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The F Word

Friendship is rarely tidy. And I can be a terrible friend. I don’t keep up the way I should. Texting isn’t my forte, and the OCD-ADHD double-punch sometimes sidelines phone conversations mid-sentence, demanding that my attention be turned to a dusty sill or a wilted plant. Or narcissism wins, and I make the conversation about me, me, me before interrupting myself and asking what it was that we were talking about. I’ve offended plenty, amused a few. But I’ve been supported by more.

Maybe it’s the incremental perspective gained through the passage of another year, or my disdain for the holidays manifesting in some odd, Scrooge-esque retrospective glance, questioning what it is that I have to be happy about. What exactly did 2011 do for me, anyway? But then I realize that it’s not about what the year did, but what I did with it, and what others did for me in the process. What they taught me.

Shooting the shit with friends reveals more to me about the world and my haphazard navigation of it than any anthropology seminar ever could. I’ve become attuned to how I search the depths of daily minutiae, try to find some semblance of vindication for what I do and who I’ve become. I hope for a resounding, amplified “Werk!” to each tiny action that comprises some infinitesimal fraction of my daily life. But this year I didn’t have to search quite as intensely as I’ve had to before. Because friends expressed it through unspoken acts, expecting no thanks; they did so without prompting, because they wanted to.

They called my flu-afflicted self from their cars to ensure I got the food they’d left at my door. They said “Hi” in a crowded theater and welcomed me. They sat on a couch in a crowded room to get to know me. They talked me down from panic-attacks. They called in a panic to check in as Mother Nature let loose. They sent unsolicited gifts just to make me laugh. They donated. They stayed on the phone when I started crying. They didn’t laugh when I tried make a point. They talked over the static, across oceans. They tolerated my angsty tirades about the unfairness of it all. They commiserated over boys’ stupidity and ambiguity. They helped me move on. They said I looked dinged-up, that I needed a break. They told me I had to learn to say “No.” They pushed a glass of scotch into my shaking hands and gave me a place to spend the night. They hooted along at a concert. They told me to get over it. They said I was doing good things. They made me feel less alone. They pulled me out of my comfort zone. They tried. They let me go.

More than anything, though, they’re still here. Waiting patiently for me to subvert my obstinacy and do what I have to do. Because they know by now that I need to learn to slacken the reigns. And I’ll do it soon enough. What the days’ revelations don’t unlock gradually, the fragile economic times wrench open. So I’ll dust myself off, let the burn subside, and embrace uncertainty. Because I know full-well that, even if I should fail miserably, I’ll have my own cheering section rooting me on. They’re integral.

They’re my people. Friends are family. And my family is lovingly extended.

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A Note of Thanks

Saccharine clichés abound this time of year, and nauseate those who’d prefer to wrap themselves in a curmudgeonly cocoon and swill a vodka pom, musing all the while about the ridiculousness of the whole shebang. So maybe I’m projecting a bit. Or would if I actually felt like that this year.

The truth is that I have always had plenty for which I should be thankful, and have always been fortunate enough to have surrounding me a glut of good, kind-hearted people who want nothing more than to share with me this crazy adventure called life. Until my perception of the fluidity of experience finally crystallized in my mind–how life is porous, always absorbing and contorting more with every second’s passing–I hinged on the fact that, every year, I seemed to never change.

But when I cast a retrospective glance over my shoulder at five years of living in North Carolina, peruse my assortment of photographs–from my naïve UNC-CH grad school days to my shovel-bum years, from my Dahling-inspired Sanford porch sittings to Bragging it up paisley-style in a sea of camouflage, from initially awkward immersion in Raleigh life to full-fledged LGBTQ activist–experiences galore smack me across the face, waking me to the reality that I’m constantly changing. That I’m experience incarnate.

A sleep-deprived graduate student reeling from feelings of disenfranchisement became a jaded, disaffected shovel-bum during the height of the recession, who landed a heartier job that requires constantly navigating the irony of working with Big Brother. But somewhere in that welter of work-related nonsense, I realized that my life isn’t about any of it. Being someone who effects change has become the fulcrum around which everything else in my life operates: a friend, a son, a brother, an activist, a voice of reason, an apropos catty commentator, a smile-inducer, a willing listener. Someone of whom I can be proud in a given moment.

So, in this clarifying moment, I’ll cast aside the cynicism and chastise myself for being a brat. And instead thank each and every person who has been there through any part of my life’s journey, whose kindness, presence, or bullheadedness affected me, played even the tiniest role in molding me into this neurotic, dramatic, accessible person who’s comfortable being all of that.

Who’s always here to do or be just the same for you.

