Of all my stupid decisions — eating an entire coffee cake after Yom Kippur when I was 14, asking JD Samson if her mustache was real — the dumbest thing I've done in recent memory was getting stoned and going underwear shopping. Specifically, I got stoned and went underwear shopping at Universal Gear, the store that does for gay people what American Apparel does for Hipsters and Meyer Wolfsheim did for Jews: Reduce a people to their basest stereotypes and sell it off to the masses. However, neither of those examples made such an egregious use of hairless bodies, and neither gave me the kind of "fight or flight" reaction that UG did.
For the (blessedly) uninitiated, Universal Gear is a kind of one-stop shop for people who want to look capital G "Gay!" without having to put any thought into gay culture, art or politics. You can pick up some hideous sequined jeans in the front of the store, move to the north wall for sheer v-neck sweater and end up at the register to buy over-sized wrap around sunglasses and leather wrist cuffs.
My mission, unfortunately, meant I had to visit the scariest part of the store: The underwear section. It will probably take me four years of therapy and a lifetime anti-weed vow to get over what I saw there, but maybe talking about it will help. I needed a pair of tiny briefs for a performance I was in. I'm in the unique position of having a 14 year-old's waist and a 25 year-old's penis on a dachshund-length torso, meaning that underwear either goes up to my belly button, leaves no room for my junk or gets so baggy it looks like skater shorts. The best solution to this problem is either to buy child's size large underwear from Walmart (which I do, and am embarrassed about) or to hit up the "Gay" brands like 2xist, XY and Gee My Cock Looks Huge in This Lycra Banana Hammock.
I have an aversion to the latter because I think brand loyalty (and the social cache implied) should not apply to the piece of cloth that keeps ones testicles from bouncing around when they run. I once had an old coworker tell me that "I should wear a trendier brand of underwear if I was going to wear my pants so low." I died a little bit on the inside then. But considering my upcoming performance involved an extended lip-synch in my underwear in front of hundreds of people, I figured I could relax the standards just once.
But when I actually made it to Universal Gear I found myself looking for a needle in a gaystack. The sheer amount of underwear cuts, colors, styles and pornographic packaging was staggering. I, red-eyed and mumbling, had to actually enlist a salesmen to help me with what I thought would be an easy, in and out job. He explained to me the merits of the brands, and how much of my ass they would show off and what the different package codes meant and what size I wore, and I walked out with a very flattering (and peehole-less) pair of green XYs. Mission accomplished!
But not really. What I bought at Universal Gear was fine- it was exactly what I was looking for. But the fact that such a store exists at all is what bothers me. At its simplest, UG is a gay store. You can go there and buy gay. And look like an idiot while you do it. Besides the fact that the clothing itself is an affront to the aesthetics of decency — imagine Annie Lennox and Right Said Fred having a baby made out of worn cotton and mega-sized logos — it just makes me wonder who sits in the giant control room, Big Brother style, and decides what gay men will dress like this season. I suspect that this great faggot in the sky could one day think "hmm... This summer, gay men will wear feathers! And they'll smear their torsos with the bull dung!" and three weeks later Apex would look look like a Big Bird orgy and smell like the Augean stables. And no one would question it.
If a volcano erupted on 14th Street right now, and Universal Gear was frozen in time forever, like a Pompeii of pomp and artifice, our homosexual forebears progeny would have so much to learn from it. The place is a museum even now. As an 80 year old man, I could take my grandkids and point out the dull sexuality of the place, and the mindless conformity to sparkle and the pack mentality contained therein and say to them "look, kids: there was a time when gay people weren't people. They were simply gay."
But what do I know? I paid $14 for an 8-square inch piece of cloth, and on the way home I went two miles out of my way to stop at Krispy Kreme for donuts. Read More......
