AatomBomb

Kevin, the Queer Conservative, has tagged me to tell you 7 things you may not know about me. Let's get all MySpace for a moment, shall we?

1) I'm fairly certain that I will be run over by a car or bicycle in the streets of New York. This gives me a strange confidence in the face of more realistic dangers.

2) I, too, played clarinet as a young student. I wanted to play flute initially, but my mother and the music salesman convinced me that it was a girl's instrument, and forced me to buy a clarinet instead. I enjoyed it much more than I would have enjoyed the flute, as it gave me a chance to sit with the larger girls and gossip about the cute drummers.

3) I have very few meaningful or detailed memories of growing up, yet I have no personal traumas in my past that would explain this. My memories begin to fade almost immediately after forming them, and I end up telling people the same stories constantly. Yet I can still remember the ISBN code of a bookmark from when I worked at WaldenBooks in high school: 68180322.

4) When I was a toddler (according to my mother) I wandered back into the barnyard behind our house in Washington state just as the abattoir was chopping the head off of a steer that we were having butchered. As she swooped me up to take me back to the house, I peeked over her shoulder and told my mother, "That cow lost it's head!"

5) I'm very good at many things, but master of none. If I were younger I would probably have been put on ADD medication at an early age. Which probably helps explain my taste for stimulants.

6) I am neurotic about staying on straight lines, patterns and lighter colors when I walk through Manhattan.

7) I do not believe in the supernatural, but am absolutely convinced that this city has a personality greater than the sum of its parts. I feel lonely anywhere else.

Have a great holiday, everyone.

Aww. My first Gawker redundancy. Took them long enough. I stand by my comment though. "Inster Fashion"? Slow news day doesn't really do that justice.

HappyGayShame

UPDATE: I've carefully re-read this post and come to the conclusion that it is a complete load of pretentious horsecrap, and I don't think I even agree with myself. Oh, the crippling shame.

There has been a bit of a media tempest in an urban gay teapot about this year's Pride festivities. Who are we? What do we need this parade for anyway? Is there a division between the affluent white gays and the adorable (but do not fuck with them) street urchins that inhabit (inhibit?) the piers every year for the strangely controversial Heritage of Pride street festival at the end of the parade in the Village? This year's clusterfuck of an attempt to move the street fair to Chelsea blew up in our collective faces, highlighting the awkwardness between the demographic divide forming in the New York gay community. The relationship between the mostly white male activists of the AIDS generation and the new-gen genderqueer types from the black/latino/trans/lesbian ranks that are currently screaming for attention has always been a strained one, but until now we have all put on a somewhat happy face together, fighting much larger powers-that-be for several decades.

Now, a sense of achievement has set in among the well-heeled 8th Ave. set, who no longer feel that the fuss is worth it every year. In other words, if we can't bring the festivities to us, we just won't go at all. Collectively, we've made incredible progress in such a short amount of time - it's almost a given that in the next 10 years New York will have full gay marriage rights, NJ is already experimenting with civil unions, popular culture has come a long way in portraying us in a somewhat positive light. AIDS is still a haunting but less immediate spectre in our lives. Perhaps the time is ripe to recognize that indeed, we are all just people, living the lives that people live. Complicated, messy but sometimes rewarding lives. Some conservative gays (of which I tend to find much agreement with) closed their eyes this year and wished upon that star.

What did I do this weekend? I played host to an ex and his friend from Texas, partied like an ageing rockstar, and missed the parade. I am, after all, a somewhat privileged white man with a fabulous view of the city, and my sense of urgency for gay issues is also somewhat muted. Saturday night found us at the old Roxy space, which had been rented out one last time for an Arena reunion blowout with Junior Vasquez. For the low low price of $55 you too could have been witness to the tortured death throes of an entire generation of NYC nightlife. The aging queen of mega-club theatrics was in familiar form by now, re-hashing old standards and mashing sounds together inchoherently with the petulance of a fading monarch. The 'spectacle' consisted of a stage prop wall of hideous neon lights meant to suggest (one would surmise) the media-centric light show of the original Arena at Palladium (now poetically a student dorm). Some reported seeing a show or two (if one considers a Madonna impersonator doing 'Don't Cry For Me, Argentina' a show) but we saw none, instead forced to suffer through a peak-hour 'Peace Train' by Dolly Parton (not live, as he once would have been able to pull off), watching a confused and scattered crowd wander aimlessly in the middle of the dance floor hugging one another - out of misery or faux-ecstasy one was not sure. Sunday was spent blissfully enjoying the soft touch and gentle kisses of my boyfriend, using up the remainder of our own ill-gotten mood enhancers. There was indeed a sense of personal pride felt by us that day, as we watched the fireworks burst over the pier dance from my declasse Jersey apartment with unmitigated glee. 

Today, I saw two adorable boys walking across 42nd street, one white and the other hispanic, and I knew instinctively that they were gay. Not because of affectation, but you do learn to recognize certain demographic realities in this city. Call me racist if you will (everyone is a little bit, after all), but one of the interesting hallmarks of gay life is that it forces you to fraternize with other gay people that aren't necessarily part of your demographic set. It would be a shame to lose that unique edge in life, which seems to be what is happening recently.  I'm all for assimilation, but I wouldn't mind holding onto the things that make us unique in positive ways, including our ability to love one another regardless of race or gender, forced as it may have been on us.