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Preoccupied

I’ll say outright that my knowledge of the Occupy movement is still very much developing. For the most part, I’ve stayed quiet about the whole shebang. But the gamut of pro/con postings by friends have grated on me in unexpected ways. And while I almost wish there was a Dummy’s Guide to the Occupy Movement for me to read, two issues I feel passionately about revolve around the movement’s periphery like unacknowledged planets: respect and reflexivity.

I do my best to be a sponge for both sides’ arguments and later distill out the more insightful bits from hypocrisy–be as objective as possible. But whether it’s all the postmodern theory I’ve read, or that I acknowledge that humans are social creatures who assess everything through some sort of biased filter, I don’t believe there is such a thing as objectivity. So here’s my circuitous take through my barely middle class/gay male/dual degree-holding lens.

I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I would not be where I am today without the financial planning and judicious decisions made before I was born by my parents and grandparents. Like most people, I’ve navigated the tumultuous financial waters of adulthood and have barely made ends meet. Nearly a year after the markets tanked, the ripples of economic turmoil began lapping at my job’s doorstep. Furloughs were issued. Leans months ensued. And then, ultimately, layoffs started. By fortuitous circumstances, I was able to jump into another job. Others weren’t so fortunate.

It’s not until I faced the very real possibility of unemployment that I realized how drastically the socioeconomic field has changed, and how it will never be the same. My parents constantly express disbelief at how closely my sister and I have come to joining the unemployed, each of us with two degrees and capable heads on our shoulders. They cannot believe that there aren’t jobs out there–that nebulous place where some sort of job relevant to one’s expertise is waiting to be plucked and eaten like ripe fruit off a tree. I still have a job, but it’s not guaranteed. Nothing can be anymore (and never really was, anyway).

Until a car accident gifted me debt, I was able to make things work and stay in the black. But now I have a car payment, and debt in my foreseeable future. Was it fair that a driver with a suspended license made me total my car, gifting me with said debt? No. Is it fair that I have a job when so many others more qualified do not? No. Is it fair that older generations, having lost their 401(k)s and savings in the recession, cannot afford to retire and are working in positions that a multitude of qualified applicants from younger generations would love to have? No. Is it fair that one percent of the population has more wealth than the other ninety-nine percent? Hell no.

But who said life is fair? No one. The reality is just that: no one owes you a damn thing. You have to go out and try to make things work. But that doesn’t mean it’s right to castigate those who protest, who have tried to make it work, who are chronically un- or under-employed. Gross overgeneralizations equating laziness with unemployment are distasteful and fallacious, and often made by those being supported by mommies and daddies in the top one percent. For those of you who feel that the Occupy protestors are just a bunch of hippies who need to get jobs, look around when you say that. Take stock and envision how quickly your life can change because of corruption and greed higher up the employment food-chain. Think about going to work only to find a pink slip on your desk. For those of you partnered, think about that situation and multiple it by two. It’s not unthinkable. That chilling thought haunts my mind; like many of my generation, I don’t have a robust safety net–just very modest savings I squirrel away when I can, but nothing that can sustain me for an extended period. It’s not for lack of trying; it’s just that I can’t afford it. Most days, I feel as though I’m operating on borrowed time.

Always in the back of my mind is a mirror reflecting my leanest times, infusing the meatiest ones with a heavy dose of realism. If you feel entitled enough to eschew the possibilities that your leanest times couldn’t return instantaneously, I hope that you can at least acknowledge the fact that others (like me) aren’t fortunate enough to live in such a dream world. I hope that you can respect the fact that most members of the Occupy movement don’t want second and third helpings of the proverbial pie, just a sliver for basic sustenance.

We all require nourishment, and I’d like to think respect and reflexivity would collectively facilitate everyone being called to the proverbial table to break bread, whether it’s a loaf or a crusty leaving.

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Moving Gaily Forward

A little over six years ago, I sat my parents and sister down at our large antique dining room table in an incredibly dramatic fashion and announced that I had something to tell them, something that’d been eating away at me, eroding my relationship with them. I’d informed my sister of my plans, and she stood by me stoically.

Being gay in a small Alabama town isn’t easy. It’s not easy anywhere, really. But watching others who identified as members of the LGBT community being persecuted at my high school made me close the closet door tighter, shove a chair under its knob even. But I always knew, just like you always hear. From the time I was about eight or nine years old, I knew I wasn’t like other boys. Contact sports were never my thing, but I craved the attention boys would give me, even if they were about the tackle me because I actually caught a football (this happened exactly once, and I ran to the wrong end zone). But then we got older, and any semblance of prolonged contact was automatically suspect. Either tacit or explicit, the assumption was clear: he’s a fag.