Disappointment, Neko Case be thy name! The flame-haired Americana chanteuse with the unreal voice put out her newest studio album, Middle Cyclone, two days ago. Which means she has two sold-out DC dates booked at the 930 Club for April. Which means that I have been told, once again, that she does not have any time in her schedule to be interviewed by me. Granted, she is one of the best-loved singers in American and I'm just some kid in a t-shirt fucking around on a computer. She doesn't owe me anything. But I have seen her — either solo or with her other band, The New Pornographers — 4 times already and tried to interview her every time. Usually this just involves pestering her publicist with emails, but at last Septembers Austin City Limits music festival I took a more active role and waited for her for three hours in the press tent, just in case. She never showed.
Though my interview requests for the current tour have once again taken the form of email flurries, I am starting to realize that all my tenacity is verging on a darker name. So if I'm going to stalk Neko Case I might as well articulate some of the reasons why. You can check out a full list, along with a Neko Case mixtape, below the fold. All songs not hyperlinked are included in it.
1. Her Ridiculously Obtuse Lyrics: Who would you rather spend an hour at dinner with: Boo Radley or Andrew Dice Clay? Someone who puts every facet of their personality on public display might make for good tabloid fodder, but doesn't leave a whole lot of mystique to unpack. On the other hand, Neko's lyrics are so elliptical that they beg to be pored over like some tattooed, PBR-drinking scholar of the talmud. "Margaret vs Pauline," "Deep Red Bells" and "Things That Scare Me" seem to touch on the injustices of the American class system. "Maybe Sparrow, "Fox Confessor..." and "The Tigers Have Spoken" use animal imagery to, maybe, make deep points about love and relationships. And who knows what the hell "Star Witness" is about? I personally think its a retelling of "An Occurence At Owl Creek Bridge" with a car accident, but I could be wrong. Thats why I'd rather ask her myself and get a straight answer. 2. I Owe Her An Apology: About a year ago I blurted out something insensitive at the most recent DC New Pornographers show (April '08, if you're wondering) and Neko called me a douchebag. I pretty much deserved it, but have never had a chance to say I was sorry. Doing something jerky and not clearing the air drives me crazy. If I snap at my boyfriend about something inconsequential in the morning I can't enjoy myself until I can track him down on gchat and apologize. I still feel bad about something mean (yet warranted) I said to my college roommate when I was 19. It would be nice to be able to say to her "Hey Neko, someone you've never met and have never given a thought to feels bad. How would you feel about assuaging him?"
3. I want her to sing at my wedding: One of the most perfect days of my life so far — October 27, 2007 — culminated with a near-magical New Pornographers concert. It might have been the weed n' whiskey combo I ingested before hand, it might have been the halloween costumes and close proximity of my boyfriends' hand. It might have been the fact that no one called me a douchebag. But when Neko belted out "Go Places" (a song which, granted, she didn't write) I was struck so fully with the size of her voice that I wanted to harness it to power my house and end war. Barring that, I just want a handle on what makes her so compelling as an artist and a semi-public figure. And once that happens we'll become best friends and she'll wear a seafoam green dress to my nuptials and belt out the world's most ethereal covers of "Precious and Few" and "Every Breath You Take." (A song which is itself about stalking. See how I come full circle?)
4. I Like To Pretend She's A Lesbian: The first time I saw Neko solo (August 16, 2007, if anyone is counting) my friend Rachel pointed out that there seemed to be some sexual tension between her and her backup singer, Kelly. It was probably just the overactive imagination of a lesbian and gay man who were too far back in the 9:30 Club to really pick up nuances, but since then its been fun to look for sapphic tinges where there probably are none. What exactly is the relationship between Margret and Pauline? Did Neko have a brown-haired lady that "fed" her when she was a "baby?" Why does it seem so incongruous to her character in "People Got a Lotta Nerve" when she sings about being a "man-eater? More than anything, the opaque nature of her songwriting just reminds me of the secrecy I used to practice when I was concerned the whole world would infer my sexuality from a simple turn of phrase.
If I actually got to ask her this, though, chances are she's probably just say "Fuck you, I'm no lesbian. I've forgotten more about sucking dick than you ever knew." But a guy can dream, right? Its for that reason that I actually haven't read her new interview with the New York Times. All it takes is one mention of a boyfriend or husband for the dream to get shattered.
