“Ballet dancers and hairdressers and drag queens made it safe for football players to come out and not the other way around. Effeminate men who couldn’t hide who they were and were constantly told they were weak—because our misogynistic culture associates femininity with weakness—those guys made it safe for masculine men to come out.” ~ Dan Savage
June 12, 2022 will mark the return of the Capital Pride Parade and Festival – a tradition that Albany has maintained since 1970 in some way or fashion. It feels especially important this year, with so many awful turns our country has taken in going backwards regarding equality and basic human rights. We are also in a tumultuous time where some have begun to question the simple need for an LGBTQ+ Pride Events (is Boston even having an official Pride celebration this year?)
I’ve always maintained that as long as there are people who are trying to take away or deny us our rights, and as long as there is homophobia, then yes, there is a definite need for it. And even if those things went away, there would still be a need to remember and honor all of those who fought and died for whatever we have today. Besides, the world needs some joy and love, and there is no more joyful and loving place than a Pride Parade and Festival.
Check out the Capital Pride Center’s page on this year’s Capital Pride Parade and Festival to find out ways in which you can take part in this important event.
A person with such insouciant charm and magnetism deserves to have their names in all caps, and today we honor JORDY as Dazzler of the Day thanks to his creative talent and transfixing personality. His website offers more enchantment for those seeking to solve his mysteries, and he was recently announced as one of the headliners for this year’s Capital Pride Festival in Albany. His music, filled with catchy hooks and pop melodies, focuses on love and loneliness, giving listeners just a little bit more to chew on than your average pop song.
When I was growing up, no one talked about being gay, and when you don’t see yourself in the world you wonder at your worth, your value, and your entire existence. #SayGay
Artists make the most impressive dazzlers, and so this Dazzler of the Day was an obvious and much-deserved choice. Here is Michael Breyette – one of my favorite living artists – and what a thrill and joy it is to be alive when someone so talented is working and producing art that will surely endure long into the future. We don’t appreciate people when we should.
Breyette has been featured here in a few previous posts, such as this artist profile and a cheeky Hunk of the Day crowning. He was also gracious and kind enough to capture me back when I could fit snugly into a Speedo.
He recently posted the following on his lovely website, offering an inside look into the process of an artist in winter:
It’s great to have a busy holiday season, but it seems like forever since I was at the drawing board. I also have this ‘dream’ of coming up with a whole bunch of ideas and outlines now to carry me through the whole year. The hope would be that I’d be more proficient and could quickly finish up one work and move right on to the next, without waiting for inspiration or taking time to develop an idea. Knowing how I usually work though, I don’t think I’ll make it happen. In the past when I’ve planned out several pieces at once, I’ve only managed to complete a few of them. Maybe I lose interest, my head is just not in the same place it was when I was creating the concept.
How wonderful it is to have him in this world, making it more beautiful, making it more resonant, making it more bearable. Visit his website here for more magic and enjoy the seasonal selections of his work below.
It was the fall of 1998. I’d just met my first serious boyfriend. It felt like a giddy time, though slightly fraught with worry, the unknown and the uncomfortable notion of opening up my life to another person, and the vaguest sliver of worry that this wasn’t the one, at least the one who would last forever. And then the more frightening notion that maybe not anyone would last forever.
The job I had was my first brush with an office environment – as a research analyst for John Hancock. Located just a few blocks from the condo, my commute was a seven minute leisurely walk, five if I was rushing, which I never was back then. It was dull and monotonous work, the scope of which was never entirely explained to us (other than a class-action lawsuit was involved and we needed to find duplicate numbers on microfiche) but I excelled and moved up the limited ranks quite quickly. A little over a month on the job, I felt comfortable in talking about my new boyfriend, feeling a relatively new sensation of pride in another person, in being part of a couple. But there were still moments of doubt. We never held hands. We never walked too close. We never kissed in public.
On October 12, 1998, I walked into the office and was about to begin the usual routine. Co-workers whirled through the microfiche readers, while others ate their breakfast bagels at the center table. I heard the news before I saw it in the paper – back when we got news from the newspaper, back when that was usually the first one would hear of anything. A co-worker blurted out that Matthew Shepard had died. After a few days in a coma, he’d given up his fight. His life was finished. It was the only time up to that day where I felt the wind knocked out of me, and I had to literally sit down at the table in the middle of the room and pretend that I was looking at some microfiche nonsense. Anything to keep from crying.
Many things haunted me, starting at that moment. The image of him being mistaken for a scarecrow at first. The image of his face being soiled and dirty save for the trails of his tears. The image of a loneliness so pervading that the feigned interest of a couple of questionable guys made the danger worth the risk.
What everyone else in that office saw as just another dead guy – one of probably a dozen in a paper as sprawling as the Boston Globe – I saw as something far more personal. This 21-year-old – just a year younger than myself – had been killed simply for being gay. He was murdered for being what I was. From that point forward the world would be haunted in a way that most of my straight friends could never fully feel. It changed everything in an instant, and the immense sorrow of where we were, and how far we really hadn’t come, took up residence in my mind, the lingering remnants of which surface to this very day.
