When Andrew Morrison-Gurza, age 19 at the time, was preparing to go to a gay bar for the first time, he did what most young gay men do: He had a friend over, talked about what to wear, and put on some pre-party music.
Andrew recalls:
[W]e made a bunch of mix CDs with a bunch of early-2000s pop songs on it, like Christina Aguilera and all those things, and I just thought, “OK, well, I really have to hype it up and get really excited and really do it, because this is my first thing, and I want to ‘be gay.'” So I had a pink shirt on. I had some glow sticks that we had gotten from somewhere. And we were like, “Yeah! We’re gonna go!”
What makes Andrew’s experience different from most others is that he has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair. After an awkward conversation with the driver of the special wheelchair-accessible bus about where he was going, and then entering the club through the freight elevator, Andrew had an experience that reminded him that he’s different from an already-different group.
This is Andrew’s true LGBTQ story:
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“I’m from Driftwood,” a collection of “lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer stories from all over the world,” appears weekends on LGBTQ Nation. For more true LGBT stories, or to share your own, visit “I’m from Driftwood.”
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