5: I Want To, Damnit!: It's just that simple. I've worked my fingers to the bone sending interview request emails. Made my neck and left shoulder sore by pinching a phone between them on the times that I tried to call her publicist while also typing up a post. I got a very mild sunburn waiting around in the Austin City Limits press tent to see if she's show up. I ate too many sandwiches because I had nothing else to do there, for Christs' sake! Who does a guy have to blow around here to get an interview with Neko Case? Ahem. Sorry for that. What I meant to say is that she is a talented artist and intriguing, enigmatic figure and I would be honored to pick her brain.
So there you have it. Any tips about how I can either make this happen or get over it? Anyone out there in TNG-ville have a similar obsession?
Loyalty — the desire to stand by that which has stood by or near you — is the great double-sided dildo of gay life.
At its most positive you have the all-abiding desire to look out for "family" that leads the community to rally around injustices like the killing of Lawrence King or elect to a pre-scandal Sam Adams as Portland mayor. Loyalty is the thing that causes a ticket-taker at the Baltimore train station, a complete stranger, to smile at me and make warm small talk when I hand him my "The New Gay-"emblazoned credit card. He's not hitting on me and we won't be best friends, but we have a commonality that will lead us to look out for one another.
At the other head you have something like Genre Magazine. The lowest common denominator of gay publications, it is a collection of beefcake photos and advertisements held together by written content that can be read entirely in the time it takes to boil an egg. Yet it is still in business. It's marketed toward gay men, by gay men, so other gay men read it.
Somewhere in the middle of these two extremes lies The Shondes, a queer, Jewish punk band who should appeal deeply to me as a gay Jew. How many acts am I introduced to when my mom sends me an article about them from The Forward? As deeply as both my gay and Jewish identities resonate with me, and as rarely as I come across a musician who is both, I couldn't get into this band for one simple reason: They don't sound very good. I understand that music is a deeply personal and subjective experience that resonates differently in every listener's ear. And that it is unfair for me to criticize something which I — a tone-deaf bumbler who could turn a trombone into a deadly weapon — have no ability to produce myself. But in the using the "this plus that" rubric that I use to describe music, The Shondes sound (to me) like a combination of Sleater-Kinney and two mountain lions gang-banging Getty Lee.
And its really not easy for me to say this. A band with lesbian, trans and Hebraic influences? A punk-leaning quartet trying to change the status quo and bring a little rock to modern Jewish life? I should worship the matzoh they walk on. I should be taking pilgrimages to their doorstep to personally deliver a lox plate and a cassette of "The 2000 Year-old Man" to keep them entertained on the road.
I guess I've been spoiled. Two of my queer Jewish touchstones — Judy Gold and Sandra Bernhard— put on shows that I was lucky enough to get tickets for. Shows that I found greatly entertaining and also relevant to my personal cultural experiences.
But The Shondes? Its a challenge for me to even write this post. I feel like I'm turning my back on my own people, but doesn't it do an even greater disservice to blindly tout something just because its like you in a couple key areas? I usually hate to say that the slope of my nose or targets of my dick should determine what I do or do not like. I guess it's true.
The Jews, as a people, have endured 2,000 years of persecution. The gays, though a newer as a galvanized people, certainly seem headed for a similar fate. Do you think its our obligation to support our own regardless of their talent or creative output? Or do you think we've come far enough to have some wiggle room in the bands we like?
I'll give them one more listen. As my fists clench and blood pours out of my ears, I can be confident in the knowledge that I'm loyal. Read More......
"The Indie Rock Fag" is TNG co-founder Zack's new weekly column. Please be kind to it.
Original illustration by new TNG artist Ryan Blomberg.
I found myself in a distressing position last month. First off, I was in Georgetown. My sojourns into the third DC (my DC and governmental DC being the other two) are very rare. Besides the pervasive "out of my element" feeling the neighborhood gives me, I have a notorious weakness for buying things don't need when they are on sale. I could easily come home with a $300 rhinestone muumuu if it was marked down from $1000. And this leads to the real distress of the day: I lapsed into some sort of trance and came home with two drastically marked down pairs of skinny jeans.
