Pride 2025
Yesterday, on a Friday, I wore my Furious Faggot T-Shirt, walked into a coffee shop (getting a stare-turned-to-friendly-forced-smile from someone who, in the past, told me that she is “not political”) to read Oscar Wilde, before heading to take gay photos with a homo, while we named off all the gay photographers we know, before, finally heading off to see a Gregg Araki double feature of Doom Generation and Nowhere, which, I explained to my dad, are part of the 1990s “New Queer Cinema” movement. I also bought two books: Deeply Human: Global Queer Photography and, after the Getty Exhibition, Queer Lens: A History of Photography.
In the car the day before, on a Thursday, after heading to the Getty’s Queer Lens and Three Dollar Bill exhibition, I asked Snooze whether he felt like he’s ever achieved gay. Like, you know when you’ve spent a lot of time feeling “not gay enough,” I told him, and then one day you wake up and say, “wow, I’ve made it.” I don’t think he replied, or I do not remember the reply.
The day before, working at church on a Wednesday, after I mentioned that I went to the church’s “RIC” zoom meeting, the intern asked me if I’d want to be the gay representation during that process. I was wearing my gay hat. I said, “maybe, but I’d need support.” The intern could be that support, but so could the pastor. The pastor expressed concerns about the intern’s discussion around the addition of “homosexuality” into the bible, and how he might not view it as a history behind us, but as an argument to hash out in the present.
The day before, on Tuesday, I went to the church’s “RIC” zoom meeting: “Reconciling in Christ,” they call it, which, at the time, was led by a straight man with a rainbow border on his zoom icon. The only point of interest for me, because I thought this whole thing is tedious—that becoming pro-gay is even a discourse at all--was the “Queer Stories” section. Imagine inviting a leather daddy kinkster, with his subby boys, to come speak to a church about the nature of submission and desire. I think the churchies would get it. Naturally, during this meeting, I thought of “New Queer Cinema” and its unapologetic, matter-of-fact defiant queer stance (for Gregg Ararki, through teenage angst, its criticism of consumerism and religion), and whether the church would be up for a gay movie night.
Monday, of course, after reading Mark Doty—a gay AIDS crisis poet, I watched Aftersun in theaters. It is my favorite movie, about a man (Callum) on an intimate and sweet vacation with his daughter Sophie. He’s incredibly depressed. Ambient music is the soundtrack. And this time I noticed the strength of heterosexual conformity—that Sophie, a lesbian, is surrounded by heteros making out or showing straight affection (except for two of the boys kissing each other, that she sees obscured): Sophie seems to reluctantly make out with a boy in order to deal with her father abandoning her for the night (she does not seem to like kissing him). Later in the movie, we see Sophie with her wife, and a newborn child crying in the other room. The queer perspective is subtle, like everything else in the movie. My brother’s girlfriend and I shared strategies, after the movie, about our techniques to keep ourselves from ugly crying in the theater: I bit my finger; my brother’s girlfriend dug her nails into her skin.
Sunday, Father’s Day: I did church (they enculted me; the office admin signed me up to be a new member without me signing the paperwork, yet. It was a joke, sort-of. Well, the joke is on her: she’s now a new member too—she thought she could get away from what she put me through: forced to flumber through the strange sort of initiation ritual in front of the church, except this time by herself because she missed it last week. It’s funny. We talk about gay frequently, and she’s smart). After church, I grabbed coffee from a gay coffee shop owned by a man who has asked me for nudes on two gay apps; that man saw me and complimented my Sufjan Stevens shirt, noting that he also had gotten merch for the new Sufjan Stevens album. I bought pies; I hung out with family.
Saturday, the day after my birthday, was the “No Kings” protest nationwide. I went and shot photos of the Huntington Beach iteration of that protest, seeing lots of prideful people holding signs (some had shirts from Adams Nest, which is a place that sells bold gay shirts). I like it when gays are intersectional like this and not just horny-crazed animals oblivious to the rest of the world. Sex is better when you feel in touch with the larger world. I tried to find some of the gays that I know, but I think they must have been at the protest across town instead. I sat down with some straight married friends and forced them to watch Call Me By Your Name, because pride month is about making straights watch gay movies.
Friday, a week before, was my birthday. Happy birthday me—normally I spend it in a crisis. What am I doing with life? Why? I abandon everyone and reflect. But no, last Friday, I spent the day at Disneyland, invited by two church people and the intern. The intern and I spoke of gay all day—“I feel like I can finally be myself,” he said to me, because, in fact, we are both gay and no longer need to code switch. It was fun. It was gay. Normally I hold a criticism of Disneyland, but that day I believed. I understand the Disney gays.
Thursday, before that, I watched an Almodovar film at the art theater: All About My Mother. Almodovar is a queer film director. I went alone. I had also taken a stroll through Ikea, noticing a display that said “Everyday Allyship,” with a stack of multicolored journals into a rainbow. Allyship is rainbow: think of the RIC man in the meeting.
Wednesday, I read David Wojnarowicz’s Tape Journals.
Tuesday, I watched My Own Private Idaho, after trying to get my brother to watch it at the art theater with me. I had sent one of my friends, who had recently been baptized, finding the “gay life” unfulfilling, some images of Barbara Kruger’s work. I hope he looks at them more; he liked them, and Kruger has some good critiques against heterosexuality and consumerism.
Monday, a gay photographer reached out so that we could shoot together. We wanted to figure out how to both shoot nudes, although I am jaded with shooting nudes. There does not seem to be a much of a project for them, in my mind: anyone can take their clothes off (many gays will strip as soon as you say the words) and the images do not say much about the world. I also spent time that day voting against the city councilmembers that wanted to “ban porn” (aka LGBTQ books, many which had no sex in them) from the library.
The day before, on June 8th I bought a server. This was the straightest thing I had done all month.
On June 6th I wrote about pride, which, if you go back, somehow, to reading that, then the gaps from then-to-now are filled.
Some other notes: to make up for June 8th’s vibe: On June 2nd I found a list of Lambda award winners. It’s a list of the “best” LGBTQ books each year, reaching back to 1989. And it felt like a little treat to find. I ordered a few poetry books.
This month has been a pure consumption month. I have taken a few photos, but I have also taken a break from producing and producing and producing (no printing at all, only little writing). It’s an experience structured from little joy to the next little joy, without needing to create anything from it. I’ve felt like a consumer the entire month: ingesting movies, digesting art, and acting as if this sort of having-had-experienced constructs, or reinforces, an identity. And I’ve finally, as I said in the car with Snooze, achieved this identity. Many people never feel “gay enough,” but through watching many of the gay movies; through shooting nudes; through wearing gay shirts and being “out;” through reading gay books; through gay sex; through all these other things, I feel, really, like I’m trying to prove something to myself. And I am tired.
Importantly: outside of proof: in one conversation last week that I had with a gay man and a straight person, I felt outed and outed and outed by my straight friend, who listed off my CV of gay experience that I had told him: some tentative dates and weird relationships that I had had, the “gay intern” that I talk about, and many things from the list above. And as I talked to the (I thought; I was trying to know) gay person next to me, I felt like this baggage, this outing, all of this culture all at once, was so unnecessary. It was like fish speaking of the water they both were in. As I tried to pick the brain of the maybe-gay person in front of me, my straight friend speaking of Call Me By Your Name would not do. So often gay representation, as gay, as entertainment, is for the straight world, because it is already unspoken and assumed to those who live that gay world each day. What use is proof, of an image of yourself to those around you, when those around you bear that same image?
(An image becomes only an image: it can be apprehended and then changed…making the world a bit different. Making the world a bit bigger, to create something, for new forms of life.)