GGG Reimagines Homecoming — This Time, No Guys Allowed

"I've never been to a homecoming with no guys." Someone shouted this to a friend over the blasting music at the party. On Friday night, October 2nd, gay gayer gayest (GGG for short) partnered with The FADER and Tumblr to throw a Black queer-themed homecoming party at Lillistar, atop the Moxy Hotel in Brooklyn — a night that rewrote the classic American high school dance from the ground up.

For a lot of people, high school homecoming meant trying to blend in, carefully keeping your identity from standing out too much. If you showed up with a same-sex date, you were often the only couple like that in the whole school. This party blew that ratio wide open: the elevator doors opened to a photo booth, and beyond it, a space filled with nightlife curators, DJs, photographers, models, stylists, and marketers from New York's LGBTQ+ community — in a half-indoor, half-outdoor venue, everyone dressed in satin gowns or sharply tailored suits, with the Manhattan skyline glittering behind them from the rooftop.

The music lineup was just as solid. Cortisa Star and Mercury delivered live performances of their latest work, while BAMBII, Jacob Dior, Goldie Harris, Dedelovelace, and Purp took turns on the decks, keeping the energy going all night. Photographer Patience Ojionuka (@patienceojionuka) captured the faces that make up the backbone of New York's queer community — the people who keep this city's nightlife feeling like nowhere else.

There was no king and queen crowning here, no straight-couple-in-suits template of the traditional homecoming. Instead, it was a night where no one had to explain who they were. Compared to the version of homecoming everyone remembers from high school, this one atop Lillistar felt like the dance a lot of people had been waiting ten, twenty years to finally get to.