The call came over the radio while I was hanging around Diggy’s.
It was Saturday at Lezapalooza 2026—Pooza, as we call it—and Diggy’s Market had become my happy place.
Any management who wasn’t actively helping with someone’s well-being needed to report to Main Cabin. As soon as possible.
My wife, Aimee, was working as Retail Staff. I was a Retail Volunqueer, although I had spent so much time at Diggy’s that the distinction between working and just being there had gotten blurry.
Aimee and Kelly left for the meeting. I stayed behind.
I didn’t know it yet, but that call was the beginning of the end of the weekend we thought we were having.
Two days earlier, we had arrived before Pooza was even finished being built.
We Beat Pooza to Pooza
For possibly the first time in recorded history, we were early.
Not on time. Early.
We were up at 5:45 Thursday morning, on the road around seven and at camp before noon. Registration wasn’t set up. The Lezapalooza sign and rainbow curtain weren’t up, either.
We worked our way around other early arrivals and drove to Red Cabin, the accessible cabin with bunks, a full bathroom and a kitchen. Aimee and Koli were staying inside with friends. I set up my tent beside it, where I had camped before.
Then we went to help set up Diggy’s Market, the camp general store.
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Aimee wore her rainbow Staff bandanna around her neck. My orange Volunqueer bandanna hung from my overalls. Around camp, the Safety Team wore high-visibility harnesses. You could see the people helping make this temporary little world work.
After setting up the store, we made a Walmart run. When we came back, registration was open and we finally got to drive through the proper rainbow entrance.
Our registration goodies included a sample bottle of lube and Lezapalooza-branded lip balm.
Camping essentials.
The rainbow was up. Diggy’s was standing. People were arriving.
And I was already thinking about how much I would miss this place.
Six Years of Making This Happen
Before the weather changed our plans, we already knew this was the last Lezapalooza at this location.
It was on Instagram. Videos from the organizers before camp. You can really hear how much camp had grown. The first camp was in 2021. About 100 people took a chance on it that first year. Liz remembers three workshops and nighttime entertainment. By 2026, the organizers were preparing for more than 400 campers, with activities, performances, workshops and a whole structure of people making it happen.
Liz talks about how the land had begun to feel like ours for that weekend. I understand that. I had a familiar place to pitch my tent. A cabin where my people were. Paths I knew.
She also explains what it takes to keep making that weekend happen.
Her responsibilities have changed. Her mother and sister need more of her time. She has a young child she wants to be more present with. She talks about struggling to keep the promises involved in providing so much programming and leading her teams.
“We have to take a step back in order for this to be able to continue,” Liz says.
At the time of her recording, the vision for 2027 was a smaller gathering, perhaps 100 or 200 people, at a location still to be determined. Organizers would provide basic necessities. Campers would create more of the activities themselves: invite people to meditate, put on music and dance, gather under a tree for a conversation.
Jess’s message brings it back to the people doing the work. She thanks everyone from the people picking up trash to the nurses, performers, Staff and managers, and says the future won’t involve the huge volunteer crews of the past.
That gives me something to hope for. I can look forward to a different way of gathering and still grieve this particular version, whose paths and cabins I already know.
I thought we would have the whole weekend to do that.
My Happy Place Was Diggy’s
The truth is, other than Diggy’s, I didn’t do much this year.
At least, I didn’t do much that you could check off on a schedule.
I wanted to watch the lake plunge, but I was working. During Karaoke, I was helping Aimee and Koli. Aimee did archery and went to the butch meetup. I went to the trans meetup.
Mostly, though, I found my happy space hanging around the store.
I spent much of Aimee’s shifts there, talking with whichever crew was working, helping shoppers and hanging out with people who had only stopped to talk. I tended the propane heater I’d brought and kept an eye on my light tower.
Diggy’s sold drinks, snacks, ice, coffee and merch. There were free things, too—period products, Band-Aids, trash bags, sexual-wellness supplies and charging cables. Little practical ways of making somebody’s weekend easier.
People came through. Crews changed. Conversations wandered.
I met so many people whose names I have almost no chance of remembering, no matter how hard I try. I even tried having someone else say a new person’s name, hoping another voice would give my brain something to hang on to.
Too many introductions. Too much happening.
But I remember how it felt to be there.
What Disappears
Pooza does not make me forget that I am transgender.
That never happened. I never forgot I was trans.
And I don’t want to.
Pooza makes me feel proud to be me, a woman who happens to be trans.
What disappears isn’t my transness. It’s the fear.
Outside of places like this, part of my brain is often doing a calculation about the person beside me. Do they know I’m trans? What do they believe about people like me? Are they scared of me? Should I be scared of them?
I feel vilified by so much of what I see in the media. Even when I know that portrayal is bullshit, I don’t know what the stranger next to me has absorbed from it.
At Pooza, I can feel safe beside people. And I hope they feel just as safe beside me.
I’m still trans. Still aware of it. Still proud of it.
I just get to spend my time helping somebody at Diggy’s or hanging out with my wife without that other calculation taking up room in my head.
The camper packet explicitly includes cis and trans lesbians, other women who love women, and nonbinary people who find community in those spaces. It rejects transphobic speech and asks campers to respect one another’s boundaries.
Those words matter. So does what people do with them.
The Safety Team, maintenance, registration, retail, events, carts, Staff and Volunqueers—all those people doing all those jobs—helped make that promise something I could feel.
Seeds and Boxed Wine
At Opening Ceremony, we were given packets of grass seed. We were told to take a few seeds in our hands, pause in silence, put our intentions into them and let them fall.
