Track Mangoes

When I came out at age twelve my sexual-preference didn’t feel like a choice. Biology seemed to confine me in pubescent shackles and all I wanted was any male that would (sexually) give me the time of day. I wouldn't have called myself promiscuous ("but who knows?!") and finding a sexual partner proved tricky in the dominantly Christian suburb where I lived. Luckily, at thirteen, my family moved to inner city Portland where I could surround myself with gay culture.

After a two year binge on gayness [where I was constantly surrounded by like minded people (read: the well meaning progressives) who taught me that--above all else--I was a normal teenager,] I realized that, ironically, it has been conservatives (Christians, Mormons, Jews and the blue collared, like the loggers on my mother's side of the family) who have always upheld the unique role homosexuals play in society. The liberal idea of homosexual equality, to me, is far more bigoted and backward than anything I've ever heard from an "ignorant" "anti-gay" conservative.

Gay men are cultural refugees who have power and wealth in things that have no price. Their legacy and contributions to society can be traced from late 19th century photography back to the dreamy statues of the Greeks, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, through Romanticism, the Pre-Raphaelites, and up into the photographs of Robert Mapplethorpe. They are, it seems, responsible, in effect, for western aesthetics. (That's right, I said it, FUCK Georgia O'Keefe.)That makes gay men powerful sentinels of aesthetic culture.

Are Gay Men hyper-sensitive to art? Could it be in born? Like a kind of autism, could sensory stimuli overwhelms the gay-male brain? How do we explain, in a rural family, why there will sometimes be a boy who Sticks Out, a boy who is uninterested in paternal pursuits, like throwin-the-ole-pigskin-around? Instead of Tonka Trucks and building blocks he is hypnotized, overwhelmed, by the lushness of his mother’s clothes, the silks and the linens, the seductive scent of her perfumes, sandalwood, vanillas, orange blossoms and rose buds, and struck by the vibrancy of her make up, the deepness of the mascara, the pastel shadows, and the violent beauty of a streak of lipstick across a palid face. Makeup, to him, is simply a paintbrush. How do we explain this behavior in children? It's an international and timeless phenomenon.

Of course claiming that gay men are born hyper-sensitive to art makes me sound like I'm saying all gay men are pansies. It's like saying black people are born hyper-sensitive to (INSERT STEREOTYPE HERE TO AVOID THE RACE POLICE). But maybe something about their biology does, perhaps, predispose them to take a liking to art? There. Now it's less acerbicly worded.

I've worked with children in my church and in summer camps. I’ve noticed that this nascent fascination with aesthetics, for boys, often couples with a predisposition towards sensitivity and/or shyness. This predisposition leads, inevitably, towards a failure to bond with peers, particularly the ones uninterested by paper and string. This disjunction causes a feeling of Otherness which is tantamount to the gay experience. It's a uniquely gay Otherness unlike racial exile. I want to, almost, call it "queerness."When gay adults claim that he or she has been gay since childhood what they are remembering is, in effect, this particular kind of Otherness, this queerness, rather than the actual sexual attraction.

Because of this it seems odd to me that gay activists would align themselves so stringently with biology. The widespread desire to find a biological basis for homosexuality is still moot (I doubt we will ever find a substantial biological foundation for gayness) and, furthermore, will lead to claims that gay people are deformed at the prenatal level. The desire itself is symptomatic of an over-politicized social climate. The left actually believes that finding the “Gay Gene” will force everyone to submit to the rhetoric of “acceptance.” Quelle fascisme!

The LGBT community needs to stop harassing Christian people. Gay people should also get over Christian hangup on male gayness. The tradition sees homosexuality as an existential threat because it is an existential threat if you follow the rules in the bible! And besides, if Gayness is the antithesis of Puritanism (which, go with me, I think it is) gay men owe a lot to the church for how it has influenced gay culture: decadent, colorful, and lubed up like KFC chicken. (Then, when I think of the alter boys in Catholic churches, the contra altos in the choir of Europe, and the statues of young'ins lashed, crucified, bleeding, naked, I can't help but think that the church also owes something to gay culture...).

