Skipping Towards Gomorrah (30 page)

Kevin and Jake are one of those only-in-L.A. gay couples: ridiculously successful, absurdly handsome, deeply tanned, sexually adventurous, and, uh,
very well accessorized.
During the tour of the house, Kevin showed me a spare bedroom that the men were turning into a “playroom.” What's a playroom, Mr. Bork? Well, picture a home entertainment center devoted to energetic, athletic sex rather than lethargic, sedentary TV-viewing. Most playrooms have padded floors (the better to kneel on), no windows or blacked-out windows, mood lighting, shelves filled with sex toys, and—for the main event—a black-leather sling supported by chains that hang from hooks in the ceiling. Kevin and Jake did some house-sitting for a gay friend who had a playroom, and they had such a great time that they ran out and bought a sling. Since they didn't want their friends to spot—or tease them about—telltale hooks in the ceiling of their bedroom, they decided to build a playroom of their own.

Spending the day with guys like Kevin and Jake always makes me wish I were richer, handier, and better looking. Good-looking, rich, fit gay men fill me with envy, and in this particular case, I had a definite touch of sling-envy. Compared with these guys, my boyfriend and I are lazy, average, boring—in and out of bed. Like Kevin and Jake, we live in a house we bought from an older couple. Unlike Kevin and Jake, we haven't done anything about the appalling window treatments, flower beds, or wallpaper left behind by the previous owners. We don't have to haul out a photo album to make visitors shudder at the previous owner's horrifying wallpaper selections; all we have to do is just open the doors and turn on the lights. And while we own a sling (it was a gift, Mom, I swear), we've never actually used it. Our sling sits in a box in our basement, gathering dust. While my boyfriend enjoyed his one ride in a sling (in an kinky, upscale boutique hotel in Amsterdam that I was writing up for a design magazine), he doesn't see himself as the kind of guy who has a sling in his house, much less a playroom in his basement. There are hooks in the ceiling of our bedroom but, alas, only to support the swag lamps installed by our home's previous owners.

As I watched Kevin and Jake hammer a new window frame into place, I tried not to feel too bad about my walls, windows, floors, and the sling rotting in a box in my basement. Kevin and Jake have to be trendy and edgy; they live in Los Angeles, after all. Kevin owns an extremely successful, high-end home lighting fixture and design business. (Madonna and Janet Jackson are clients.) Jake is a big-deal exec at a movie studio. As an up-and-coming gay power couple in status-conscious Los Angeles, Kevin and Jake's home has to scream success. They have to tend to their abs and cultivate a sexual edge; with so many good-looking, available men in Los Angeles, gay men who have boyfriends either keep the home fires blazing or lose their lovers to someone younger, hotter, and hipper. Thankfully, my boyfriend and I don't live with the same pressures. Jesus Christ himself is likelier to drop by our house unannounced than Madonna; and Seattle falls somewhere between Dubuque and Buffalo Grove on the sexual energy scale.

When I told a friend that I was looking for a hip gay couple who were planning to attend the gay pride parade in Los Angeles, he gave me Kevin and Jake's phone number. I called, and they invited me to come down and spend the weekend at their place. It was a hot Saturday afternoon in late June when I arrived, the day before the pride parade, and Kevin and Jake were working on the patio behind their sprawling, one-story, wood-frame house when my cab pulled up. I was offered something to drink (“Beer?”) and something to smoke (“Pot?”), and I accepted a beer. Then I sat scribbling away in my notebook as Kevin and Jake strolled around shirtless, digging up some plants, watering others, and answering my questions. While the men walk and talk and look and dress alike, Kevin, originally from the Midwest, was more talkative, more willing to entertain my questions than his boyfriend, Jake, who is originally from the East Coast. I had only one basic question for Kevin and Jake, however, one I asked them over and over again for the next two days: Why on earth were they going to the pride parade?

“The pride parade is about seeing your friends and having fun,” Kevin said, hosing down some strange plant. “And it's fun to laugh at the freaks.”

 

E
very June, American cities with large gay populations host pride parades to commemorate the Stonewall Riots in New York City in 1969.

