On Queerness
A recent episode of Kathryn Fink’s fantastic podcast, The Heart is a Cauldron, recently got me thinking about queerness. More specifically, my queerness and my relationship to being “queer” enough.
Queer As Smoke(y Eyeliner)
My experience of the word “queer” reveals my age. I grew up just at the edge of when that word was used as a weapon, and many people have worked really hard to reclaim it since. The reclamation seems to be working, as the word is becoming more and more embraced within the LGBTQ+ community. Arguably more people than ever before (at least in recent “Western” history) are becoming more comfortable with breaking down gender and other barriers. It’s exciting to witness.
For me, the word “queer” will likely always set off danger signals. It was something I never wanted to be called because that would mean that someone knew what I was trying to hide. Well, hide in a way. I was at my queerest in high school when it was at once the riskiest and easiest time to experiment with queerness. One day, I’d wear iridescent eyeshadow, blue lipstick with flecks of glitter, extremely sparkly shirts, and pants with legs that were far too wide (and are somehow now back in style! Don’t make the same mistakes we did back then, kids. Those pants fray so easily!). The next day, you could find me in a black fishnet shirt, black eyeliner, pleather pants with a matching vest, and black boots. I think the whole queer thing was pretty god damned obvious to everyone, but the word still cut like a knife whenever I heard it.
A Conscious Choice in Labels
I used to say that coming out when I was 17 made me “straighter” before I had better language for it. I ditched the makeup, the hair dye, and the dapper fashion. For the love of everything wyrd, I embraced khakis of all things in my first semester of college. This was a conscious choice driven by my sexuality, though: if I wanted a more masculine-appearing guy, I likely would have to embrace my own masculinity, something I generally shied away from for a lot reasons growing up. It’s been off to the races ever since. People are generally pretty shocked to find out that I like other guys, and I suppose I still enjoy the subversiveness of that. I’m easily accepted into typical cisgender, heterosexual circles because I’m not threatening as a white male, but at any moment, I can drop the gay bomb and surprise everyone even though being open about my sexuality can still be a little awkward for me.
These days, I still don’t identify with the word “queer” because of the connotation my body and mind have with it. If someone were to yell “queer” across the street, I’m sure my stomach would drop and my heart would start to race, even though I’m pretty comfortable with who I am. “Gay” is what I choose to call myself. It feels safer, even though my experience with being gay hasn’t been all that positive. I often think that it’s both the best and the worst part about me. Best because being gay allows me to more easily empathize with other marginalized communities, and it also has given me the confidence to understand that traditional expectations of culture and society are nothing more than dangerous spells. It arguably has led me down so many current life paths that I’m proud of: my career in nonprofits, my love for the “wild” and “natural” world, my interest in the occult, my fantastic taste in music.
However, being gay has also been an incredible strain for me. This year will count as twenty years since I came out (fuck, I’m old!), and dating this entire time has been a never-ending and dispiriting journey of failure and rejection. It’s sadly only gotten much worse as I’ve gotten older. At the same time, my experience with the LGBTQ+ community has been less-than-pleasant in a lot of ways. Understandably, we carry a lot of trauma, and we often unknowingly wield it onto others. Many LGBTQ+ folks were abandoned by their families because of their queerness. My heart of course goes out to those who’ve experienced this, and I’m always in awe of their resiliency. Thankfully, I’ve always had a very supportive family and never felt the need to dive into the community head-first in order to find a second family. The community has been life-saving and positive for many people, but that hasn’t been my experience. Making friends is challenging at best, and so much of our culture is based around alcohol and drugs. I suppose it’s only fitting that my experience of gayness is a spectrum like how all aspects of queerness work.
My Queerness Today
If I made the choice so long ago to embody masculinity more than femininity, can I even be queer? Gender fluidity is in many ways at the heart of the queer experience. Have I completely forsaken myself?
These days, I suppose my queerness isn’t as external as it once was. Instead, I think I’ve embraced it on the inside. The seeds I planted when I was younger with spirituality and the occult have grown into unshakable forests that I frequently explore now in my imagination. We LGBTQ+ folks often serve as ambassadors to the spirit realms for many societies due to our inherent liminality. Knowing this fact, I’ve often felt that I’m not “queer” enough to truly qualify as someone who exists as such an ambassador. I often experience a bit of imposter syndrome when it comes to magic and the occult. In actuality, I’m an absolute wizard these days. In fact, just today I did a Tarot reading for myself, left out some offerings to my ancestors, and read a bunch on genii loci (spirits of place). What is magic if not being queer as fuck and embracing the absolute batshit strangeness of reality? I try to do that every day.
Tonight, I decided to invoke my inner 16-year old queer while writing this. I have memories of listening to Madonna’s Ray of Light with incense burning in my darkened teenage bedroom reading about Kabbalah (it was the thing to do in the late nineties and early aughts, trust me). So, I lit some incense in my apartment and played Ray of Light on my HomePod like the fancy boy that I am. In fact, after writing all this out, I feel pretty drawn to picking up some nail polish for the first time in almost two decades. Maybe that’s a small place to start. It’s a shame my stereotypically-queer ass already went to Target today.