And it takes life.
Because 21. I begin dancing at clubs.
Because when I am 12 during White Trophy’s WestPac deployments, my neighbor, I will identify as Black Surrogate, takes me to the San Leandro rifle range.
Because 18. I like to think I am a lesbian project.
Because I reload my own .223 shells.
Because I am in 7th grade.
Because my first Soldier of Fortune magazine, a young Muhajadeen posed with AK47.
(Because my son will be 12 years old this year.)
Because until March, when my Civic after 220,000 miles breaks down for the last time, I dance at Death Guild every Monday.
Because every third Thursday I am at the Cat Club.
Because I remember when I go to a club in drag.
Because the first club I danced, I am with 3 other sailors, on a New Orleans weekend.
Because an AR15 is semiautomatic. But you’re firing the trigger too fast, (says Black Surrogate,) it’s like you are going full-auto.
Because a dance floor is amniotic.
Because 18, Mo Phelan, my 25-year old co-worker with the Women Studies MA degree from SFSU insists I hear Judith Butler lecture.
Because 21, when I join the Navy.
Because Afghanistan, US mercenaries oppose the Soviet Union.
Because I would be a Marine instead.
Because those reading my FB posts, know that every Monday night, I write: “See you on the floor….”
Because the floor is my safe place.
Because 4 sailors walk in to a club on Bourbon Street’s northeastern end. .
Because we start dancing.
Because White Trophy from Rand, West Virginia.
Because Black Surrogate from Lake Charles, Louisiana.
Because the former escapes coal mines and the latter escapes oil fields.
Because one will not eat from his river and the other will from his.
Because 12 my Black Surrogate offers his AR15 for $500.
Because my son, (who will soon be 12,) chooses Magic Cards, Star Wars Legos, or newest Skylander.
Because my son has two AR15s worth of Legos.
Because in the same issue of my first Soldier of Fortune, a young Karen National Liberation Army soldier poses with M16.
Because he looks like he should be in high school.
Because he looks like displaced fob pushing his way down lockered hall fighting the war left behind.
Because he looks a lot like me. But I ain’t no FOB.
Because my son is too white, to be a FOB.
Because after two songs, my shipmates tap me to leave.
Because uncomfortable they are in a gay club.
Because we never talk about being in a gay club afterwards.
Because we migrate to Bourbon Street’s southwestern end.
Because butterscotch shooters are served by waitresses in pastel tank tops.
Because she looks like she should be in high school.
Because we listen to Toni Basil’s, “Mickey,” and leave.
Because we didn’t come to the French Quarter to dance to 80’s pop.
Because we never talk about it.
Because day after Judith Butler’s lecture about Willa Cather’s Tommy, I buy Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity at Cody’s Bookstore.
Because I buy Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex at Cody’s Bookstore.
Because I am writing this poem.
Because this is an AR15.
Because I smell the love of gun oil lubing a barrel.
(Because it is not the rifle used to kill as thought at the Pulse on June 12, 2016, but it is the rifle presumed and immediately I write this poem.)
Because implicates all assault rifles.
Because Queer and Straight POC are targets on the dance floor.
Because Queer and Straight POC die and are injured on the dance floor.
Because my FB trends reactions about gun control, toxic masculinity, Orlando, the Pulse, victims and murderer, terror, hate, and love.
Because my FB does not explain how an assault rifle can bind Black Surrogate to a White Trophy’s step-son.
Because I want to scold the FB friend for criticizing “toxic masculinity” without contextualizing it — locating it — for universalizing it.
Because if I am going to be held complicit?
Because 12, firing an AR15 from 100 yards, I group magazines of bullets in to bull’s eyes.
Because Seattle and Paisely from Seattle, Rat from Lancaster, CA. I-from Berkeley. I think they are conscientious if seen in a gay club by other sailors.
Because as West Coasters, we are in a sea of Southern folk.
Because Clinton’s legacy includes DADT.
Because when Black Surrogate drives alone on long stretches like I-5, an AR15 is with him.
Because I have only twice argued with White Trophy.
Because 20, Mother sends Sister to ask me whether I was gay.*
Because we have lunch at Raleigh’s.
Because I do not know how to explain this desire to be Ambiguous.
Because second day stationed at Naval Air Station Alameda, off-base salon, a transvestite cuts White Trophy’s hair.
I say transvestite because transsexual and transgender are not in White Trophy’s vocabulary.
Because the Hard Rock Café waiter directs 4 Port Royal sailors to “an alternative club,” The Crystal, on Decatur.
Because High School, classmates who listen to The Cure, and wear The Cure t-shirts are queer.
Because Bob, a former Marine and I are removed off stage at Bondage, at the Trocadero.
Because we are not employed dancers.
Because of the way dancers move on stage, we believe the stage is public access.
