The other day, as I drove down Manchester Road toward Maplewood, I remembered there was a partially queer-owned coffee shop called The Living Room. I made a mental note to stop in and support them. I love how, these days, my straight friends are often the ones telling me about queer-owned businesses.
It got me thinking: How do we get the word out about queer-owned spaces to the people who need them? How do queer people find one another in St. Louis? The way I think I can answer those questions is to keep writing.
The magazines I read in my early twenties, much like Out In STL today, were lifelines for many people. Back then, we called them “the gay magazines,” and they helped many of us learn where to go to find one another, offered glimpses into varied queer identities, and emboldened us to explore our own paths to community. That work still matters.
Writing isn’t just about getting words published. It’s about helping us find each other. It’s about supporting our spaces, our businesses, and the people working tirelessly to keep our community connected.
As I drove and overthought everything—as one does with ADHD—I looked over and saw The Majorette event space in Maplewood. Instantly, I smiled. Because last summer, something incredible happened there. Something worth writing about.
For many years, lesbian spaces have been closing. As our gathering places disappeared, finding one another became harder, and it began to feel as though lesbians were disappearing, too.
Dating apps filled part of the gap, but something was still missing. What happened to finding friendships? What happened to leaving one’s house hoping to find community? What happened to meeting people face-to-face? To me, something felt incomplete.
Last summer, however, I watched something new and beautiful happen in St. Louis. Our lesbian and queer community started finding one another again. And right in the middle of it all was Kelley Harris.
I first really got to know Kelley on St. Patrick’s Day 2025. She needed help cleaning up after a huge lesbian party called “Circus: The Carnies, The Freaks, and the Rebels,” which she hosted at The Majorette the night before. While we picked up rainbow streamers and swept popcorn off the floor, I learned something important: Kelley wasn’t just throwing parties. She was rebuilding community.
Kelley educated me on many topics I was truly out of the loop on: politics, the trans community, the broader queer community, and what life looked like as a newly divorced lesbian mother of two teenagers. As she mopped and I moved boxes, a friendship quietly began to form.
I’m not going to lie—I had developed a crush on her. A big one that I thought I hid well (which she later informed me I did not).
I felt like an awkward teenage boy who didn’t know what to do with their big feelings. But Kelley wasn’t ready for a relationship, so I did something unexpected: I learned how to be her friend.
As we cleaned up that day, she handed me a sparkly silver charm she had found on the floor. I kept it and still have it to this day. Looking back, it feels like the beginning of something much bigger than either of us realized. We were building a new lesbian empire—or, as Kelley likes to call it, igniting the flames of a St. Louis lesbian renaissance.
Kelley contributed to that effort by creating High Femme Gaiety, a project that worked to bring lesbians, queer women, and the broader LGBTQ+ community together through events that, to me, felt almost magical. “Hidden Agenda,” “Giddy Up,” “The Circus,” and “Pussy Control” were equal parts queer joy, curated entertainment, and political commentary.
(Side note: Kelley has since passed the High Femme Gaiety baton to Ashley Ruff and Kassidy Bilin, aka Butch Kassidy, to continue the legacy of spreading queer joy and political discussion through sexy entertainment.)
Then she did something simple but revolutionary. She took over a hard-to-find bar called Boombox, tucked behind and beneath The Majorette, and started a weekly lesbian night on Wednesdays so we could simply exist together on a predictable schedule and build community.
During those nights, I watched people do many things. Some made lifelong friends. Others found hope. Many found community. And some of us found love.
While Kelley was creating spaces from one angle, I was doing the same from another.
I started organizing gatherings at lesbian-owned businesses. I wanted to bring back the dance parties we used to have in my younger days. I wanted people to leave their houses and reconnect face-to-face. I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend. I was looking for community and friendship.
But along the journey of community-building and networking, as Kelley often tells me, I built a lesbian empire just to be with her.
St. Louis is a small community. I already knew who Kelley was long before we actually met.
