More To It Than That

I was asked the question about nine months ago. It's not the first time that I've ever been asked it, but for some reason, that time, it stuck with me. Maybe its because there was no malice in the question that time. Someone was just genuinely curious. I had the answer, but nothing more. No reasons. No examples. Nothing to back up what I knew instinctively was true.

The question is: “Is there more to being gay than sleeping with other dudes?”

And I instinctively knew that the answer was “yes.” I knew that there was more to being gay than the literal definition. I felt that there was something else to be said, but I didn't know what it was. But then, it finally hit me.

In an ideal world, there's nothing more to being gay than your sexual preference. In a vacuum, there's nothing else to it. When there is no stigma attached to a label, then you don't make a culture out of it. There's no glasses culture. There is no Methodist culture. There is no red-head culture. Because these things don't exclude people from the normal at-large society that we all belong to.

But, at any time, someone could say “You don't belong here” as has so long been said in the subtext of American society. And so what literally means “sleeping with the same gender” suddenly comes to mean so much more. So, yes, there is a lot more to being gay. Because we've had to fight for a long time to be who we are.

For the longest time, I used to say that I didn't ever want to be a banner-waving queen. I took it as a badge of honor that I didn't read “queer.” And then, I ran across a quote from someone (can't remember right now who said it), and it said “Whenever you rail against those that are too 'feminine' and 'swishy,' think about where we would all be without them.” Where would we be?

Fucking nowhere, that's where.

Once upon a time, a brave man dared us to push ourselves. He dared us to come out, because the community would stand with us. And we did. We came out so much that a bad coming out story is becoming less and less common. We're coming out at such a rate that a 15 year old can come out in small town south Georgia and not have a word said to him. Sure, it was the talk of the school and church for a few months, but people (well, most people) got past it. And as we came out, we got to have a good look at ourselves and we realized something: We were not the same as everyone else. But then, we encountered a problem: We are not all the same.

We run the gamut from gym bunnies to politiqueers, from DILFs to gerds. Every aspect of society can be found in the queer community. There's nothing to unify us. There's nothing that ostensibly binds us together. After all, just because you share a common trait doesn't mean that you have to have the same agenda or even similar characteristics.

But through it all, gay culture has come into its own. There are some things that bind us together as a gay culture. First off, we all have a coming out story. At some point, we all had to tell the world that we weren't quite so heteronormative. I don't know if its universal, but I love hearing people's coming out stories. I love reading strangers' stories. I love watching it in movies. I think it becomes such a common motif within gay culture for two reasons. First, its something that we all have a common, so easily becomes common ground among an incredibly diverse group of people. Second, this is one of the hardest things that many people ever have to do. Thus, it obviously has an effect on people. And hard stories are interesting stories.

Another thing that binds the gay community together is the stigma that comes with being gay. I don't care if you've never had a negative personal experience, the illwill generated by those opposed to the homosexual community is palpable to us all. For every person that is totally fine with us, there are more that give lip services and vote against us, rejecting hate crimes legislation, marriage equality, and equal rights for military service. For every person that is not us but that stands with us, there are those people who choose any place that cameras show up to protest our very existence.

This hatred of us isn't rejected to any religion, creed, race, or class of people. There reasons are varied, but their goal is not: the eradication of the homosexual community. And yet these same people have the audacity to ask us why we reject their culture. Why we make our own. Why it becomes so dreadfully important for us to have an identity all our own. If these people want nothing to do with us, then we want nothing to do with them. And as such, we must create a culture and a life that allows us to live without them.

For some unknown reason (call it the collective unconscious), gays have gravitated towards certain people. We fall in love with stage divas. We love Margaret Cho and Kathy Griffin. We will be there for every Cher come back tour. We unabashedly own copies of Spice World. And for all of our trashiness, we also as a culture support the arts. We feature a huge number of writers and artists in all mediums. We love a good wine tasting (and a good vodka tasting...and a good rum tasting). But none of these single things bind us together because they aren't complete characteristics, so we start to squabble. Is it okay to be effeminate? What's the best way to look? What's the place of bears in all of this? Is there a place for the stupid? The intelligent? The blue-collar? As a culture, how do we all fit together and how do we make a stand? Shit, if we can't even agree about what rights we want, then how the hell are we ever going to make any headway?

