"Terrible thing to live in fear"
Ugh, I don't really want to do this. In fact, I decided to finish re-watching Shawshank Redemption instead. But then right towards the fucking end, Red utters that line, and, well.
Late last night/early this morning 103 people were shot at a gay club in Orlando, Florida. Fifty of them died. The phrase getting thrown around is that it is the worst mass shooting in American history. I have trouble with that. How do you actually qualify these things and rank them. Is there a "best" mass shooting? But numerically speaking, it's unparalleled.
I have a pretty spotty history with gay clubs. I have some trouble articulating exactly why that is, but I think it in part stems from the broader trouble I have dealing with what exactly it actually means to be gay. When I was younger I was pretty uninterested in asserting that aspect of my self because it felt like it had a massive power to overwhelm everything else. Fair or not, it felt like to actively embrace that identity meant that you couldn't really be known for much else. Or you could, but the first thing that would always identify you was "gay." And I think I was keen to avoid that because so much of what seemed associated with that label didn't feel like it applied to me. Youth and stereotypes and inexperience, but there you have it.
So gay clubs, as a thing, were always unappealing because they chose as their focal point the one aspect of personality I felt least inclined to use as a tool for social grouping. I think at some point my mom or friends must have asked me why I wasn't more interested in socializing in gay specific groups, and it was because I felt that it was a dumb reason for a bunch of people to get together. It'd be like going to a club for tall people, or folks with brown hair. Like, "gay" is just a quality that gets tacked on to a lot of different people, and tells you nothing about what you might have in common. Give me a club of gamers, or a group of musicians, people who are interested in the same things I am. Those are people I can form connections with.
It's amusing to me now to see these two thoughts laid out side by side. In case you didn't catch it -- in one paragraph I'm asserting that there is a monolithic stereotype of gay, and in the next I'm saying gays cover the whole spectrum of human personality. The latter is, of course, the truth, but it took me long ass time to actually come around to realizing that. And you know how that happened? Hanging out around a bunch of gay dudes! You know what is a great way to do that for a lot of people? Gay clubs!
I'm still not a club kid. I can almost still count the number of nights I've been out to gay bars. But there've been significant moments there. My first trip to The Other Place in Cork led to a kind of long soul-searching journal entry that I forgot was actually on paper, but I apparently summarized it here as well. It was thanks to a gay club that I got to first experience being gay as just uncomplicated and good. More recently, I've been hanging out at Oil Can Harry's, a club here in LA that's main shtick is doing line dancing. It is small, and casual, and laid back, and nobody seems to really care about the beauty contest clubs get infamous for. And did I mention it's a bunch of dudes (and a few lesbians) twirling around with their partners? Dunno, just makes me smile every time I'm in there.
I found a comment from Nicole on on the old entry that pretty much sums this up -- when you're in these environments, "it's like [you] can let some kind of guard down that I didn't even know was up." That's exactly it. Even being completely out, in a progressive city, with friends and family who are cool -- having literally never had an issue with anyone on account of being gay -- it is still just fucking weird navigating straight society. You get used to it, and stop thinking about it, because it's never that big a deal. But holy god there need to be places where you just don't have to worry about it. Where it can feel like your normal is also everyone around you's normal as well.
So that this fuckwit would target one of those sucks. It sucks, it is scary, it is unfair, it is everything awful. It gets to me. I don't know, like I am aware gay bashing is a thing, and there has been violence in the past. Maybe it's the scale of this that is finally causing it to break through my own protective shell of never having had to face that prejudice head-on myself. But like, I just have to say -- it sucks knowing there are people in the world who, sight unseen, think they would be happier and the world would be a better place if I were dead. That is messed up, and just... hard to get your head around. What do you do with that?
Carry on, is of course the only answer. The aggregate situation of the world didn't change between Saturday night and Sunday morning; only my awareness did. Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.
Gonna try and shake it off.
Late last night/early this morning 103 people were shot at a gay club in Orlando, Florida. Fifty of them died. The phrase getting thrown around is that it is the worst mass shooting in American history. I have trouble with that. How do you actually qualify these things and rank them. Is there a "best" mass shooting? But numerically speaking, it's unparalleled.
I have a pretty spotty history with gay clubs. I have some trouble articulating exactly why that is, but I think it in part stems from the broader trouble I have dealing with what exactly it actually means to be gay. When I was younger I was pretty uninterested in asserting that aspect of my self because it felt like it had a massive power to overwhelm everything else. Fair or not, it felt like to actively embrace that identity meant that you couldn't really be known for much else. Or you could, but the first thing that would always identify you was "gay." And I think I was keen to avoid that because so much of what seemed associated with that label didn't feel like it applied to me. Youth and stereotypes and inexperience, but there you have it.
So gay clubs, as a thing, were always unappealing because they chose as their focal point the one aspect of personality I felt least inclined to use as a tool for social grouping. I think at some point my mom or friends must have asked me why I wasn't more interested in socializing in gay specific groups, and it was because I felt that it was a dumb reason for a bunch of people to get together. It'd be like going to a club for tall people, or folks with brown hair. Like, "gay" is just a quality that gets tacked on to a lot of different people, and tells you nothing about what you might have in common. Give me a club of gamers, or a group of musicians, people who are interested in the same things I am. Those are people I can form connections with.
It's amusing to me now to see these two thoughts laid out side by side. In case you didn't catch it -- in one paragraph I'm asserting that there is a monolithic stereotype of gay, and in the next I'm saying gays cover the whole spectrum of human personality. The latter is, of course, the truth, but it took me long ass time to actually come around to realizing that. And you know how that happened? Hanging out around a bunch of gay dudes! You know what is a great way to do that for a lot of people? Gay clubs!
I'm still not a club kid. I can almost still count the number of nights I've been out to gay bars. But there've been significant moments there. My first trip to The Other Place in Cork led to a kind of long soul-searching journal entry that I forgot was actually on paper, but I apparently summarized it here as well. It was thanks to a gay club that I got to first experience being gay as just uncomplicated and good. More recently, I've been hanging out at Oil Can Harry's, a club here in LA that's main shtick is doing line dancing. It is small, and casual, and laid back, and nobody seems to really care about the beauty contest clubs get infamous for. And did I mention it's a bunch of dudes (and a few lesbians) twirling around with their partners? Dunno, just makes me smile every time I'm in there.
I found a comment from Nicole on on the old entry that pretty much sums this up -- when you're in these environments, "it's like [you] can let some kind of guard down that I didn't even know was up." That's exactly it. Even being completely out, in a progressive city, with friends and family who are cool -- having literally never had an issue with anyone on account of being gay -- it is still just fucking weird navigating straight society. You get used to it, and stop thinking about it, because it's never that big a deal. But holy god there need to be places where you just don't have to worry about it. Where it can feel like your normal is also everyone around you's normal as well.
So that this fuckwit would target one of those sucks. It sucks, it is scary, it is unfair, it is everything awful. It gets to me. I don't know, like I am aware gay bashing is a thing, and there has been violence in the past. Maybe it's the scale of this that is finally causing it to break through my own protective shell of never having had to face that prejudice head-on myself. But like, I just have to say -- it sucks knowing there are people in the world who, sight unseen, think they would be happier and the world would be a better place if I were dead. That is messed up, and just... hard to get your head around. What do you do with that?
Carry on, is of course the only answer. The aggregate situation of the world didn't change between Saturday night and Sunday morning; only my awareness did. Haters gonna hate hate hate hate hate.
Gonna try and shake it off.