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WARNING:
SOME OF THE LANGUAGE AND/OR SUBJECT MATTER IN MY BLOG MAY BE OFFENSIVE
TO SOME AND IS NOT SUGGESTED READING FOR ANYONE UNDER 18 YEARS OF AGE.
READER DISCRETION IS ADVISED.
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It seems as though in the gay community; excuse me, the BLACK gay community we are much more concerned with masculinity, femininity and traditional gender roles than our straight counterparts. It reminds me of a conversation that I had with RuPaul about two years ago. I remember asking him why he dressed as a woman and where it came from. He told me that back in the 80’s people dressed in up drag as a way to be defiant. To rebel against societal norms. That only in more recent times dressing in drag had started to become more about realness, looking like a real girl, walking runways and being undetectable. Before our three hour long conversation that night I honestly didn’t like the idea of a ’RuPaul’. Out of my ignorance, shunning that which I didn’t take the time or make the effort to understand (sound familiar, American society?) I created an animosity toward someone I didn’t even know. I felt that drag queens gave “normal” (there goes that word again) somewhat masculine (I don’t dig ditches or play football or do any of that manual labor stuff. I blog, but I still give boy. LOL) gays like myself a bad name, getting on TV and acting all extra and cunt, wanting to be a girl. He told me himself that he has no desire to be a woman. That his drags are his work clothes and he doesn’t wear them unless he’s getting paid. Meeting RuPaul as a man, a pretty normal looking and acting one at that really broadened my horizons and made me a little less judgemental of people.
In the past few months I have been exposed to the ballroom scene courtesy of my best friend Mike (Icon, WERK ICON! LOL) and what a spectacle that is. Besides being a feast for the eyes spectating the ballroom scene has been a learning experience. It is more than just a fad or a passing trend it is a sub-culture of a sub-culture of a sub-culture with it’s own history, leaders, politics, legends and folklore (and a few straight up lies thrown in). It’s a microcosm of our world that is so addictive and encompassing that many of its citizens get caught up and lose sight of reality.
My friend Mike, though far from a drag queen in the traditional sense dresses in a different kind of drag. The ballroom scene like life can sometimes go from one extreme to another. Instead of wearing panty hose and pumps and sashaying down the runway like his drag and fem queen counterparts Mike walks thug realness. Sporting a garb of Timberland boots, basketball shorts, hoodies, fitteds, and loose-fitting jeans Mike strides down the runway with an unshakeable ice grill and a confident virility in an effort to make the judges see his realness. He can’t come off looking or walking the least bit fem. If he cracks a smile he will be “chopped’ and eliminated from competition.
The funniest thing about RuPaul and my friend Mike is that once the drag comes off the real person is quiite different from the person we see on the runway. Not that my friend Mike is a big old queen but when we get together with our good friends we tend to cut up more than he would at a ball and more than I would at work or with a date or just living regular life. Lately I have begun to wonder why that is?
Janet has “Damita Jo” and “Strawberry”, Beyonce’ has “Sasha” and I have “Quentin” aka “Q”. “Q” is the name my new friend and I have made up for my romantic persona. An ex of mine said about me that me as my normal everyday self, Adam, is smart, talkative, eloquent, engaging, your all around non-threatening negro but then in the bedroom I suddenly turn into a thug (ya don’t find too many thugs named Adam. Thanks Mom). My new friend echoed his sentiments by saying that when things start to get romantic and sexual my voice drops and I got a certain sexy look in my eye. That is why we created “Q”. I wonder though, Is my romantic hypermasculinity, though an unconscious response, a subconscious way to assert myself as a top? Is my “normal” personality not man enough? Or is “Q” another facet of my normal personality? I mean, we all have layers right…?
If I had a quarter for everytime I heard or read this:
“I can’t stand dudes that act all feminine. I’m gay, I wanna be with a man. If I wanted a girl I would be with one.”
or this:
“I’m not letting a dude who vogues climb my back!”
I would make Oprah look broke. As far as the person I’m dating for the most the whole feminine/masculine doesn’t really matter much to me as long as the person is attractive and cool I’m aight. I have many fellow top friends that are like Ponce deLeon sailing the turbulent, craggy waters of homosexuality looking for the illusive “masculine-hood-total-bottom.” I also have bottom friends immersed in that same sea looking through their periscopes for that “masculine-hood-total-top” (**whispering condescendingly** neither one truly exists). Then there are those of us who specifically look for “straight” guys with wives and baby mama’s to mess with because we feel as though to “turn” them is some kind of prize (excuse me while I throw up profusely). On all the sites you see people with ads looking for boys who “act straight” and who can “walk down the street and not get spooked.” Then we have our friends who are taking it a step further beyond dressing in drag. They having all these surgeries (some not even done by medical professionals) risking their lives to physically become women. Why does it seem like all the gay people either wanna be women or wanna be straight? Why the totality? Where’s the balance?
American biologist Alfred C. Kinsey argues that as far as sexuality is concerned none of us are totally anything. He said in his 1948 book Sexual Behavior In The Human Male that “Males do not represent two discrete populations, heterosexual and homosexual.” and puts male hetero and homosexuality on his seven point Kinsey Scale:
0: Exclusively heterosexual
1: Predominantly heterosexual, only incidentally homosexual
2: Predominantly heterosexual, but more than incidentally homosexual
3: Equally heterosexual and homosexual
4: Predominantly homosexual, but more than incidentally heterosexual
5: Predominantly homosexual, only incidentally heterosexual
6: Exclusively homosexual
He further adds that “An individual may be assigned a position on this scale, for each period in his life.” So he feels that even his own definition of sexuality isn’t absolute. To loosely quote the Bible it says in the book of Ecclesiates that there is a “time and a place for everything.” A time to kee and a time to run trade.
My new friend and I were talking the other day and we’re now feeling as though we should let go of our deeply rooted subconscious sexual prejudices. As much as it makes me cringe to see a 6′4″, 250lb, feminine bottom with a 5′5″, 135lb feminine top who are we to judge them? Who are we to say that they are weird, or wrong, or vomit-inducing?
There is no definite answer to the question at hand, ‘to kee or not to kee?’ A better question was posed by Wiliam Shakespeare ‘to be or not to be?’ I say we should be ourselves, however feminine of masculine that is because no matter what you’re into nothing is more sexy than confidence.