The Gays found their crack-pot prophet and he was nastier and crazier and ten times more insane than Coulter and Limbaugh. Yes, his name was Chris Crocker. Crocker was the crazed messiash from the woods, who spent all his life silently collecting Britney paraphanellia until finally the Lord called him forth to speak, to SHOUT from the highest mountain the internet had to offer, and he did. Chris Crocker told everyone to leave Britney Alone and the scary thing that nobody wants to admit is that they did. He broke the silence long enough to shout the truth and tell America something it didn't want to hear: it needed Britney.

But I digress.

Wihtout crazy people like Chris Crocker gay culture will fall into genteel dandyism, no longer the radical social experiment it once was. A truly progressive gay culture should not be a middle-class, elitist posturing with a paternalistic attitude toward the religious working class’ “ignorance.” I hate it when people insist that "We are the educated ones, and your homophobia comes out of deep ignorance."

Gay Culture has historically been the only true believer in the fact that sexuality is highly fluid. They've constructed their entire culture around the outer limits of sexual spectrums, fetishisms, fantasy, taboo and permiscuosness.

It occurred to me early on in adolescence that the feeling, the fright and excitement, the visceral fury of the simple idea of having sex with a woman, was something I had not experienced since, say, I was thirteen and trying to have sex with men. I grew nostalgic for that sensation of the badness of outer sexuality and I had grown weary of men. Gender didn't seem to matter so much anymore, the excitement of something new and "forbidden" was overwhelmingly appetizing. I had also constructed an entire identity that was GAY and unchanging, so to have sex with a woman would be like I was straight and having sex with men. Was I an in the closet straight man? However, like a sixteen year old, I was terrified to peruse anything even though I wanted many things quite badly. WHAT IF I WAS WRONG? Better to just stay in the closet. Keep having sex with men.

If sexuality can be this fluid how are we, then, to concede that gayness is strictly biological? To deny fluidity of sexual preference is to abandon the work academics have put into the study of gender and sexuality. Sex is temporal and always on a continuum, coming in and leaving like the tides. It permeates every relationship, even familial, every dream, every word that comes out of our mouths is in someway touched by sex. How can we find a GENE for this? How can there possibly be one biological factor, nay, one UNWAVERING biological factor that determines our sexuality from birth until death?

We can change our sexuality. Yes. You heard it: sexual conversions are theoretically possible. Though they may not be pleasant or desirable or even valuable, and though Christian fanatics may use this fact against queers, sexual conversion must be, at least theoretically, possible. We are, in effect, more comfortable knowing that sexuality is genetic, rather than letting it loose to the chaotic powers of God.

Instead of mooing about equality the Left should look long and hard at its approach to gay politics. At the same time, we, as they sexually lost, should seriously reconsider our affiliation with the left. While the staunchly gay should question its die-heard pursuit of marriage rights and special legal protection. If that's really what we want then we should at least stop to discuss how gay culture will be affected and if we want that or not. Additionally, gay men ought to embrace their culture’s character in spite of its tendency towards sexual promiscuity and drug use. I say appreciate it BECAUSE of its sexual promiscuity and drug use! To be gay is to be an outsider. To be an outsider is to be an artist. To be an artist is to be hated by society at large most of the time. Join the club.

Even if you think homosexuality is an inborn trait it does no good to seek the approval of government, the Judeo-Christian establishment, and other contenders who know very little about queerness. I'm adopting the view of Parker who once said, "heterosexuality isn't normal, it's just common." We've got to start thinking and behaving along those lines instead of validating the Right's queer-fears and degrading our culture by asking for their approval. I'm not calling for separatism, (though a continent of gay men wouldn't be half bad) but I am calling for enlightened militancy. We’ve got much bigger fish to fry than marriage.

Since homosexuality is a choice, there is no need to harbor self-hatred by thinking that our choice to love who we want to love is somehow wrong. It’s fabulous and truthful and totally against all the rules. Love is radical. And it’s how culture survives in the face of obliteration.