to feel celebrated authentically — even for a fleeting night.
The event, filled with queer joy, bouts of the worm and a rainbow candy bar, closed out SAGA Club’s Lavender Graduation. The night was a send-off for graduating club members. Its finale gave queer students a chance to re-do prom, an American rite of passage, as their real selves. Prideful instead of shameful.
“A lot of people who are queer didn’t feel comfortable going to prom in high school,” said Alyssa Mercer, the outgoing president of SAGA Club. “We noticed as a club that there’s not really a celebration for people who have gone through the queer experience at college.”
Blatter noted that gender roles are particularly pronounced during prom. Women don sparkling gowns and couple with their suit-sporting boyfriends. Judgment, and in some cases, violence, lurk for those challenging the status quo.
“Being the butch lesbian who shows up at prom when all the girls are dressed in gowns … it just feels like you stick out like a sore thumb,” Blatter said.
Many teens build up the hype around the chance to ditch classroom attire for their flashiest formal wear and show off their dates. A conversely mortifying prospect for those who would rather be in another gender’s clothes. Binary expectations can even feel suffocating to the point of dissociation. Blatter, a transgender woman, said she repressed the night of her senior prom completely.
“It was really awkward,” Blatter said. “I was very much closeted back then. Nothing about romance, sex and dating made any sense to me.”
Queer people are privy to the ever-present drone of a heteronormative society. It hums steadily like an old fluorescent light.
“It’s in the water. It’s in the air,” Blatter said.
But maybe Gay Prom showed the limits of society’s predominantly heterosexual norms. That the salvation of queer community can hush the noise. That it’s possible for queerness to be casual instead of an uphill battle.
Even just for one day. Prospectively for a million more.
“That’s kind of the world we’re going to,” said Blatter, “Where it’s not some catastrophic fall off a cliff to realize you’re queer. It can be something you just grow into organically.”
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TOP PHOTO: Attendees of LPC’s Gay Prom settle in for a dinner of Chipotle catering under strings of rainbow flags on May 4. The event concluded SAGA Club’s Lavender Graduation, which celebrated queer students. (Photo by Jaxyn Good/The Express)
Jaxyn Good is the Managing Editor of The Express. Follow her on Instagram @jaxyngood.
