A transgender man received destroyed documents in the mail a few days ago. One of the listed reasons was: “Document must reflect sex assigned at birth.” Google quietly removed the DEI initiative from their policies. The National Park Foundation removed the “TQ+” from LGBTQ+ on the Stonewall Inn Monument website. Everyday, every hour, I see another way they want to erase us.

Sometimes I think I don’t live loud enough. That I don’t take up enough space, or go to enough gay bars. I see the grey paint they use to cover “transgender,” or “equality,” and it feels like I’m starting to fade at the ankles.

I’m a quiet gay, a mellow queer. I love my nights at home with my partner. Nights where I rest in a well-crafted nest on our fire escape, reading while he reads. Yet these nights, laying against his bare chest in the dim lights of our home, our haven, doesn’t feel proud enough.

Every new headline brings a bubbling, bashful, benevolent desire to scream in the streets, “I am here! My name is Carter, I am queer! I am proud! I won’t be erased!” I feel a need to demand my existence. I feel a drive to once again put a condom over Jesse Helms home so that they have to report on us. So they have to look at us. I reach to our past to learn how to be loud enough. Loud enough that there won’t be enough grey paint in the White House to cover the word “Transgender.” I float in our history, and see how we have come together to become a beast, a spirit, a chorus of queer warriors in the past. We sang, we refused to die, we sang while we died. This time, quiet gay or not, I am going to be a part of the beast that scrapes the grey paint off; that carves “We Are Here” into America.