Track Mangoes

I was consuming my monthly shot of "Details," when I cam across this frightening article, frightening because, to me, it is proof that the American Gay (not to be confused with American Queer) is circling the cultural drain.

The article outlined the ways in which "A-Gays," the new urban blend of executive chic and straight-man savvy, didn't seem to critique the old American Gay culture so much as it targeted a very specific "kind" of gay man. In doing so, the article maligns that kind of gay man with the all gay men. The author touts that "A-Gays" are "smarter, sexier, and far more successful" than these Other gays. They're "moneyed...educated," and they certainly don't speak with "a lisp." It seems to me, then, by this criteria, that "B-Gays" must be all of the following: stupid, ugly, unsuccessful, POOR, and swishy (complete with lisp). Oh, not to mention guilt ridden: "Comfortable in their own skin, they're fast becoming the new archetype of cosmopolitan masculinity," writes Mike Albo, as if to suggest that the rest of us have been suffering from Vastly Incorrect guilt such that we wouldn't want to sell out to mainstream culture and, my god, Who Wouldn't Want To Do That?

"[A-Gays] don't own yappy miniature dogs or time-shares in Fort Lauderdale," Albo continues. "Their Savile Row suits are impeccable (A-gays tend to go custom rather than buying off the rack), and they furnish their homes with collectible pieces by designers like Claude Lalanne. They drive to Krav Maga class in Lexus hybrids and read four newspapers a day, including the Wall Street Journal, because they're bosses and entrepreneurs, not employees."

Albo walks on the edge of knife, on one side he is innocently (?) describing a newfound archetype of the American Gay, on the other side he suggests that, perhaps, We Should All Follow Suit. Albo seems to feel abandoned by his bretheren, such that he finds it necessary to paint us déclassé. What. Elitist. Bullshit. It evidences, to me, a shift in the American Gay mindset.

Since Stonewall, the gay movement has sought equality under the law, often shunting the societal taste for homosexuality at large. Gay men were cultural refugees, physically debilitated from AIDS, possessed with a great knack for the plastic and performing arts, and absolutely attuned to Other Gay Men. Today the trend is to seek societal approval. Gay Rehab for homophobes, brought on by the pesky feminist movement, infiltrated schools spouting liberal dogma into the ears of people who wouldn't/couldn't hear it. Makeshift "awareness" building programs like "Day of Silence" were propagated in schools to show that WE WERE OUT THERE! Strangely, Day of Silence was most popular among straight people. And, AH!, what a perfect metaphor for what is happening to gay men.

Gay men are becoming straight. Straight in a cultural sense. They are no longer concerned, primarily, with equality under the law, because they know it is only a matter of time before it happens. Now gay men seek conformity and allegiance from their peers. Feminists have filled their heads with the allusive idea of Eutopic equality, a grand promise of freedom, and we have moved away from the more realistic goal of political equality. Cultural arch comes from outsider status. Some people want to give that up. Somewhere along the line we started defining ourselves with straight terms. Money. Success. Fame. Tools in the capital market replaced the paintbrush and the magnifying glass.

In the acclaimed show, "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy," which only ran for a few years, offered a domestically challenged heterosexual male the opportunity to live a day like a fag. He was then invited to keep the tools bequeathed unto him by the "experts" of gay culture. Paradoxically, by adopting a homosexual aesthetic the subject would supposedly buffer his heterosexuality. It's this kind of sick and disgusting contradiction that makes me find mainstream gay culture so utterly repulsive. WHEN DID WE BECOME STRAIGHT PEOPLE'S SHOESHINNERS?! WHENWHENWHEN? The show offers, at once, a "narrative of transformation," as suggested by Katherine Sender, and a kind of sexual exotification.

One could find it perfectly reasonable for a straight man to sit down, watch an episode, and come out either disgusted (hey, at least he tried, right?) or enlightened, if only a little. But the problematic aspect of this show, to me, occurs when a Gay man watches this program, when a Gay man sees the narrative of subservience, this narrative of refined cultural transformation, and feels that it is his duty to perpetuate the sexual violence. The transformation narrative lets the straight man know that Anyone Can Do It, while it informs the gay man that he has no culture of his own, that his culture is a thing for the bourgoisie to play with, that his culture's soul purpose is to decide what color the Duchess's throw pillows are going to be.

I think this desire in gay men might stem to the the gay fetish of being penetrated by straight men. We must get rid of this. That fantasy, the way I see it, is a direct connect to the internalized self-hatred so prominent amongst gay men. Oh if only a straight man would want me! is essentially the same as If Only I Could Get a White Bitch.

Okay okay Jens is calling for separatism again. SO BE IT.

It is also no accidence that gay aesthetic is becoming more white, relatively affluent, or both. People who have had the luxery of "coming out" have been doing so since the fifties and now, with the largest gay constituency being rich-white-men they are becoming a political and socio-economic force that has a real hand in the tides of retail markets and senate floors. Back in the day gay wasn't such a culture, but now it's becoming predictably white. Latino gay culture and black gay culture has severed from the dominant gay culture, and probably rightfully so. Dominant gay culture is suffocatingly centered aroudn the slave-master relationship with straight people.

I ask myself if I really want an "A-Gay" lobbying for me. What does it mean for the future of the culture of which I am so fond?

Perhaps what Ablo is most correct about, unfortunately, is his contention that "[A-Gays] will never say 'Just wear it with a belt!' They own the company that manufactures the belts." Ah! So it comes out. The A-Gay is no longer part of that group of cultural refugees with a hyper-sensitivity to art. The A-Gay is not gay at all, he is capital machine who sleeps with men. "B-Gays" let their sexuality flourish with pagan delight in the face of heteronormative constraints, while the A-Gay is above that, he keeps his sexuality under a business suit. That is until his cock slips out and we see the true content of his character. Sexual Chthonianism.

Return to the fold!!!