The Stonewall Riots in a nutshell: Once upon a time, on a humid night in June, the New York City Police Department conducted a routine vice raid on a routinely sleazy little gay bar called the Stonewall Inn. Instead of meekly filing into paddy wagons, some sweaty, angry queens decided to resist. Judy Garland's funeral had taken place earlier that day, and the queens just weren't having it. With Judy gone, what else did they have to lose? A crowd gathered as the cops tried to drag the kicking, screaming queens out of the Stonewall. Someone in the crowd began pelting the cops with pennies. Ten minutes later a dozen of New York City's finest were barricaded inside the gay bar they had come to raid while an angry mob hurled stones, bricks, bottles, and parking meters through the bar's one small window. Someone tried to set the bar on fire with the cops trapped inside. Thus began the Stonewall Riots, which went on for three nights and heralded the emergence of a more militant, confrontational gay rights movement.

The Stonewall Riots are often made to sound like the big bang of gay politics—the beginning of gay time—which isn't entirely accurate; a handful of gay activists had staged small protests before the riots, to little effect. Even if Stonewall wasn't the beginning of gay politics, it did change everything. Pre-Stonewall, meek gay groups issued pleas. Post-Stonewall, noisy gay groups made demands. Pre-Stonewall, gay men in ties and lesbians in skirts picketed politely, at considerable risk to their private and professional lives. Post-Stonewall, gay men in short-shorts and lesbians in painters' pants marched constantly and rioted occasionally, at ever-less risk to their private and professional lives. Ironically, archive footage of the few pre-Stonewall gay rights protests are in black-and-white, like Dorothy's Kansas in
The Wizard of Oz.
Post-Stonewall footage of gay rights marches are in blazing color, like the Land of Oz itself.

Early gay pride marches had two missions: First, let the straights know the gays weren't going to hide anymore; and, second, let closeted gay people know that it was safe to come out. (Of course, it wasn't safe; it still isn't entirely safe. The
certain
misery of being closeted, however, is so far outweighed by the
potential
for happiness outside the closet that most gays and lesbians are willing to risk it.) Pre-Stonewall, gays and lesbians were made to feel ashamed of themselves; post-Stonewall, gays and lesbians were instructed to be proud. Like the women's movement (“Equal Rights Now!”) and the African-American civil-rights movement (“Black Power!”), the gay movement chose a slogan that laid aggressive claim to the very thing the wider culture had denied us. Women didn't have equal rights when they took their slogan, and blacks had not much in the way of power. Likewise, few gays and lesbians took pride in themselves back in 1969.

For a group of people condemned as sinners—and some are understandably still sensitive to the charge, as it's still made—it's ironic that gays and lesbians should select a sin as our rallying cry. And not just any sin, but the sin Pope Gregory the Great unironically called, “the queen of them all.” But it made sense at the time: the whole world conspired to make gay people feel ashamed of themselves. It worked. Straight people viewed homosexuality as disgraceful and disgusting, and so did most gays and lesbians. Shame was the poison that kept gays closeted and prompted us to off ourselves at slightly higher rates. Clearly, strong medicine was called for, and pride was the obvious antidote. Being gay was nothing to be ashamed of, gay activists insisted. Being an openly gay, reasonably healthy, functioning adult was something that a person should be proud of! After all, any homo who survived a hostile family, homophobic employers, corrupt police departments, and hateful churches had accomplished something significant. So pride parades: Gay is bad, they said. Gay is good, we replied.

Pride was tremendously meaningful and important and radical and revolutionary—thirty years ago. Back then, very few gays and lesbians were out of the closet, and the central metaphors of the pride parade—we have nothing to be ashamed of!—resonated with vast numbers of gays and lesbians still too scared to tell their parents what kind of bars they liked to hang out in. As an antidote, pride was effective: Every year, at each successive pride parade, more and more gays and lesbians showed up. We became less closeted and less fearful, which made it increasingly difficult for our families, employers, and elected officials to pretend we didn't exist or talk us into offing ourselves.

The funny thing about antidotes, though, is that they're usually toxic themselves. If you've been bitten by a poisonous snake, you're supposed to take the antidote, yes, but you're not supposed to
keep
taking the antidote, day in, day out, for the rest of your life. Looking around gay neighborhoods (or looking in gay magazines, newspapers, and inside gay heads) thirty years after the antidote arrived, it's clear that gays and lesbians are in renewed danger of being poisoned—only the poison threatening us now isn't shame. It's pride.

