[Vol. 7] Queer Love (and Sex) and the City
My love letter to the city that helped me truly come out.
Dear New York City,
I know you go by a lot of nicknames, but it doesn’t feel right to profess your love for someone (let alone an entire city) using a nickname. Some moments just require the dramatic weight of the full name – no concessions.
I love you, New York City. There it is.
But I didn’t always love you, just as I didn’t always love myself or my community.
I thought I loved you when I first met you – it’s true, I did.
Really though, what I loved about you was that you were exciting. You pushed me into crowded bars where underage kids could get past the bouncer with a fake so shitty that the lamination was tearing off the corners. You blinded me with a firework show on the Hudson, with a Christmas tree lighting at Rockefeller, and, on numerous occasions, with strobe lights so strong that they probably shouldn’t have been in possession by a seedy club in Hell’s Kitchen.
Most of all though, you introduced me to your friends.
I’ll admit, I couldn’t do much more than stare when I first met them – the booty-shorts gays lounging in Washington Square Park, the trans-feminine, thigh-high-stocking-wearing strangers that would step on the Subway car somewhere between West 4th Street and 2 A.M., or the shaved-headed, suit-wearing, pierced-to-the-nines butch lesbian that stood behind the counter at that one coffee shop in the village.
For a queer kid indoctrinated with the straight-laced straightness that comes with being one of the few openly gay kids in your High School graduating class, meeting your posse was revolutionary.
I was scared of them, I’ll admit, but really that’s just because I was still scared of myself.
They took all the things I suppressed through fear, self-doubt, and insecurity and just put them all out there for the world to see.
When I fell in love with you, I fell in love with them. And, in the unforeseen ways that these things usually go, I fell in love with myself, too.
Not to keep you in suspense, but didn’t get ‘That’s Gay’ in your inbox? Make sure you get it next time and subscribe below.
And, and, and – consider helping to get the word out! Tell a friend, DM, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook – whichever poison you prefer, word of mouth, a few clicks, and a share are the only way the That’s Gay community is going to grow.
Not to use an already overused metaphor, but I often feel like queer people are drawn to you like moths to a flame.
*Or, let’s say, like a very parched gay man to iced coffee with a splash of some alternative milk.
No matter the “reason for your trip” we might have to clarify at the airport, the subtext of a trip, move, or prolonged stay in New York City for a queer person always errs towards the inevitable “to be around other queer people”.
It may not be plotline A, or even plotline B or C, but it almost certainly makes an appearance in the subplot.
I once met a man who came to New York from his quaint life in Ohio just to experience sleeping around in the big city.
I met him on his fourth night – he’d already gone on four “dates”. No, I wasn’t one of them, I just happened to be at the same table in the bar where he was getting frisky with his fifth.
How do I know that he came to the city just for sex? He told me, straight up. He had some meetings lined up and whatnot, but his top priority, he said, as he took a slow drag of his cigarette, was to meet guys – guys as far away as he could find from his much smaller bubble in Ohio.
I admired the hell out of his honesty.
You, New York City, have had the same effect on me.
Living in this city, alive with a distinct sexual energy, tangible even underneath New Yorkers’ 3 meter-deep faux-fur winter coats, has made me want to explore my sexuality more than ever before.
I don’t know if it’s all the Sex and the City people binge before getting here (guilty as charged) or if it’s truly the energy the city emmits, but New Yorker’s swap sex stories like fake bags are swapped on Canal Street. Eventually, you just want some stories to tell of your own.
Besides, there is no city more convenient for sex than New York. A sexual rumspringa is pretty much inevitable in this city – we’re all already living on top of each other as it is. There are new guys and gals and everything in between for you to meet around every street corner, and the difficulty of getting to each other has been all but eliminated by the subway, taxi cabs, and 5 minute uber rides.
That convenience, combined with the palpable sense of pent-up sexual energy that runs down every avenue, makes you, New York City, the playground to every queer person’s sexual awakening.
Of course, my love for you is not all about sex. My love for you is really my newfound love for me; the kind of self-love that you inspire in so many other queer people that book flights and hop on trains to get to you.
A close friend of mine was one of those “hop on a train to New York City” kind of people. She moved to the city so she could finally pursue her dream of, well … living in New York City – a dream I shared with her and a small club of millions of other dreamy-eyed 20-somethings.
She moved into a big Brooklyn house, with even bigger, queer personalities. I watched as she explored her sexuality, questioned her identity, and did it all in a different fabulous coat each day. Over the years I’ve known her, she’s gone from straight, to bisexual, to finally, a lesbian, and I’ve never seen her more alive.
Her story parallels mine (although I laid down my roots on the other side of the Brooklyn bridge).
Before you, the queer community and I were out of touch.
Again, fear is really the only reason I can think of that I kept my distance from your friends. When it came to being “out and proud” I think I mostly just had half of that equation down.
For a long time after coming out, while I could say that I was gay with ease, I didn’t quite know what that meant for my identity or how I felt about it. When I met other people that had, in my eyes, figured out what their queerness meant to them, I became insecure.
What they wore openly on their sleeve, I was still safeguarding deep down inside. What they saw as unique traits and character strengths, I saw reflected in myself as weaknesses and undesirable qualities. The more openly they bent in the direction opposite of conventional norms of gender expression and sexuality, the more I felt I had to push myself towards the safety of convention.
Yes, I was “out” when I came to you, but I had a lot more to unpack.
Before you, I firmly believed that I wasn’t “that kind of gay”
– you know, the kind that was flamboyant and feminine, crop-top wearing and “girrlllll”-saying. Every sector of the LGBTQ+ community is stereotyped to some degree, and this just so happens to be the stereotype gay guys everywhere are bundled under.
Now, after living in a city where I’ve seen a-thousand-and-one iterations of what being a queer person can look like, I know that I can be that kind of gay. At least, parts of me can.
It may not be indicative of my overall personality (as is true for everyone) but that feminine edge – what some would call the “stereotypically gay” side of me – still has a place somewhere as part of my identity.
Existing in this city for a little over a year now, I’ve seen what it looks like for a gay man to love his femininity as much as his masculinity. It’s from watching these people that I’ve learned to get over my fear of slipping into a stereotype. It’s from them that I’ve come to realize that “that kind of gay” isn’t a real person, because real people’s personalities couldn’t possibly be boiled down to a single trope.
Instead, they’ve simply gotten over their fears and the stigma behind being stereotyped or becoming a stereotype. They’ve stripped the “that kind of gay” trope of its power and have chosen to do whatever the fuck they want with their identity. Some of that self-expression may fall into the stereotype-zone, sure, but so what? The shame that lurked behind it is no longer there – at least, it definitely isn’t visible to the naked eye.
So, what does all this have to do with love?
Well, thanks to you, New York, I no longer push against stereotypes that have been used to belittle queer people and I no longer push against my community.
Instead, I choose to love who I am and thereby find it easier to love the community around me that once made me insecure. It sounds unbelievably corny, I’ll admit, but you have only yourself to blame for that, because this is what you’ve taught me.
And that was That’s Gay, Volume 7. See you in Volume 8, folks!
Want Volume 8? Not signed up yet?
Share this newsletter and help my baby grow!