Although I like where this guy is going with his thinking, I also hope that Pride doesn't become a completely anachronistic exercise for us. In our continuing effort to mainstream our lives, we should hold tight to the idea that the rising tide should benefit all ships, and not cut the ropes on those who lack more immediate mainstream appeal. We all experience our sexuality in unique, sometimes wonderful ways. But we all have secret shames to deal with - sometimes personal, sometimes public (note to Jr.: let go of the past, girl.) Let's not make our greatest shame an inability to empathize with those of us who haven't seen all of the advantages that some of us have been so lucky to see in our lifetimes. Wouldn't that just be so depressingly human and predictable? So I choose to not celebrate Pride this year, but Shame, because it is only in recognizing our own complicity in man's inhumanity to man that we will ever reach a place that recognizes all of us as the beautiful, fabulous creatures that we are.

MadAsHell

and he's not going to take it anymore.

FaggotSeason

There is a brilliant moment in an episode of 30 Rock where Liz Lemon, our scrappy heroine, is mulling over the idea of leaving New York for Cleveland.  She explains to her boyfriend that she could never leave this great city you see, because...and then a man interrupts her by spitting directly into her mouth.  She goes to Cleveland.  Comedy gold.

My friend and erstwhile editor Jeffery and I had just finished the RuPaul screening of Starrbooty, and were walking through the West 4th St area, right near where the Wendy's was shut down for being vermin-ridden.  I suppose we should not have been surprised to find vermin roaming the area, in retrospect.  We paused by a small folding table of books.  The usual street fare, strange adult-themed trash lit mixed with 10 year old magazines and a few piles of children's books.  One of the children's books caught our wicked eyes, as the title referenced the name of one of our friends trapped in a strange relationship.  Let's just say there was a lot of easy irony to be found in the synopsis on the back. 

As we mulled over the idea of giving it as a gift out of sheer premeditated malice, I noticed a small rat-like man hovering around us out of the corner of my eye.  I figured he was the owner/operator of this fine card table of books, and paid him little mind.  Now, to be clear, I do not pass easily for a red-blooded butch American heterosexual, especially in the company of my friends.  It's New York, for fucks sake, I only feel self-conscious about my sexuality on the Upper East Side.  But I had my own Cleveland moment as I turned around and found myself face to face with the rat man. He was literally inches away from my chin, picking his nose in a deep and urgent way, while muttering what I imagine most salespeople find the best way to attract potential customers: "Get away from me, you fucking faggot." 

My first reaction, naturally, was to recoil in complete gay horror from the stubby, dirty finger digging for gold inches away from my face.  God knows what he intended to do with the treasures he sought so forcefully up there.  I think my exact words were "Eewwwww!" as I raised my hands to my face like a Hollywood diva and backed away from the rodent.  This had the odd effect of reinforcing his initial impression of me, so he slurred some more "faggots" as I happily obliged him and got quickly out of his strange little world.  Initially, I tried to make myself feel guilty over the fact that I didn't fly into a Joan Crawford rage, flip his sad little table into Sixth Ave. and kick his kneecaps out.  But it was clear to me that what we had here, despite the obvious homophobic outburst, was a plain old New York crazy person.  And I haven't survived for a decade in this city by getting uppity with crazy people.  So here's to you, you little rat-faced turd.  You just lost a customer.  But I'm not moving to Cleveland, so fuck you.

This strange encounter got me thinking, though.  June.  Gay Pride.  Kevin Aviance was bumrushed exactly a year ago.  I've noticed that there is almost always an uptick in homophobic slurs around this time.  Summer is upon us, the heat makes people a little loopy, and perhaps a subtle subconscious awareness of Pride brings out the inner macho douchebag in people.  It happens most noticeably in traditionally gay-friendly areas.  The West Village, Chelsea, the East Village.  Then, on Saturday night, my boyfriend and I are standing at my bus stop in NJ, and a cheap-looking red SUV cruises us while some angry and clearly repressed boy hangs out the window screaming "Faggots!!" at us.  I have lived on the river facing Manhattan for over 6 years, and I have never heard that word in my presence.  I know, it's surprising to me as well. 

So what the fuck is up with the June hate parade?  Is there some sort of subliminal signal that flips on during Pride month, activating a sleeper cell of frothing neanderthals?  I don't know, but it's certainly a healthy reminder that as we get more and more entrenched in mainstream culture, our gay ghettoes become fair game as the unevolved lash out at our inevitable domination of civilization.  I think my instinctive response is still the best one.  Eww.

Starrbooty!

Last Thursday I attended the press screening for Starrbooty, a feature length resurrection of the blaxploitation-style series of low budget episodes made by RuPaul in the Eighties.  Ru was there (and yes, he goes by Ru out of character, somewhat to my surprise) and was witty and effervescent, as always.  He confessed an unhealthy degree of excitement for the Judge Judy show, but gave a great pre-screening interview.  Quick, clever, and thoughtful, as all great queens must be to survive. 

Joe from Joe.My.God was there, and gives a nice synopsis of the thing over at his place.  My EIC and I enjoyed the film very much, as evidenced by our constant level of obnoxious laughter.  No punches pulled, this is not the safe-for-radio-airplay Ru of the Nineties.  She flexes all of her drag muscles, and the result, with stellar performances by Candis Cayne and Sweetie, is a wicked old-school romp through the Meatpacking District with a bunch of tranny hookers.  Kind of makes you nostalgic.  We'll be interviewing Ru for noiZe soon, stay tuned...