Sometimes I like a pretty phrase, a fancy image. It causes me to stretch the truth sometimes. As some of y’all know, I was technically raised by a decidedly regular set of parents, not drag queens. As much as I like to think of Hedwig as my mom, teaching me to apply striated glitter eyeshadow that has layers and depth, while others learned to color in the lines, or a RuPaul dad who taught me to put on pantyhose…really it was sweet Vera and Barry, teaching me to value a tidy house and proper lawn maintenance. Two things I do so well now! Never falter.
However, the phase does refer to something real. Not drag queens, (necessarily anyhow) but gay men. And not a literal raising from birth…in a rhinestone cave, but raising me from a sorta broken girl to a proud fierce miss lady thang woman diva honeychild, dammit.
Once upon a midnight queery, also known as the other night, after Pride, up in Dallas, I received a text from one of the many influential gay mens from my past and present that started with “Happy Gay Pride Day, Miss Lady!” and ended with “Thank you for accepting me and all my (2/2) faggotry!”
Its inspired me to write a message to that faggot ( a term that would make him both scowl and kick up his feet) and all others who lay claim to faggotry: I love you. In a deep, yet sitcom worthy way. In a way that will always be somewhat of a mystery to me, the little broken pieces of our queer little hearts are drawn together into one glorious whole. (Do not confuse with glory hole.) But more importantly than loving you, I thank you. Let me count them ways:
1) 1) First, you named me. Well, actually it was a frustrated 16 year old nail art-having, gum-popping student who first put that on me... “miss, miss, miss, umm…Miss Lady!” But it was the repeated usage and oh-so-positive response of the gay, who saw that it fit me, and knew that it was fierce, that caused me to adopt this term, that so perfectly captured all the burgeoning conflict and glitter that was growing up inside me, and the identity I was fashioning around it.
2) 2) The first and most and best visual admiration I ever got was from gay men. I know that some might think that a gaze from the gays might not mean much in a culture where women are taught over and over to evaluate their worth based on their sex appeal, presumably to heterosexual men, but it did. After trying to explain what I knew naturally to others who didn’t, the best words I can come up with is that some gay men look at you in a way that’s not sexual…but sexified! Many can easily see the sexy on a woman; they just don’t want to sex it. Honestly, sometimes I think it’s easier because it’s not all wrapped up in wondering what some buddy will think, or the ongoing scale of rating women and whether or not you’d like to bang them/ hit that/ fuck her, or somesuch. In the past, gay men have just told me that I was lovely/sexy/hot/ awesome, simply because it was true.
So, in the same vein, I’d like to thank some gay men specifically for this. I’ll start with the gay man who gave me my first kiss…outside a food court bathroom y’all. While I really wanted to be hitting on his super stable straight friend who had accidentally shot his mother the year before, this was nice too. And thank you to Terry, who first taught me the power of my updos, by asking me to junior homecoming after I made a particularly fetching one in my morning cosmetology class, on the condition that I wear my hair like that. And to Juan, who will buy me drinks not for my tits, but for my grande entrances! Or to that one big muscle man at the Village Station circa 2003 who lifted me up in the air, making me feel like a hot pant wearing size 0, and danced me about until my shirt fell off, or that guy at that weird club in Oak Cliff that gave me all his numbers after I Dancing Queened in my fairy Onassis costume, or those drag queens up in the bathroom that liked my glitter hairspray that one time and that other time. And thank you to David, a true ladies fag, who amongst other things, insists that I am photogenic, and then photoshops my pictures to prove it.
It might seem sad to anyone who doesn’t really get the toxic culture concerning appearance for American women, where opportunities for rejection and inadequacy are around every corner, but I don’t think I really understood that my exterior is worthy and fierce, just like my interior, until gay men learned me that lesson good. The interior stuff I owe to my birth parents; the rest I owe to the gay.
3) 3)Thank you for making me feel like a star. See above. And also, though it is decidedly less pronounced in Austin, nowhere else but in the gay community, do people swarm me so. Amongst my favorite moments, are the times when I arrived to an event alone and sober, let’s say it was the Puppy Parade, only to find myself immersed, given Bloody Marys, and introduced around. Like I was special…when really I’m just a little suburban girl whose shoes match her earrings which match her bunny purse which matches the holiday.
For a while, gay men were the only men I knew. As my locale changed and my social goals have changed (find rich husband?) this has changed somewhat too. I don't think I ever could have had the confidence in myself to understand that straight men, with proper training on taste and all, could learn to love me too, if it weren't for you. However, my heart is still with the faggots. I hope that my Miss Ladyness is an equal exchange for all the faggotry you have graced me with. I know that not all men who claim gay also claim the faggotry, but for those who do, its always welcome here.