I wasn’t called a fag until high school. I even used it in my own jeers among peers. Because that’s what you do when you’re desperate to hide a part of yourself, when you see other, prouder, braver people demoralized in front of the lunchtime crowds. I became grateful that, somehow, I passed. But everyone’s time comes due. And then you become the fag people laugh at when you walk down the hall, the fag people impersonate with overly embellished, lispy inflections and limp wrists. But you deny it; it’s the only way you know how to cope.

And then you graduate, and move away from the small town to a bona fide city, still in Alabama. There, you make life-long friends during heartfelt conversations and experiences, and leave others behind in quintessentially angsty tirades. You grow a little over the years. More people come into your life: first crushes, first exes. You realize through these experiences that who you are at your core isn’t problematic or immoral; it’s just a part of you–not the whole shebang, but a crucial building-block to use as a basis for constructing your future self.

And then you prepare to tell the people who’ve been there from the beginning, and hope they accept you. Because, during the ride back to that small Alabama town, you steel your nerves for the potential fallout–what you’ll grab and leave with, how hard you’ll try not to let them see you fall apart. You stay as distant as you’ve been for the past few years during those first few days back, trying to wrap your mind around the fact that this is it: the moment of truth.

Then we all sit down. We’re all here, at the table. And I stare at my plate. I trip over my introductory blurb–memorized for months now, but as distant as Pluto. The silence becomes palpable. I glance up every now and then to make sure they’re still there, that I’m not still in my Tuscaloosa apartment talking into the dark. And then my voice cracks at the precipice of that final phrase. But I fall in, the words following me down and out.

“I’m gay.”

Silence. I look up, straight into their eyes, catch a tear or two. And I want to scream. But then, another voice breaks the silence.

“I hope you know that this doesn’t mean that we love you any less.” Mom: the champion.

Still, it takes time for it to sink in. There’re more tears and questions, and all the typical things that follow. And there’s a bit of distance. But then, gradually, there’s more acceptance and interest in my romantic life. There’s the usual prodding about “getting out there” and questions about “seeing anyone.” They express an interest in becoming more involved, educating others. They want to make a difference for others like me. They talk about opening their home in the middle of the Alabama woods to disowned, homeless, or threatened LGBT youth. They are no longer the “them” against “us.” I’m immensely proud.

And I think to myself, and say aloud, “I’m fucking lucky.” I’m out, proud, and loved.

And I love each and every one of you.

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Calling All Allies: Yes, You.

I looked down at the three LGBTQ encyclopedia volumes donated to the LGBT Center of Raleigh in my name and could feel the lump form in my throat. Stoicism and I have a complicated history, and I’m usually able to buck up and tough it out. But these three shrink-wrapped books laid waste to any resolve I had not to cry. Maybe it was my vodka cran. Maybe it was the chilly weather. Maybe I was a gay, unhinged.

No; not really. What crystallized in that moment and got the waterworks going was the realization that my family had made tangible their complicity in the fight for LGBTQ equality. My family has been behind me for six years, since the moment after I sat across from them at our dining room table, summoned the courage, and squeaked out, “I’m gay.” But these books were something else. They were a call to arms.

A call to LGBTQ allies: “Y’all are up to bat!” With the passage of the anti-LGBTQ bill through the NC Senate last Tuesday, on the heels of a well-attended rally against the amendment, it’s more evident than ever that we need support, not just from renowned equality groups, but from every single friend, relative, acquaintance, and coworker. Sometimes the LGBTQ community can be overly insular, a leave-it-to-us mentality undoubtedly borne from historical precedent. Bigotry targeting LGBTQ individuals has tracked through time: From concentration camps, where pink and black triangles relegated LGBTQ individuals to some of the most intensive, tortuous work details; to the streets outside the Stonewall Inn, where emotional thresholds were reached and trampled over; to last Tuesday on Halifax Mall, where I stood with friends and supporters rallying against bigotry being ensconced in constitutional terms.

Nothing is accomplished by looking dejected and shaking your head when you hear news defaming LGBTQ individuals. To effect real, meaningful change, you have to act. Whether that means contending with a bigot bullying someone, or driving that extra mile past Chick-fil-A to eat at an establishment that doesn’t discriminate against a minority group, you have to commit wholeheartedly; there’s no room for half-assed activism. You may not think little things like that do anything. But for every persecuted person who learns they have allies in strangers, for every cent that goes into the pockets of another business that promotes equality in lieu of funding discriminatory legislation, we all become stronger. We show the bigots that we’re still here. That we’re not going anywhere. That it is they who will have to leave.

