October 2007 Archives

When I was visiting New York City a few weeks ago, I almost doubled over laughing when I passed by a t-shirt shop prominently featuring a shirt design that looked something like what you see at the right. I laugh because, as I'm sure you know, Che Guevara's image has been so commodified across the globe that it's clear most folks donning a Che shirt have little idea who he actually was. That is to say, he's become a distilled idea - a rough approximation. The particularities of his life and politics have been stripped away and all that is left is an image with no particular meaning. In the hands of the consumer, his image might be called on to symbolize general teenage angst, or a general cynical attitude towards government. When I was in Singapore, I was amazed at this phenomenon. You could find t-shirts, key chains, wallets, backpacks -- anything you can imagine with his image emblazoned on it.

So perhaps it's quite fitting that a lock of his hair just sold for $100,000. Yes, that's right - one hundred thousand dollars! It's reminiscent of an item I recently saw for sale at Bloomingdale's new store in San Francisco. Briskly walking through the store (since I clearly can't afford anything there), I noticed out of the corner of my eye a relatively small crystal statue of the Buddha. It couldn't have been more than a foot tall. It's price tag? $10,000. Wha-what?

Folks, capitalism is pretty amazing. It can chew up and commodify even the most radical elements within it. What's next? A Sotheby's auction of Marx's sock collection? Actually, that sounds totally feasible. And that kind of makes me a little sick!

I tuned in a bit late to Ugly Betty a bit late this evening, but I got in just in time to see Marc snuggling on the couch with Cliff - a newly introduced character that apparently Marc is dating! Now, a few days ago in my original Gay Bitch posting, I included a photo of Marc as sort of a reference point - a caricature of what I was talking about. I knew then that he was a tricky example -- his character, after all, slips in and out of Bitch mode. But I used his image anyways, because I still believed him to be a prime cultural example of the Bitch.

With the new development in Marc's dating life, I'd like to revisit him as a Bitch. Now, in my experience, part of being a Bitch is being seriously insecure about your body image - and projecting those insecurities on others. You know, all the "Ugh, some people should just not leave their house without a shirt on" commentary. It's of course the product of deep insecurities about their own physique, and a need to distance themselves from "other," unfit bodies. It's a huge part of being a Bitch (women could certainly make a similar argument about the Bitch as a female archetype).

Now enter Cliff. Cliff is a husky guy. Actually, by TV's narrow standards of beauty, he's downright fat. If Marc's character saw this guy enter the MODE offices, he'd make a catty comment within about 2.3 seconds. And yet, here we see them snuggling on the couch, preparing to watch Psycho together. If Marc gets scared, Cliff tells him not to worry - "I'll be right here" (that's actually the precise moment you see in the photo here). They're fucking adorable!

At first glance, this seems totally unBitchlike - like we should take a moment to pause and reconsider whether Marc's really the Bitch I've made him out to be. I want to argue, however, that dating a guy like Cliff falls right in line with Bitches I've known - and my experiences as a Bitch. I'm thinking here of a friend of mine on the East Coast who's the epitome of the Gay Bitch. He's a gym bunny; he's constantly projecting his insecurities about his body on others (including me); his constant striving to present himself as an all-important socialite is cemented with the rapid pace he uploads photos of himself onto Facebook. Now, don't get me wrong, I understand and empathize with everything that goes into these things - I don't hold it against him. That's why he's my friend.

But color me surprised when I met his boyfriend of several years. Physically, he's a guy much like Cliff. He's exactly the kind of guy that my friend would see at a club, and make some catty remark about! What the fuck? At first, it seemed terribly hypocritical and fucked up. Here's the skinny little twinkboy who runs around the clubs trying desperately to seem important and better than everyone, seriously dating a boy who he'd humiliate out in public. I wasn't sure if I should be impressed at his unBitchy choice for a partner, or I should resent his blatant hypocrisy.

But then I thought about my own sex life - and my own choices in guys. I don't really date, so I can't speak to choosing a partner. But I certainly have my fair share of hookups, so I can speak to my experiences in the bedroom. I've always had deep-seated insecurities about my own body. I've always been a little bit too curvy to be a twink - and not curvy or hairy enough to be, say, a cub (or butch for that matter!). You might think that boys like me jump for glee when muscle Gods hit them up online for a hookup. What charity! But I don't get excited. In fact, I generally either don't respond or ultimately back out of meeting up.

