It takes a Village to Raise a Fag

I finally understand the genius of the Village People. It took a few decades. Back in ‘78, I discovered my first pubic hairs moments before the comforting thrill of masturbation. Like the average pre-teen I spent after school hours in the basement bathroom of our banal suburban Ontario home. In the evenings my younger sister had a sick habit of walking in on my evening joystick sessions. Each night I patiently hid under the covers, right ear cozied up to the A.M. transistor radio. Invariably the DJ would make some snarky comment about the Village People before playing “Y. M. C.A.” I never got the remark, or the song. Feeling vaguely turned on by the album cover, I remember being repulsed by the seemingly nonsensical lyrics. I confess to flailing my arms in the same ridiculous manner other people did while dancing to it at weddings. They obviously didn’t get the man-lust reference to it either. A few years later, after visiting the downtown Toronto Young Men’s Christian Association and ‘flirting’ with several once famous now dead homos, the Village People started to make sense. 

Mid-flow forties and only now do I begin to truly appreciation the necessity of embracing queer history. Much of which is oral history. My Elders share with me what textbooks never could. They have taught me that we have always infiltrated mainstream society. We will continue to do so. Not just for us but for everyone’s benefit. Not as consumed by parenting we have the time and space to add our creative flavour to society’s evolving conversation of itself. The last few weeks have taught me the danger of not knowing where we come from. I am amazed how queer history has rapidly transformed from scintillating stories to medical nightmares before being reduced to culturally limiting statistics.

I workout at the Victoria Y. This sometimes amounts to a long soak in the steam room. The pattern follows: straight guys loudly banter on about last night’s game, give us all a headache then leave. Next the old-boys and their stock n’ bond prodigies talk money; (since Jack Layton died and the Wall Street protests however, they are finally a little more discreet about their greed.) Then around 6:30 as they too totter off to their family dinner other guys linger. I linger the same way I use to in T.O. twenty years ago. Sitting in the corner of the same steam-room doing the same stretches, crunches and other related poses, I pump-out the same amount of sweat I used to on the dance floor. 

Steam Room Fever 

We’re both distracted. The young guy busts a move right in the middle of a meaningless conversation I’m having with this long-term queer acquaintance. A decade younger than us, he starts massaging his body and as if he were on some solo tantric-trip. He circulates his hands to all parts of his lithe, attractive body. The Scorpio tattoo underneath his thigh becomes more visible as his routine takes up more physical space on the slippery tiles. My curiosity is more than piqued, so is my friend’s. The door opens and interrupts; towels quickly swish over our excitement. We expect this; factor it into the erotic experience. Titillating but that’s about it.

Towelling off in the dry sauna the younger guy compliments me on my body part and suggests I meet his partner sometime. I smile. Then he asks, “You clean?”

So much happens between the split second of a much-hated question and the stilted response. I look into his eyes to see if he has caught me over-thinking my comeback. “I get tested every 3 to 6 months for STI’s.” Cool, he says. Before the moment’s lost and because I don’t want to be sent to jail, I say, “And in the spirit of transparency, you need to know I’m undetectable.” Then he affably responds by saying, “Oh, so that means you’re clean/clean.” Setting aside the double offence I am polite, “Do you mind if I ask how old you are?” Twenty-nine years old, a year younger than the discovery of the virus. The guy has never heard the term ‘undetectable’. Clearly sexually active, in an open relationship, he hasn’t a clue what undetectable means. I inform him. He leaves. He now knows. It takes a village to raise a fag.

Cold Sweat

An anomaly? Here’s an attractive, uneducated guy sheltered in a relationship where he doesn’t know his condom-covered dick-head from his well-lubed asshole. Then I think back to a week earlier and a conversation I had on Grindr. Again, a highly attractive smart kid, twenty-five and working in an upwardly mobile, affluent career. I say something about queer community. “What’s that?” he says. Disoriented I say “You don’t know what ‘queer’ is?” He laughs, “No, I’m gay. It’s the ‘community’ part.” The kid has NEVER heard of or put the two concepts of ‘gay’ and ‘community’ together. If I weren’t so angry I’d break out in a cold sweat. I piece together anecdotal evidence of the past several months since moving back to the Victoria, B.C.

Gay Rights? “We’ve made it. We’ve got everything we asked for, we won.” I’ve known this friend for a quarter-century. He came out to me at the same age I am now. “I see these younger men fitting in, they don’t need to define the same way we use to. It’s just not an issue anymore.” I think of the book The End of Gay that I refused to read. I desperately need to catch up.

Only recently returning to the city from a quiet rural life I’m troubled to find out many gay men here don’t have gay friends. The only party going seems to be the annual Pride event and a monthly drag show. I learn that the homo programs only have a few guys showing up. “I have more in common with my neighbour’s garden than I do other gay men,” says one former wanna-be trick. I chat with him on Squirt. “Is gay even relevant anymore?” asks another middle age man. He confides in me that members of the local Prime Timers even told him to go back in the closet if he wanted to get a job in Victoria. My blood sours. I want to hurl. Not in anger or disgust, all of which I feel, but more out of fear. Having taken care of my Poz body and my Poz-bodied man for so long in welcome rural isolation I never would have imagined gay culture to slip so quickly into the dark ages again. Others argue that we live in enlightened unlabelled times. We’ve got Glee. We’ve outgrown our past and that’s that. I’m nauseous because like any member of a minority I know that to forget our history means we risk our future and the future of those for which we must stay vigilant. Is gay relevant? Bet my sweet ass it is!

“Help! Fire!”

Privilege puts people asleep. So to lovingly slap folks awake again I forcibly tell them about the latest harrowing statistics: compromising safety and education, 64% of queer Canadian youth do not feel safe at school. Like chalk scraping down a blackboard I press on about the suburb kid who committed suicide two months ago, that no one knew he was gay until a friend of mine, his teenage lover, went to the 23 year old kid’s funeral, and outed himself to the blabber-mouthed, bottle-blonde haired cousin who asked him who he was and why he was there.

I tell the gay-naysayers amongst us about the latest hanging of two young 18 year old boys caught kissing. Right now, consensual queer sex between adults are illegal in about 70 out of the world’s 195 countries (approximately 36%); in 40 of these, only man-on-man sex is outlawed; State-sanctioned murder of our kind. I remind them that historically, before the end of an era, such as the late 20’s in Gay Berlin we fags were all the rage before thousands of us got scapegoated, too.

I remind them that their tax dollars are being used by the self-called “Harper Government” to build future privatized jails (my dark prophecy) that have to be filled by someone. All this in a time when crime is at an all time low and the court system is backlogged and throwing out cases. Then I put it all in the context of criminalization of HIV Poz people: our kind thrown to the neo-con lions of small town judges and going to jail as sex offenders only to be starved and regularly beaten by Poz-phobic brutes. This is what the inmates tell me. I can be persuasive. Their faces remain impassive.

“Undetectable, what’s that?” Maybe an acceptable question many generations from now. “Gay community? What’s that?” Never. I never want to hear that question again. Lives, past, present and future depend on us to keep our stories, symbols and society-refreshing silliness alive. Help! Fire! Where are the Village People when you need them? Are they all dead? We need sassy-cultured, stereotype twisting, super-queer weirdoes now more than ever! We need the play, pleasure and partying of a consciously loving community in order to keep the spirit of our people alive. Gay culture needs a renaissance now.