The details of the night he was attacked felt eerily familiar in the way it all began. A random encounter at a bar – where we all went looking for love back then – that ended with a drive onto the desolate and cold back roads of Wyoming – some sad American nightmare where Matthew was brutally beaten and tortured by two straight men… and for what reason? For being gay? For being different? For wanting to be loved? How could anyone be so hated simply for loving?
After we learned of what had happened, when a guy riding his bicycle passed Matthew’s body strung up on a fence, and initially mistook him for a scarecrow, I didn’t think he would die. The world couldn’t be that cruel. It couldn’t be that cold. So when he did, and when someone so flippantly said he was dead, I had to sit down, because whatever hopes and dreams I had secretly harbored since I was a kid were suddenly knocked out of me.
It was an act of hatred that I would never understand, and in the following days and weeks and years I would read everything I could about what happened, trying to come to some sort of understanding as to why they did it, and at every turn and every new piece of information, I failed. Yet throughout all that time, and through all these years, the memory of Matthew has remained alive. I’d forgotten the names and fates of his killers, but Matthew Shepard is indelibly imprinted upon my memory, imprinted on my heart, imprinted on that precious part of life that should have been filled with innocence and hope and dreams.
The older I get, the more I start to see the importance of a day like today, especially when I look back at my own childhood and elongated coming out process. I grew up in the 1980’s, and in a rather sheltered/cocooned household. Raised by strict Catholic parents, I never heard anyone talk about being gay, not in my formative years, not when it mattered and would have made a world of difference. And there was no internet or gay bookstore in Amsterdam, NY to help me see any possibility for all the confusing feelings I had.
If you do not see yourself in the world around you for the majority of the first two decades of your life, you do not see yourself as a valid part of humanity. You feel a little lost, but the truth is there was never a path that I saw, so it’s a sense of being lost that allowed for no way to being found. Looking back at that time, it’s a wonder I wasn’t an even bigger mess than I was. It’s like an orca that has been born and raised in captivity – the dorsal fin droops, there are all sorts of health issues, and the poor little creature doesn’t know any other way of life, so it gets afflicted with all these problems without knowing what its life could have been. Do those animals feel the pull of the ocean, the pull of who they were meant to be? I felt it subtly, without name or explanation, and it mostly came out as me feeling alone and different without exactly knowing why, which only served to feed into my social anxiety and create an absolutely debilitating environment in which to grow up. It’s hard enough for a kid to make it unscathed through childhood – adding these other elements imbued my time as a child with a sense of terror – and the absence of that terror in what I could see in my friends only added to my confusion and feelings of inferiority.
Whenever I wonder whether I should keep this silly blog going, I think back to my twelve-year-old self, and how impactful seeing something like this would have been. Not because I’m so wonderful and fabulous – but because everything I’ve put forth here is a pretty accurate reflection of my mundane, dull, boring, yappy, crappy, sappy and happy life. I didn’t need to see a famous celebrity come out, or a glamorous historical figure outed – I just needed to see the possibility of being gay as something that existed. I needed to see someone simply living their life, being accepted, occasionally celebrated, and working on just being a better person. Instead, I saw a heteronormative world that had no place for me or what I was feeling. For twenty years – arguably the most important years of a person’s life – I did not see myself. That’s something that doesn’t ever go completely away, and it’s the reason that moments like National Coming Out Day still matter.
Having already been named a Hunk of the Day here at such a young age, there was time for Billy Gilman to stage a second act – sure to be one of many for someone whose talent has grown and evolved over time. Today he earns the Dazzler of the Day crown thanks to his dazzling song ‘Soldier’ which is the latest highlight of his career. See his website for more evidence of his brilliance.
Heralded as the first active NFL Player to come out as gay, Carl Nassib earns his first Dazzler of the Day for that always-courageous act of being true to oneself, especially in a profession that has never felt very embracing of difference. That may be changing, and if this first step will help other football players making similar difficult choices, then so much the better. (But always keep this in mind too.)
With Pride Month in full swing, and a large number of Pride events happenings as the vaccinated among us move more freely than we have in well over a year, I’m taking a moment to be both serious and silly about this special month. Hence these photos, taken so I could update my social media profiles with something more seasonally gay.
Next weekend is when some of the main Pride events are happening in Boston, including Pride Night at Fenway Park with the Red Sox. More often than not, Skip and I would find ourselves there for such an event, and it always thrilled me to see the rainbow flags flying at Fenway and on the Boston Public Library. While we mostly skirted the big parade (we did it properly once) it was good simply to be in town for such celebratory fun. Boston enjoys an electric-like excitement in June, whether from the residual glow of graduations, or the exuberant arrival of summer, or probably a bit of both – and it’s sort of a glorious finale right before the city seeps into its sleepy summer slumber (which I tend to appreciate even more).
