Queer Ramblings
When I was a little kid, there were no gay characters in anything I read or saw, although I latched onto the proto-bromances of Don Quixote and Sancho Panza at a very early age. At eight or so, I read about a lesbian encounter in a biography of (I think) Hedy Lamarr, which I found (oddly) in my super-conservative Baptist paternal grandmother's library. At ten, I was both bothered and fascinated by the two "gay" characters on sitcoms, Jack on Three's Company (John Ritter) and Jodie on Soap (Billy Crystal). Jack was really only pretending to be gay so he could rent an apartment with two girls (these were different times, whippersnappers). Jodie was gay for real, but his boyfriend was so closeted that he made Jodie get a "sex change" so they'd appear to be a hetero couple. There was no hormone therapy, no psychiatric exam, no history of cross-dressing or or transness; he just checked into the hospital and told them to BAM! turn him into a woman. Only he didn't really want a "sex change," so he took an overdose of sleeping pills before the surgery, but (amazingly, for a gay character in 1977) he didn't die, and I don't remember what happened next. The effect these characters had on me was to make me mince around, limp-wristed, until my mother made me stop because it totally looked like I was mocking gay people. I wasn't; I just thought that was how you were supposed to do it.
A little later, I encountered the Bitter Gay Men: the play and movie The Boys in the Band; the novels of Andrew Halloran and such; The Best Little Boy in the World; even the horrible, horrible movie Cruising. Raw stuff for a thirteen-year-old, but I was doing research. Any gay character who appeared to be at all happy was a minor character, frequently someone's agent, frequently murdered (although I remember one wonderful mystery novel where the gay agent solved the mystery and pwned everybody!). There was the Charlie & Peter trilogy by Gordon Merrick, but even in their blissful beefcake world, it was a given that you had to hide a gay relationship. In the third book he dragged a girl into it, which made me give his books to the thrift shop (wonder who got those?) and renounce him forever. Other than Jodie's dubious adventures, there were no trans characters anywhere, or any acknowledgment that they existed. I can't even remember the next time I heard about transsexuality, and I know I didn't hear of FTM transsexuality until I was in my early twenties. It immediately resonated with me, but by then I'd already started publishing and being interviewed and photographed and all that tyranny-of-hotness crap, and it just seemed too late, and too hard. I admire and envy the certainty with which very young people transition today, but from what I now know about trans history, they have strong shoulders to stand on. (Not mine; I talked about it endlessly in interviews and essays, but I didn't start doing anything about it until 2005, which I hope will always remain the strangest year of my life for many reasons you can learn if you go back and read my journal entries from then.)
I guess the original La Cage Aux Folles changed my life in a way when I was 13. The characters still didn't seem terribly happy or romantic with each other, but they had a good time and didn't give a fuck who knew it. I acted like Albin for about a year, though now I am obviously Renato.
It took me a little while to realize I could write openly about gay characters and have anyone in the horror field publish it, but once I did, I obviously never stopped. Well, yeah, with the horror, but not with teh gay. (I have decided I love LOLspeak and I don't care if it makes me look like a dumbass and whoever doesn't like it can go hang.) I can maybe take a little credit for the emergence of gay characters in horror fiction that's still making homophobes cry -- I started this homo shit, and this the muthafuckin thanks I get -- but there's nothing new under the sun, really. Look at J. Sheridan LeFanu's vampire novella Carmilla (1872), which is so blatantly a lesbian romance that at least one essay was published after his death attempting to prove that the narrator was supposed to be a boy.
What got me started thinking about all this was the book I'm reading, Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation (Leora Tannenbaum, 1999). Perversely, or maybe not, I find myself much more interested in feminist issues since I completely stopped trying to be female.
I would also like to thank Jeffrey M., the sleazebag speed dealer in my tenth-grade biology class who said to me, "Girls aren't supposed to [do something or other I was doing] -- but then you're not much of a girl, are you?" He was only being cruel, but that was the first time the neon sign in my brain flickered on: No, as a matter of fact I'm not.
A little later, I encountered the Bitter Gay Men: the play and movie The Boys in the Band; the novels of Andrew Halloran and such; The Best Little Boy in the World; even the horrible, horrible movie Cruising. Raw stuff for a thirteen-year-old, but I was doing research. Any gay character who appeared to be at all happy was a minor character, frequently someone's agent, frequently murdered (although I remember one wonderful mystery novel where the gay agent solved the mystery and pwned everybody!). There was the Charlie & Peter trilogy by Gordon Merrick, but even in their blissful beefcake world, it was a given that you had to hide a gay relationship. In the third book he dragged a girl into it, which made me give his books to the thrift shop (wonder who got those?) and renounce him forever. Other than Jodie's dubious adventures, there were no trans characters anywhere, or any acknowledgment that they existed. I can't even remember the next time I heard about transsexuality, and I know I didn't hear of FTM transsexuality until I was in my early twenties. It immediately resonated with me, but by then I'd already started publishing and being interviewed and photographed and all that tyranny-of-hotness crap, and it just seemed too late, and too hard. I admire and envy the certainty with which very young people transition today, but from what I now know about trans history, they have strong shoulders to stand on. (Not mine; I talked about it endlessly in interviews and essays, but I didn't start doing anything about it until 2005, which I hope will always remain the strangest year of my life for many reasons you can learn if you go back and read my journal entries from then.)
I guess the original La Cage Aux Folles changed my life in a way when I was 13. The characters still didn't seem terribly happy or romantic with each other, but they had a good time and didn't give a fuck who knew it. I acted like Albin for about a year, though now I am obviously Renato.
It took me a little while to realize I could write openly about gay characters and have anyone in the horror field publish it, but once I did, I obviously never stopped. Well, yeah, with the horror, but not with teh gay. (I have decided I love LOLspeak and I don't care if it makes me look like a dumbass and whoever doesn't like it can go hang.) I can maybe take a little credit for the emergence of gay characters in horror fiction that's still making homophobes cry -- I started this homo shit, and this the muthafuckin thanks I get -- but there's nothing new under the sun, really. Look at J. Sheridan LeFanu's vampire novella Carmilla (1872), which is so blatantly a lesbian romance that at least one essay was published after his death attempting to prove that the narrator was supposed to be a boy.
What got me started thinking about all this was the book I'm reading, Slut!: Growing Up Female With a Bad Reputation (Leora Tannenbaum, 1999). Perversely, or maybe not, I find myself much more interested in feminist issues since I completely stopped trying to be female.
I would also like to thank Jeffrey M., the sleazebag speed dealer in my tenth-grade biology class who said to me, "Girls aren't supposed to [do something or other I was doing] -- but then you're not much of a girl, are you?" He was only being cruel, but that was the first time the neon sign in my brain flickered on: No, as a matter of fact I'm not.
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