#bageldog

Queering the American Alligator: Putting Gators on the Payroll

I played a game at work that I think you'd like. My coworker, Anne, put a sheet of paper in front of me and told me to write down my two favorite animals and three reasons why I liked them. My lists looked like this, and you're invited to write yours now as well.

Dogs

Perfect

Angel  

Babies

Alligators

Chubby bellies

Hardcore

Can eat me

Of course, because this was a fun work game, my first animal was how I see myself and the second was what I looked for in a partner. These results were startlingly accurate. I, a quintessential high femme, am charming, lovely, and vain. My girlfriend skirts the line of futch and hard femme, and I often, in my own little gay fantasies, like to imagine us as the main girls in But I'm a Cheerleader..., the greatest dramatic representation of a symbiotic high femme/hard femme relationship to date.

However, beyond the enjoyment Anne's cutesy game provided, I felt a deeper meaning lurking just beneath the surface. This intersection of alligators and hard femme seemed amusing at first but stayed with me in the nights to come as I tossed and turned on my pink, satin sheets, a hand clasped over my frantically beating heard, my trembling breast. I tried to strike the erratic connection from my mind. "Alligators aren't all hard femmes!" I tried to reason the thought away and was only further tormented. I wiped a perfect, sparkling tear away with the sleeve of my faux fur-lined, sheer robe. "That's completely illogical!"

What is it about an alligator that just screams "Hard Femme Bad Bitch?" What neurological mis-firing had to occur for my eyes to take in the image of an American Alligator and my brain to perk up and categorize these reptiles closer to my queer brothers and sisters than the alligator's more biologically similar, genderless swamp-dwelling compatriots?

Perhaps, it's their temperament, which stays calm, collected, until a bitch is hungry and snaps. The way a gator can sit still and just watch, either sleeping with her eyes open when important shit’s going down or avidly soaking in every perceivable detail about you while you, unawares, give yourself away to her. It could possibly be the gator’s style, her slick, mean look that makes me think of slinky dresses and thigh high boots (often made from the skin of the hard reptile femme herself).

There is only one real issue that separates a hard femme from a gator, and I believe this is where my poor, little head had bashed itself while spinning frantically and where I believe Disney World and its associated parks has once again provided me the clarity to see straight, so to speak. This issue is finances. “Fuck you, pay me,” while originally more associated with Mafioso-speak, has become almost a chant in bad bitch and hard femme communities alike. Coming from a tradition of being walked over, disregarded for appearance or affectation, and the poverty that has devastated and held our LGBTQIAP+ communities, the hard femme learns to control her cash flow by whatever means necessary. After all, Rhianna, maybe one of the baddest bitches of our time and a hard femme icon in many ways, disappeared her accountant when he invested her money wrong like she was some goddamn magician and he the unlucky and never-to-be-seen-again audience volunteer – or so femme legend goes.

A brief concession: you may believe that alligators do not have jobs and while, generally speaking, you would be correct, this is not always the case. This is, after all, the US of A and these are American alligators.

The alligators I’m thinking of are the rowdy boys and girls who live in the cozy lakes surrounding the Disney World resort. Like their cousin feral cats over at Disneyland, our big swamp kittens play a role in the goings on of the park – and it ain’t catching mice. An alligator at Disney World is just as exciting to a tourist as an alligator in any part of Florida, but this one has a name like Louis from Princess and the Frog or the Tic Toc Croc.

And so, the guests of Disney World, with their small children and their stiff, crooked grandmas and pop-pops, make friends with the gator, throwing her nice little treats, unfinished burgers and fries, chicken strips, popcorn that Little Billy Tourist just couldn’t finish. They wave goodbye when they leave while Ms. Gator doses and digests and waits to be fed again. And when our gator friends can’t get a meal from the guests, the locals are happy to step up. It seems there is no type of person at Disney who is truly immune to a gator’s charm. Gators are an attraction, seemingly free entertainment.

This was the case, at least, until Disney and gators’ symbiosis was complicated this summer. Lane Graves was a two-year-old staying with his family at the Grand Floridian Resort & Spa on the shore of the Seven Seas Lagoon. His family didn’t know that the “No Swimming” signs on the beach were regarding the wildlife and not the boaters, who are allowed access onto this manmade lake. As Graves was wading, scooping some wet sand out from the lake for his sandcastle, an alligator grabbed and pulled him into the water. Officially, Lane Graves died of drowning and traumatic injuries. In search of his body, five additional alligators as well as the alligator who had taken Graves were found. Authorities killed all six gators. Who is to blame here does not interest me as much as who we can hold responsible to ensure that it does not happen again. More specifically, I am interested, in proper high femme utilitarian fashion, in what methods could be implemented to protect both humans and gators at Disney World and, perhaps most importantly, ensure that it remains “The Happiest Place on Earth.”  