I don't have the answers. But every time that I think that I can make rules for the world, I have to take a step back and realize what an idiot I'm being. We're all obviously not going to agree. Our diversity makes us stronger as a culture. And we're allowed to have disagreements. But, sometimes we have to look at the bigger picture.

A friend of mine recently made the point that we have a history that includes some incredibly illustrious individuals and that so many of our people have no idea about their history. It blows my mind that I have gay friends who didn't know the story of Harvey Milk until the Gus Van Sant film. It worries me that they don't know about Stonewall. It worries me that they don't realize how tenuous the rights struggle has been in this country or how capricious the courts of the US have been in granting our rights. It worries me that they don't know me and it angers me that they don't care.

If we as a culture decide that we would rather be left alone than confront things that make us uncomfortable, if we decide that it's simpler to live our lives in our tiny worlds rather than exploding out and demanding our rightful place, then we fail. We allow all of the ignorant assholes to believe what they want and we damn another generation to the hell of growing up gay.

Yeah, it's hard to fight. You're not going to convince them with your fists or your knives. No bombshell or hail of legislation will swing public opinion, though these things are not entirely to be discounted. A few more celebrities coming out is going to change society. No, the force of change is you and me. Its in our faces. Its in our lives. Our smiles. Our culture. Our history. That is where our strength comes from, because many people have stood up in the past and said, “I'm not going to fucking take this anymore.”

So, if you're completely happy with the state of the American homosexual, I commend you. But I'm not. Sure, we've come along way. We made it to the top of a hill. Now, though, I can see the road ahead for the next little bit. And its important that we keep walking.

Until I was 15, the most important thing that I had ever done was to come out of the closet. I have a feeling, though, that that's where many of us stop. We just barely make it out of the closet. Instead of just creeping out, though, we should set fire to the door so that we can never go back. And don't stop walking when you hit the bedroom. Go out of the door and into the streets. Confront the world with who you are. Don't take their shit. Don't make them force you back into your house. Stand and march. Where once it was said that we would stand with you, I hope we enter a new generation. I hope now that we march together, literally and figuratively, until we get to wherever it was decide we want to go. Together. All of us.

I didn't start this to be a rant at the gay community. And you are more than welcome to disagree. But that brings me back to my larger point: so long as their stigma attached to homosexuality, than American culture forces us to adopt our own culture.

This is the birth of any sort of group counterculture. If you willfully exclude someone from being a full member of your society, you beg them to create a counterculture to subvert yours. The disparity of racial culture in the United States is one major example of this. “Why can't they be normal?” I ask you, why can't you be more accepting?

Acceptance is uncomfortable. Acceptance means that you take all of us. No exceptions. You don't get a chance to say you don't like bull-dykes or swishy queens. You don't get a chance to say that bear culture freaks you out. You take people as they are. That's acceptance. Only then will we become part of your culture. Part of your world. Once upon a time, tolerance was simply enough. But I reject that defeatist philosophy. We're here. It's your move. Until then, though, there's going to be a lot more to being gay than just being gay.

"Normal" Gay?

My friend, Jason Styres, recently posted a note on Facebook with a quote from Larry Kramer's The Normal Heart. This play was one of the first dramatizations of the AIDS crisis and the effect it was having on the LGBT community. One of the characters makes a speech about the importance of the queer community uniting as a community that has to claim its right to exist because we have a history made up of people who were not invisible.

It makes me question all of the times in my life that I've ever said that I didn't want to be a "banner waving queen." All the times that I've ever looked down my nose at someone I thought was too swishy. Doesn't make me feel too great. I don't know if this is an internalized bit of homophobia or whatever...that doesn't actually matter. I don't actually dislike these people, but for some reason, I don't want to be identified with them. Which is stupid, because I readily would jump to their...our...defense were it ever needed. But, they are people who are different from me. And I don't know how to interact with the community as a whole.

