Queer is a Variety Pack

Queer isn’t for everyone. For me it’s essential. For me it’s survival, the only way I thrive. Queer isn’t definable. Queer constantly changes. Queer is unconventional and non-conforming, a place for someone who rejects the normal. Queer is about more than gender non-conformity, but gender authenticity is it’s spine.

How did I find the queer in me, and why did it take so long to accept and embrace my queerness? I hid something inside, implied only by the effects it had on every aspect of my life, like a planet inferred by the movements of all that surround it, by its effect on others. When I finally came out, when I discovered my dark planet, I found that my shadow was a rainbow.

It began to show in grade school, when the catholic nuns at St. Bernards Catholic School in Riverdale, Maryland showed us a filmstrip on “Religions of the World”.  We were shown Judaism, Islam and Hinduism. We saw Protestantism only as far out as Luther and his theses. It wasn’t until I was in college did I hear of Calvin,the Huguenots or the Friends.

They showed us Buddhism. I can’t recall what they said about Buddhism, it certainly wasn’t peppered with words like “mindfulness” or “beginners mind” as it would be now. But I got the message that Buddhists worship no diety or God, and look within to find our “Buddha Nature.” That was the moment I felt mine inside and found the truth. I found Buddha in an eight grade catholic school presentation, where the boys were acting up and the priest was getting steamed under his tight collar at them. While they played their parochial school drama, I was drinking enlightenment and receiving transmission of mind from the long line of buddhas.

Buddha was the first queer I met, the first non-conformist. They would be the only queer I would know for a long time. I had seen an alternative to the Seventies suburban white catholic America and I kindled and cared for that flame in my heart until now, where I can let it blaze.

Queer is a Variety Pack
May 11,2019

Queer is a variety pack
I don't know what
I'll wake to in the morning
a stiff and determined cock
a soft and childlike hug
for my stuffed animal
or radiant waves
of gentle orgasmic energy
imagining lingerie, ropes
and complete submission

Queer is a variety pack
I don't know how to dress
For me, for you, for them
is this a safe space
can I wear a dress here
can I wear colors here
Do I mind the stares here
Am I safe here
Am I safe anywhere
Is anyone
and am I safe with me

Queer is a variety pack
How can I discover
How I feel in any moment
When my feelings are always tempered
By the attitudes of those around me
Or what I perceive to be
The motives of those around me

Am I dressing like this now
Am I feeling these feelings now
Because they're feelings
that naturally arise
or because I finally have
A few moments in a safe space
So hurry!
Put on a dress and be a woman
Get hard and have sex

I just want to be myself
everywhere and all the time
But I haven't crossed
to that place yet
I'm still changing in my car
Still wondering how I need
to dress
More than how I want
to dress
I'm still dressing for you
too much of the time

I woke up longing
to find a place
where I could be naked
in nature
Because naked in nature
I'm just me
feeling all my feelings at once
without confusion

Queer is a variety pack
My natural self
begins to emerge
and confronts the very self
that I had become
to protect them
looking in this magic mirror
recognizing and not recognizing
frightening homecoming
longing and crying
to see bits of myself in you
ways that you expressed yourself
to keep us sane
and alive

Ways you expressed yourself
that you expressed us
so we could find Love
and be held
and walk outside naked
if only for a moment
of breath
before sinking under again

I see us in the Magic Mirror
and we need to know ourself
We need to be gentle and patient
and become friends
friends don’t try
to mash together into one
Friends don’t hurt each other
trying to fix everything at once
friends can cry together
and tell each other our secrets
walk and heal together
Friends accentuate
each others assets

Queer is a variety pack
sweet, sour and salty
orange and green
black and white
whips orgasms
and teddy bears
finding myself
means looking
in a lot of places
untying and rearranging
all of these bonds and spaces
releases energies deep
and superficial sparks
memories and desires
pop and submerge
faces change as in a dream
unreal moments of crossing
the journey defines the Life

