Published in the fall of 2005
by electronic magazine
New Town: Swell
PRIDE in the Land of Prejudice
Last night I went to a drag show; this is remarkable because of the geography
of the club: Marion County, Florida.
There are two contributing factors to the miraculous advent of a drag show
in the aforementioned geography. First, depending on the whim of the media,
is the reporting of the fascist undertakings of a few local politicians
and the sheriff to all but lynch anyone who isn't a white-picket-fence heterosexually
(breeding) legally bonded wage-slave. There's a mythology at play here and
a dangerous one. I use the word fascist because, before the dictionaries
reflected the regime mentality of the last few decades(one generation, truly),
fascism was defined as a group-held prejudice backed, mostly by military
might. Although fascism is usually applied to such easy charismatics as
Hitler, Franco, and Mussolini, it should also apply to the Jim Crow
laws of the American South (at least) prior to the 1970s ( it seems safe
to give the Civil Rights Act of 1963-or '64, depending on the source-some
half a decade to find its way into practice), and to the xenophobic,
homophobic views held today. Anyway, a local politician went on camera to
announce his crackpot idea of sending those arrested for sex crimes to Mexican
prisons. There is a local fervor targeting people convicted of certain sex
crimes; so much so that the sheriff had printed up a book of names, pictures,
addresses and convictions of everyone in the county convicted of a certain
sex crime. The book was, apparently, included in the local newspaper in
much the same way as a Sunday supplement. Never mind that the information
was already posted on the local government site. Never mind that not too
far from here the publicity caused one person to shoot himself(fatally).
Never mind that one day my very own mailbox held a flyer with a picture
and an address of some neighbor convicted of a sex crime. Never mind how
invasive it is in more than one quarter.
The sex crime listings are titled "Sexual Predators.' These listings
are posted in restaurants for reading over the coffee. The title is deceptive.
At first, it seems that a sexual predator would include a rapist, a batterer,
a serial killer; however, in this usage, the sexual predator is someone
who only prefers legal minors. It is unclear if this would include the client
of a juvenile prostitute -of any gender-or someone even with a fake ID.
Never mind that Marion County has one of the higher per person rates of
patriarchal violence-as hooks calls it-in the nation. People beat their
partners, rape their neighbors, pound on the children, target parking lots
of commerce and are otherwise filled with rage(road or otherwise) and violence
'round here. Most of them are not native-born to the area: they come from
new York and Miami and Ohio and Pennsylvania and the Carolinas. The economy
here is pretty questionable, but the picket-fence myth of happy-ever-after
is in operation and causing dangerous repercussions among the disenfranchised.
Of course, sexual predation - of the kind being publicized - does not involve
consenting adults as both partners; or so it appears the law assumes.
This would therefore disbar the mention of sexual predation and homosexuality
in the same breath; however, reality-that is, local reality-has this as
too fine a point. If a man is not with a woman, well. Also, women are not
to have sex outside of legal union and for any other purpose than breeding.
Thus, the anti-abortion freaks punish the children of incest by way of punishing
women for having a sexuality beyond breeding.
Interestingly, young students and young people in general, having more energy,
demonstrate a whole lotta hate towards gays and pro-abortion advocates.
Never mind that many of them are single parents. This violence is usually
targeted on local offenders -gay students, mostly. It is now impossible
to count the covertly gay students who were intimated out of courses because
of the frothing of hate mouthed by some student. Two instructors at
the local college, in separate and private conversations, said, "I
don't approve of the gay lifestyle." Why, no one was offering you,
honey. They are teachers though and it makes life harder for many people
to have such ill-thought philosophies held by the safely employed
instructor.
To its credit, the local college did offer something called a "Safe
Zone" seminar, of which I am a graduate. If the seminar -devised by
a self-satisfied white hetero bitch at some university -accomplished more
than pissing me off, it was to guarantee that the tiny, wannabe diesel
to my right stayed in her marriage. The thesis of the seminar was
"let's be nice to our gay friends." Personally, if I had used
the seminar leader's line, "I want to celebrate you for being gay",
I am sure I would be needing reconstructive surgery. I was tempted to cause
her a need for reconstructive surgery.
Anyway, the decades-old gay bar had been shut down somehow. The gay bar
in the next town had also been shut down. This meant that anyone who wanted
to go to a gay bar, anyone who lived around these parts, had an eighty mile
drive. A week ago, there was a picnic held by PRIDE: a miracle upon which
the local PRIDE president (from eighty mile north) commented , "We
were told we couldn't have events here, but here we are." The picnic
hosted somewhere under a hundred people -in a drizzle-in a park pavilion
and surrounding grassy area. The guy who had just opened the bar that features
the drag show gave away T-shirts, with the bar's logo, as raffle prizes.
I didn't see any suddenly euphoric college students, but there were many
other suddenly euphoric people.
The drag show I saw last night was interesting in that one of the triad
of entertainers went from a standing jiggle into a full split. Standing
at NBA height in heels, Miss Sound-System-Too-Bad-To-Hear-Name also wormed
across the dance floor. Another performer stripped out of the kind of housecoat
routinely sold to GramMaw at the local WallieWorld. Of course, the entertainers
synched to moldy-oldies, but it was great seeing mulleted lesbians stuffing
dollars into costume tops, and seeing bouncing young men climb the performers
like linesmen on a telephone pole. The four women I was with creamed like
witches at one entertainer's cheerleading costume: so much more powerful
than the same costume on Gwen Stephani just shown on the dj's multiple
TVs earlier. The distillation of all this is that in the urban ghettos of
gentrification, the right to drag is so old school. The right to be out
-in a college classroom, in a job, in a bar -is a liberty won back when.
For us, despite the media's technological invasion, the liberty is fragile.
True, the bar was packed -patio to piano bar to main event. Equally true
is the shadow of the sheriff and his weird ways. Stetson Kennedy said "you
can't call the police when the Klan comes; the police are in the Klan."
Although, I, personally, expected the sheeted freaks to show, maybe they
don't yet know. Certainly, half the bar consisted of the young and delicious
and the other half of wage-slaves with weary minds: no better psychic vacation
than a linebacker in sequins, methinks.
So enjoy the liberties of your urban hell. We'll mow our sand and fight
at the front.