Travis Barr-Longo, aka Anita Buffem, becomes the first drag queen in nation’s history elected to a school board
BY SEAN GALUSZKA
In a sleepy, Central New York, agricultural village, Herstory is being made. Anita Buffem (www.youtube.com/@BuffemBeautiful ) (aka Travis Barr-Longo) has become the first drag queen in our nation’s history elected to a school board. We met in his hometown, Cazenovia to discuss his journey, triumphs, and inevitable Trump-era haters.
It’s fall before harvest. The village nestled along the Southeastern shore of Cazenovia Lake has a slight main street of connected stone buildings housing pizzerias, bakeries, retail, and offices. A white gazebo adorns the park center. Among the “Bedford Falls” storefronts, an LGBTQ flag flaps conspicuously.
H. Grey Supply Co. (www.hgreysupplyco.com) owned and operated by Travis and his partner Alex Altomonte features clothes, jewelry, pride merch, and in a delightful lounge serve Utica Coffee Roasting Co. (www. uticacoffeeroasting.com) local coffee that’s simply stunning. They’re tucked harmoniously alongside businesses on meticulously maintained sidewalks. But that harmony is fading.
After a 2017 back surgery, Travis, then a New York City resident, came home to recover. Staying with his elderly mom, he soon realized she needed extra support. Travis recalls, “There was never this decision to stay. But I couldn’t leave because of my extensive physical therapy and also wanting to support her, and then… pandemic. So the opportunity for this store presented itself and I thought, let’s try this, let’s see what happens.”
“We’ve created something here for our whole community, but also something that lets our LGBTQ community, especially our LGBTQ youth know, they are valued and they are seen.”
Three years strong, offering retail, food and coffee complete with a beautifully comfy “safe space lounge,” the surrounding community deemed them, the gay store. But in fact, they created a new LGBTQ safe space in a time when most were disappearing at an alarming rate.
Travis invites groups like LGBTQ Christians, hosts twice-monthly Safe Space meet-ups (www.safespacecny.org), wine tastings, and even streams online shopping with comedic Anita Buffem. H. Grey Supply Co. has emerged a vital, redefined LGBTQ space.
And then Travis, a gay male drag queen, was elected to the local school board. He tells me, “We’ve been invited to the table in a way we’ve never been before. Right? So we want to celebrate that, and I’m asked to talk about it. But the people who aren’t happy about it are using my lifestyle against me. They’re weaponizing my personal life.”
Days before voting, a late entry, and opposing candidate suddenly announced. That week, his car tires were slashed in front of his store, twice. Someone sent the police to his elderly, disabled mom’s home. Flyers placed on his car. People were yelling “faggot” at his workers taking in the flag at night.
Social media brewed. We can’t let this trans win. He’ll put tampons in the boys’ bathrooms; kitty litter boxes in all the schools. Anonymous callers erupted, asking H. Grey store employees why they support a pedophile. “The community is making me a tangible expression of all the stuff they don’t like in politics, and they’re coming for me as a way to change it. And that’s been difficult.”
Growing up the only out gay in town, Travis suffered discrimination mainly from adults. “When I got the normal bullying as a child I was told, ‘Well, if you didn’t carry yourself the way you do…’ I was taken out of the lunchroom away from my friends, and placed in Special Ed lunch. I was removed as the problem rather than these bullying kids being set straight.
Now since the campaign and election, I’ve been having panic attacks, not sleeping, a lot of anxiety and it’s shocking because, this is not me. I feel guilt over the board wasting time and resources on hate. Guilt even though I’m not the problem, and that’s a symptom of being punished as a kid, feeling it was all my fault.”
Clearly “Joan of Arcing it” for the community, Travis’ teddy bear looks and demeanor misgive his hard biting take. “I’m happy to be the one to handle this, to help us evolve and move the needle forward. But recently I feel like, that’s actually not my job. Our job as LGBTQ people is to live happy, fulfilling lives like anybody else.
It’s not my job to help lighten your feelings about gay people, or drag queens, or my interaction with children, how dare you? That’s for a therapist to help with your homophobia. To deal with this hate you have toward a group of people that is unsubstantiated. And how dare you judge us in this way, when you were the ones who made us have to hide?”
He looks away and his expression softens. “But I also feel there has been some healing through this upheaval.” He tells me about Equality New York (www.equalityny.org) a robust organization that didn’t hesitate with excellent support, resources, and service.
The F.B.I. currently monitor social media surrounding Travis, protecting his rights. His community allies gather in such number and force at his store, he can’t even work. There’s light at the end of harvest season.
“I’d like to think what we’re doing here is sowing seeds, making connections, creating experiences for people. Experience is what helps people evolve. Words don’t teach. Experiences teach. We’ve created something here for our whole community, but also something that lets our LGBTQ community, especially our LGBTQ youth know, they are valued and they are seen.
I’m proud I can hang any flag I want to, because that is patriotic. It is not lost on me that I can be a drag queen and elected to a school board because people gave their lives for our freedom. It is out of respect for those people that I do hang my flag. We hang the pride flag because it is all-inclusive, and that’s the American way.”
As we drive from the tiny main street into “Trump/Vance” lawn sign country, it begins to rain. How well could any of us shoulder our hometown’s scrutiny? Like many, I ran away young and learned to hide. But Travis operates in full view, ready to accept the roles of school board member, business owner, drag Herstory trailblazer, and innovative LGBTQ safe space creator.
He and Alex continue opening their beautiful store to more groups and steadily, bit by bit, they’re flowing in, just like this rain. They’ll feed the seeds sewn by Travis and Alex, and LGBTQ activists before them, and U.S. Veterans, and all our many allies, and anyone who believes and works to hasten the harvest of freedom.