I’m not asking much–only to do your part. Everyone can. In the wake of the NC Senate’s vote, I’ve been heartened by responses from my straight friends, new and old. Some of them have had their eyes opened; some have had enough of the hateful rhetoric. One even sparred with a coworker over the issue when the subject came up in my absence. Yet some allies act as though it’s not their battle. Perhaps it’s a matter of reflexivity: they subscribe to the notion that “I’m not part of the community, so why should I care?” While you may not be, you likely know someone who identifies as a member of the LGBTQ community. You may have children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, godchildren who are questioning. Take action for them, for those who haven’t yet found their voice. And when you feel that slightest bit of hesitation to take up the activist mantle, just imagine a legislator pointing to your loved one and declaring, “You are not my equal.” Let that sink in. Think about how such hateful ignorance has reverberated through time, and what problematic practices and events have been guided by it. And imagine that being inflicted on someone whom you hold dear.

It’s not easy to be different. I can surely tell some tales. And it’s also not easy to stand with the minority. But the fact of the matter is plenty of people are doing just that, and are becoming more informed and are reaching more people. My mother is attending a conference with other parents of LGBTQ children to promote LGBTQ tolerance within the Catholic Church. One of my dearest friends told me that she plans to collaborate with other educators to initiate the formation of a Safe Space at her university. And another friend told me today that she is becoming a volunteer at the LGBT Center of Raleigh; she’s no longer content to watch the show from the sidelines–she’s had enough.

Unknowingly, each of these brave individuals may be saving the lives of those who feel as though they have nowhere to turn, who’ve become victims of silence. Silence is bigotry’s bedfellow and deafens more than a hundred Westboro bullhorns. Because in that silence, people are lost; they are forgotten; they are deemed unworthy of support. Moreover, overt, senseless violence and apathy share a disturbingly thematic thread: an inability to empathize, to realize the consequences of what you choose to do or not do. If you see or experience injustice, do something about it–devote your voice to chants of LGBTQ solidarity, informed debate, and biting wit requisite of ripostes to close encounters of the bigoted kind. Don’t back down to hate. Fear-mongers spewing hatred deserve to be called on their accusations. Because their arguments have no legislative or constitutional grounding; it’s all theological, which has no place in government.

Now, nothing I’ve written is groundbreaking, and I didn’t intend it to be. I’m not a bleeding-heart liberal; I’m a hemorrhaging liberal. Because I hope the mess will attract some attention to the scene and prompt others to ask why I’m bleeding out so forcefully. And I’ll tell them, let them chew on my message–really digest it.

And hope they’ll do something about it.

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Pride

With just a few weeks until the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots–the pivotal confrontations referenced as the impetuses for the US LGBT rights movement–I’ve noticed a gradual increase in Facebook posts by LGBTQ allies and LGBTQ individuals, the messages of which are infused with support and calls for acceptance. For those posts and those allies, I am grateful.

But one thing that gives me pause, not just with these messages, but in many rally speeches and calls for equality, is the attention given to people who identify as GAY–in all caps. GAY, not LESBIAN, not BISEXUAL, not TRANSGENDER, not QUEER. But GAY.

Debates about rhetoric plague every identity group and community, and the LGBTQ community isn’t immune. “Gay” has seemingly become the semantic blanket-term for all LGBTQ people, even though it most commonly references gay men. To map “GAY” onto these various identity groups adds to the welter of misunderstanding about how LGBTQ individuals identify themselves; only LGBTQ individuals can identify themselves as such, and decide if they want to be a part of a “community”–a term which is simultaneously inclusive and exclusive, a quintessential example of the us:them binary opposition entangled in one word.

And it’s when I start to deconstruct the nitty-gritty, ask myself the hard questions, that I come to realize the great differences within the LGBTQ community: the power dynamics, the alliances, the ambiguity. All too often gay men are given more attention than lesbians, and lesbians and gay men garner much more of the public spotlight than bisexual or transgender individuals. And then there are those who prefer to identify as queer rather than gay, lesbian, transgender, or bisexual.

Perhaps this “GAY” mapping is because it is “easier” for news anchors, reporters, and even members of the LGBTQ community to “get” the relationship between two men or two women than it is to understand a woman who has partners of different sexes, or an individual born male who identifies as female, who is in-transition to becoming the woman she has always felt she has been and is in a relationship with a woman who identifies as a lesbian. Identity isn’t easy; it’s always in flux. But everyone deserves recognition. We’re all people, with the only perceived differences between us being equal parts melanin and social stigma.

So, let’s not forget the “B,” “T,” and “Q.” Because between them and the “L” and “G” is where pride thrives, bound up in the connective threads that unite us, make us a community with committed allies, and not just jumbled letters. However you identify yourself, own it.

