Queer flag flying

I used to be afraid of typing that word

Animation inspired by the forthcoming (someday) Lives of the Saints, Book One: The Queerdoes

I recently told a young person at work my coming out story. Not the one where I came out to myself: unsure if what was happening to me was gayness or just wanting to be a nun. And not the one where I came out publicly in a poem in the student newspaper that caused a boy some serious chagrin. But the first time I told someone. The first time I said it out loud.

I was 20 years old. It was night. Summer. I was sitting in the driveway of a friend. A sorority sister who was probably just a few years older than me, but who felt eons more mature. She lit a cigarette, and smoked like a champion. She had bracelets on her smoking arm which clicked together when she set the heel of her hand behind her to lean, the cigarette between index and middle fingers, lifted just off the pavement. I remember my arms around my knees, clutched to my chest, looking out at lights twinkling—were we on a hilltop? Were we overlooking the Sound? Of that I am not certain; I only remember the night, the lights, and her waiting for me to say it. She already knew it all. Felt it firing off me in my shaking and rocking, my breath getting caught in my throat so dry the words were stuck and broken.

It was 1992. It’s likely I had only just learned the word gay. My good friend—who would later give me a bad haircut, then MUCH later the best one I ever had—had come out to me over the telephone. “I’ve been going out dancing with the boys,” he said, “and I like it.” He didn’t say the word to me; that’s not where I learned it. I learned it from the news. From reports of the gay disease.

I don’t remember if we were in that driveway for only the length of time it took her to smoke that cigarette, or if it was hours. In my mind it’s an eternal moment, where my fear was palpable, and her ability to hold it for me was infinite. But at some point I finally said, “I think I’m gay.” I wasn’t even certain what the label meant for me; I only knew something along the lines of what my friend knew: I went dancing with the girls, and liked it. But I was terrified, because I had a deep fear that if I said the words, and made it real, no one in my family, none of my friends, would ever want to touch me again.

The friend in the driveway with me already knew this was coming, and said a few comforting words which I don’t remember, because they are what you should say: doesn’t matter, love is love, etc. But then, she hugged me. And this I remember discretely. It was a long, deeply fearless hug, full of unconditional regard and love, our bodies fully pressed against one another, her arms so tight around me. And I was saved from the abyss.

***

Many of the young folks I work with identify along the spectrum of Queerness. Through them I am learning a lot about the evolution of queer identity and queer culture. I don’t use social media (this blog and LinkedIn excepted), so unless my good friend Sheri tells me, I don’t know what’s hot and what’s not. These young folks are so candid about their Queerness. They teach me new labels, about new identities, even micro and sub identities—things I didn’t know existed, never mind that there were words for.

Sometimes these words can be liberating. Validating, like, at last, something that accurately describes me! And I am no longer alone! But sometimes they can also be soul-crushing. Because in the same moment that a label frees, it also locks you up. This is the nature of labels. They segment and cement identity. In a moment we may enjoy understanding, a little better, who we are with the help of the label; meeting others who share the label. But as soon as we venture into the territory of using the label to describe to the world who we are, we enter into shadow territory. We could be rejected, persecuted. But worse than that, we could reject, and persecute those who don’t exactly fit the label that we have embraced. And what was meant to connect us—to ourselves and others—only separates.

My own evolving sense of my Queerness defies words. And I really like that. Even when I use certain words I feel most closely connected with, they fall short. I am a dyke, certainly. This word offends so many people. But to me, it arises out of a place not located anywhere near where “normal” lives. And that feels somewhat close to how I feel a lot of the time, and quite happily so. But still, I’m not that. I’m me. And my queerness is me. We are inextricable. It’s not an outfit I take on and off. It is not who I kiss. It is a way of being that has informed, completely, how I see the world and everyone in it, and who I want to be in it. Queerness is my location. The center of which is everywhere; the circumference of which is nowhere.

I used to sit in a park in TriBeCa with a good friend from seminary eating Shake Shack and thinking about these things. We’d talk about God as trans. About what it would take to truly change the world. We both had our blind spots. We admitted them. But the only way we could really make sense of Queerness was by thinking about rigidity. Queerness opposes rigidity. If we could root out rigidity—within our selves, first, and then others—change was possible.

We understood rigidity as something like a hard grip on a fragile identity. A person so unaware of their own fear of losing their sense of self that they would rather destroy all other ways of being than be threatened with the task of asking themselves: why is my identity so fragile? The answer to that could lead to terrifying places. Like where I was, overlooking the twinkling lights in my friend’s driveway, about to change my life.

Happy June all.

—MBF