My Own Community

July 2, 2008 | Pop Culture

I know you’ve been hearing mostly from Roxxie the past few months…what can I say, school was hectic and then work instantly started eating up all my time. What happened to the carefree days of summer?! Anyway, following up to Roxxie’s post about not fitting in with lesbian/queer communities, I wanted to post about the community I’ve created around myself.

In high school I had no idea there were other gay people around. This was before GSA’s started popping up everywhere - in fact, a few years after I graduated, I was contacted by a girl who wanted to talk about starting a GSA at my old high school! I had no tips for her, because I totally hadn’t realized that I wasn’t the only queer chick in school. I knew of exactly one gay boy and that was it. So it wasn’t until college -the first time around - that I realized there were other gay people out there. I’d learned about it from an academic standpoint, but never a social standpoint, until college.

For a long time, I had mostly straight friends. My wife was the only other queer person I really knew in the area. I had some gay friends online, but nobody I could talk to in person (the DC Lesbian Avengers were never very successful, and after the local lesbian bookstore closed they were gone). I thought about working with Burgundy Crescent, a local GLBT volunteer organization, but I had a hard time with the concept of just introducing myself to strangers, so I didn’t do it. As a result, I was still pretty isolated from gay people, until 2004 when I got involved with the local leather community. Now when I say “involved,” I mean as an outsider - I am not really a leather person myself, I was there to interpret and I made several friends in the local deaf leather community. But I only saw these people for certain events, so online was still my only gay contact spot. In 2005 I went on an all-gay cruise (as an interpreter) and had a blast, but that was only for a week.

But going back to school last year brought out a whole new world. I have real local friends now, that I do real local things with, like going out to dinner and everything! They are a mix of gay and straight, with my best guy friend being a flaming homosexual (I love him to bits) and my best girl friend being straight (but I can overlook that flaw). I realized that even though I yearned to belong to a lesbian/gay/queer community for a long time, I don’t need to focus ONLY on that group. I need to have some gay people around me so I can be my fabulous self - and occasionally shock them with kinky questions! But I don’t need to have ONLY gay friends. You’d be surprised what a realization that was!

And although you’d never know I was gay by looking at me - there are tons of rainbow necklaces and butch haircuts all over campus, but I outgrew that a few years back - pretty much everyone knows I’m gay. I refer to my wife constantly, I’m always speaking up when a semi-gay issue comes up in class (you should have seen me in Sex & Gender last semester!), and it is basically no secret whatsoever among my social circle that I’m a big ol’ homo. And I like it that way. It was such a relief to learn that I don’t need to socialize with gay people because they’re gay - I need to socialize with people because they’re people. Gay people are just extra cool!

Posted by meredith @ 6:43 am | Leave a Comment » Comments