And be proud.

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Billed

I should be in bed. But then I realize that tomorrow I, along with other second-class citizens, will fight for my civil rights. So, as sleep escapes me, I visualize signs and slogans, fists raised aloft in solidarity. All for equality. All for recognition.

But there’s something else bubbling beneath my insomnia: anger. As right and just as it is to take the high ground, be mature, channel reason and optimism in lieu of cynicism and doubt, what I really want to do is scream, “Wake up, bigots! It’s 2011!” And why shouldn’t screaming work for our side? After all, the slurs, taunts, and biblical verses conservatives blast through bullhorns resound in the halls of the state capitol, contorting a very straightforward decision into a sick, religiously-tainted, “morality”-governed bout of tug-of-war. But the victors’ prize isn’t a trophy; it’s the continued subjugation of a minority, the dissolution of their basic rights and privileges–the same afforded to drunken couples in Vegas drive-thru chapels, but denied to committed partners.

A variation of love shared by the majority should not be mapped onto us all or given precedence. After all, everyone loves another in multiple, complicated ways; there is no one way to practice love, no one way to express it. Love is nebulous and messy. But we all deserve to have it recognized, not just by our friends and families, but by the legislators and other elected officials that we, their constituents, look to as arbiters of justice and equality.

Hope as currency has been financing the LGBT community for decades. Let us all fund a better tomorrow.

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Dear Bigots

Dear State Legislators:

Hi, I’m Matt. You don’t know me, but you think you do. You think you know how perverse I am, know my inner thoughts, my “agenda.” But, really, you’re just bored. And tired. Sad, really.

At a time in our country’s history when things have crumbled, I have the fantastical notion that we’d prefer to band together, not descend into divisive, dogma-directed attacks. But that’s what optimism gets you these days: false hope. In case y’all haven’t noticed, it’s 2011. Interracial marriage is legal, women can vote and are agents of their own bodies (at least during this administration). But that itsy-bitsy, persistent problem keeps bubbling up: gay rights.

I’m not going to throw statistics at you, not going to talk at you about STDs. Because, really, I know you prefer to shy-away from informed discussion. When it comes down to it, all of the empirical evidence ever amassed can’t get the most vivid, most disturbing piece of evidence out of your minds: me, in bed, with a man.

And this is where it all gets tricky, where you try and contort your religiosity into saving grace; it’s all for the children, after all–well, except for those most challenged, those most in need of care. You’ll leave them to the gays and lesbians, the transgender community whose politics you can’t ever understand and wouldn’t want to even if you could. You’ll let them all move into the ramshackle neighborhoods, pretty them up, raise those property values, and pay their taxes. But then, when they tap you on the shoulder–you, their neighbor–and ask, “Hey, how about equality?” those voyeuristic bedroom images of yours rush in, pervade your every thought, pollute the air you breathe, and make you turn away. But you rationalize your ideology, undergird it with The Word or your version of morality, and map it on to every living, breathing thing in your path. You’ll appropriate anyone’s personal life if it bolsters your journey to the legislature, up those steps, right to your seat. Because you feel as though my personal life is your life if it can benefit you in some way, get you a cushier seat, make you feel dignified, like you’re one with the people.

Really, though, if you’re so disgusted by where I put it, then get your nose out of there. Go on with your own life and engage the issues that affect us all. Don’t fall victim to the bully’s dilemma: Because I’m insecure with myself, I can’t face the music, can’t see that I’m not in control, I’m not the voice of reason, then let me pick on someone else, subject them to the rack, deny them certain inalienable rights. And sit back and pat myself on the back, sleep better at night knowing that I have a leg up on someone else.

But the truth is this: You’re no different than every other bully or fear-monger spewing your nonsense from on high. We’ve made it this far, not on your “charity,” not because you allowed us to, but because we’re tough–all of us: the lesbians, the transsexuals and transgendered, the drag queens and kings, the bisexuals, the queens, the bears, the leather daddies, the twinks. The queers; the “others” you can’t quite understand. Whether you like it or not, we’re here to stay.

You might not think you’ve lost control, but you have. At some point you’re hate-inspired speech, your rhetoric, your inequality bills will be eclipsed and will make history; but it won’t be the history you’d prefer it to be. It’ll be a quintessential example a future, more informed legislator will one day hold aloft, read a section, and wait for the boos, the hisses, the shaking of heads, the intakes of breath. Because it’s hate-speech, and it’ll go on record as such. Maybe not today, but it will be known for that, and that only. Because the one thing that’s constant in these tumultuous times is change.

And it’s coming, sequins and all.