I have a hard time getting worked up about the injustices being done to the LGBT community. And I think that the reason is because nothing audacious has happened that directly effects me. I'm just barely an adult...I'll turn 21 in three weeks. And in my life, nothing bad has ever happened to me as a gay man. Sure, I came out in south Georgia in conservative surroundings, but I pulled a wild card in how well it turned out. I was never accosted in high school. I was called a fag three times in college. That's it. That's everything bad that's ever happened to me. And so I don't know how to relate to a world that seems dangerous, reactionary, and unfair when I read about it but not when I live it.

I have no plans to get married anytime in the discernible future (for that, you'd have to date...), so gay marriage isn't an imminent concern. I've never been the victim of harassment or a hate crime, so the Matthew Sheppard Bill doesn't effect my gut.

It's a little known fact about me, but I briefly planned on going into the military in 2005 once I graduated from college and serving a basic stint before moving on with my life. It's just something that I privately thought was important--I think that it's every person's responsibility to serve their country and their neighbors if there is a need that you can fulfill. But, with Don't Ask, Don't Tell, fulfilling this goal wasn't worth nailing back up the door that I'd already kicked in. So, I joined AmeriCorps instead, beating a sword into a plowshare.

I intellectually understand that these are the issues facing my community, but I don't know what I can do. It feels like nothing. And if there's nothing I can do, then it feels like fate. And I'm no Lachesis.

---

When I went to college, I went to find myself. And every summer from 2006 to 2008 I considered my summer in the Booley House, referring to my favorite book, Leon Uris's Trinity. In this section of the novel, the two main characters spend the summer tending herds in a booley house. While there, they learn who they are and how to be men.

I feel like I've become more who I am than I ever have been. At the same time, though, I don't know how I feel about so much of the world. Years ago, opinions were simple. But I've been dragged to see the middle ground and to occasionally walk that path. I've been forced to concede that the lines are moveable and that black and white are just extreme shades of gray. Maybe one day I'll be set in my ways...right now, that feels like the opposite of my constant confusion.

Stories from the Past: Coming Out Cow

My senior year of high school, the theatre director a TCHS declared that we would do a one-act version of the three-hour Sondheim monster Into the Woods.  Because I didn't sing, I would be the Narrator for  the play, and she had planned to enlist all of the pretty, preppy, show choir kids to play most of the parts.  The traditional corps of the department would serve as back-up artists and crew...which, while crappy, was better than an earlier idea to dress them all up as trees and have them dance around as different parts of the scenery.

Just like this...but made of dancing high school theatre kids.  Image via Wikipedia

Anyway, I had decided months ago that I was going to come out before my senior year started because I was tired of living the lie.  So, on Sunday, August 8th, 2004, I told my parents, which is another story for another day.  It intersects with Into the Woods because I was working on that show at the time.  In fact, I was the theatre intern with my friend Alisabeth.  Between us and Mandy, we were given the job of doing the cow.

For those of you who aren't very familiar with Into the Woods, it's a musical mash-up of the stories of Jack, Cinderella, Rapunzel, and Little Red Riding Hood all going into the woods to get their dreams.  Okay, well, Jack obviously has to have a cow because he's going to the market to sell his cow for food for him and his mother.  Now, there are two ways that you can do this.  You can either hire an actor to play the part of the cow or you can build a cow prop.

We, sadly, attempted the latter.  It was maybe the most dangerous weapon that I've ever seen on wheels.  Made of two-by-four, chicken wire, plaster, paper-mache, and white paint, more people bled on this cow than I would have thought possible.  It was a hot disaster.  The casters wouldn't stay straight, the back of the cow buckled, and it needed so much plaster to make it look like a cow verses a box covered in chicken wire that that was what I was assigned to do with Alisabeth for the second week of school.