Because until White Trophy returns from WestPac deployments, one hour almost every weekend for 7 months, Black Surrogate takes me to the rifle range.
Because Bootcamp, Great Lakes, Great Mistakes, Illinois, recruits are called CUNTs: Civilians Under Naval Training.*
Because 79 out of 80 recruits take offense.
Because my lesbian mentors prepare me for bootcamp.
Because Navy Penitentiary, Pensacola, Florida, I realize the previous weekend is my last time at The Crystal.
Because Pride, I feel more in me from Black Surrogate than from Mother or White Trophy.
Because if I still had my car, I am on the dance floor twice a week.
Because I often request “Beautiful Friend” by Cranes.
Because “Beautiful Friend” is one of several of many.
Because “Beautiful Friend” is a missed connection or the one who gets away.
Because “Beautiful Friend” is released two months after the Navy releases me.
Because “Beautiful Friend” are those I want on the floor with me.
Because Bootcamp, during small arms training, gang allegiances appear, and “former” gangbangers point pistols at each other.
Because they do not receive gun safety and responsibility as I do from Black Surrogate.
Because favorite phrases when I am 18 are “compulsory heterosexuality” and “gender performativity.”
Because favorite phrases when I am 21 are “you must be on Quaaludes” or “attitude check-fuck you.”
Because favorite phrases as I write this poem are “white feminist microaggression” or “white liberal hijacking” or “trauma of the postcolonial conditioning” or “yellowfacing asian american performance” or “see you on the dance floor.”
Because my first fight with White Trophy, is in my first year in high school, over defining work.
Because political theory and homework are not real work.
Because the US Navy is real work.
Because faggot is the worst thing to be called in bootcamp.
Because before leaving for Great Lakes a Louisiana-born Berkeley-based Ballet Review writer demonstrates how he embraces the word faggot
Because this is an AR15.
Because had I not broken my contract, after Great Lakes, I am billeted to Orlando for Submarine Sonar school.
Because I don’t want to be a bubblehead.
Because I don’t want to be confined to a nuclear reactor.
Because the Eagle Scout in my troop wears The Cure t-shirt underneath his uniform.
Because when describing my movement: Tai Chi meets Waltz.
Because 6, in Kalihi, Lola Mary’s dance lessons when Dad deploys on Fast Faggot 1057.
Because he doesn’t know when he returns from WestPac Mother files for divorce.
Because real work in the Navy is patrolling the Persian Gulf.
Because at closing hour, I ask the Trocadero manager what I need to do to get on stage.
Because he says, I need to know how to dance.
Because I need to dress properly.
Because I need to show more skin.
Because of Judith Butler, I read Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison and The History of Sexuality because We Other Dark Victorians.
Because the Navy is about discipline and punishment.
Because Black Surrogate’s house smells of gun oil.
Because he owns: a Mini14, an Uzi, an HK91, an M1 Garand, a .357 Magnum, a 9mm Beretta, and the AR15.
Because always a firearm in some form of disassembly and cleaning.
Because gun ownership demands discipline.
Because when I walk into The Crystal with 3 west coast sailors, I wear board shorts and a perforated U-Hawai’i jersey.
Because Bootcamp, before marching from the barracks, recruits lineup nut-to-butt.
Because recruits are conscientious of their bulge.
Because 24, Mark wishes he knows how I got out of the US Navy.
Because he is stationed in Orlando.
Because he suggests inflammation to being gay, so the Navy kicks him out.
Because in the Navy, sometimes suggestions are facts.
Because DADT is Clinton’s legacy.
Because Mother worries I never brought home a girlfriend.
Because 12 years old, recoil of Black Surrogate’s HK91 and M1 Garand is more than my shoulder can absorb.
Because Thrill Kill Kult’s “The Days of Swine and Roses” is the first song I remember hearing at The Crystal.
Because I move to the center of the floor.
Because I dance in dialogue with another man.
Because we are synchronous, almost magnetic repelling and attracting.
Because Black Surrogate teaches me how to regulate breathing, to aim, to focus, to be steady, to read wind, to anticipate racial violence.
Because Mother tells me to write White Trophy who is on deployment and ask permission to buy the AR15.
Because Naval Base Pascagoula, MS, for three months.
Because in those three months, my weekends are in New Orleans.
Because after the first weekend, I return each time to The Crystal, by myself.
Because Thom Gunn, as much as Maxine Hong Kingston, as much as Ishmael Reed, as much as Bharati Mukherjee, as much as Robert Hass, as much as Czeslaw Milosz prepare me to read social situations, and how to write these progressions in the Navy.
Because 15, the second fight with White Trophy is about love.
Because one of his reasons he divorces Mother.
Because Mother is unsuccessful breaking Sister’s relationship with her high school sweet heart, a black man.
Because today her husband.
Because I argue, “What if I came home with a black girl friend!”
