They’re Not Running

Elinor Slomba had just returned home from ladies night at Partners Cafe when she tuned into the news.

Dancer Luis Antonio saw the news flash while in Colorado visiting his boyfriend Jasper’s family on Sunday morning.

“It hit me like a punch in the stomach,” Slomba recalled. And she thought: ​“We’re all part of a bigger network, and what happens in one safe space really affects us all.”

The news was about an unfolding tragedy in Orlando, Florida, where a gunman opened fire on patrons of a gay and lesbian nightclub called Pulse. He ended up killing 49 people and wounding 53 others in the worst gun massacre in U.S. history — shots that resounded especially in the lives of gays and lesbians everywhere.

On Sunday afternoon, after arriving back in New Haven, Antonio was walking down the street, trying to center his thoughts. His mind was awhirl. Every step felt like a herculean act. Then he ran into Tony, one of the bartenders from Partners. Come out to a gathering tonight, Tony urged him. Don’t stay home. Be with those you love and celebrate the fact that you love them. 

The two recounted how a brutal chapter in American LGBTQI history — and their own tales of being out, scared, angry, and hopeful in New Haven — on a WNHH radio special dedicated to the impact of the worst gun massacre in U.S. history on members of New Haven’s lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning community.

For both Antonio and Slomba, a long grieving process and community call-to-arms began Sunday morning, as news of the attack began to fill the internet.

“We were waking up to come to New Haven that morning,” sad Antonio, a founding member of Elm City Dance Collective who moved to New Haven from Puerto Rico at the age of 8, and came out to his family when he was 18. ​“First thing I saw: What happened in Orlando. It broke my heart right away. I lived in Orlando for a couple months about nine or ten years ago. I was very upset, distraught … we started talking about it and find out it was Pulse Nightclub. I found out that more people died … it was a hard day or traveling.” 

“It brought an awareness to me which I always have, but it brought it up a lot more,” he added. ​“I spoke to my brother that morning and he was like: ​‘Luis, be careful. Be aware of your surroundings. Be alert.’ It’s something that nobody should have to worry about, whether you’re at a club, at a movie theater, anywhere. You should feel safe wherever you are. It’s scar. My heart was aching … I was trying not to think about it, to stay off social networks.”

Slomba says that acute awareness stung for her when she heard the news, which kept her alert and in a state of distress.

“I had gotten home, just starting to unwind, and tuned into the news,” she said. ​“it hit me like a punch in the stomach. We’re all part of a bigger network, and what happens in one safe space really affects us all.”

Out & Latino In New Haven

In adding their voices to the conversation, both Antonio and Slomba were careful to talk about the attack as the latest and deadliest threat to LGBTQI culture in a long and devastating list of affronts and attempts to silence that community. For Antonio, that includes being an out Latino male in New Haven. 

“People say: ​“Oh, it must be hard being gay in the Latin culture,” and at first it is. I have seven brothers and two sisters. They’re all very macho womanizers.

“And then there’s me, the baby. It was hard to be raised around that. All of the people who passed away were my age. [At that age] when I was still in the closet, and I was not out. For a lot of those parents, it was finding out two different things about their kids. They never got to enjoy that part of their child. For my family … my mother got to know me, who I really am. Before that, it was like I was somebody else. It’s unfortunate that those parents did not get to see that in their kids. It breaks my heart.”

“It does get easier,” he added, noting that he and his father, once strangers to each other, were talking again. ​“They learned to love me. They would take a bullet for me if they had to. I feel the love from my family and it’s very sad to hear that many of the people who got shot were from the Latin community.”

Violence In Suburbia

Slomba, who grew up in a cul-de-sac in Virginia, identified that kind of oppression in her own upbringing as well.

“I think that white suburbia can be in some ways a very violent place,” she said. ​“There’s all kinds of hidden violence that keep the structures in place so that someone like me could grow up til age 13 not knowing anyone who didn’t look like me and didn’t come from a different background. That for me is a form of poverty in and of itself and one that I’m very glad that my children aren’t being raised in.

“I knew at puberty that I didn’t fit into the mold and wanted to do anything I could do to grow out of it — pretty terrified. Really looking at a culture that was very conformist, not just in terms of sexual orientation but on many many axes. Conformity was the only way to find a place in that culture and I really wanted to check ​‘none of the above.’”

She also addressed the heightened risk of hate-based attacks and suicide in the LGBTQI community.

“There are predators out there who don’t want you to be. That wears on your existence,” said Slomba. ​“For me as a young person, for people I know, it does get at that core will to live, that we can certainly strengthen for each other.”

“It’s really important to reach out, and to take seriously other people’s sentences that might not be: ​“I’m thinking of killing myself” but ​“I don’t know how I can go on,” ​“I just want this to be over” — things like that that might be real warning flags. If you hear that coming from people that you’re close to, you might want to reach out.”

How It Got Better

Both of them say that gelling with other members of the LGBTQI community and communities in New Haven are how they found a way to both survive and thrive in New Haven.

“As a Latin man, I will say I didn’t stick to one community,” Antonio said. ​“As a gay man, i will say that I like to expose myself to all communities. I feel like I’ve found a haven or a safe space in all communities [here]. I have a trans community that I love, I have a community of lesbians that I follow, that encourage me and are there for me … I didn’t just stick to one community. I kind of flourished into all of them. I also wanted to be exposed to the love and give the love to everyone.”

“When I was focused on finding spaces with women and for women, they were there,” she said. ​“Like anything, when you start cultivating with the right open mindset, you need to meet the right people.”

That was a big part of where and how they felt supported after the shooting, they said.

While Tony urged Antonio to come out to Partners, at 168 York Street, owner Joe Goodwin was urging others to do the same. It’s that kind of response, Slomba and Antonio said, that the community needs more of not just in the wake of tragedy, but 365 days per year.

“I do believe that in as much as we can all cultivate the parts of us that might not fit into the boxes that we were presented with, and be vulnerable to share those parts, and not feel that we have to stay in strict definitions of anyone else’s labels or any kind of community, we’re going to be better off as a city,” she said. ​“There’s more safety, I believe, in expressing more and not less.”

To listen to the full episode, click on or download the audio above, or subscribe to WNHH’s ​“Elm City Lowdown” podcast on Soundcloud or iTunes. Those feeling distressed in the wake of the attacks can call the Disaster Distress Helpline at 1 – 800-985‑5990; TTY for deaf and hearing impaired at 1 – 800-846‑8517. The GLBT National Hotline is 1 – 888-843‑4564. The Trans Lifeline is 1 – 877-565‑8860. The Trevor Lifeline for LGBT Youth is 866 – 488-7386. The English-Spanish Hotline for the NYC Anti-Violence Project is 212 – 714-1141. The National Suicide Prevention Hotline is 1 – 800-273‑8255.