Friday, April 16, 2004

 

ENTRY 104


In my account of what happened with Zeke the other night, I neglected to mention a brief incident whose significance has grown increasingly apparent to me over the past couple of days.


When we were having a drink at my quiet little downtown lounge--just a regular neighborhood bar in the Flatiron/Chelsea area--and discussing Zeke's breakup, there was a straight couple halfway down the bar from us. At one point Zeke got a weird expression on his face and murmured that he didn't like this place very much. I asked why, and he said he'd tell me later.


We left for dinner and, while walking over to the restaurant, he told me that the straight couple made some remark (unheard by me) to the effect of "What, is this a gay bar now?"


At the time I shrugged it off as someone's minor idiocy, but the quiet anger over it has metastasized in me. I realized that last night, when I suddenly became angry about it and began imagining what I would have done had I overheard the comment myself. I'm far from an extroverted or in-your-face person, but I've certainly been known to confront people uncomfortably and semi-stridently.


I spent many of my formative years, unfortunately, in the heavily Hispanic and Catholic and Southern Baptist town of Corpus Christi, Texas. (I do not single out any particular culture for exceptional blame--every culture and race and gender and sexual orientation and religion has been guilty of some form of prejudice--but it is a vicious lie to say that the machismo Latino culture hasn't been horrific for women and homosexuals, or that Catholic and Southern Baptist congregations are open-minded havens.) It was far from easy to be a skinny, intellectual, openly gay high-school student in Corpus Christi, Texas, in 1994. In fact, other than one guy who graduated a year before I did, there didn't seem to be any other openly gay people in my school at all. (My gay friends were all pretty much older, or heavily closeted.) I was called "fag" and "queer" and "homo" by complete strangers. A group of football players threatened me in the locker room one day. Someone spray-painted "FAG" on my locker.


In a way, the blatant homophobia wasn't so difficult to handle, because it was easily countered. Someone in the hallway might yell "Faggot!" and I'd turn around, give them a scalding look (I've always been able to stare down anyone), and say, "Yeah, I'm a faggot. What the fuck's your point?" Just about every day of my senior year, when I walked into my first class at 8 AM, Hank Tatums and his idiot football-jock buddy would cough "faggot" and "queer" into their hands. I ignored it for two months before finally bringing it to the teacher's attention. She was appalled and said she'd have a talk. The incidents continued for another week, and when I followed up with the teacher she said she'd told them to stop and would tell them again. I said it was time to go to the top, and dropped in for a chat with the principal. But the principal was a homophobic racist who never concealed her dislike for me. She said she'd call them in for a talk, but the slurs did not end. I went to see the principal a second time. She said they'd openly admitted what they'd done, but she'd done nothing to punish them.


"Come in on Monday and remind me, and I'll talk to them again," she said.


Fuck you, you heartless bigot scum.


At the time I didn't even have my parents to turn to for help. They'd basically said that if I was dumb enough to come out when I could reasonably pass for straight, then I would just have to deal with the consequences. Besides, they were consumed with Marc's illness, and I didn't want to be an additional burden. And the person running the school didn't mind homophobia at all, even when it was flagrantly flouted in her face.


At the age of 16 or 17, I realized that I was on my own with all this. It was terrifying and infuriating and I don't think I'll ever completely get over that disillusionment.


It didn't even end when I escaped from Corpus Christi to college in Austin--a city hailed as progressive and accepting of gays--because my roommate was the worst homophobe I'd ever met. Suspecting I was gay, apparently because I was skinny and intellectual and not a misogynist, he had his friend call me and claim she was doing a sexual orientation survey for her psychology class. Not fooled for an instant, I played along and answered her questions, which led to my own friends and family having to email me because he would hang up on all my calls, and his threats to do physical harm to me. The University of Texas did nothing, despite my repeated requests for help, until I finally hunted down the head of the dorm like a dog and demanded furiously that this fucking bastard be thrown out of my dorm room.


But even with all that unfortunate history, I think in certain ways I've been lulled into a false sense of security living in a city like New York. It's a place that thinks of itself as oh-so-open-minded, where male and female couples hold hands on the street and Broadway is oh-so-fabulous and even the straight guys are metrosexuals.


Yet this all brings me back to my earlier point, that the blatant homophobia is easier to handle. It's the subtler forms that gut you, piece by piece, like tiny shards of a beer bottle. For instance, the beer bottle I have fantasized about breaking over those motherfuckers' heads in that bar.


What if I'd been black? "What, is this a hip-hop bar now?" Or Japanese? "Have they started serving sushi or something?"


