I have enjoyed reading Sabrina Imbler's 'My life in sea creatures' (2022), a kind of queer marine biology combining descriptions of the sea life and death with autobiographical reflections on race, gender and sexuality.
An account of communities of crabs gathered around isolated vents of hot water in the cold ocean depths segues into memories of Night Crush, a queer night at Re-Bar in Seattle they first visited in 2016:
'We showed up embarrassingly early —the bouncer was eating a ham sandwich by the DJ booth and had to be called to stamp us. We walked to the dance floor, a large black box crowned with a glinting disco ball, and watched the DJ spin Rihanna to the empty room, vocals glancing off the walls, from a booth decorated with a banner reading PAY ME, DO NOT FETISHIZE ME. I danced so hard all night that I didn't pee; my sweat made me as moist as a salamander. There were moments when the whole room vibrated together and I could have sworn my feet left the ground, lifted by the bodies swaying and shrieking around me'.
The club is now closed. In both the sea and the city, 'Oases here, where so few things are certain, inevitably blink on and off. But life always finds a place to begin anew, and communities in need will always find one another and invent new ways to glitter, together, in the dark'.
Swarms of sea creatures encountered at Jacob Riis beach in New York evoke comparisons with the city's annual Dyke March: 'Every June in New York, we swarm. We come from all around, on trains from other boroughs and cars from upstate and bikes over bridges that seem to quake, throttled every few minutes by subway cars careening into open air. However we come, we always recognize one another, limbs stuffed in mesh and netting and leather, teeth bared, nipples out. Our shirts, if we wear them, are emblazoned with the conditions of a world we would rather live in: without TERFS, without ICE, without imperialism... We meet in a part of Manhattan many of us have no business in, a patch of green surrounded by glass-fronted stores and metallic offices, and once there, we grow larger, friends finding friends and water-getters winding their way through an obstacle course of bodies. We swarm because we are full of the joy of being together, full of anger at the systems that exclude or endanger us, full of hope for the possibilities of the future'
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