Maybe I Don’t Want to Have a Kiki

Confession: This is the only reason I watch this music video.

I have some confessions to make.

I kinda like the Scissor Sister’s new club-track turned homo-anthem single, Let’s Have A Kiki. Sometimes when I’m alone I watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. One time I tried to read The Trials of Oscar Wilde because I thought that’s what “intellectual gays” read. I own several sets of “sexy underwear” because someone once told me that gays don’t wear boxers. I once watched Eating Out on Netflix and was convinced for months that every gay guy was an underwear model who doesn’t own a single shirt with sleeves. Consequently I bought several tank tops and then never once wore them in public.

Then again, I don’t scream “gay.” I don’t wear rainbow bracelets or tank tops (see above). I’ve never been to an event specifically targeted towards GLBT audiences, unless you count a college production of Aida. I’m not some hetero-normative “macho man” either; I can’t stand professional sports, l don’t shoot things with guns, and I’m not that into Scarface. I’m neither a purse nor a billfold. I’m more of a messenger bag.

But the thought occurred to me today, “Am I gay enough?”

I went to Gap today because I have given up hope of ever moving out of my parents’ house and have just decided to stock up for the long cold winter that is the next 15 years of my life. While I was there, wandering among the slim-fit chinos and half-zip sweaters, I was approached by Sales Associate Nic. Sales Associate Nic was cute. Sales Associate Nic was beardy and blue-eyed and friendly and short. He didn’t call me “boss,” “chief,” or “man,” and he wore a tie with little anchors on it. He had a full blond beard. Let’s just say I wanted to move into that beard and hang up my posters and order-in Chinese.  I wanted to make that beard my fourth husband then bitterly divorce it and split half my assets with it. Sensing an opportunity, I applied the my failsafe flirt techniques: prolonged and unnecessary physical contact; brief and furtive eye contact; self-degradation; incorrect sentence construction; incoherent mumbling.  It must have worked a little bit, because I did get a “Stop it. You’re so thin.” out of him. I also got him to bring out a rack of clothes that wasn’t supposed to go on sale until tomorrow and let me sift through them. So for those who were wondering, I do have minuscule amounts of “mad game.”

Flirting skills aside, I was thinking one thing nearly the whole time: “Does he know I’m gay? Am I acting gay enough?” Then I caught myself. What does “gay enough” even mean? Am I talking about conforming to stereotypes of gay guys with high-pitched voices and limp wrists and Louis Vitton murses? I am not that guy. Neither was Sales Associate Nic. We weren’t connecting over our lisps and love of Bette Midler. He wasn’t singing “It’s Liza with a ‘Z’, not Lisa with a ‘S’…” and I wasn’t wearing jean cutoffs. But there was a unspoken physical attraction there. We were talking, shopping, and flirting without a single “Legalize Gay” t-shirt or rainbow wristband to guide us.

I realized then what I meant by “gay enough.” I meant confident. I meant comfortable. I meant that I was able to look this guy in the eye and express (through socially acceptable channels) that I wanted to pin him to a wall. It’s a feeling that has been desperately lacking in my life. So when I slapped myself on the cheek and said, “Be gayer, dumbass!” I was really asking myself to drop the act. Quit pretending like you don’t want to take that beard out behind the middle school and get it pregnant. I didn’t mean drop the wrists and raise the voice an octave or two. I meant stop trying to hide who you are. Then of course I understood the “Legalize Gay” t-shirts and the rainbow wristbands. It wasn’t conforming, it was confidence. It was a way to say, “I’m gay and I don’t give a hoot and a half what you think about it.” I had always understood ‘pride,’ but Pride had finally become personal.

So maybe I’m not gay enough. Maybe I’m not proud enough or confident enough or comfortable enough. Because being gay rocks. I don’t know why I don’t act like it sometimes.

So I don’t really want to have a Kiki. I’m no good at “Lip-Syncing for my Life.” I wear shirts with sleeves and I didn’t major in Queer Studies in college. But I am gay, dammit! It’s time I started acting like it.

