BABOU! SERPENTINE!

On June 30, the last day of Pride month, the New York Times published an editorial opinion by Matthew Vines, gay Christian activist. It was titled “I’m Gay, Not Queer. It Matters.”

That it matters is probably the only thing on which I will agree with Matt. There have been many, many people writing counterpoint to the original essay. By coincidence, I had unwittingly written my response a few days before the editorial appeared. I posted it on my substack but I feel if I share it directly, instead of hidden behind a link, more people might read it. It is a direct result of conversations I have had many times over the years and, at 57 years of age, I have some strong feelings on the “queer” vs “gay” dialog.

I don’t write a lot of poetry, leaning more toward prose, but this subject either required or inspired that format, in the beat, sermon, and incantation inspired free verse I adopted as my style. It is simply called “Elder Queer” and I share it with you below.

—

Elder Queer

Language matters.

And the words we choose

To fill out and dress up

The wardrobe of our identity,

The layers we put on

To protect us from

The raw elements

Of social scrutiny,

Matter more than most

A poorly chosen pant or suit

Fitting wrong, too tight,

Binds and restricts

Jams our flow and limits

Our possible.

Too loose, and we risk

A trip, a stumble,

Getting lost as we swim

In awkward folds

Of fabric in which we hide,

Shelter, and protect, but instead

Find ourselves left without breath

And drowning because our masks

Carry no oxygen for the soul.

In my closet you might

Find such a word as “gay”

But this is not the cloth

In which I robe myself

Except on the rarest occasions

When it has been casually

Pulled from the wire frame

On which it was hung

Because laundry, yet

Needing to be done,

Made an easy

And convenient choice

In the moment

And it was sufficient

To cover my otherwise

Naked self.

Gay is pastels and polo shirts

A cardigan in cashmere

Slung casually shoulderward

For a bennie brunch with Bellinis

(Or after a particularly hard night

A Caesar with two stabs of bacon)

Gay is polite, charming conversation

And holiday apparel tied on

With the cheerfully bland ribbons

of heteronormativity

Comfortable and beige

As coffee cut with cream and sugar

To mask and dilute the bitter darkness

Which somehow found itself

In the cup of polite company.

Gay is a shallow glass of a nameless Chardonnay

All floral fruity clarity and top-notes

Lacking even the melodramatic mouth-feel

Of tannins and devoid of undertone

Letting the cultural middle-ground finish without

A lingering sense of affectation.

Gay is vacation photos from

Mykonos, Sitges, and Puerto Vallarta

Drinks under an umbrella on the

Patio wearing sunglasses and white chemise

Or on the beach (but not that beach,

The proper one with the

Tourists and clothing)

Gay is Corporate Sponsored Pride

Dressed up for families

And tourists, fresh from the burbs,

And press-ready photo ops

Promoting a promise of progressivity

That is dropped as soon as the season has passed,

Makeup removed, and the costumes,

The make-believe personas, packed away

Or just discarded

Like Jack-O-Lanterns left to digest and dissolve

In the cultural compost of yesterday’s marketing.

Or in a different season,

Tinsel pulled from the tree,

The tree, artificial, packed away

With all the other ornaments and gaiety.

And I am none of these things.

I am Queer

Because I was there when Gay

Took an unscheduled extended vacay

With her best friend Tina

After White Party in Palm Springs

That only ended when her stolen bike

Crashed in the alley behind a dumpster

In Cathedral City

Aflame with the consequence

Of deliriously bad decisions

And paranoid delusions

Born from the sleepless hours

Of a weeklong bender.

I am Queer

Because I walked the quilted sea

As it spread over the National Mall

Seeking out the names of friends

Lost to the plague that ravished

An entire generation

Of mentors, teachers, artists,

Scientists, doctors, writers, leaders,

Clerks, secretaries, stylists,

And couriers whose last letters

Would never be delivered

While the government made politics,

Joked at our expense,

And pundits mocked our obituaries

In weekly features on talk radio

While my people died.

I am Queer

With a capital ‘queue’

Because in Laramie, Wyoming

Matthew Wayne Shepherd

Was brutalized, beaten, bloodied

And left, tied to a fence, to die

A gruesome scarecrow

Discovered by a passing cyclist

And spent six days in hospital

Before giving up his ghost.

I am Queer

Because “gay” is too polite and nice

Because some else decided

Who and how I love

Who and how I exist

Should be the subject of

Political debate and discussion

And that is not a conversation

That deserves a reserved and polite tone

I am Queer

Because it is the word required

Queer is the spiky fur, leather straps,

Tight jeans and muscle shirts,

Studded jacket and thirty year old

Biker’s hat on its second chain

Cut off sleeves and provocative prints

That I keep on the front rack

Bleeding rainbows and unicorns

Driven mad by the discourse

Of corporatized sexuality and gender identity

Rampaging across the carefully

Architected neighborhoods of generic suburbia.

