This is The Parlour, a place for intimate conversation, a real-time archive, a shared diary passed between a rotating cast of queer characters every week in an attempt to capture a kaleidoscopic view of what it’s like to be a queer person right here, right now.

Earlier this year, my close friend and creative partner, Brendan, and I were given a small grant by our county’s arts and culture division to produce a documentary film. Our proposal outlined our intention to highlight the unique aspects of the South Florida gym where we powerlift. Through our mutual and disparate experiences there, we noticed our gym is unlike any other athletic space we’ve been in. It’s a serious powerlifting and weightlifting gym, but it also has a family-like atmosphere — only this family is perpetually accepting of who you are and of your life experiences. This family is fully supportive of the work you do inside and outside of the gym. This family doesn’t care if you’re a freak, because we’re all freaks. It’s a family of freaks.

I don’t think this kind of environment is totally uncommon in the world of competitive sports, but in a place as politically and socially divided as Florida is, this diverse community’s ties to and trust in each other feels like a small miracle. A small miracle that helped improve both our lives and further ingrained in us what we’ve known is true for so long: Community is wherever you want it to be so long as everyone’s willing to put in the work.

Since we started filming the documentary, Brendan and I have been calling this little community the “Misfits League,” a bunch of weirdos who by luck and by grace came together to build something that’s transformed all of us for the better. And that’s how the story has taken shape. With our premiere date looming, we had to wrap our work on the documentary entirely last week and send it to the editor we’ve hired to add all the final touches it needs to look and feel like a real feature. When we began the process of interviewing our friends, recording B-roll footage and outlining the story we’re trying to tell, neither of us had any filmmaking experience. We had a vision but, being that every creative endeavor we’ve ever taken on together has been a “learn by doing” experience, we figured we could hack it, even if it’s not perfect. We just wanted to create something beautiful for the community that’s held us over the last few years. After a couple months of filming, we learned we’d both be relocating to different states for new jobs this summer, which meant we’d also be moving away from Florida, from the gym, from the people there we’ve come to love so dearly.

As we were rewatching and editing footage down over the past two weeks, I was struck by how endearing it was to see some of the strongest, toughest people I know in such vulnerable positions, how much closer their responses to our questions made me feel to them, and how much I’d been trying to hide how distraught I was about leaving them so soon. Over the last two and half years, I’ve taken advantage of the comfort I always feel in the space of that gym. I’ve joked with my brothers and other siblings between (and sometimes during) lifts. They’ve cheered me on for my accomplishments —like finally hitting a squat to depth over 200 pounds —and I’ve returned the favor.

I always knew I could walk in there on the hardest days of my life — as I did the day after my mom died in 2023 — and not just lift with familiar faces next to me but be carried by their words, their hugs, and their love for me. When I began my weightlifting (and then powerlifting) journey in the summer of 2022, I wasn’t looking for anything other than a fix for the severe osteoarthritis in my knees. The gym owner, Ryan, says I was “barely on the bus” when I first began to ride with this community. I couldn’t squat at all, everything took my breath away and made my skin feel like it was ripping apart, and I often dreaded how grueling it felt before I even stepped foot in the gym to begin my workouts. These people took me in with all of my inabilities, made me part of their family, helped me fall in love with the sport, and made me an athlete when no one else ever told me I could be if I wanted.

Every day, I get a little closer to having to say that final Goodbye to my gym family. I’m not looking forward to this part. I know finding a gym that suits my training needs in my new city won’t be difficult, but through making this movie, I was reminded once again that the process of becoming your strongest self isn’t just dependent on the equipment you have access to. You need people to push you in the ways you need to be pushed, to tell you that failing doesn’t mean you’re bound to fail forever, to call you out when you’re letting yourself down, and to remind you that you deserve care and you deserve to give care in return. This kind of atmosphere is more essential than any piece of equipment.

As the documentary comes to completion and I prepare to leave over the next few months, I’ve been trying not to focus on how much I’ll miss walking into this place every day. I’m trying to figure out ways to take what I’ve learned with me when I go, to spread those lessons to every person I can, and to keep building communities wherever I am, no matter who’s there. I know the Misfits League doesn’t have to end here. I don’t think any of us, with our ever-shifting lives, will ever let it.

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