It dawned on us only while we were picking up a chunk of masonry as a souvenir that our 24th anniversary was the next day. More than two weeks earlier, Doug had received a liver transplant, so this sudden intrusion of flaming reality was a seismic surprise after the exhausting monotony of hospital visits, medication scheduling, and sleep deprivation. My husband and I had just returned from a bloodwork appointment down the street. The previous few weeks had already been a dizzying nightmare. Oddly, my reaction was more subdued than I expected.
And right there, at the top of my news feed, in a shared tweet from earlier that morning, was video footage of the Rainbow Lounge, Fort Worth’s legendary Near Southside gay nightspot and lightning rod for political controversy, engulfed in a blazing fireball while the shaky-handed bystander filming the inferno on his smartphone sputtered expletives of disbelief.Ī few hours later when I was standing outside the smoking wreckage of this once-famous (or infamous, depending on whom you asked) LGBT watering hole – the acrid smell of scorched wood burning my nostrils the constant drip, drip, drip off crumbling, water-drenched brick filling my ears – the reality of what had happened began to sink in.
My brain was stuck in a buffering loop at that hour, so I reached for my laptop and did what any logical human being would do when faced with unthinkably impossible news: I opened Facebook.
