Tag: YMCA

Tell Her No

Saturday morning in the Lost Apartment, and all is well–at least so far, at any rate. I slept super well last night, and Sparky even let me sleep later, which is not his norm. But when he decided enough was enough, enough was enough. Yesterday turned out to be a very needed day of rest after I finished working; I ran my errands and was drained by the time I got home. I did some chores and the laundry, before settling in for some reading as my brain began misfiring again and the tiredness from the week settled in when I walked back into the apartment lugging groceries around four thirty. I settled into my easy chair and read for the rest of the evening, finishing The Demon of Unrest and starting another new non-fiction read (White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity by Robert P. Jones; yes, I am studying the racist history of the country right now), and caught up on Real Housewives (SLC is lit this season, y’all) before going to bed.

Remember a few weeks ago how I finally talked about how sick and tired I was of every form of homophobia, and especially the passive-aggressive bullshit from so-called “friends” and “allies”? Yeah, got one of those comments on here. Fortunately, I have to approve comments (because I do get the occasional homophobic diatribe; I learned the lesson to approve comments with Livejournal over a decade ago), so you’ll never have to see it, but it’s always a jolt. My favorites are always the ones like this morning–couched in language that appeared friendly, but was actually insulting, demeaning, and invalidating me as a human being with lived (and learned) experience. I love when people think their own lived experience as a straight white man is more valid than my own–and their knowledge of my community and its history is vastly superior to mine, despite their never needing to know anything about it and I’ve studied it extensively over the last three decades, but then again–I’m just a faggot in need of a straight person to get my shit together.

It’s always lovely having that kind of shit drop into your inbox first thing in the morning, before you’ve finished your first cup of coffee. This is why I finally had enough a few weeks ago. I’m not putting up with this shit anymore. Sixty-three years of being excluded, made to feel less than, and putting up with all bullshit that comes with being a gay American man born in the second half of the twentieth century. It certainly got my blood pumping this morning, and made me wake up faster than my morning coffee. It’s almost as funny as the lead singer of the Village People claiming that “YMCA” isn’t a gay anthem. Oh, honey, all your songs are gay anthems, and no one needs your permission to say it. The gays made you, the gays made your songs, and the gays kept your songs alive long after their shelf-life had passed, but go ahead and kiss some mango ass, bitch. Don’t let me stop you, by any means.

And if “YMCA” isn’t a gay anthem, it’s only because the community ditched it after it started being played and danced to (by the way, the song is from 1979…) by mediocre, rhythm-less straight white people at sporting events and political rallies. It always amuses me to see your homophobic asses dancing (badly) to a song about cruising other men at the Y. Butt-fucking and blow-jobs, that’s what the song is about. Remember that the next time you decide to stand up and dance at your next sporting event, straight people. At least the MAGA dance to it works, since it looks like the dancer is giving out handjobs with both hands.

And yay, we get to experience another four years of this kind of shit. At least. I don’t know why my sex life–which is no one’s business but my own–bothers so many people; I certainly don’t hold other people’s sex lives against them. It’s also election day here in Louisiana–this is when we have the elections when someone or something didn’t pass outright in the general. I think it’s just amendments to the state constitution, which I am going to have to look up before I walk over and vote. I also suppose I should be grateful that I don’t get more homophobic abuse on here and on-line; which is one of the reasons I never check DM’s on social media and usually will just clear them out in one swoop without looking at them (words of advice: for this reason, direct messaging is literally the worst way to reach me, especially if you need an answer from me right away), but…as I said a few weeks ago, I am not taking it anymore.

This is why I am no longer attending conferences and conventions–this sort of thing, never knowing who you’re going to meet who is a homophobic piece of shit (and there are quite a few of them, spread out over all sub-genres–you know who you are). Until such time (ha ha ha ha) that these events stop allowing and condoning this kind of shit–or not caring that it happens–why would I support them with my money and my paid vacation time? I know, I know, visibility and all that–but I’ve been doing all that for almost fifteen years, and I am tired.

After all, I’ve not been back to Left Coast since that horrible woman was racist and homophobic to me.1

Heavy sigh. I think I am going to get another cup of coffee and will read for a bit. I do have to run errands today–wash the car, pick up the mail, a little bit of groceries–before coming home and getting back to work. I don’t really care about any of the football games today, so I may turn on the SEC title game, or I may not. I don’t really have an interest in who wins it, so why not read, clean, and work during the day rather than watching games? I’m going to barbecue a pork tenderloin later for dinner, which will be nice. It’s sunny outside, but it’s only 48 degrees outside, and the high for the day is fifty-nine. I’m also going to do a German lesson this morning, and try to get a grip on my inbox, and I am also going to try to finish a substack entry this weekend; I have sixteen started (seriously) and they aren’t going to write themselves. I need to get this editing job finished, and I need to get back to work on my Scotty book. I also had breakthroughs on several other books ideas, so I’d like to get some work done so as to lesson the Sisyphean tasks I always have before me.