Twenty-five years earlier, I had seen her studying on Mokabe’s patio. I remember thinking, “That has to be the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.”
Then life happened. Years passed. Careers came and went. Families were created. Entire chapters of life unfolded.
Never in a million years did I imagine we’d end up together.
Yet there she was. The same beautiful woman. Only now she was sitting across from me, laughing with me, sharing drinks on her porch, helping her daughter study, playing cards with her son, and calling to make sure I got home safely.
Somewhere along the way, friendship turned into something more.
I fell in love in the quiet moments. Not during the parties. Not during the events. Not while building community.
I fell in love during ordinary life: long phone calls, conversations about everything and nothing, evenings spent sitting outside together, and the occasional adult child asking, “Where can they find their shoes?”
In those moments, I started feeling seen and understood.
I knew I was falling in love long before I admitted it to myself. The problem was that I wondered whether the friendship mattered more than risking it all for love. So I waited.
Then one night, after another great evening spent building community together, we found ourselves dancing at Tim’s Chrome Bar.
Kelley asked me to step outside. Then she kissed me.
A big lipstick kiss.
Suddenly, the woman I had admired from across a patio 25 years earlier was standing right in front of me, igniting the flames of a new romance.
To this day, I still can’t believe it.
It feels like yesterday that I was sitting on that patio, admiring her from a distance.
Meeting the love of my life wasn’t the goal. Community was. Love just happened along the way.
That’s why this story isn’t entirely about romance. It’s about showing up.
It’s about taking chances. It’s about leaving your house and making connections. It’s about friendships and conversations. It’s about the volunteers who show up for community, the organizers who give so much of their time and money, and the people who spend countless hours creating spaces for us. It’s also about those who donate anonymously to help keep these efforts going.
It’s really about finding your own way to build and support community. This is where community begins, and sometimes, if you’re lucky, that’s where love begins, too.
So this Pride, I have an invitation for you.
Today, Kelley and I look around and see more people building community again. Nothing makes us happier.
Once again, STL Pride 2026 offers many sapphic-focused events to choose from.
We also want to invite you to join Kelley and me, along with The St. Louis Lesbian Queer Society, at the After Pride Party on Saturday, June 27, 2026, from 7 to 11 p.m. (with the bar open until 1:30 a.m.) at Hummel’s, 7101 S. Broadway.
It’s one of only a handful of lesbian-owned pubs in the country, and it happens to have one of the most beautiful patios in St. Louis. (The patio is cash only, but an ATM is available on-site.)
Come meet your community. Come support a lesbian-owned business. Come thank the volunteers who make these events possible.
Come solo, and I promise you’ll leave with friends, just as we’ve seen so many people do over the past year.
We’re working hard to keep lesbian- and queer-owned spaces alive because there simply aren’t many left. Taking up space matters.
Our rainbow dollars matter. Your presence matters. Showing up matters.
Because community doesn’t happen only online. A stronger community happens when we walk through those doors and connect in real life.
If there’s one thing Kelley and I have learned from doing this, it’s that the fear and anxiety of putting oneself out there are real, but the gifts that come from connection are worth pushing through.
And every once in a while, if you’re incredibly lucky, you meet the love of your life.
That’s how I found Kelley. That’s how we found each other.
And maybe that’s how we’ll all find each other again.
Wouldn’t that be something?
So come solo or bring your entire queer gaggle. We look forward to connecting the rainbow that night.
After all, “WE ARE FAMILY”!
Kelley Harris: “I created these events to provide a consistent place for lesbians to gather, with a lesbian staff and curated entertainment, continuing the strong tradition of lesbian culture established by earlier generations of lesbians in St. Louis. It was an honor to hire the many talented lesbians, queer people, and women of color who performed for the lesbian gaze while supporting and creating discussion around pressing social and political issues affecting lesbian and queer women.”
“Butch in the Streets” columnist Rena Noonan is with the St. Louis Lesbian Queer Society.