I'm in a constant race to compare myself to others on sites like Manhunt and Gay.com -- they kind of bring out that feature in people. So when guys who I see as "out of my league" message me, I run the other direction. This isn't entirely based on my own issues. I used to meet up with those guys, but many times I could tell that, when I took my shirt off, they weren't as into the scene as they were before. So I learned quickly that I had the best sex was with guys who I judged to be either "on my level," or below it (and let's be real - that's how this shit works in the gay marketplace of desire). I wasn't second-guessing myself the whole time - or making sure to turn off the lights *before* my shirt came off.

This all boils down to my conclusion that Marc's choice in dating doesn't necessarily contradict his status as a Bitch. In fact, it fits right in with my experiences with other Bitches, and with my own experiences as a Bitch. Bitches certainly do sometimes date and fuck statuesque guys. But some Bitches find a guy they can let down all their guards with. Who they can be a little more real with. And, for better or for worse, sometimes that comes in the form of guys like Cliff.

After a bit of channel surfing, I settled in tonight to watching the Molly Ringwald classic, Sixteen Candles. I was struck by how familiar the actor who played Jake looked, and so I hopped on IMDB to find out who played him. Apparently, it was Michael Shoeffling, who also co-starred in Longtime Companion, one of the first films to portray the way gay men were dealing with the epidemic.

Now, I'm not a sappy person. It's just not really in my nature. Anyone who knows me can attest to it. But damned if I don't start tearing up just seeing the title of that film. I can't explain my relationship to these early AIDS films (It's My Party and And the Band Played On also come to mind). I don't just cry - I bawl. I weep. What is it about these stories that makes me such a puddle of mess? Why do I connect to these stories of deep, painful loss - when I never experienced that kind of loss myself? I was born far too late to ever have friends die of AIDS in the way that these films depict - and the way that my older friends talk about. I came out in 1997, just a year after the introduction of protease inhibitors, and the beginning of the end of the AIDS crisis for urban gay men (for more on this deliniation, see my late mentor Eric Rofes' wonderful book, Dry Bones Breathe).

So what's up with my tears? I've been thinking about this a lot over the past three years --particularly after moving to San Francisco and having a dear friend test positive. In San Fran, the disease was much more tangible than it felt in North Carolina. I remember hearing people tell stories about the Castro being an amazing place to find bargains on art and antiques in the late 1980s and early 1990s because of all the garage sales that were constantly going on as more and more men died. I lived in the heart of that history: 17th Street and Noe. The middle of it all.

After having some time to reflect, I think I've narrowed it down to one key issue: I lament and resent the deaths of so many of the men who I wish were around today to mentor me. Where are the 40 to 50-something year old sex-positive gay men? All we seem to have left over are fucktards like Andrew Sullivan and Michelangelo Signorile. Eric was one of the few radicals who had survived and remained HIV-negative - which makes his death from a heart attack last year all the more tragic. In his book I mentioned above, he speculates that it was his distaste for anal sex that kept him alive. Another mentor of mine similarly speculated that, had he not been abroad researching for his dissertation when AIDS hit, he would probably not have survived either. Both were highly sexually active, after all, and in those crucial early years nobody knew how to protect themselves.

So my theory goes something like this. Eric once mentioned to me before he passed away that he thought about 30% of gay men in San Francisco died from AIDS complications in the "crisis years" (1983 - 1995). While that's a giant chunk of the population, it's not enough to explain the lack of mentorship I feel in my life. But who were the men who were dying? Were they the ones with the more sexually radical politics - who were regulars at the local bathhouses and sex clubs - were they the ones more likely to test positive? Perhaps its a naive way to think, but I can't help but think that, yes, the guys who had my kind of sex politics were almost certainly the guys in the highest risk categories - and thus the ones more likely to test positive.

So this is my question: Did AIDS kill off the most sex-radical elements of my community? Or did the epidemic just make gay men more conservative in general? Because, sometimes - actually, almost all of the time - I wish there were guys out there in their 40s and 50s fighting the good fight. But it seems all we get are Dan Savage, Larry Kramer, Michelangelo Signorile, and Andrew Sullivan. If that isn't depressing, I don't know what is.

I miss Eric. So, so much.