  1. I can honestly say I never expected to hear the slur terms for biracial in casual conversation, let alone directed at me. Live and learn. And for the record, this is why racism is so insidious; no one is actually safe from it. That experience also made me wonder if sometimes when I am treated badly by service staff, it has to do with racism? Because they think I’m biracial? And for the record, my brain never jumps to bad treatment = homophobia; I just think the person is a dick. But now I have something else to wonder about. ↩︎

Macho Man

Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Hey! Macho macho man…I’ve got to be a macho man….

Sadly, this entry isn’t really about Macho Man Randy Savage, but I did meet him once, and yes, I always did think he was sexy; that body, the wild hair, the voice–the skill in the ring, and that amazing ass…yes, I was a fan of his. How I met him was when I worked at the airport–a lot of pro wrestlers lived across the bay from Tampa in either St. Petersburg or Clearwater or any of the communities on the peninsula, which means they had to fly in and out of the airport. One night I was covering Baggage Service, and was doing the fun thing of sending messages through the system about whatever bags were misdirected to us, or were simply late arrivals that needed delivering. I was by myself and merrily typing away at my keyboard when I heard the door open and before I looked up heard that unmistakable voice asking if a flight had arrived. Startled and wide-eyed, I gave him the information, and I could see he knew I recognized him–he scribbled his name on a ticket envelope, I babbled out that I was a fan, and he was very kind, friendly and gracious…which is why what eventually became of him was very sad to me. We never know what demons people are battling inside, do we?

The word macho is Spanish, and el macho or la machismo are Spanish terms that bled over into, and was appropriated by, American English, and it’s something, in all honesty, I’ve never cared for; it isn’t Spanish for toxic masculinity, but it might as well be. I first became aware of the term in the 1970s, which was also the time when the women’s movement was getting underway and feminism became a thing. Suddenly, all the things that were “manly” were under review (some straight white men certainly felt they were under attack instead; words matter); and the established protocols of what was and wasn’t ‘manly’ began to be reexamined and frankly, found wanting. Macho, or toxic masculinity, also wasn’t good for men either; they are trapped in a gender role that is kind of outdated but at the same time they may not fit into comfortably, either. The strong, silent type–remember that? That was the definition of manly; no emotions, no feelings, the provider and protector of the nuclear family…which begs the question, isn’t that emotionally crippling in some ways?

And where do gay men fit into this?

I sometimes think queer equality also threatened the role of the ‘macho’ male in our society and culture; straight men were supposed to be so deadly dull in real life, in the way they dressed and played and wore their hair and did all their manly things in that John Wayne/Gary Cooper mold…but gay men? Gay men could dress to accentuate their positives and look good. They cared about their hair and how they presented themselves to the world. There were some professions or sports that weren’t considered ‘manly’ enough–despite the fact that those things might actually demand more from the male body than other sports–football is manly because it’s violent and involves hitting other men with great force; while figure skating and ballet are not manly because it requires beauty of movement, and being graceful: men aren’t supposed to be grateful.

And that freedom to be ourselves was something to be envied by men trapped by conditioning, both socially and culturally, to be unemotionless drones with no way to express themselves other than through violence and anger.

I’ve always theorized that homophobia is subconsciously rooted in envy (of course, most people immediately zero in on ‘rejecting their own attraction to men’, which is also probably accurate in some cases). The stereotyped gay man has a lot more sex with a lot more different partners than straight men (not always the case, of course) and the idea of gay sex clubs (bathhouses, backroom bars, that sort of thing) where someone can go and have their fill of anonymous sex as long as they are capable and willing drives straight men crazy because most of them don’t have anything like that in their lives. Gay men were free from responsibility, from being what society sees as manly, and didn’t have to have kids or any of the other responsibilities that weigh down straight men and keep them, sometimes, from chasing dreams and living their life the way they want to; to paraphrase, ‘forced into a life of quiet desperation with no way out.’

I always found it amusing that the Village People, who had their moment in the sun during the disco years, always recorded gay-flavored songs cheerfully that were also dance hits that infiltrated the pop charts and the straight dance clubs, songs alluding to the gay world simmering just below the surface of American culture at that time.. They wore outfits that featured male images that gays saw as sexy icons of masculinity–the Native American, the cop, the sailor, the biker–and had hit songs that hinted about the pleasures of gay life. Some members of the band were gay, and the Village in their name referenced one of the more famous gayborhoods in the county, Greenwich Village in Manhattan.

Come on. I lived in Kansas during the heyday of the Village People–they were already out of fashion by the time we moved to California; but even I knew what their songs meant and what their costumes meant.

And the songs? Please. “Macho Man” was about hyper-masculinity, which was a gay fetish; “In the Navy”–well, everyone has always considered the Navy, going back to the British Empire, as a hotbed of homosexual activity (what with them being at sea for months at a time only in the company of other men; “YMCA” was about all the endless possibilities for.gay sex at the Y–also a notorious cruising spot for gays; “San Francisco” was of course the motherland for gays; and so on). I have always found all the straight people at sporting events, dancing and singing along to “YMCA” hilarious–because they don’t know they are singing and dancing to a song about the availability of gay sex there. I also found The Traitor dancing to “Macho Man’ at campaign rallies hilarious because of how much more stupid he looked because he and no one around him had any idea of what that song was about.

