New issue of Just Out comes out today and I have three articles in it: one on a book called "The Best Nonreligious Quotes Ever" (Kevin Reedy), one on another book called "How To Be A Gay Porn Star" (Mike Donner), and one on the 12th Annual Hat Party at Chameleon this Sunday (where I will see each and every one of you, right?) I stopped by Chameleon yesterday and talked over both the Hat Party and my party, and left just as a health inspector with a clipboard arrived (Health Police!) Pat said we should be able to project "Art Police" on the wall for my party, but we need speakers; the movies he usually projects during business hours are silent. He told me about the Salon Q that Chameleon hosted a few weeks back. Sounds like it drew a good crowd (he estimated almost 200 people), but based on other things he told me I'm glad I didn't go. He said there were uppity attitudes and when a stripper Pat had hired showed up to perform, some of the gays got snooty, asking "What is a stripper doing here?" and Pat's attitude in response was "You aren't at a business meeting, this is a party." I said, "There are lots of snobby gay guys that are just no fun."
Funny how hearing a little thing like that sets me off. I think back to that cocktail hour for queer journalists that I attended a while back, where someone, I think it was that Zuckerman person (apparently Sam Adams' boyfriend du jour), when introduced to me played the snob card and was like "Where do you come from? Who do you know?" I guess I was supposed to prove my right to be amongst such lofty company by ticking off a list of names of my connections to important and powerful people. Like Byron Beck, maybe? (He was there. We didn't talk.) I don't know which was more unpleasant: the snobbery oozing from him like cobra venom or the fact that the venue selected for our little social status contest served eight-dollar drinks at happy hour. (Let's live in the real world: if we're journalists, most of us aren't exactly raking in money. Let me pick the venue next time. Actually, let me pick the people, too.) I kind of felt bad for him, though, because I sort of know what he was getting at: he didn't know what box to put me in, because I don't fit in any box. And even though I greatly enjoy journalism and the opportunities it affords me to network and meet great people, it is hardly the extent of my ambition to be a freelance journalist for the rest of my life. I am not just going to write about people, I'm going to be someone who is written about. I have visions of being the center of a cult of personality. I've had them for a long time.
Maybe I AM a megalomaniac. I have certainly been afflicted with delusions of wealth, power, fame, etc. for almost as long as I can remember. Except, to paraphrase John Hurt playing Quentin Crisp in "The Naked Civil Servant," (above, with Greenwich Village drag queen) I would question the word "afflicted." I think I would have to ask whether "delusions" are really all that bad. What it really boils down to is that I have long had - maybe ALWAYS had - a strange certainty that I am on course to something great, that at some point I will have some measure of wealth or fame or success (or all three!), almost as if I'm guided by some sort of angelic spirit. I would say that I feel "blessed" if that word wasn't so tinged with religion. That's why snubs by snobs just can't hurt me. I like people who are just NICE. It's the easiest thing in the world to be and takes much less energy than copping attitude and it's so much more pleasant to be around. Of course, there is a time and a place for attitude - and don't I know it! - but there's no reason to be rude and snobby simply for the sake of it. People who are obsessed with proving and maintaining their social status are a sad, desperate lot, and I will happily pass right by them on my way to endless treasure that will never be theirs and has always been mine, without even an effort, since the very beginning! Social snobs are insecure and afraid to be themselves deep down.
I am neither. And actually, I never have been...even going back to elementary school! I dress how I want, do what I want, say what I really think. Boys who wear brand name clothing don't impress me. Boys who make their own clothes do. I'm not in it for money or social status or any of those things, really, although I'll accept them if they come, and I have a feeling they will, eventually, if I just keep going in the direction I'm headed. Maybe I'll find out fame and artistic recognition and material comfort aren't important to me after all. Maybe I'll fall in love and it'll be mutual (whoa nelly!) and I'll learn how to fully love another human being, the one major aspect of human existence that I'm still in the dark about. Regardless, my life is rich and full already and now that I've finally made a serious commitment to take better care of myself and really go for the gold, the good times are really only starting. I have something that most people don't have. It's a sort of invincibility that comes from my calm and unyielding conviction that wherever I'm going, it's somewhere great, and no matter what happens when I get there - even if it's not exactly what I expected in my starry-eyed youth - it will be OK.
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