Friday, we were sitting out in the courtyard outside the drama room.  This was right after the outdoor furniture that had been used at the previous year's prom had been donated to the school but before they screwed on that brass nameplate that dedicated it to that kid that died.  Alisabeth and I are slathering plaster on the cow and talking about the election.  She had proven to be mostly conservative, and this being 2004, my senior class could vote for the first time, and it was shaping up to be an important decision:  you could either vote for President Bush or you could vote against him (Kerry not actually counting as a canditate because he stood for nothing).  Although we could agree on the upcoming pro-liquor referendum for Tift County (which was dry at that time), we eventually ended up on thornier subjects.  Like gay marriage.

Obviously, I defended gay marriage against her arguments, but at the same time, I had to admit to myself that it looked like it was going to be an uphill battle, even for civil unions.  I mean, two of the four states to have same sex marriage have happened in 2009, and this was five years ago.  If I'm not mistaken, Massachusettes was the only state to have anything like this going on.  My fervent support made Alisabeth ask me if I was gay.  To which I immediately replied "no."

I started to kick myself and got really quiet. I guess Alisabeth was either embarassed that she had asked and I wasn't or didn't know what to say because she knew I was closetted.  I actually surprised most people when I came out.  And I had promised myself that although I wasn't going to throw myself a "coming out" party like a debutante, I also wasn't going to deny it any longer if anyone asked me.  And this was my first test, and I had already screwed it up.  After another couple of minutes of silence, I back-tracked:

"Wait, scratch that."
"Scratch what?"
"I am gay.  Not many people know.  Don't spread it around."
"Okay..."

We talked about my coming out for a little bit.  I didn't want the news to get around because I was afraid, this being the deep South, that I'd be harrassed.  But, I didn't trust this girl, and the circle of people who knew was getting big.  Soon, it was going to explode.  But for now, I was just another guy covered in plaster, trying to make a cow for the musical theatre.  And the future was a story for another day.

By the way, the cow never did become satisfactory.  Instead, we dressed up a short girl like a cow.  She did a much better job than a plaster representation.

Last Weekend at Shorter

I keep a drafted blog update where I keep ideas for things to blog about when something interesting doesn't happen over the course of my day. However, I've really got to start getting more specific, because I no longer understand two of the things that I could potentially write about...so, if any of you from my past get what I mean by "Gangs by gender" or "The Castle," please clue me in...because I really have no idea.

Recap of graduation weekend (Warning: Long story coming):

I graduated last Saturday with a BA in English and Theatre, summa cum laude and with honors...there was a lot of symbology happening next to my name on grad day. Anywho, so the night before that, we had Bacchalaureate, which sounds like it would be a lot of fun--it sounds kind of like Bacchanalia, and thus I assumed that we were getting together as a class one last time to have a rocking good time and drink. But sadly, this didn't happen. Which is why I'm glad I took a book. Somehow, it ended up with all of us sitting in the gym listening to some guy give a sermon. His sermon lasted exactly the same length of time that it took me to re-read The House of Yes. I picked the perfect book for this occasion.

Post-Bacchalaureate, the senior theatre class went to Los Portales...there ended up being about twenty of us in the party. However, Nick, William, Trey, and I were the first four to arrive. Big mistake to come to this restaurant. I knew that there was a reason that I always stayed at my beloved Los Palmas. This place was a hate crime waiting to happen. We walked in the front door and everyone stopped and started staring at us. The people who were being cashed out at the register started talking amongst themselves, saying they could take us if it came to it. Finally, we were seated...in the middle of the restaurant. So, now we're four queens feeling threatened, and we're getting eyes from all over the place.

You know, I really forget that homophobia exists until I'm confronted with it. Most people are so cool and understanding...wait, no, that's just the world around myself that I've created, but whatever.

So, I hung around this place for about an hour and a half (even their chips and dip were gross), and then I went out and grabbed wings with Catie, Krystin, Paul, and Chris. Ate a ton of wings. Went home. Packed. Watched the Dollhouse finale. Slept.

