#queer stuff
this month, 30 years ago - a postcard advertising ACT UP’s same-sex kiss-in event to challenge homophobia during the AIDS crisis, created by gran fury, may 1988
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So, I wrote a book. I mean it’s my 18th book, so like the book writing itself isn’t a surprise, it’s sort of my job, but the fact that I got this particular book written and published is a big deal.
For the like 4 of you who actually follow this haphazard Tumblr, you know that I started my account because I’d been in a massive writing funk since my friend Diane Gaidry died. I hadn’t felt even remotely cohesive in my creativity for almost a year. I’d already abandoned two other projects in that time. And when I found Tumblr I wasn’t trying to do my job at all. I was mostly laying on my couch, grief stricken and watching too much Gentleman Jack. It was really that show and the fandom surrounding it that made me want to start writing again.
If you read my early posts here they’re filled with both trepidation and hope, and totally interspersed with GJ fandom reblogs, along with the occasional gushing about other things that got in the way of being a functioning professional (I’m looking at you gender dysphoria and conservative family members).
This was not the novel writing process I’d ever known or would recommend to an aspiring author. It went against everything I’d ever learned about how to be successful in my field. Tumblr is not well organized, does not facilitate strong focus, it doesn’t conform to high ideas of craft or form. It’s not filled with serious topics to hone the mind or sharpen creative stamina, (at least not the way I follow it). Most of all it draws more heavily on the work of others than anyone who fears copy right lawsuits should ever be comfortable with. For me Tumble was pure fandom, the exact thing people warned would lead to the watering down of my voice and derivative story telling. And yet, the voices I found here were also so unapologetically enthusiastic I dove right in, not in spite of all those things, but because of them! The content I used as a crutch was passionate, unrepentantly whimsical, and wildly joyous in ways I desperately longed to be again. And I’ll be damned if it didn’t work
At first I would write like two paragraphs of my own work then, totally exhausted and emotionally spent, I’d zip over here to emote and/or distract myself for the rest of the day. Many of my colleagues posted about their own impressive progress, and shook their heads at me. But just like learning to ride a bike with training wheels I got less wobbly as I went. I grew more confident, and a picked up speed. Soon queer Tumblr became less of a distraction and more of a reward for a job well done. Then it became a way to unwind after a full day of writing. I leaned on the mental/emotion supports less and less, until one day I realized the training wheels had fallen off and the writing had actually become it’s own inherent support system.
From there I took off, and the book took off, too. Modern English not only finished strong on the first draft stage, it flew threw edits, and copy edits, and early reviewers. Everyone who got their hands on it talked about how it was just “one of those special books.” The kind that reads like an effortless gift from the muse.
I still don’t know if I should laugh or cry when they stay that.
Nothing about this was easy. Nothing about it was normal. This was a mess of absurdity, heart wrenching, teeth gnashing, and clinging to random lesbian period romance memes with all of my fingernails.
It wasn’t even until recent weeks that I could loosen my white knuckled grip and breathe deeply enough to look in the rearview mirror at how far I’ve come. Reading my early posts now is humbling. I couldn’t see the path forward from there, which I suppose makes sense. I was so lost, but after I found my way again I forgot to bring you all forward with me.
I’m sorry for that. Once I started writing on the book in earnest I stopped writing here. And I’m not sure anyone particularly cares, but it didn’t seem right to just ghost Tumblr. Y’all deserve better. At least a few of you took me at my worst, so you deserve to see me at my best.
So here you go. Here’s the full circle moment. The culmination of the crying, and crazy random fandom, and deep dives into obsession, and therapy style blogs, and my complete submersion into the queer content sections, and my trying to wrestle all of that into something that meant something, something I could make sense of, and something I could give back to the community that gave so damn much to me.
Modern English, my 18th full-length, women loving women romance novel is now available wherever great queer romances are sold.
The reviews are rolling in, and every one who reads it assure me no one would ever know what I went through while writing.
But I know, and you all know too.
So thank you.
What the actual hell, y’all? Nothing to see here, except Katherine Hepburn giving us all the look that makes our collective gay insides instantly clench up then immediately liquefy.
What is that gut incinerating reaction? I can’t say for sure, but I have been thinking about it a lot, and I’m going to offer 3 possible suggestions:
Attraction(obviously).
But there are many levels to attraction. There’s like a woman walks by and turns your head attraction, or A-list celebrity beautiful-person attraction, and then there’s THIS. This feeling I’m talking about goes so far beyond the “you’re attractive” sort of attraction to like “laws of physics” sort of attraction. The kind of attraction that registers not just inside your core but also psyche.
It messes with my head in ways that have turned me around ever since I was old enough to be aware of such things, and I’ve come to sum it up as “The great queer question.”
Do I want to be with you, or do I want to beyou?
It’s hard when you’re young (or even not so young) and you’re hungry for role models, but also thirsty for something else. And the whole issue gets complicated by the way those two feelings register in similar places of your body. The first time you see a woman step into full ownership of her God-given gift of giving zero fucks for conformity it lights a fire in the deepest regions of your gut. And as the warmth spreads outward from that low guttural place it can cause things to heat up in areas right below your core, too. You know the ones I mean, right? Those body parts are very close together, sometimes it’s hard to separate the two types of attraction.