I try just to be a person, and to see others as just people, and to shun the heterophobia and misogyny and internalized homophobia and racism that thrive even in the "gay subculture" (whatever that may be). But then, like a Bud Light bottle to the skull, I am forcibly put in my place, reminded that, after all, I'm a faggot, and I should know where I belong. Like in some comedy of manners, I've become a one-dimensional character in a latter-day Jane Austen pastiche. I've made a social faux pas by treading on my dainty toes into Breeder Country. And, while no one might say anything to my face or hit me or shake up a can of spray paint, they'll still laugh at me behind my back--the laughter a cover for their thinly veiled revulsion--and speculate about Zeke and me, about who fucks who up the ass, about how much we resemble those funny old faggots on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.


This is why I will never be "discreet" or deride lesbians or say straight people are boring or call anyone who has more sex than me a slut, and why I will never be anything but myself. And fuck you if that makes you terrified, asshole.

2:32 PM

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Wednesday, April 14, 2004

 

SPECIAL BULLETIN


I received an email from my fellow blogger Crash concerning an upcoming benefit for his (predominantly gay) rugby club, the Gotham Knights. They're holding a bachelor auction next Sunday, April 25, and I'm always happy to help promote a good cause. I plan to be there; if any more incentive might possibly be required, you can get all the details here.

10:47 PM

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ENTRY 103


Saturday night found Phil and me going on another of our notorious East Village pub crawls. Fairly standard stuff: one gin and tonic, then another at the Phoenix; a Corona at the surprisingly uncrowded Starlight (Phil speculated it's now a has-been); and a senseless dancing bout at the definitely has-been Wonder Bar.


By that time I'd certainly had enough, but a few of Phil's friquaintances had joined us randomly (one of them offered me a usurious price for Madonna concert tickets, which I declined), and I'd made the mistake of mentioning a little bar I knew that made a yummy shot tasting just like a Rollo. So off we trooped, ending up doing the shots before dancing on a cushioned banquette to "Born Slippy"--now there's a blast from the past.


Passed out on my bed by 4. Ugh. I'm getting too old for this.


Today I finally got around to seeing a matinee performance of I Am My Own Wife. I had slight problems with the play's structure, but in general I thought the dialogue (monologue, really) was pretty outstanding. The set, though minimalist, was surprisingly intricate and clever in the background. And Jefferson Mays, who metamorphoses from demure transvestite hausfrau to spluttering Nazi in an instant, deserves just about any award they give him.


At happy hour I met Zeke for a preprandial drink at a quiet little downtown bar I like, and he talked about his breakup. Yep, the boyfriend whose existence dissuaded me from telling Zeke I'd been attracted to him was no more. We talked about breakups for a while, and then the manuscript of my first novel, which I'd given to him to read. He had nothing but praise for it, and we spent some time dissecting certain parts. I find that when I've warmed up a little, I can enjoy discussing my own writing, despite my initial reluctance.


Over dinner at Cafeteria, my opportunity came to put to rest the questions I'd always had about what had happened between us last year. Zeke's breakup involved a misunderstanding concerning monogamy, and Zeke's coworker had made the comment that he flirted with everybody, to which Zeke took issue.


"Well," I said, "that's interesting. Sometimes, when I first knew you, I wondered whether you were being flirtatious. Let me ask, did you ever realize I had a big crush on you when we met?"


"No, I didn't," he said, with nary an indication that the crush had been mutual.


So he was just being really friendly, after all.


Heading home afterward, I turned the whole thing over in my mind. My ego could handle the fact that he hadn't been attracted to me; it's not like other people haven't been. And, in the end, perhaps it's easier not to have truly been in the game, despite my own false impression, than to know that I'd blown it somehow.


Before getting on the train, I gave Zeke a copy of a brilliant book that I found tremendously helpful in my own breakup: How to Survive the Loss of a Love. The title may sound incredibly cheesy, but it's a remarkable work that lays out, in succinct and practical terms, how to move forward through the grieving process to the other side in the course of leaving a relationship behind. I've flipped through it numerous times while dealing with one loss or another. After all, life is full of losses that we don't always recognize, but they impact us just the same.


And I decided, clinging to the pole in the shimmying train, that I was prepared to risk some big losses again, because without those hazards you never get anywhere but uptown, at home, telling the details of your day to your devotedly attentive blog.


I have a crush on you, http://www.accidentalnewyorker.blogspot.com. You're at the top of my bookmarks. Did you ever know that?

10:30 PM

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