Growing up in Galesburg, Illinois, a small town in the Midwest, I rarely (knowingly) ever met queer people.
There was the couple that owned the best café in town, the voice professor at the community college, and that was about it. And then, of course, me. There weren’t social media influencers to follow or forums to find solace in; the internet loaded one horizontal bar at a time back then, and the isolation was often tough.
Because of that, going to college in a bigger city was imperative, no matter the cost. I stayed in the closet until I got to my university campus, came out from day one, and tied up loose ends later. Kissing boys, going to gay bars, and making queer friends affirmed that cities were my thing and that the pros outweighed the cons.
Cities have long been magnets for queer community and belonging. “If you need to interview someone who’ll never leave the city, , that’s me!” said a dozen friends of mine here in Los Angeles when I told them I was writing this article. For some, city life is a nonnegotiable,
