The Gay Recluse

The New Old Gays

I thought this article was fun, and most of the people complaining about it probably haven’t ever read The Observer. (Context!)…I will say that after my crazy week in the middle of that Nike ad controversy, it makes me realize that there’s also a new breed of twenty-something gay guys (let’s call them the opposite of the New Old Gays) who basically want to “out-straight” their straight peers, which means turning sex and hooking up (and commenting on blogs) into an ultra-competitive “sport” with all sorts of “in-your-face” jargon that you see on Craig’s List, etc and is essentially an extension of the elementary-school playground (scary place). Needless to say, I find the degree of homophobia at work here kind of alarming, and interestingly enougth, I was just reading this passage in a Carson McCullers book (btw, she is now in my top three American novelists of the 20th century) where this Jewish kid is talking about how much he initially admired Hitler and the fascists because to see all the youth together filled him with a sense of belonging, and as an outsider in a small Southern town, that mattered most to him; as he put it later, he was aware of what was happening to the Jews, but he didn’t want to think about it in light of his desire to belong. I think this is very much the same dynamic at work in many gay “scenes,” and while it’s understandable, it’s also kind of frightening; the level of aggression and denial at work can result in some fairly monstrous actions…

doree:

My Observer article this week:

These days, the young gays of Williamsburg and the East Village—the ones who wear pointy shoes and tight cutoff shorts, who studied queer theory and dabbled in heroin at Sarah Lawrence or Bard or Wesleyan, hang out at bars like Metropolitan and Sugarland in Williamsburg or the Phoenix and Eastern Bloc in the East Village, and listen to Chromeo and Girl Talk and Le Tigre—get all the attention. Corner one of these young men, and he will profess ignorance of that other scene of youthful gays, the gays of the Friends of Dorothy variety. As one of the New Gays confidently told me, it is a scene made up exclusively of the old and, quite possibly, fat, adding that the only young men who fraternize with this group are those who cannot, in all likelihood and despite their best efforts, get laid.

Help Brad

Eesh is right. And speaking of things to boycott, I was thinking Turkey (as in the country) might be worth adding to the list after reading about the “honor killing” of this guy.

doree:

And maybe boycott Yuengling in the process? My friend Brad Walsh (who also took our awesome, if I do say so myself, author photograph for the Postcards From Yo Momma book) got attacked last week by the driver of a Yuengling beer truck, and he’s being stonewalled by the company in his efforts to track the guy down. NOT OKAY:

As I wrote last week, on Wednesday I was attacked by a truck driver in public, punched in the face, and called a “faggot” several times. Five days later, I still have a sore neck and jaw, and I have difficulty chewing. I did not disclose the name of the company for whom the driver was delivering. It was a large truck, with a giant Yuengling logo on the side.

Eesh. So scary that this kind of stuff is still happening.

I am a stupid.

homophile:

I just emailed my favourite Internet writer Choire Sicha because I really liked his piece for Radar today, even though it was kind of about being pestered by the youngs! Like me!

And now I feel really stupid about sending it, because it was kind of nonsensical and annoyingly gushy, and I would hate to have him think of me as a suck-up or media leech who would ever stoop to wearing a dress made out of I don’t know condoms to get attention and publicity, which is weird because I suppose his opinion of me should have no bearing on me. I don’t know. I wish I could somehow reach into his inbox and, like, delete my email forever.

Whatever, I guess it will give him something to roll his eyes at.

This is kind of how I felt when I read Sheila’s rant on Gawker about dumb commenters on Emily Gould’s blog, knowing I had commented a few times and kind of regretting it (although, traffic!). I’m pretty sure (as in 100 percent) I didn’t call her “hon” or anything stupid like that or offer life advice (except to read Schopenhauer, which I say to everyone), but it made me wonder if I’m too old to be writing gushy I-love-your-writing fan comments. (Answer: yes!)

On a different note, I loved that Choire pointed out how relentlessly heterosexual the whole Brooklyn literary scene is. Whenever I read about it (and since I have no first-hand knowledge, this is just a sense), I feel like I’ve entered the same horribly suffocating world created/described by Roth/Updike and company in which the gays don’t exist. It’s highbrow, perhaps, but ultimately very suburban/conventional, which come to think of it is a pretty good description of my college (Cornell).