#circuitqueens

NOTE:  I just came across this article recently that I had written about ten years ago.  I'm surprised it has held up this well.  

“Where are all the good costumes this year?” I pondered as we both stood on the precipice of what has become THE Halloween party to attend for those in the know.  As a local though, I would have to say “only in New Orleans.”  

“Not only that,” offered my friend, “but if I see one more obnoxious arrogant circuit queen, I’m going to have to get vicious.”

“Get vicious?” I asked her with a smirk.

Now, I’ll agree that it might seem a tad unfair to begrudge these buffed-up gym jockeys from living in their self-induced never-never land.  I’ll even admit that the lifestyle they have carved out appeals to my baser notions of vanity.  However, in all our attempts to diversify gay culture, I wasn’t aware that we were numbing it down as well.  My question remains, where on the road map to enriching our queer collectiveness was it deemed necessary to overlook everyone’s significance in favor of muscles and attitude?

Circuit queens as a gay culture phenom have evolved over the years almost as much as religious tolerance towards gays.  In the 1970’s, it was the clone that lived out of those tight pair of Levi Wranglers and possessed an attitude that was almost as coiffed as his hair.  Circuit’s evolutionary scale of adjustment has given rise to an ecstasy-soaked segeratory behavior where the requisite stance is uber-masculine partyboy---at least in their own imaginations.  As gay columnist Mike Alvear says, “the irony of all that muscle in gay culture is that we put it to so little use.”

Sour grapes some might say.  Although I find it highly unlikely, it is a conceit worth mentioning.  I’ve personally observed the rites and passages of the circuit and its inhabitants for several years.  Their increasing reluctance to accept anyone who isn’t buff, rich, or male often exposes their underbelly.  When scrutinized, they merely become an over-priced, over-valued spoiled “he-man, woman-haters” club.  The only exception to their membership are the young muscled “twinks” who, in the majority of their ranks possess little to no money, use their bodies and drugs to gain admittance.  Taking a page from Michaelangelo Signorile, “…as a compensation for this inner [existing inferiority], a man either becomes a great beauty or finds himself only attracted to Adonises.”  Within this entire visual intake, I hope beyond hope to find some hidden truth behind the rampant vapidity.  I find myself still waiting.

Now, don’t be misled into thinking I would advocate doing away with the circuit as some of the queer elite would with drag queens, bisexuals, and the transgendered.  The gay scene is more in need of transcending all of these sub-divisions.  More apropos than ever, as a new century dawns and anything becomes possible, wouldn’t it be more prudent to stop pretending to be sixteen and join the rest of the Homo troop back in this space we like to call reality?

Muscles and fitness I can get behind.  Hell, I’ll even admit to a passing knowledge of the discography of Junior Vasquez.  However, segregation and ever-updating stereotypes in what proposes to be a depressingly “masculine” world of neo-neanderthals has far surpassed the level of passé.  Reaching that level takes quite a climb, but it’s easily achieved when self-hatred and a history of standing stereotypes begin to repeat.  The only thing masculine I have observed in these groupings has been the speed with which they fuck and backstab one another.   In a report on the “O’Boys”, an orgiastic sex grouping of circuit creatures, Rob Kindred surmised that “silence during sport-fucking shows signs of [nothing more than] machismo, uptightness, and internalized homophobia.”

When I gaze into the trick mirror of circuit boystown, it looks like this wonderfully “devil-may-care” life in which I could partake of a seemingly endless supply of sex, narcotics, and dancing.  There’s this old joke I’ve heard repeated thousands of times that circuit queens only look good from the neck down.  To re-appropriate the pun into something more real, I say it is because from the neck up they tend to miss the obvious facts of life as the rest of us have come to accept. Despite living our lives in a society where the majority including elected officials still believe our lives are empirically wrong, we as a collective have managed to eke out a niche of life where we work together for human recognition.  Together - gay men, lesbians, bisexuals, and transgendered - we fight the good fight every day of our lives and hope beyond that we will be able to receive basic human decency.