Graduation. Yes, I'm sitting on the front row between a girl I went to high school with and Amy Goggins. The speaker offended me by preaching prosperity gospel and by saying that we as a class should go out and "sell ourselves." I got my diploma (just one, despite the two degrees...their both BAs, so the degrees would have look the exact same. I get it...I just don't agree). As my mother tells it:

"I was about to start clapping for you when they said 'John McGowan Freeman, summa cum laude,' but before I could, I pulled my hands apart and the room burst into cheers and applause. You have a lot of fans."

I spent my time wisely and I'm well-liked (though how the hell that happened, I have no idea). Anywho, at the end of the ceremony, it was raining so they couldn't let us proceed out into the weather. Instead, they circled us around a back way and ended up holding us behind the stage of graduation. To the left of me (seeing as I was like sixth in line) were a line of fire doors that were propped open. I grabbed my regalia to my chest and turned to my friends, "You coming?" and I stormed out the door to look for my family. What were they going to do to me for not following their rules? Not let me graduate? Already done. Take my diploma back? From my cold, dead, rotting fingers. Anywho, I walk up the hill to go find my family...I am literally the only graduate who made it up there for about ten minutes. So, I see all my profs and whatnot.

On her way to get to me, my mother falls down a ravine. I can't say anything to her except, "Did you fall, Dot?" Two black guys help her up. They all go to Gondoliers and I tell them that I'll be there as soon as the theatre grad photo is over. I'm thinking twenty minutes tops.

In the fifty minutes that I was at the Theatre photo, here's what happened:
-I almost lose my hat and robe.
-Stephanie gets a note in a sealed envelope from Audrey. Audrey says read this when you have time. While waiting on people to make it to the green room to get the picture made, Stephanie opens the note, which expresses the general theme that although she has denied it for a while, Audrey does have feelings for Michael (Stephanie's ex-bf from about a year ago). Someone said the word "cheated" and the room lost its shit. I'm not going to weigh in my opinion here (I'm too much of a lady to use that kind of language), but the timing was shit-tastic. Of course one more crisis is how 2009 STD would end its time.

-Got grad gifts from Mr. B and Georgie. Georgie gave me a novel planner...which I'm about to start using. Mr. B gave all the seniors a book about dreams...and he said, as I was hugging him, that he gave me two books. I didn't get two books and I glanced around and saw that Grant had two...no big. I didn't even mention it because I figure that the universe said he needed it more.

-Was an hour late to lunch. My grandmother and Lani were being stoic. They left about ten minutes after I got there because Lani had to be back. My G'ma Dot couldn't stay after the ceremony because her feet were hurting too badly. Extended family was a little low on the gushing pride...which is kind of what I expected and I'm a little whatever about it all. They didn't come to my Capstone show for one reason or another. Which is totally fine...if you didn't want to come, I didn't want you there. But to not understand that that was the night that I graduated and that walking around in the robe was just some pomp and pageantry...you don't get me or what I do at all. So, lunch was okay...I ate a salad and two bites of pasta.

Outside the restaurant, I stopped my family and told them that Trey's family might be at the apartment when we got back. I told them that Trey's family didn't know that Trey was gay. They immediately began laughing. My mother said, "They have to know. Have they met him?" She thought about it for another second and asked, "Where are they from? The moon?" That made my day and has that racheted to the number one spot on quotes from my mother.

We moved me out and I said goodbye to Shorter. Btw, the SM keys got found. Apparently, I gave them to Chris. I must have been drunk or a zombie when this happened, because I have no recollection of this. I mean, they went missing in the middle of my show...if I would have just kept them, I wouldn't have had to take the lid off of the weapons closet to get the gun.

I spent the night with Krystin in the torrential downpour. And that ends this story, because I fear that I'm starting to ramble.

Tomorrow, I promise an honest-to-God reflection on something...today, all I had in me was plot.

Oh, and theatre folken, you might want to take a gander at indiemonos.blogspot.com. I promised you, didn't I?