Because White Trophy answers, “You will do the right thing.”
Because louder, “What if I came home gay!”
Because in the same calm voice White Step-Dad repeats, “You will do the right thing.”
Because Sister does my eye shadow, my lipstick, my eye lashes.
Because Sister is transgressive.
Because today their children.
Because after the bombing of Marine Barracks, Beirut, I return books to the NAS Alameda library.
Because I walk in to a terrorist response exercise.
Because a black marine emerges from corridor, points his M16 at me and orders, “Halt!”
Because the barrel at my eye-level.
Because, I am eleven years old and I imagine the most beautiful woman in the world.
Because I know what a .223 bullet can do to my body.
Because Vanessa Williams.
Because dancing, I have no identity.
Because following Wednesday, on my night to dance on stage.
Because instead of riding with friends.
Because they never appear at the café, I BART in to the City.
Because on the corner of Mission and 4th, behind me, group of sailors, point.
Because they yell “Get a look at him.”
Because they yell “Get a look at him.”
Because they yell “Get a look at him.”
Because they yell “Get a look at him.”
Because I yell, “Get a good look at me! What about it! Want some. Let’s go!”
Because they are stunned and walk off.
Because Yerba Buena Gardens and Moscone Center are just a hole in the ground.
Because Yerba Buena Gardens and Moscone Center will signal the closure of may SOMA dance clubs.
Because White Trophy writes insisting my first rifle should be a .22.
Because a squirrel gun like what he had when he is my age, bringing home squirrel meat for squirrel stew.
Because I want to think he writes from the Indian Ocean.
Because somewhere between Diego Garcia and Bahrain.
Because when I am 18–21, because I wear Land’s End pastel pinks and purples.
Because San Leandro Rifle Range: within the 100-yard range, a ground squirrel killing field.
Because impact with flesh, a .223, mushrooms, a fist, as leaving.
Because I do not shoot ground squirrels.
Because often, I close eyes and navigate the floor.
Because gliding.
Because choreography.
Because poem.
Because NIN’s “Closer” is the first song I remember dancing to on the Trocadero stage.
Because I join the Navy.
Because a year in college I am restless and the first fight with White Trophy heavy weighs.
Because if I am not straight, Mother curses to Hell, “Bakla! Putang ina mo.”
Because of irony.
Because casualty of the first Internet bubble.
Because casualty of military Base Realignment and Closures.
Because the nightly San Francisco clubs are fewer now.
Because 12, I learn to field strip and clean an AR15.
Because I miss gun oil on my hands before dinner.
Because Sister distracts Mother when I leave.
Because The Philippines, best dance instructors are queer.
Because mothers returning from the United States to attend their town’s fiesta, rent queer dance instructors.
Because day after Pulse massacre, I check my half-brother’s FB page.
Because I am relieved.
Because I am jealous, he wears more pink than I do.
Because White Trophy only gets his haircuts from queer Filipinos.
Because when I join the Navy, I do not tell my lesbian big sisters.
Because I fear they will not understand?
Because they will be disappointed?
Because dancing on stage is so much easier after experiencing a full-body cavity search in front of Marine guards.
Because Marine guards stretch examination to study tattoos.
Because my asshole no contraband.
Because Marine guards appreciate Adrienne Rich’s “Diving into the Wreck.”
Because 12, I stand my ground wanting an AR15, not a .22.
Because neither.
Because what brings me here?
Because music collapses.
Because light collapses.
Because stage collapses.
Because floor collapses.
Because on BART I pull from ankles, thigh highs.
Because months later, I am offered a job.
Because I am offered the stage.
Because I didn’t know I auditioned.
Because this is an AR15

SEAN LABRADOR Y MANZANO lives on the island off the coast of Oakland. He edits Conversations at the Wartime Café (seeking submissions for volume 2: Sanctuary and Surveillance [send for details]); curated the mfa reading series Mixer 2.0.-now 3.0; organized the symposium “From Trauma to Catharsis: Performing the Asian Avant-Garde;” performed as Jose Rizal in the jazz choreo-poem, Das Kapital, Volume 4, Elimination of the Industrial Phase and the Accumulation of Debt. His current projects examine Buddhism and graduate student suicide, H.D. and colonialism, Balikatan, and race and violence.

June 12th marked the 1 year anniversary of the Orlando Massacre, an attack on the primarily Latinx LGBTQ+ people at the Pulse nightclub. Last year, Anomaly created a space for writers to mourn and express themselvesfollowing this tragic ordeal. Anomaly has invited LGBTQ+ Latinx writers to come share this space with us, again. Whether you’re mourning, remembering, celebrating survivance, or seeking a space to heal with your poems and prose.

Pulse: One Year Later. “ Because this is an AR15,” by Sean Manzano was originally published in Anomaly on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.