Until about a year ago I thought that skinny jeans were the biggest aesthetic tragedy of the new millennium. Removed from any notions of fashion, or what's "in," I simply used to be of the opinion that tapered, cigarette-fit pants didn't look right. Until I had a gradual realization that a lot of people were wearing them and not all of them looked hideous. Then I realized that I was skinny and that pants were skinny. So I thought "why not break every rule of what makes a person look normal and buy two pairs of denim panty hose?"
One pair was whiter than a samoyed in a blizzard and the other so incredibly form-fitting that you could tell the make, model and serial number of my penis. I'll admit they look ridiculous. But again: I'm very skinny. Transcending lanky, I skirt the level of corporeal slightness that causes grandmothers to pinch my biceps and ask if I'm eating enough. Because of this, the current fashion trends leave me tickled pink. Everything is made perfectly for me. If buff dudes or baggy pants were to come back in style I would be right back on the desirability dust heap. I wrote last year about The New Gay Build and the sentiment still holds: I'm fortunate to be comfortable in a look that many find socially acceptable. I can be so quick to judge the backwards capped Aberzombie or Mr. Rogers-esque Sweater Fag, but I'll also freely admit that there are few people who walk into their favorite bar and don't find themselves dressed like everyone else.
I'm not going to spill any more ink on the "hipster" policy of conforming to nonconformity: The H word and all its accompanying criticism are so overused that they have ceased to mean anything. But I, personally, have a uniform that takes me through my daily life. Everyone does. Mine happens to be jeans, old t-shirt, old belt buckle and rod lavers. If its cold I'll throw on a flannel or a hoodie. I don't see myself dressing any differently anytime soon. Throw in the giant tattoo on my right arm and I leave my self as a candidate to look like its 2009 forever.
I like to wonder what will happen when it's 20 years from now and all the kids at the Black Cat are wearing nylon bodysuits or hypercolor hemp robes. Will I follow one more ridiculous trend because I've been numbed from its ubiquity? I will I be "that guy" sitting at the back table, mocked for my propensity to wear clothes that are 20 years out of style while I ogle the au courant youngsters?
I can imagine this is the point when the average reader thinks "that is why I don't follow fashion trends. I just dress like myself." I have news for you: No matter what you look like, there are hundreds of people in the DC area alone who look just like you. Go to the mirror right now and look at yourself. Now say this: "I am a caricature." It is the truth.
From the Armani-suited banker to the punk kid with 30 black t-shirts, any stabs at individuality or distinction through clothing are failed from the start. No matter if you admit it or not: you belong to a group.
But enough about all of you. What does this mean for me? It means I own some suffocatingly tight pants that, despite all my prior standards, look pretty good. The pockets might barely have room for my wallet. Bending over is an impossible task and I'm pretty sure that if I farted in them an air bubble would travel down my leg and escape somewhere near my ankle. But I like them and, for now, they work. I should just stop questioning it. Read More......
Of the many annoying things about growing up gay — isolation, prejudice, having to wait until college to experience oral sex— I consider one of the most lasting injustices to be the queer inability to relate to popular love songs. While all your friends got to swoon over the latest top 40 radio hit — say, "My Heart Will Go On" or some similar drek — you couldn't quite get into it because it was a woman singing to a man. Or a man singing to a woman. Or any combination of genders that would eventually lead to someone's penis going in someone's vagina in the most hetero way possible.
Luckily, as my musical knowledge expanded I got the pleasant surprise of discovering that a lot of gay love songs did, in fact, exist. Most artists have a couple love songs in their repertoire and many artists are gay. Ergo, it is possible for the discerning queer music lover to make a mixtape this valentines day and not feel that they're bowing to straight privilege. So in my humble opinion these are the top 17 gay love songs: Each has either a queer singer or writer, or explicitly queer content. Feel free to add some (or tell me how wrong I am) in the comment box. ________
17. CSS, "Lets Make Love and Listen to Death From Above"
Not all love songs have to be treacly. While some people prefer to spend their special couple days entwined on a sandy beach or sipping champagne in a carriage, other people want to get stoned and fly to another city to see someone they have a crush on. And once they get there, what's to stop them from having a lot of crazy sex while listening to Death from Above 1979? The mostly-queer Brazilian girl group CSS has described one of the best afternoons I could possibly imagine.
