Believing in Fairies: Where Have All the Sissies Gone?
My partner and I are having an argument. This in and of itself is not unusual. I'm an Italian boy from New Jersey, Floyd's a Jew from Long Island; we're both genetically wired to yell across rooms at the people we love, all the time making appropriately emphatic and vaguely threatening hand gestures.
Our latest argument, however, involves getting another dog. We both agree we want one; we both agree we want a bulldog. Where we differ is the naming of this still-theoretical canine. Floyd, perhaps because he's been saddled with the unfortunate name of Floyd all his life, favors a sensible bulldog name like Bruno or Spike. Naturally, I have another idea in mind.
I want to name our bulldog Precious.
I don't know why. I just love the idea of standing on our doorstep in a paisley silk robe screaming "Precious!" at the top of my lungs and having a floppy-faced drooling mass of dog come trotting around the corner. Yes, that's a good boy, Precious. Daddy loves you.
My straight friends object to the name because it seems to them a rather cruel joke to play on a defenseless animal, which I suppose it is. On the other hand, most of them have dogs with names that make their dogs sound like little old Jewish people: Max, Tillie, Sadie...I imagine the dogs talking to one another in the park: "Sadie, you vant we should chase the ball?" "Vat, in this heat? Tillie, are you crazy?"
The reaction of my gay friends is stranger still. "That just reinforces the stereotype of the gay man as an effeminate swish," says one. ("Well, excuse me, Miss Thing," reply I.) "Marc, why don't you get a real dog like a black lab? That way you can take him with you running or when you go camping."
Running? Camping? Black lab? I ask you, when did queers get so butch? Whatever happened to sissies?
I was at a party recently and mentioned StraightActing.com, "Your online politically incorrect source," where you can take a little quiz to see whether you rank as a "macho man or a lilly queen." The notion piqued everyone's interest, so we fired up the computer and turned it into a party game. And who do you suppose rated the most effeminate in the room? The guy who wants to name his bulldog Precious, of course.
I wasn't terribly surprised at my score, but I was surprised at just how "straight-acting" my friends rated. I looked around the room at the wrists flapping like so many birds taking wing and I thought, "Am I really the faggiest one here? Or am I just the most honest because I wasn't afraid to admit that I'd seen The Bridges of Madison County and own a bottle of Nair?"
Either way, I couldn't help but notice the palpable satisfaction in those who rated the most "straight-acting" and the slight superiority they exhibited towards poor, swishy me. Now, it's one thing to feel demeaned by butch straight guys, but it's another thing entirely to feel demeaned by butch gay guys.
Starting with the mustached clones of the 1970's, gay boys seem determined to out-butch the straight guys. Gay porn, for instance, is rife with construction workers, cops and athletes, but just try finding a hot video about a florist and a flight attendant.
Sure, pretty boys abound in porn, but they're always being dominated by some straight-acting top. Just once I'd like to see a porn video in which an interior decorator screws all the frat boys and then re-does their draperies and pillows. That's my fantasy.
Certainly I'm pleased that young gay men feel comfortable wearing baseball hats backwards and talking about fly-fishing, but when I hear them disparage the Hermes scarf-wearing antiques lover, it chills my blood. "Why do they have to act that way?" they say. "It's got nothing to do with sleeping with men."
But to these young men I say that the screaming nelly queen is probably braver than they'll ever be because a big fairy can't "pass" in the straight world. The big swish defiantly announces to a hostile society who he is and what he does, just by being his own fabulous effeminate self.
Many of the young gay men who drive trucks and play pick-up games of basketball seem to have forgotten, indeed perhaps they don't even know, that the freedoms they enjoy today were first won by Judy Garland-loving drag queens who threw the first bricks and bottles at the Stonewall Inn. To me, these young men in their dockers and Nikes are standing on the shoulders of giants, giants who are taller still because they're wearing heels.
And that, my friends, is The Gospel According to Marc.
Marc Acito and his partner have made it fourteen years without the benefit of marriage, thank you very much. He can be reached in care of Letters or atMarcAcito@home.com.
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 2, Mar. 9, 2001