On the serious side, all the rainbows and unicorns and fluffy party scenes mask the heartache of the history that we in the LGBTQ+ community have endured and survived – and it’s worth a moment to recognize and remember the many of us who didn’t make it this far. It’s also worth challenging ourselves in analyzing the privilege and distinctions among intersectional groups and individuals within our widely-varied community. We are making progress, but this is a long journey, and it’s largely in its infancy. Let’s keep going, and growing, and learning.
“We don’t come out for heterosexual people to know. We don’t come out for the ones who hate us to know. We shout and make as much noise as possible just so other people like us who are scared and can’t be themselves would know that they are not a mistake and they are not alone.” – Artem Kolesov
What a wonderful circumstance to realize that Pride Month has reached such saturation in mainstream media that it rivals Christmas in all the best and worst ways. I’m not going to get into a critique of corporate tie-ins and the whole lavender-washing of a movement that was rooted in the Stonewall Riots of 1969. We’ve come a long way to see rainbow flags on Target merchandise, and I’m not about to decry or condemn the rest of the world for catching up and wanting to celebrate too.
Rather, I’m going to focus on the true meaning of Pride, much in the way that I’ve come to focus on the true meaning of Christmas – the essence of this month in which we remember our past, celebrate our present, and look to make things better for the future. For me, Pride will always be about one simple image: two guys walking down Boylston Street in Boston holding hands, unconcerned about the world around them, and simply enjoying the touch of another human being. I saw it at one of the first Pride Marches I ever attended, and it still thrills me – because I remember.
I remember what a thrill that was because it was something I didn’t grow up seeing.
I remember growing up and not having any sense of the possibility of love – not the love I was created to experience, not the love I was born to live. I remember the sort of heterosexual love that was forced upon me, and that I forced myself to fit into, even when it felt wrong, even when I knew it wasn’t me.
I remember not seeing myself anywhere, not finding my future on television or in a magazine or a movie.
Because I remember those things, and so many more, I will still celebrate Pride.
An oiled-up naked man graces the cover of Club 69’s debut album ‘Adults Only’ and, truth be forever told, that’s partly why I had to buy the CD at Tower Records. It was the 90’s and this was the standard club fare – house music and strong-throated divas singing power-anthems with a driving beat and a killer melody.
As the gay community smoldered in the ashes of the AIDS epidemic, and the damage to a generation was still burning strong around the world, I looked at love with wary eyes. For those of us who came of age at a certain time, sex would always be tinged with danger – and the lurking possibility that it could lead to death. What does that do to an already-marginalized population?
For the most part, I spent my weekends alone in the Boston condo – glad and comforted by the proximity of Chaps or Club Cafe, but socially anxious enough to not dare step foot into their darkened dens by myself, aside from the occasional moment of alcohol-induced bravery in which I’d join a few friends for a night of tea dancing. I always had a blast, but it was never enough to make me a regular, and hardly ever did I venture out alone. When my twinkdom was at its most potent, I was at my most hermit-like. I don’t regret it in the least. It may have saved my life. AIDS was still ravaging the gay community. Safe-sex was just starting to become the default, but people would always do what they wanted, no matter the risk or stupidity. The only person you could absolutely trust was yourself, and even then lust and desire could make you see things as they weren’t truly so.
Instead, I’d spin this CD of house music and play out fantasies of club life within the safety of my bedroom: dance party of one. I could wear only my underwear and no one would stare or cop a feel. I could get as sweaty as I wanted and just take a few short steps into the shower. I could dance the night away, absolutely safe and secure, and there was joy enough in dancing with myself.
“You deserve so much more than just to be tolerated. You deserve to be loved for exactly who and what you are right now. This, of course, is a double-edged sword. This also means you must return the favor. Learn more about racism and sexism and ableism, too. You, unfortunately, are probably already well aware of how much homophobia can hurt, inside and out. Learning more about how different kinds of oppression work and where they intersect will help you build better bridges with others and create a safe and respectful…culture for everyone. Bullies are almost always outnumbered by the bullied. We just need to organize.†― Ivan Coyote
October 11 marks National Coming Out Day, and since I’ve written many a gay post here over the past seventeen years, I’ll not regale you with the tale of my own coming out because it’s been done before. Rather, I’m asking a simple question that hangs in the air with the idea of a new Supreme Court justice taking Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s vaunted place. How would you feel if your marriage was suddenly up for a vote, and if it went the wrong way would be deemed null and void? Or better yet, how would you feel if you grew up in a world where you weren’t allowed to marry the one that you loved? National Coming Out Day is about coming out and being true to who you are. That’s a relatively new luxury – and for many it’s still not a luxury at all. We met remember that. We must safeguard it. And we must work to protect the rights we’ve earned when hate and homophobia make motions to rise again. No one is equal until everyone is equal.
