Notes On… The Latex Ball

It was my second time attending the Latex Ball as a GMHC staff member, but I’ve come to learn that you don’t really attend the Latex Ball- you step into it. You’re crowned in community, and reminded that public health is not just about systems. It’s about people. It’s about presence. It’s about culture that refuses to die.

The Latex Ball began in 1993, at the height of the HIV/AIDS crisis, when far too many Black and Latinx queer and trans people were being buried before they were ever fully seen. GMHC, already a lifeline for many, created the Latex Ball as a radical act of meeting the moment, not in boardrooms, but in ballrooms, not in shame-based messaging, but in sequined survival.

Even the name itself, Latex, is a metaphor. It’s a symbol of protection, of pleasure, of defiance. A way of making safety feel powerful. Here, harm reduction is not abstract theory; it’s embodied.

As a therapist, I often sit with clients in the aftermath of disconnection, after rejection, after trauma, after being told in countless ways that they do not belong. But the Latex Ball tells a different story. It says: You belong here; brilliantly, loudly, defiantly. The Ball functions as what D.W. Winnicott might have called a transitional space, a container where the authentic self can emerge without fear of annihilation.

The categories are iconic! Face, Runway, Sex Siren, Realness, Vogue Performance. But under each one lives something deeper. Face is about being seen. Realness is about feeling safe. Runway is about taking up space. Sex Siren is about being desired on your terms. Vogue is about telling a story through your body when words fall short. There is therapeutic power in that. Because what is therapy, if not helping someone feel whole again? And what is ballroom, if not a sacred space where people remind one another that they already are?

At GMHC, we offer HIV testing, safer sex kits, PrEP and PEP support, and access to care. But what makes the Latex Ball different is how those things are shared with joy. With cultural fluency and real respect. This isn’t outreach that talks at people. It walks beside them.

And I’ll be honest; there is something healing for me too, as a queer clinician of faith, to be in that room. To feel the gospel of bass and belonging. To remember that our work, whether in the clinic or the ballroom, is not just to reduce harm, but to restore dignity.

Not just to name trauma, but to make space for joy.

So yes, it was my second time at the Latex Ball.
And once again, I left changed.

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Notes On… If America Was My Client

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Notes On… PRIDE