Queer is spicy

Queer is in-your-face

Queer is inherently political

Because our lives and existence are used

As fodder in a manufactured culture war

In which we are involved

not of our own volition

But because we were drafted

As the exemplars of degeneracy

Our humanity questioned

Worth demeaned

And dignity burned away

to fuel someone else’s moral outrage.

I am Queer

I have little trust for those who cry

“But Queer is a Slur” as if Gay

Was not cut from the same womb

To be yoked to the same

inherited burden of indecency.

If this umbrella is too big for you

Do not ask for me to entertain

The complaint that your hair,

Your cashmere or your polo

Have been ruined while you stand

In the rain of your own self-exclusion.

I will stand without shame

In my armor of bare flesh

Jock straps, short shorts,

And a prism of flags

And let the rain fall on my upturned face

Inured to the acid and bile

My spirit searing the torrent

sublimating to steam as I pose,

A beacon in the darkness.

In my closet you might

Find such a word as “gay”

But this is not the cloth

In which I robe myself.

I select my sacred vestment

Pulling on my Queer

Dressing my experience

In grease paint and glitter.

The leather, and lace, and latex

Wrapping my tattooed and pierced body

In the fabric of my person and mind,

The gossamer silks of self-determination

Which I have bled in joy and pain

from the Truth of my queerness

And the will to be me

This is the best advice anybody can give you, but it's not fun and it's shitty to execute: the only way to get better at writing is to write a lot.

I'm not going to say that there aren't people who have a better intuitive capability at writing than others, but no matter how much innate talent someone may have, nothing will ever take the place of the journeyman grind of writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. From the first story I ever wrote to the last one I churned out, the difference is immense -- and while yes, I've grown in experience, vocabulary, literary reference and maturity, the only way I was able to deploy those new tools and refinements was by continuously throwing myself bloody against the brick wall of writing yet another story.

The best way to be a good writer is to be a bad writer for a very long time, in essence, and to be able to grit your teeth through that process. That last part, the endurance sport of it, that's the thing a lot of people can't do; even once you're a quote-unquote good writer, writing doesn't get much easier, because you hold yourself to a higher standard, and chipping blood out of the rock of your frontal lobe so your story can have a climax is the same agonizing process it's ever been -- regardless of how you avoid thesaurus abuse these days.

Re: the realism and atmosphere, I regret to send you to Elon Musk's twitter, but I wrote a long thread about my process there years ago, which now I'm thinking I should probably transcribe into Tumblr at some point.

Tom taking his anger out on his office

How to drop out of society

How to do gay shit with your friends

How to start an encrypted Signal chat with the beautiful women in your phone

posting this one again bc I need to talk about it. (via paper mag) paul looking like a tom of finland inspired drag king. the homoerotic hypermasculinity turned submissive and worshipful / the french maid fantasy of a woman who's socially inferior but saucy becoming the disinterested dominant.

and then. well. the stylist for this shoot, kat typaldos, posted on her instagram story that this image was inspired by guy bourdin. and ok. the 1977 photo in question:

There's no happy ending with me.

It is possible to find both sapphic SFF and M/M fantasy. It is significantly harder to find, say, aro urban fantasy. Or trans romantic suspense. Or intersex mystery.

A lot of the advice above only really works for trad published or popular books and for identities/subgenres/content that aren't too niche.

So here's some advice if the advice above isn't working for you (either because you can't find books with what you want or because the books you are finding don't end up being the vibe you want), from someone who reads a few hundred books a year:

Find websites or lists dedicated to the specific thing you are looking for. They will generally have more variety and will post you to examples that don't show up in regular rec lists. (ex: aro book recs, ace book recs, intersex #ownvoices database, sapphic books). Goodreads lists can (sometimes) also be your friend.

Get comfortable reading self-published and small press books. Trad publishing has its blind spots.

Check Reddit for recommendations

Start figuring out what it is specifically that you like and then start making your searches more specific. This can be subgenre (if you want urban fantasy, you're rarely going to find it just searching "fantasy"), tropes, plot devices, vibes, etc.

Look at the "readers also bought" on Goodreads/Amazon, similar books on Storygraph, etc. if you read a book you like. Even if you don't end up reading the one you click on, it can show you similar authors (similar to looking at the blurb on a cover), especially because far fewer books have blurbs now.