People often speculate about my place in the queer community. Am I trans? Am I a gay man? Am I a drag queen? Am I an alien? What category do I fall into? I work at Re-bar and Pony, so I get asked these things all the time. Since people constantly press the issue, let me just answer right up front: I fall into the gender nonbinary category. But I don't think it matters what category of queer you fit into. There's still sooo much work to be done, and we're going to have to do it together.

I moved to Seattle from Colorado 15 years ago. Not much to say about Denver, where I grew up. It's there. My grandma was an opera singer who gave up her career for marriage and kids. My mother and father were actors and singers who met in an all-black musical production of The Hobbit. I was an arty kid who grew up around music, dance, and theater.

I left Colorado because I didn't really see any artistic opportunities there and I had some friends moving to Seattle. The day I arrived, I met a man named David Bickley at Jade Pagoda; he took me to Re-bar and also introduced me to people like Gary Zinter and Rodney Shrader, who were involved in fringe theater. Gary got me cast in a play at Re-bar; it was set in a gay bathhouse in the 1970s and titled The Ritz. That was the beginning of my artistic life here.

I don't really consider what I do to be drag. I think of it more like performance art. I'm just Adé. That's my real name. People assume it's something I took on or made up. When I'm not slinging drinks, I'm a singer, actor, musician, model, producer, and curator. Sometimes I do these things in a dress, sometimes not.

Before The Ritz, I was singing karaoke around town and working a job at the Walgreens on 15th. I was sharing a studio apartment on 13th and Republican with three friends. I had a gig at a hair salon for a while, but that didn't go so well. This was 2005. It was deep into the George W. Bush administration, and everything was miserable. Of course now, in retrospect, it looks like a walk in the park.

I got a job working the door and bartending at Bus Stop, back when it was on Pine Street. I ran the karaoke there on Sunday nights. Then the grimly gorgeous old tenement that the bar was located in got torn down. I started hosting karaoke nights at the McLeod Residence, a cozy windowless Belltown art gallery and social club. Then they closed. I did some catering for Microsoft. I went back to Denver to see if I could make things work there. I turned right around after a month and came back to Seattle.

Seattle has changed enormously since I first arrived. Something that we have to acknowledge is what happens when gay people and artists move into poor neighborhoods and gentrify them. I must also acknowledge that I have benefited from that process: After all, it's what happened to Capitol Hill. This didn't used to be a nightlife district; it used to be where cars got fixed or sold. In the early 1990s, there was only one bar in Pike/Pine, and that was the Comet. White Center is seeing this happen now, with the gay bars popping up there. When that occurs, what happens to the people who have already been living there?

It's an old story: people coming here from everywhere and the rent going up and up. It's making it hard to survive in this city, especially on Capitol Hill. This is an expensive neighborhood. That said, I can't think of anywhere else in the US I'd move to. I want to stay on the hill. If I left Capitol Hill, it would probably be to move to Mexico City.

It's also getting harder and harder to survive as a queer person of color—a person of color period. President Donald Trump is the single biggest reason. It's a very strange time—between the spaces people find each other on social media and the racist cheerleading from the White House, all of a sudden these white-supremacist creeps are coming out that you didn't think really existed.

I haven't experienced Trump-era racism personally, probably because I live on Capitol Hill, but I know it's there. What with all of the things people tell me, and what I see in the news, and what comes out of the president's mouth. Seattle still feels generally progressive, and that protects me a bit.

Someone recently mentioned Barack Obama to me. All I think when I think of him is: "I miss you!! Come back!! Please come back!!!" I applaud Obama and former attorney general Loretta Lynch for classifying trans bathroom rights as a civil rights issue. Trans rights are civil rights. Let us not forget that it was trans women of color who were at the front lines of the Stonewall riots, 50 years ago this month. Without the bravery of Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and the rest of the patrons of that bar deciding to fight back against the cops, we wouldn't have the Pride movement.

As for Trump, I think he is doing everything he can to undermine the progress Obama made on trans rights, and he will continue to do so. The murder of trans women of color is a common practice. And Trump ain't gonna do anything about it. As an attack survivor, I will always do what I can to fight for trans rights, for the rights of people like me. The United States is a bizarre place to be, and to be from, in 2019: I just want to wake up and have all this have been a fucked-up dream. That's what I want to have happen. But we can't sleep through this. We have to fight.

I'm also going to keep fighting to survive as an artist who works in the nightlife and service industries. I've worked at Re-bar for about 10 years now, and only recently started at Pony, which is kind of a punk pansexual bar during the week. More and more though, the weekends at Pony are overrun with bridge-and-tunnel straight folks: bachelorette parties and the dudes who want to fuck the women who go to them. I don't have anything against those people, but it's irritating when a queer space is taken over and turned into a circus playground. And you get the feeling these people are slumming. It's a bit insulting.

Then again, queer people don't go out as much now, not like they used to. Hookup apps like Grindr have changed the scene: You used to have to go out to meet people. Now it's just Dial-a-Dick.

It was when I stepped away—that month I went back to Denver—that I truly started to appreciate Seattle. And it was when I returned that I really dove into doing shows. Capitol Hill High was a fringe theater soap opera. I did Ian Bell's Brown Derby, where they stage live readings of popular movies. I created a character named Buttry Brown, a former-model-turned-vigilante with a deaf-mute sidekick played by Scott Shoemaker. We developed those characters into a YouTube series. I did cabaret appearances. I was in a band.

What I'm saying is this: If you're an artist, if you're a performer, if you can connect with people, you can survive in this city, even if you were not born wealthy. I am proof of that. I feel lucky to say I live here, and I feel lucky to be performing on Pride weekend—shameless plug!—on Sunday, June 30, after the Pride Parade, at Seattle Center's Mural Stage with Jayson Kochan /Airport.

I will also be bartending and hosting at Pony throughout the rest of the weekend. Even though Jade Pagoda is gone, and Bus Stop is gone, and McLeod Residence is gone, even though so many other things are gone, at least we still have Re-bar and Pony. Appreciate the things you have while you have them. Come say hi. Happy Pride.