Hopefully, something would grow.
I did it several times around camp. A few seeds, a quiet moment, then an open hand.
I kept doing it even after the storm.
Saturday afternoon, I went to Runway, which was exactly the kind of ridiculous queer joy I wanted from a weekend in the woods.
The categories were Anything But Clothing—ABC—and Witchy. The ABC winner was dressed as a box of wine, with a spigot in the back.
Tell a bunch of lesbians they can wear anything except clothing and somebody becomes boxed wine. Of course.
The Witchy winner was Baba Yaga, wearing a witchy house with cutouts for her boobs and ass. And a personal notable mention goes to J, because Uno. IYKYK.
It was creative and funny and gloriously Pooza.
There was still supposed to be a dance party that night. There was still supposed to be Drag Brunch Bingo on Sunday.
Eventually, I was back at Diggy’s. Aimee was working. I was hanging around.
And the radio came alive.
We Thought We Had More Time
When Aimee and Kelly returned from Main Cabin, they told me camp was canceled for the evening.
Liz’s announcement in the BFF chat explained why: winds were forecast to reach 50 miles an hour, and trees and branches had already fallen, including on campsites. Tent and platform-tent campers could no longer safely remain in those accommodations.
People in cabins could stay. For those who couldn’t leave and needed somewhere to sleep, Main Cabin’s floor was an option. Liz told people to make sure they had a sober driver and explicitly said nobody was being asked to drive under the influence.
I could stay with Aimee in Red Cabin. My tent had to come down. My entire campsite had to be struck.
So I ran back and got it done.
Around Red Cabin, people were still finding the announcement in the BFF chat. There was confusion. People were worried and sad. I checked on my cabin mates and clarified what I could, then headed back to Diggy’s to help take it apart.
We knew we would have to do that eventually.
We thought we had more time.
Merchandise went into bins. Tables folded. Grills were carted away. The place where I had spent so much of my weekend started turning back into an empty patch of campground.
And people kept coming over to offer help, even though we already had plenty of hands.
Elsewhere, campers who had finished striking their own tents formed little roving groups and helped other people pack up. They could have been done. Instead, they went looking for the next person who needed them.
We offered bunks in Red Cabin. In the BFF chat, people posted available spaces in Red, Yellow, Blue and Periwinkle. Koli posted that Red had at least two spots. Liz coordinated an open bunk in Yellow for a vendor who lived far away.
Someone urged departing campers with room in their cars to check the ride-share chat and help people get to a station or home.
People were making room for one another, literally.
Thursday, I had helped build this place. Saturday, I was helping dismantle it.
And somehow, with less and less of it standing around me, I could see what I loved about it more clearly.
It was the people.
Of course it fucking was.
The camper packet had warned that severe weather could interrupt a rain-or-shine event. Knowing that possibility existed hadn’t made me ready to pack up.
Staff had to make a decision that cost us something. Campers had to change their plans. People were disappointed, and people still helped.
That was the care I had been feeling all weekend, made visible in a different way.
I am still angry about what we lost. The Saturday dance party. Sunday’s Drag Brunch. Painting Queer Joy. More conversations, more hanging around, more time to absorb that we were saying goodbye to this version of Pooza.
Fuck the storm.
I don’t need to be grateful for it to recognize what I saw.
The people who made me feel safe while we were having fun were still showing up when the fun was being cut short.
What Came Home
On the way home, we dropped off Koli and picked up NinjaPotato, our son, who had spent the weekend with family.
There were closed roads. At one roadblock, we were allowed through because we were headed to a local home. I also suspect the truck’s air-conditioning compressor gave up somewhere along the way, because apparently the weekend needed a final flourish.
We had heard worrying reports about flooding back in Ocean County. What we actually encountered was minor flooding on Route 37 in Toms River. We drove cautiously and made it home.
Back home on Sunday, we brought in the essentials and left the car mostly packed.
Aimee went to take a nap. NinjaPotato was playing Roblox. The television was on, and I sat down to write, looking at my Lezapalooza 2026 bracelet on the desk.
My wrist felt a little naked without it.
Not naked in the good Lezapalooza way.
Just naked.
I will miss that campground. Red Cabin, the lake, the paths, the rainbow entrance. The spot where Diggy’s stood. Those places hold real memories. Leaving them hurts.
I don’t know exactly what the next Pooza will look like. The organizers have described a direction; the details are still to come.
But after watching people take care of one another while everything was coming down, I can imagine gathering somewhere else. Making something different together. Bringing this care with us.
I never needed Pooza to make me less trans. I needed a place where being fully myself didn’t require being afraid.
Liz and the other organizers, Staff, the Safety Team, the Volunqueers and the campers made that possible. And while we packed up, they kept making it possible for one another.
Maybe the grass seeds I left in those woods will grow. Maybe they won’t.
I brought something home with me anyway.
Where the Wild Lesbians Are.
Turns out that’s not an address.
Update, September 28: Apparently, the storm wasn’t finished with us.
After school today, NinjaPotato went into his room to put down his backpack.
“What the hell happened to my ceiling?”
A section of it had collapsed onto his bed.
He’s okay. He slept on the couch last night. He told us he’d noticed a bubble in the ceiling before bed, but thought his tired eyes might be playing tricks on him. We don’t know exactly when it fell; he discovered it after school.
We notified property management, and they were on their way when I wrote this update. We’re still figuring out what happened and how much damage there is.
Fuck the storm. Again.
(PS: Ninjapotato says fuck the storm)