And I’ve made peace with that, the not always knowing which came first, or which takes precedent, because ultimately it doesn’t matter. As fun as it can be (and by fun, I clearly mean disorienting) to try to figure out if I want to be with someone or be like someone, I am non-binary enough to realize the answer can be, and often is:
Attraction and aspiration are both cool, they’re both fluid, and they totally intersect. I’m comfortable with that. I’m more than comfortable with it. I dig it.
So if there’s no great conflict around attraction, why should that photo of ole K. Hep and her butchly furrowed brow still make my tummy so. damn. squimbly? Could it be something deeper than attraction? Something more complex? Something more elemental? Something like…
Recognition.
You see, over the last few years I’ve gotten into the concept of ancestral echoes, or the idea that memories and the knowledge that comes from them can be passed down through our DNA. That you can, on some level, know about things you’ve never experienced for yourself, and you can recognize the same sort of knowledge in other people.
Example: Folks way back up my family tree were sea-faring explorers. It’s been like 15 generations and I am super susceptible to sea sickness, but I am still so drawn to boats and the ocean. Not just like I find them pretty, but like I’m freaking Moana or something. There’s a pull there that goes beyond all reason and logic. I know that if I get on a sailboat there’s decent chance I am going to lose my lunch, but I can’t stay away. Even as I go green in the gills and my stomach does summersaults a part of me is still like:
I feel the same inexplicable connection when I look at that picture of Katherine Hepburn. There is a gay DNA level kind of recognition. A big queer ancestral echo. Whatever part of me that makes me gay senses its mirror in her.
Now I don’t know what part of me that is, nor what part of her trips that recognition trigger for me. The insolent stare? The turn of the mouth? Those gay AF eyebrows?
I’m not sure, but I feel certain it would exist even if I didn’t know the words gay or DNA. Something queer in me honors something queer in her. It’s inborn, liike gaydar on steroids boiled down to its most primal level. It runs through the generations on double helix rainbows. It vibrates across my chromosomes humming through the lowest, most animal regions of my brain.
Iknowyou.
We are the same. Whatever this thing is, it builds an unbreakable bond. A shared ..something. Brotherhood is too gendered. Personhood too vague. A queersterhood. A … wait for it … Listerhood?
You didn’t really think I’d make it through this gay ass therapy session without her did you?
Well I didn’t, because I can’t. I am physically incapable of looking away from this paragon of queer top perfection. And while I get that this is exactly the point where I should be able to tie this post up neatly on some note about our foremothers of the past living on through our legacy, that’s not going to happen.
As much as I would like to have some spiritual or academic conclusion for the things I feel when I see this, I don’t.
Nothing about my reaction is academic, or hypothetical or high minded.
I’ve looked these photos it so many times, trying to figure out what is bigger than attraction and deeper than recognition, and there’s only one word that comes close to capturing the experience for me:
Reckoning.
Reckoning involves looking something in the eye and taking stock of it and you at the same time. It involves taking weight and measures, taking inventory of your totality, and checking receipts on the things both utterly unquantifiable and yet indisputable.
And when I look at those women, I am forced to reckon with a fundamental truth:
They are better tops than me.
Katherine Hepburn is a better top than me. Ann Lister (as played by Suranne Jones) is a better top than me. There’s no way around it.
No matter how much I like to think I have some natural predication for topness, they have more. Clearly.
Sometimes you look at someone and you just know they know things. Things you are desperate to know. They possess a command and understanding you do not possess. They have skills you can only, and probably only ever will, aspire to.
I am not ashamed to admit it. It’s just the natural order of things. Did Joe DiMaggio feel shame at not being Babe Ruth? Or for you non-sportsball people, does Lizzo feel ashamed for not being Aretha Franklin? I hope not. There’s no shame in having your greatness fall just below that of divine master. Not everyone can be the GOAT. I’m okay with that. It’s not a competition. I don’t need to best anyone.
But I do need to make peace with that reckoning in other ways. Like a wolf who just met the new pack leader, or pirate captain whose ship just got overrun, there’s a new world older that must be acknowledged in those moments. There is a hierarchy of tops and topness, and it’s just been indisputably altered.
I am not the top top, not even in my own mind. I can’t ignore it, I am the one who acknowledged it in the first place. I could run from it. At least in theory. I could look away, close my eyes, or banish those understandings to vast reaches of the unfollowed internet, but I am not a coward.
As fluid as I am, and as secure as I am in who I am, I can feel gratitude at the the opportunity to look upon greatness. To indulge my awe. To relish my vast appreciation of the most transcendent of beings.
And then, of course, as is only right, I feel compelled to roll over. Honestly, I don’t know how anyone could feel compelled to do anything other than roll over when they look at that picture. That is the great tremble in my gut: it is all the scripts being flipped.
Does that make me a lesser top? Maybe. Does that make me a bottom? Perhaps sometimes. Does that bother me?
Not at all.
Cause really, what’s the use of recognizing a hierarchy to tops, if you don’t intend to enjoy every possible aspect of your own position on that spectrum?
