KAILUA-KONA — Kevin Frost and his husband Geric were supposed to be at Pulse nightclub early Sunday morning, right around the time the normally vibrant, vivacious scene was transformed into a hellscape that played stage to the worst mass shooting in American history.
The Hawaii Island couple travels to Orlando, Florida, at least once every year to visit friends, particularly after Gay Days, which concluded little more than a week ago.
“We were meant to be out there this last Saturday, but we had a couple different family circumstances that forced us to shift around our entire schedule,” Frost said. “It’s surreal. It still gives me the chills. We would have 100 percent been (at Pulse). That’s the place we always go to whenever we go to Orlando. We’re night owls and being from this time zone, we’re always there until last call.”
The friends the Frosts planned to visit were down the street at another club at the time of the shooting, and had plans to make their way to Pulse before calling it an evening.
Another of their acquaintances in Florida has a close friend among the 53 people injured, currently in a coma in the intensive care unit. He’s not been awake since he was attacked, and is yet unaware that his partner is among the 49 victims slain by 29-year-old shooter Omar Mateen.
“That chills my heart,” Frost said. “My husband (Geric) and I have been together for 23 years, married this August for 21 years, and I just imagined — that could have been me. That could have been any of us.”
Kevin identified particularly with Eddie Justice, another member of the dozens murdered Sunday morning, who sent texts to his mother from the bathroom after Mateen’s rampage began.
“Mommy I love you,” one text from Justice read. “He’s coming. I’m gonna die.”
The Frosts’ lives were saved by circumstance, but they didn’t escape the aftershock of the tragedy, which has rippled all the way to the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
Frost pointed out that all loss of life is impactful, but among the gay community it can strike even harder because as a minority group, many gays around the globe are connected by only a few degrees of separation. Several of Frost’s friends and acquaintances knew someone affected by the shooting — or knew someone who knew someone affected.
“For lack of a better analogy, it’s almost like someone’s congregation or church had been shot up,” Frost explained. “Not to be sacrilegious, but gay bars and clubs are an extension of our community. When people are coming out of the closet, it’s the very first place they go. It’s a safety zone where, ironically, we’re the majority, and where who and what we are is the norm. It’s the one place we can actually be ourselves.”
The Frosts will attend a vigil in remembrance of the more than 100 victims at 8 p.m. Saturday evening at My Bar in the Old Kona Industrial Area.
Rocco Carbone, co-owner of My Bar, said that despite the small gay population on Hawaii Island, a call to provide a venue to show support for those victimized in Orlando was too loud to ignore.
It was a call that came from gay and straight alike.
“We were getting a lot of response via Facebook and people contacting us at the bar looking for a venue to just show their respect,” Carbone said. “This is so we can recognize who the (victims) were and personalize it. One way the community can show their support is having a personal connection with those victims.”
The vigil will include speakers, handouts with information about victims for whom personal information is available, and a reading of victims’ names to be followed by a moment of silence.
In an expression of solidarity with Pulse nightclub, My Bar will not hold a candle lighting ceremony but will instead hold a glow stick ceremony.
“It’s like our tribute to somebody in the industry who had this atrocity happen within their doors,” Carbone said. “I think those of us in the gay community who just are not as active or don’t take an active part, it kind of makes you really renegotiate how close it can hit to home.”
The act of terrorism perpetrated by Mateen was as much an attack on the LGBT community as it was an attack on the American public and way of life in general, as illustrated by Mateen’s chosen victims and venue.
The political fallout from the incident has been highly publicized, with presidential hopeful Donald Trump slinging accusations at the current administration followed by responses from President Barack Obama and fellow presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton.
Issues of immigration and gun control, which were already central to the current climate of political discord, have resurfaced as polarizing topics within the American populace in the wake of a tragedy.
But Carbone and Frost agreed that avoiding the politicizing of Saturday night’s events is crucial.
“It’s very important that we come together as a community, not just the LGBT community, but our friends and allies. We’re all humans,” Frost said. “I think it’s beautiful that we’ve all been impacted so deeply by this, because it shows the depth of humanity.”
Carbone did concede that the incident brings into focus the fact that just because marriage equality has made great strides in the U.S., there still exist many social prejudices against the LGBT community that serve as hurdles on the path toward a harmonious society.
“It’s interesting because the gays haven’t been specifically attacked by this particular group before, and something like this brings a new light to it,” Carbone said. “But I think right now, instead of making it a messy political debate, the focus should be on those people affected. Let’s bury these people before we get into all of that.”