16. Patrick Wolf, "The Magic Position"
While the bisexual Englishman's live shows leave something to be desired (the phrase "musical diary" comes to mind,) this single from his second album accomplished two wonderful tasks: It provides a great little love ditty for anyone who's had puppy love and it allows its listeners to make adolescent "magic position" jokes. On your back with your legs in the air and a wand in your mouth? Pulling a rabbit out of somewhere untoward? The possibilities are endless.
15. The Smiths, "There is a Light That Never Goes Out"
Intense crushes have the ability to bring out the 13 year-old in all of us. That's why Morrissey's endless romantic yearnings are as timeless as a deep brown stain on your white cotton sheets. The master of gender non-specific pronouns' ultimate adolescent fantasy involves finding eternal love by colliding with a double-decker bus. It's the quintessential teenage, gay and English sentiments all in one.
14. Antony and The Johnsons, "Hope There's Someone"
People seek out relationships for a lot of different reasons. Some are interested in sex. Others want companionship. Some people can't cook for shit and enjoy having a hot boyfriend with an endless mastery of vegetarian cuisine (not that I'm speaking from personal experience.) As a function of my age and good health, though, I never consider another impetus for love: to be cared for in your old age and on your death bed. That's probably why this song doesn't get played at very many clubs.
13. Queen, "Somebody to Love"
Some love songs are successful for their specificity (see number one on this list.) Others, like Queen's "Somebody to Love," are so universal that a troglodyte would probably enjoy singing along. It's right there in the title. Who doesn't want somebody to love? The multi-tracking and giant choruses don't hurt either. It's not like Freddy Mercury was fooling the American public into thinking he was straight. His band's universal appeal speaks to his ability to write great songs.
12. Tracy Chapman, "Fast Car"
Would you laugh at me if I told you I lost my "with a boy" virginity while listening Tracy Chapman? It's OK. Most people do. The Welsh agent of my deflowering was feeling "soppy" and decided that Ms. Chapman would provide the best soundtrack for my descent into buggery. To his credit it did set a pretty nice mood. And anyone who doesn't tear up at this song is made of concrete. (PS- Though Tracy tries to remain ambiguous on the subject of her sexuality, Alice Walkerspilled the beans about their affair in 2006.)
11. The Damned, "Jet Boy Jet Girl"
Though originally performed by Elton Motello, most people are familiar with The Damned version of this sexual confusion anthem. (The less said about Plastic Bertrand, the better.) Most people have been played at one time or another by someone who hasn't exactly figured out their sexuality yet. While getting dumped for a girl hurts, its even more painful when the dumper comes back around to liking guys that aren't you. No matter how many times he bottomed or gave you head.
10. Peaches, "Fuck The Pain Away"
Not much to say about this one except that Peaches has immortalized one of the best short-term heartbreak solutions. My boyfriend has said before that he would let Peaches peg him. After a few listens to this I would probably watch.
9. David Bowie, "Kooks"
A gentler kind of love song, Kooks is clearly written from a father to a son. Besides being so much less maudlin than "Cats in the Cradle," "Kooks" combats the paucity of songs that same-parents can sing to their beloved infants. I discovered this song in college. That's a shame because it would have been great in highschool to daydream about having a dad who threw my homework on the fire and fucked Mick Jagger instead of making me take out the garbage.
8. Electronic, "Getting Away With It"
Neil Tennant does guest vocals on this slice of early '90s perfection. It's less a standard love song than a lament about being led on. "Walking in the rain just to get wet on purpose?" C'mon, Neil. Grow a pair. But if it was that easy to walk away from a bad situation I wouldn't have spent half of highschool in a dark room listening to Portishead. This song is a little piece of heartbreak that you can dance to.
