A Queer and Meaningless Bark

When I was in my teens I used to scour the library for gay themed books in the hopes there would be some sex scenes in them. The stories of struggle with personal and public identity meant nothing to me. The  handful of books I ran across often had characters I didn't identify with other than the fact that they were guys who were into guys. One exception was The Best Little Boy in the World an autobiography by John Reid (a pen name for Andrew Tobias ) because the guy telling the story was just a guy. He didn't even kiss other guys because "Cowboys don't kiss." By the end of my teens I took some other looks at gay culture beyond porn. When I was in Seattle I checked out the Seattle Gay News and some gay lifestyle magazines. But I still didn't see guys I had anything in common with or a culture that appealed to many beyond the fact that guys could hook up with guys. Back then finding others I connected with because of my sexuality really wasn't a big...

My high school friend-with-benefits Nate was pretty successful at fooling around with a lot of other high school guys. I'd guess in the cold light of day some of those guys regretted the fooling around, that's not uncommon during the adolescent “experimentation” phase. I doubt any of them ever said anything about it to anyone or even joked with their friends about "gay Nate." Nate had a good sense for the guys who wouldn't care who was sucking their dicks and the guys who might have more than a little curiosity about dicks themselves. The guys in the first category would be the types who wouldn't think anything of the experience once they came. Guys in the second category would be extremely cautious about drawing attention to their sexuality. Tossing accusatory words and names towards a guy you had some traceable connection to could mean attention might focus on you. “Hey! He's a fag...And you used to go swim in his pool with him...

Being queer in high school in the early 80s was probably unpleasant for most queer guys. Of course most those queer guys weren't openly queer but, teenagers being the beasts they are, it really didn't matter if the targets of rumors, or worse, were definitely queer. Especially if it meant attention was drawn away from rumor mongers' and attackers' own queer secrets. For the most part being secretly queer in high school really wasn't all that bad for me because I'm one of those guys who has always “passed” for straight. Even though I was one of the few guys in my high school drama class, was known as an artist, and was a vocal hater of high school sports, I never, for most of high school, encountered any queer slurs or was aware of rumors.  I also wasn't romantically attracted to guys which spared me the queer adolescent anguish of “a love that dares not speak its name.” I definitely liked seeing guys naked, fantasizing about gettin...

Some years ago a couple of my sisters and their kids were visiting Seattle and we all ended up at a street fair or something on Capital Hill, Seattle's tragically hip and heavily gay neighborhood. One of the community info stands, something to do with the gay community, was giving away balloons so my sisters stopped for the kids. A guy working the stand looked at me and said “Didn't you go to Mason High School?”  I looked at him and recognized him. His name was Dean and he'd been a year or two behind me. Dean and I had no dealings in high school though we'd both been in a volunteer program that worked at the local nursing home and hospital, mainly filling water jugs for residents and patients. (I'm not sure why I was in that program, probably because someone claimed it'd look good on a college application. Or maybe I was a slightly better person than I recall being.) Despite Mason High school not having been enormous (around 600 students t...

The Entertainment industry sort of sucks when it comes to queer male characters, particularly TV. Yes, it's great that TV puts gay characters out there for everyone to see. But even in more recent enlightened times it seems we still see the same cliche gay characters. TV is all about extremes. There's no interest in subtly. Just ask the owners of A&E, a network that used to show recordings of Shakespeare plays. Now they show a nonstop stream of shows like Dog the Bounty Hunter . Shakespeare was shoved off stage and for good measure they sent a bear after him. In the extreme world of TV there's little room for ordinary guys who happen to be queer. Which sort of sucks for the young queer guy or older guy who's just figuring out he's queer. Guys like that  pretty much only get the message: Gay is...Drag, divas, fashion, drag, celebrity worship, clubbing, drag, endless one night stands, bitchiness, and drag.  A guy pondering his identity who doesn't i...

My childhood and teen years weren't nightmarish, but they weren't great, either. For the most part it would have all been the same if I hadn't been queer, in fact I think if I'd been 100% straight things might have been worse.  I don't dwell on my life before age 20, I rarely even think about it. At age 20  I went to college where my brain emerged from a weird fog of sorts that it had been in during my teen years. At college I had the best time I'd ever had in my life and I made friends who decades later are still my friends. I almost never think about high school. On rare occasions I ponder certain guys I had a thing for or I'd fooled around with.  I've never attended a high school reunion because I have no interest in what my former classmates are up to. I had a couple friends in my class but mostly I had friends a year or two older or younger than me. (One friend, Lydia, is still a good friend. No, she wasn't my special hi...

Seattle's Gay Pride was exactly as I imagined a Gay Pride event would be which is exactly why I've never attended one. The parade was pretty much like a parade and I've never liked parades. But it was somewhat different than most parades in that the Pride Parade was mostly (at least the first hour and 15 minutes I saw before I left)... 1. Noble people riding in cars with their long list of noble deeds being read to the crowd by a drag queen (of course). (I am very much for noble people doing noble things but they make for very dull viewing.) 2. Employees of corporate sponsors who support the LGBTQ community. (I also think that's great but it too makes for a boring show.) Many people in the crowd seemed to think Pride = whacky costume/apparel day. There was a lot of stuff being worn merely because it was odd though it wasn't particularly LGBTQ (which I guess would be slogan t-shirts, boys in dresses, and of course rainbow rainbow rain...