Be Careful What You Ask For

The Chris Abraham Show

Reference Source: NPR Code Switch: Dispatches from the living memory of trans people of color

Identity, Stealth, and Staying Submarine When the Wolves Come Out

I heard a line on Code Switch that stuck with me: “I’m staying in my lane. I can’t speak for you.”
This is my lane. I’m not your hero or blueprint. I’m just a man with a few stories — potatoes in a rock soup — about how identity can be sanctuary, then trap, then survival trick when the world turns mean.

I first learned what I call the vampire door in Norwich, England, 1990. By day it was farmers and muddy boots. By night some of those same men slipped through the door of the town’s lone gay disco. A pint in hand, glitter on the collar, nod to the bouncer. An orbit under Donna Summer. Then cloak back up before sunrise.

It was a door you stepped through when you needed to be seen — and stepped back out when you needed to be safe. I carried that logic home with me: the door always swings both ways.

But I’d felt that door long before England. At GW in 1988, I was living blocks from Dupont Circle — one of the loudest, bravest queer neighborhoods in America. Back then D.C. was neon and sweat: drag races on 17th, basement bars, whole blocks that felt like portals. My friends and I — queer, straight, shape-shifters — learned fast: the bar at seven is family, the bar at eleven is the pack. If you don’t feel the shift, you don’t make it home.

Later I saw the same logic online. The WELL, The MetaNetwork — early “walled gardens” that needed a password, a vouch. Small. Sacred. Not because they hid treasure, but because meaning leaks when the wrong eyes peek in. That’s why I still love my Freemason lodge. Anyone can see the charity dinner — but when the doors close, there’s a man with a sword. Context is fragile. Leak the lodge, salt the garden.

People hear stealth and think it’s fear. Sometimes stealth is just strategy. Like a concealed-carry instructor once told me: “The best weapon is the one nobody knows you have.” Same for your identity. Don’t print it on a flag when you know the street outside is still 1950. Sometimes staying submarine is how you get to YAWP again tomorrow.

Walt Whitman’s YAWP is America’s big queer shout — but this country loves it embalmed. The living version it fears. The louder you glow, the more antibodies you summon. You become uranium: radiant, potent, and a perfect fuel for the machine that’ll spin you up and point you back at yourself.

That’s how the pack does it now. Not clubs or chains, but money and legal twists. Look at Skrmetti: SCOTUS upholds Tennessee’s ban on gender-affirming care for minors. Or Planned Parenthood: the Court says states can block Medicaid for everything — contraception, cancer checks, not just abortion. Sanctions turned inward. The message is simple: amputate the piece that makes us squirm, or starve.

The bar at seven is your found family. The bar at eleven is the werewolves. And the pack is bigger than a club — it’s donors, lawyers, ghost rules from 1950 still sitting in the court. You can’t extrapolate the sweaty Pride float to the rest of the country. The vibe shift is real. The pack is always circling.

So here’s my lane. I was never the hero. I was the shape-shifter who knew when to slip back through the vampire door before the vibe turned. Pretty enough to drink your Absolut — smart enough to leave before you asked me to explain.

I’m not telling you to hide forever. I’m telling you: visibility is power if you understand how the pack moves. Stealth is not shame — it’s strategy. Context is a garden. Spill it for clout, and you salt the soil. Your YAWP is holy. So is your cloak.

Stay submarine when you need to.
Always gone before eleven.