What I propose is this: put gators on the payroll. Gators function as an attraction and publicity for not only the Disney World parks but the state of Florida itself. I am not trying to pretend that what happened to Lane Graves was an alligator’s outburst of “Fuck you, pay me.” To be completely honest, I’m not exactly sure what a gator wants or if reptiles have a concept of wants at all. I am fairly certain, however, that they do not have a concept of wage employment. If that is the case, what makes up an alligator economy should we look for ways to compensate them? What can we give the alligators for the land, entertainment, and evolutionary companionship they have given us?

Here I will return to my queer theory roots and blow the cinders off of my singed copy of Lee Edelman’s No Future: Queer Theory and the Death Drive. Lee Edelman’s controversial work looks at reproductive futurism, moving the queer antisocial thesis a step further. The rectum is no longer a potential grave but a subversive force which stands for death and threatens heteronormativity.  The implication of No Future, as well as many other theses which deal with futurity, is that the future is an inherently human concern. Edelman’s argument is that, because this is inherently the case, the American queer must ultimately reject futurity and stand in opposition to the cult of the Child.

Aside from the sex-, race-, class-based concerns Edelman’s piece raises, there is a deeper question to consider in regards to the American alligator? Let’s pretend that our purpose as queers really is to oppose the mainstream and futurity. What is, then, our relationship to the future of other queers? What is our responsibility toward nature? Must nature be queered to require protection? If a gator is a hard femme, can we compensate her with a future?

Don’t get me wrong. Gators are strong, resilient, and I hold firm that they will live as long as our species if not longer – supposing we don’t hunt them to extinction. However, by making sure their finances are in check, we actually do ourselves a greater service. By making an effort to compensate alligators beyond lodging and scraps of food, we can hold them to an employee code of conduct and put in provisions for assuring this.

This is where I tell you something about how alligators are our responsibility, and that we must as the queer hive-mind concern ourselves with their shit. I ain’t about to pretend that some base part of me doesn’t want to believe that, but there isn’t a gay hive mind and maybe you don’t see alligators as hard femmes and maybe you don’t give a flying shit about swamp cats that wander onto the happiest place on earth because its warm waters feel just like home and food rains from the sky. That’s A-Okay, because you got your own shit and you got your own pet causes and neurological mis-firings.

But if I can keep you for just a second longer, I wanna press your hand between mine, kiss the tips of your fingers and nails, and let you know that it’s important to me. Inside this perfect, angel baby exterior is something soft and selfish, and I want the alligators to live, and I don’t want no more babies to get eaten, and I don’t want any body to get killed because it lived in the wrong lake.

Brothers and sisters, queers and Allies, don’t let me get too sentimental and don’t let me be misunderstood. Alligators are tough, and they can take care of themselves. There are no ethical mathematics that allow us to determine whether the life of one child is equal to the life of six alligators.  But a femme has got to hold out for another femme, no matter how scary she might be. That doesn’t mean she can eat somebody. That just means we keep her from getting into situations where she can get into that kind of trouble.

I can’t believe there is one solution, one outcome to this Disney-gator problem. However, I do believe in options. It might be that Disney needs to drain their manmade lake, to not put gats and people so close if neither of them can behave in a way that adheres to Disney World’s code of conduct. There are plenty of other places to go boating in Florida. Disney could even buy one and set up a shuttle back and forth six times a day so people can enjoy themselves will still patronizing the right company.

Disney doesn’t even need to get rid of the gators! The idea that we must live separately is misguided, completely impossible in a state like Florida where there is one gator for every fifteen natives. Disney could put up some fences, something to keep gators out of the shallow sides of the lake. Disney could set up a series of underwater cameras, record and track everything that goes on underneath the surface of their lake. This would be not only an effective way to monitor the lake population and activity but could be packaged as their next nature documentary film!

There are things that can be done, and deaths that can be avoided. We have to reject the idea that the future is only for humans, much like how queer people must deeply consider their own relationship to futurity. By putting alligators on the payroll, we can not only put in safeguards to protect both of our species, we can ensure that a future is provided for the American alligator. Their meat can still be fried, their skin still worn, their mouths filled with popcorn and fries—all for the good of humans. Us high, in-love femmes can rest easy knowing that there will be hard femmes in the future, long after we’re gone.