“I came out at the age of twenty. I was trying to understand...

“I came out at the age of twenty. I was trying to understand myself. It was a discovery time. I was thin and flexible. I loved to dance. I started performing in a trans show at a gay club. I wore high heels and sang Janet Jackson songs. It was wonderful. I did my own choreography. My friend Carlos designed my costumes. Carlos didn’t charge me money. He wanted me to be a success. We weren’t lovers or anything. He was more like an older brother. He was huge, and coarse, and a little bit of a bully. One night I was waiting backstage and Carlos came running into the green room. He told me that there was a fire and we needed to leave. He had been standing by the exit when the fire broke out, but he still came back to get me. We ran down a dark hallway to the emergency exit. The hallway was filled with smoke and there was a crowd of people pressed against the door. They couldn’t get it open. It was chained from the outside. Carlos lifted me up on top of the crowd, and people began passing me forward. It was completely dark. I held Carlos’s hand for as long as possible. Someone broke a window and I got pulled into the street. I was completely naked because so many people had been grabbing my clothes. When I finally turned around, I saw the whole club engulfed in flames. Over twenty people died that night. Carlos was one of them.”

(Valparaíso, Chile)