7. Alison Moyet, "Love Resurrection"/ Yaz, "Only You"
The jury's still out on whether or not Alison Moyet is actually "family." And Yaz was made up of her and Vince Clark, the straight half of Erasure. Yet their brief reunion tour this summer brought more gays and lesbians out of the woodwork than free poppers day at the Northampton Home Depot. Combined, these two songs give queer folk 7 minutes to look into each other's eyes and be happy.
6. Dusty Springfield, "Breakfast in Bed"
Functional relationships make for boring songs. That's why the nuances of something like "Breakfast in Bed" are so fun to unpack. As best I can tell, some lady with a girlfriend uses Dusty for emotional (and vaginal) support when things at home get too rough. When an admittedly bisexual woman implores the object of her fancy not to "eat and run" you have to assume there's more going on that meets the eye.
5. Belle and Sebastian, "Judy and The Dream of Horses"
How many copies of "If You're Feeling Sinister" have I owned since I was 16? Two? Three? The exact number may be lost on me but I am completely clear on how I wore them out. Belle and Sebastian have always seemed not gay, not queer, but so solidly bisexual that I identified with throughout my own youthful delusions of "Bi now, gay later." (See also "She's Losing It.") So when the trumpets reach their apex and Stuart sings "the best looking boys are taken and the best looking girls are staying inside" I had no choice but to wait out the next 57 seconds and start it over. Even my MP3 skips now. That's fine, though, because in my mind song's final word is "h-h-h-ho-horses."
4. Velvet Underground, "Pale Blue Eyes"
Once my old roommate and I went to the Hirschorn Museum to see an exhibit on the art of light. In a big room at the galleries center was a rotating metal orb which spun kaledaiscope shapes around the walls. We watched it slack-jawed for half an hour. It was mesmerizing. This song is like the aural version of that orb. A laconic jangle and some of Lou Reed's least croaky vocals lead us through verses whose initial euphoria give way to a whole lot disappointment. I can't say I know what it's like to fall in love with someone who is married. But this song gives me a pretty good idea and it doesn't sound fun.
3. Hedwig and The Angry Inch, "Wicked Little Town"
My first boyfriend had this song quoted in our senior yearbook. At the time I cringed to see "If you have no other choice/you know you can follow my voice" posited sincerely among so many glamor shots and Sarah McLachlan lyrics. But in the intervening 7 years I can't believe I would ever judge this song as anything but beautiful. Sincerity is often approached with caution in the gay community but you can't fight goosebumps.
2. Magnetic Fields, "Papa Was a Rodeo" and "100,000 Fireflies"
Considering this band's best-known album is called "69 Love Songs" it was not easy to pick a winner from Magnetic Fields. "I Don't Believe You" and "The Luckiest Guy on The Lower East Side" were contenders, but in the end it was simply impossible to choose. I've witnessed "Papa Was A Rodeo" entrance a 2,000 person venue to complete silence before causing spontaneous bouts of tears. "100,000 Fireflies" could make the grinch realize long-dormant feelings for his own sled. They are both gorgous songs and both written by Stephin Merrit, the best love-song-writer of any sexuality. So they both make the cut.
1. The Blow, "Parentheses"
There is nothing wrong with this song. The image of two partners as protective parentheses. Loving someone enough to guide them out of the grocery store if the meat selection upsets them. The assertion that babies cry because they can truly feel the world. All that sweetness and it still manages to be upbeat. That's the general appeal.
There's a more specific appeal for me. It was lying stoned on my roof, in a hammack with my boyfriend, watching the stars and the bats play around the apartment buildings around us and listening to this song. For a really brief second I thought how cool it was that I was with my boyfriend, hearing a song that some woman I'd never even met had written for her girlfriend. But then the song stopped and we played it one more time. After that we just went downstairs to bed.
TNG started off as a DC-based blog/website for alternative queer culture, events and commentary, but we've realized our writing and concept isn't applicable only to DC. We're working to expand into other cities throughout the US. Here's how you can help:
* Become a city events editor.
* Write for TNG.
* Join the TNG Street Team.
In order to be a good fit for helping us out, you have to meet two criteria: you need to be prepared to spend some time at this, and you need to be frustrated with the current status of queer culture in your town. If you think you have what it takes, please let us know by emailing info@thenewgay.net.
