LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Weekend Beach Bum |
by Eric Morrison |
"Quiet as it's kept..." Thus begins Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, a novel whose magic-real style and brutally honest tone captured my college freshman heart. "Quiet as it's kept" is a saying traditional in African-American culture. When a speaker uses this phrase, she is about to tell you something that you already know but that no one discusses. She is readying herself to present you with a deep truth encompassing a culture or community.
As I move into my later twenties and become more accustomed to gay culture, I often hear the phrase echoing in my gay mind and soul. The powerful, epiphany-inducing words bounce from the walls of gay bars and clubs. The vaporous axiom floats through the damp, warm air of bathhouses, and is etched in the steam collected on sauna room mirrors. The unwritten words hide between the lines in countless queer bookstores. Peer into your Sunday afternoon cocktail, and you may find the chilling phrase spelled out in ice cubes. Quiet as it's kept, the gay community has too many secrets. In the 1980's, "Silence Equals Death" became a rallying cry in the fight against AIDS. Certainly, failure to talk about safer sex leads to lives cut short. The gay community has lost thousands of its kindred to the pernicious plague. Between AIDS, hate crime murders, suicides, and death from drugs and alcohol, we know a great deal about dying gay. We know what kills our bodies. But the silence that pervades our everyday livesthat's the silence that kills our psyche and pride, our spirits and souls. We need to talk about living gay. My ex-boyfriend contended that his gayness was just another part of his personality, like having blue eyes. He didn't understand my political dedication and my need to identify with a community. "In this life," he paraphrased Buddha, "you can live as grass or as a tree. Trees are tall, proud, and admired, but they run the risk of being struck by lightning, falling in strong wind, or being chopped down. Grass, because it is lowly and humble, can weather the storms and survive longer." I adored my ex-boyfriend too much at the time to retort, "Yes, and grass gets stepped on a lot." People who do not want to talk about being gay are the last people to work for the community. They may pen a meek letter to a state congressperson once in a blue moon or don a coat for charity twice a year, but they will not throw themselves in the trenches. Even when we do something to foster gay pride, we usually don't want to identify as an individual. I am shocked at how many newspaper editors don't ask for a photo when I write an editorial. They assume I don't want my face with my words, and I do. A failure to talk about living gay results in a failure to improve the lives of other gay people. If you can't hold a conversation about your gayness without using the words "trick," "trade," "top," or "bottom," you sure as hell don't have the intellectual depth or fortitude of character to improve the community. As late author and activist Paul Monette points out in Last Watch of the Night, we live in a political world. Divorcing yourself from that world and levitating above it like an enlightened Buddha is self-serving and selfish. I cannot abide gay people who divorce themselves from the community because we have problems. For whatever reason, no one wants to talk about being gay. Recently, AIDS Delaware sponsored a Rehoboth coffeehouse for gay men. The event was organized and publicized, but only one gay man arrived at the appointed hour. I guess he ended up doing the same thing I usually do when I want to talk about living gay in a heterosexual world. I talk to myself. A fellow Letters columnist recently wrote about how she shies away from pride events in major cities. She's not a misanthrope or a hermit, and she doesn't suffer panic attacks in crowds. She's just tired of how the Silence = Death equation, sometime during the last three decades, morphed into Pride = Party. The next time a pride event takes place in your city, notice how the ads are riddled with happy hours, gorgeous go-go boys, and dancing until dawn. We should be perusing advertisements for discussion groups to overcome the trauma of growing up gay, the cultural challenges to a loving same-sex relationship, and shattered self-esteem. If you think my feathers are a bit ruffled, you're right. My gay soul is as angry as a wet hen. I just finished reading Maya Angelou's The Heart of a Woman, fourth in her autobiographical series. I was enthralled by Maya's adventurous spirit. Her lifelong commitment to African-American rights has been unyielding, and her humanity has not suffered in the process. In fact, Maya thrives on working tirelessly for her people. She recognizes that stepping outside yourself and working to help your community helps you to heal yourself and others. In her early adulthood, Maya enjoyed many friends and much fun at bars, parties, and dancehalls. But Maya and her friends talked about political issues over cocktails. They recognized that for members of a subculture, the line between personal and political is almost indecipherable. I attended my first tea dance last weekend, and I don't recall a word about where we stand as a community, just a lot of talk about that guy's hot-to-trot boyfriend or that girl's great Gucci bag. I didn't meet any really interesting people, although I did reencounter those two terrible twins ubiquitous at gay partiesBoredom and Banality. We don't talk about being gay because we've had the wool of virtual equality pulled over our eyes. Most American subcultures don't talk about their less than stellar status anymore. After the great civil rights leaders of the 60s and 70s were assassinatedthe Kennedys, King, Malcolm X, Milk, et al.we threw ourselves into earning money to earn equality. It hasn't worked, and it's still not working. I don't fear for my life or my financial future as much as gay people did several decades ago, but I fear for the future of my gay family and the future of the gay soul more than ever. Do this wet hen writer and yourself a favor. The next time you're at a party, club, or tea dance, turn to the person next to you and ask them about their experience as a gay person. Take home a book from Lambda Rising that's not from the erotic section, and actually read it. Research in your community and volunteer for a gay cause. Do it for yourself and for the future of the gay spirit. Eric lives in North Wilmington during the week, and in Rehoboth Beach on the weekends. E-mail StarchildB612@gateway.net. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 10, July 27, 2001. |