Queer survival in Mississippi and the bars that saved us
On Highway 90, between the shrimp boats and the neon of the casinos, there’s a quiet kind of resistance. The type that pulses under dance floors, tucked behind unmarked doors. Gay bars on the Mississippi Gulf Coast don’t wear their pride like big-city clubs. They don’t have rainbow flags stretching across intersections or drag brunches advertised on billboards. They live low to the ground, out of sight but very much alive. They’ve had to. In places like Biloxi, Gulfport, and D’Iberville, being queer has never been entirely safe. But the bars? They were the closest thing to it. I remember my first gay […]