Queer is freedom, queer is relief. Relief from all the pressure and stress of growing up in a troubled family and a troubled world where I felt I didn’t belong. As a child I embraced the fun of the Sixties; Mod clothes, psychedelic music, Pop Art. I embraced the change; the Black Panthers and Martin Luther King, Ecology. But all the beauty of the Sixties began to decay as the Seventies corroded and then the Eighties brought the Reagan years like Stalin in a polo shirt. The nation was free falling in a downward spiral back into a devastating model of conformity, normalcy and oppression of everything creative, free or fun. We were all Devo.

In the Seventies, my queer was expressed bending the normal while surviving it. I saw too many suicides of children and priests to let my freak flag fly. I wasn’t going to die. So I went stealth, bending dress codes and nurturing a sly dry and wicked sense of humor. I put on headphones and hid myself away.

My femininity and gender blurring seemed natural in the Sixties art and music scenes that I longed to join, and in the broader world there was hope in the unisex trends and a burgeoning gay liberation. But not in Riverdale. I was going to Dematha Catholic boys high school, and learned to survive by hiding, laying low, and keeping to a close couple of friends. My survival instinct led me to push my desires and the development of the young woman inside me deep within. She would have to wait, and she was forgotten and forbidden. Without a chance to socialize with other girls (let alone other queers), given no education or means to understand my own adolescence, I was in the worst possible situation.

Being a transgender person was never an option. I heard the slurs about homos and fags, but that was all underground and out of my sight.

I was something else, and my swirling desires grew intense. My sexuality was strong and looking for relief. I fantasized and masturbated to the women in my brothers Playboy and Penthouse magazines, but I was also crushing on boys at school that were slight and feminine or masculine and kind. I wanted to hold and fuck them, but I also wanted to be soft and feminine and feel their cock in me. All those hormones were swirling and swelling and trying to grow out of the package I was trapped in. I desired to be touched and felt and experienced sensually in a world where no one knew how to touch. My mind was wide open to every experience, and I was trapped in a catholic boys school in Prince Georges County Maryland. Meanwhile at home, my family was falling apart in a carnage of drugs, sadness and the aftermath of the Vietnam War.

I wanted to wear boots! Beatle boots when I was a kid, thigh highs when I was a teen, tanker boots when I got to college. I wanted to wear colors and leopard print and patterns that clashed. Blocks of color with paint splashes. I wanted to wear stockings and crop tops with my tummy showing. My queer was ready to burst for a long time,

I mostly hid my queer inside until now, and certainly never knew it as such until my late fifties. But I made sure to let some of it out, gave myself some steam vents. I was too clever not to, and the girl inside of me was determined that we were going to survive. My queer leaked out occasionally and inappropriately, requiring excuses, secrecy and a slow steady stream of “I didn’tmean it.” Guilt and Shame were constant symptoms of survival.

In college I let loose with my non-conformity in the context and service of art. But my Queer, in terms of bringing together my non-conformist faith and ideas with my non-conformist gender and sexuality was something I didn’t conceive of. My gender remained a confusing secret, except for private confusing outbursts usually fueled with alcohol and the artistic license of punk fashion. My lack of understanding and synthesis of the whole me made relationships and intimacy difficult. I was always watching myself to hold me back, and honesty was elusive no matter how hard I tried to express every feeling and thought. How can you express feelings that are hidden even from you?

Knowing my Queer and learning the reality of being transgender, has been a long journey. I’m really just now beginning to unfold and explore who I am. It’s a journey I want to share openly, both because I want to reach anyone who may need to hear this, and because I’ve lived so long on the inside that I need to live on the outside now to thrive, stay sober and become myself. Queer is a variety pack, and I’m so happy to be living it! As I write this, there’s hope that the nation and world are turning from the dark towards the light. I feel this is a blessed time, certainly just a beginning, and I hope it leads to a bright future for us all.