Straight people can be so clueless sometimes–but it’s always good to have the occasional hearty gay laugh at their expense, isn’t it?

YMCA

Ah, the Young Men’s Christian Association.

One of my favorite things about homophobic straight people is how clueless they are (the homophobia is really a tipoff) when it comes to queer stuff. (In fairness, if they don’t know any queer people why would they know anything about queer stuff?) Nothing amuses me more than watching crowds of straight people–whether it’s a sporting event, wedding, or a party– start doing the “YMCA” dance when the deejay puts it on. It’s particularly funny to me when it’s a sporting event, particularly something more on the unenlightened side with their fan base when it comes to queer equality, like NASCAR or hockey (although NASCAR had been doing rainbow stuff all month…). As I watch them all stand up and do the ‘YMCA dance”–always out of rhythm, never to the beat–I smirk to myself and think, you clearly don’t know that this song is about the sexual smorgasbord a YMCA was back in the day for gay men, do you? It’s about GAY SEX, homophobes! You’re singing along to a song about getting fucked at the Y!

It always makes me laugh. Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

I’m sure the founders of the YMCA system would have been quite nonplussed to know that in some major cities, gay men turned YMCA’s into essentially bath houses. There were a couple in Manhattan that were notorious for hook-ups, but of course a YMCA would draw gay men. For a long time they were the only places for men to go and get exercise, unless they belonged to a men’s club, like the New Orleans Athletic Club (which used to be for men only), and since gay men, especially after Stonewall, liked to be fit and keep their bodies worked out and in good shape (to draw lovers, of course) they wound up at the Y. And when you get a bunch of gay men thrown together in an environment that includes pools, weights, saunas, steam rooms and showers, you’re going to get hook ups. YMCA’s also provided cheap rooming alternatives, too–and of course, that meant that you could get a room at the Y (just like you could at a bath house) which meant you could bring partners back to the room for sex.

When we first moved to New Orleans there was still a Y at Lee Circle (now Harmony Circle); the Lee Circle Y had been there forever and was actually kind of historic; one of the Israeli athletes murdered at the Munich Olympics was a Tulane student who worked out at the Y. I thought that should at least have some kind of commemorative memorial plaque–and had preservation-minded folk cared about the Lee Circle Y, it could have been declared a historic landmark, instead of closing and the land being sold for yet another hotel. Maybe a murdered Israeli athlete isn’t enough of a connection for historical landmark status. But I used to train people there, and also taught aerobics until it was closed permanently. They had redone the weight room and bought all new equipment a few years earlier, too. Some things–like the locker room and so forth–were musty and moldy smelling, with that distinct stench of decades of male sweat baked into the walls.

But yes, the Village People of “YMCA” fame–every one of them was dressed as a particular gay archetype (leather man, Indian chief, fireman, cop, etc.) and all of their songs were thinly veiled odes to the joys of being gay and having lots of no-strings-attached sex; “Macho Man,” “In the Navy,” “YMCA,” “San Francisco”–and the village in their name was Greenwich Village, the gayborhood in Manhattan. (The promotional video for “YMCA”–taken mostly from the movie Can’t Stop the Music–which is a topic for another time, because yes, that movie needs discussion–really says it all.)

There were bath houses, of course (Bette Midler famously got her big break performing at the Continental Baths in Manhattan); New Orleans had two when we first moved here–the Club New Orleans in the Quarter on Toulouse Street and Midtown Spa on Baronne in the CBD, across from where the Rouse’s is now. Both are long gone now, ain’t dere no more as we say down here. We used to do testing in the bath houses, which was always a weird experience. Every room had a television with porn on a loop; the room they used to let us at CNO to test in also was the sling room. So I’d sit on the bed/cot, with porn playing on the television hanging from the ceiling in the corner, and a sling in the opposite corner from the television. I bet that sling could tell some tales….or could have before it was consigned to the dustbin of history.

I also remember the battle over closing bath houses during the height of HIV/AIDS. Rewatching It’s a Sin reminded me of a lot of the struggles back when the disease was new and we didn’t know much about it other than almost everyone who got infected died. It seems kind of counter-intuitive now, but there was an argument that could be made that restricting gay sexuality was also a repressive attempt to push gays back into the closet as well as further stigmatizing gay men. It seems silly now, of course, knowing what we know now, but the mask argument during the pandemic kind of took me back to the struggle to get gay men to wear condoms. (I’m so old I remember when herpes had everyone freaking out in the late 1970s.)

I keep thinking I should write about the Lee Circle Y, just to preserve that piece of New Orleans history. “Never Kiss a Stranger” originally started with my main character getting off a Greyhound bus and lugging his duffel bag down Howard Avenue to the Lee Circle Y, where he gets a room while looking for a place to live. (I later realized the story actually begins with him finding that place to live; the rest is just filler and not very interesting.)

Maybe someday.