The message at gay pride parades in the United States hasn't evolved; it's still, Gay is good! There are two problems with this: First, it's misleading. Gay isn't good or bad, it's just gay. (Yes, yes—Michelangelo was gay. But so was Jeffrey Dahmer.) Second, what relevance does a “gay is good” message have to the vast majority of American gay men and lesbians who, like Kevin and Jake, don't believe that there's anything in the least bit shameful about their homosexuality? What relevance do pride parades have to hip, secure, handsome gay men like Kevin and Jake? What was in it for them? Why were they going? Why did they still need the antidote? Weren't they cured? Or do they go to the pride parade to remind themselves how far they've come, like a former cancer patient who, despite having been completely cured, reminds himself he isn't sick anymore by dropping by the hospital once a year for a little chemotherapy?

Kevin and Jake assured me that, no, they didn't feel any vestigial shame or guilt and, no, they weren't any the worse for wear on those years when they missed the pride parade.

So why do they go?

The fourth time I asked, Kevin stopped what he was doing and looked right at me. I'm uneasy around extremely good-looking gay men; I like to look at good-looking gay men, of course, but I find it intimidating to be regarded by them. It always makes me feel like I need to go and do some sit-ups or iron my underwear or pluck my eyebrows or something. So I felt suddenly self-conscious when Kevin looked at me like he couldn't quite bring me into focus. (Maybe it was the pot and not the question?) He turned away, shrugged, and sat down on a lawn chair. I asked again. Surely there are better ways for him to have fun? With his equally beautiful boyfriend? On a sunny Sunday afternoon? In a house with a sling? Why go to the pride parade?

“It's important for gay youth,” Kevin finally said, speaking to me very slowly. Perhaps he wanted me to take down every word. Perhaps he had concluded I was retarded.

“Gay kids in their teens and early twenties come to the pride parade,” Kevin continued, “and so do other people who are just coming out. It helps them to see lots of different people there. It gives them hope.” Attending the parade is social work? “Yes, it has a component of that. Young people and people who are just coming out need to see that gay people really are every color of the rainbow. Hot and hideous; young and old; smooth and hairy.”

 

W
e're just doin' it for the kids.

That's the party line these days—every party's line. Right, left, and center, politicians run for office to make the world a better place for our children and our children's children and our children's children's children's children. The unwinnable war on drugs must continue so that we don't send kids the wrong message about drugs; energy companies drill for oil in ecologically sensitive areas so that our children can live in a world with power; environmentalists fight energy companies so that our children can live in a world with caribou. One Seattle TV news show has the absurd motto, “For Kids' Sake.” Nothing is permissible in the United States these days unless it somehow lifts up our children, who, in case you haven't been paying attention, are our future. (So how come millions of American children live in poverty, lack health insurance, and don't have enough to eat? Never mind.)

Sadly, gay people are not immune to kid-mongering. Ellen DeGeneres didn't come out of the closet to resuscitate a dying sitcom; no, she came out to help gay youth. Olympian Greg Louganis didn't come out after his diving career was over to sell some books; no, he came out to give gay teenagers hope. Recently Chuck Panozzo, the bass player in the long-forgotten 1970s rock group Styx, came out of the closet. To get attention? To get laid? Sick of the closet? No, Panozzo came out, he said, “to make this a better world for the next generation.” Gay porn stars tell the fawning interviewers at porn magazines that they're not making porn for the money or the thrills or the smack. No, no, no. They're making porn to give gay youth hope. (Do not despair, O Gay Youth! There's a place for you! A place where men shave their ass-cracks! Pierce their nipples! Gang bang!)

When I tell Kevin that I'm not convinced that gay pride—the concept, the rhetoric, the parade—does much good for gay youth, he smiles at my cynicism. When I tell him that I think the current understanding of gay pride—Gay is good!—actually does more harm than good, he frowns at my heresy. One of the dogmas of modern gay life is that pride is always good for us, like vitamin C. And like vitamin C, massive doses can supposedly cure anything. HIV infections rising? Spend public health money to boost gay men's self-esteem and feelings of gay pride. (Never mind the studies that show that the more self-esteem a gay man has, the likelier he is to take sexual risks.) Not convinced that hate crimes laws and employment protections for homos are good ideas? Clearly you suffer from a worrisome case of gay-pride deficiency. Think gay men over fifty look ridiculous with their bare asses hanging out of leather chaps? Take these gay pride supplements, and you'll feel differently! The gay man who doesn't take pride in all things gay—without question, without thought—has long been accused of self-hatred. These days they're also accused of Demonstrating Insufficient Concern for Gay Youth. Gay pride isn't a slogan anymore or a rallying cry. It's dogma. Gay pride has become a sort of gay civic religion.