Thoughts About Hipsters, & The Hallway of Sexual Preference

Gay hipster kryptonite.

Do you like the new header design? I did that all by myself, thanks entirely to freelance designers who makes fonts like Ostrich Sans and apps like Paper that allow people like me to fake creativity. It’s the blogger’s equivalent of Instagram (no, your Taco Bell wrapper does not count as art if you filter it). I did doodle that little doodle at the top, but please know that nothing like that has ever issued from my pen before, nor will it ever again. It also looks nothing like me. I am way more attractive. And I don’t wear suspenders. I call myself a “hipster” for the purposes of this blog, but I can assure you that no suspenders nor an appropriately ironic tee has ever graced my scrappy frame.

“How dare you call yourself a hipster,” screams the hipster community, “when you don’t even own ONE SINGLE glow-in-the-dark wolf tee or pair of thick-rimmed clear-lens glasses?!? Do you even KNOW what Urban Outfitters is?” Urban Outfitters is the hipster’s department store, where everything looks like it was just found in the dumpster but still costs more than most of us make in a week. Urban Outfitters allows you to stare into the fetid heart of all that is wrong with humanity, and then spend $89 on a pair of socks with Kimmy Gibbler’s face on it, because you NEED THEM. Urban Outfitters is the Instagram of the retail world.

So why do I say this blog is about “How to Be a Hipster Without Really Trying?” There’s a story behind that. I know you’ve heard me describe my rural upbringing and subsequent education at a small university in the town where dreams go to die. Seriously, I didn’t get out much. So when I discovered that people in the real world didn’t all buy their clothes at Walmart or wear sandals with socks, I made an effort to start dressing better. Because I started wearing shirts that fit and scarves when it wasn’t that cold out, and because none of us had actually seen a “hipster,” I earned the title of hipster among my friends. I rejected the title at first, claiming I was just “trying to look nice,” but I eventually began to accept the label, if only ironically. Irony, you know, is the patron saint of hipsterdom, so this convinced my friends I was some sort of meta-hipster, who’s true identity was so complexly ironic that I transcended the label altogether.

So without really trying, I had become a hipster. (“Hipster without really trying” is a little redundant, as being a hipster requires the appearance of not really trying anyway.) The fact that I was a gay guy living in a conservative world only made me feel more counter-cultural, so I suppose I identified with the subculture. So when I started this blog and named it “How to Be a Hipster Without Really Trying” I did so in an effort to communicate my feeling of being counter-cultural while at the same time trying to be just like everyone else. Also, I had just seen How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which somehow won a Pulitzer (someone apparently thought this was the A Streetcar Named Desire of it’s time), and that song about a brotherhood of men was stuck in my head.

So that’s where the name of the blog came from. It’s sticking around because 1) I can’t think of anything else, 2) It still sorta conveys a sense of what I’m going through, and 3) I don’t know how to change it.

You’ll notice that I crossed out the word “closeted” in the new header. This is because I don’t really think of myself as a “closeted gay guy” anymore. I don’t like that term anyway (What does that even mean? How did I get into the closet in the first place? Is it a broom closet? When I come out of the closet, will I be in the “hallway of sexual preference?”) And after I passed the hurdle of coming out to my parents, I didn’t really see a need to hide it from anyone anymore. Most of my friends still don’t know, but it’s not from a lack of trying on my part. (Seriously, friends, how many times can I mention how much I liked Magic Mike before you get it?)

Lastly, I need a new pseudonym, but my url has to stay “The story of not important,” something that did not occur to me when I created it. I should have spent a few days dreaming up a better screen name, like we all did when AIM first came out (I will not tell you what my AIM screen name was, but I will tell you that, in retrospect, it was unintentionally and glaringly sexual).

So for now this will remain the story of a boy who’s name is not important to his narrative, and his name will remain, for the time being, a mystery.