a dream and kissing in public
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Last night I dreamed I was at a dance teachers’ conference and I was late for everything and had packed for a femme conference (fewer leotards, more fishnets). I was wearing black lace stockings and those fishnet glove things on my hands, which I have no problem with but I would never wear. Then at the keynote the speaker was name dropping Dorothy Allison and Havalah and one of the organizers from the Femme Conference in Chicago were there. I was really confused as to what Dorothy Allison had to do with teaching dance and why the keynote speaker was friends with her. Also there was a donut machine.
Anyway, last week Johnny and I were talking about gender confusion (that is, the confusion other people experience when they look at a gender non-conforming person, not the personal kind) and how it works on couples. Johnny was saying that for hir and some of hir partners, there’s often an element of age confusion – Is that your son or your boyfriend?
I am used to being read as queer more often when I am with a partner, but when people read Mr. GF as a man that shifts. I think I am still more likely to be read as queer when I’m with her than when I’m alone, but my presence might increase her odds of being read as straight. (If that person has a heteronormative appearing girl on their arm, that person must be a man).
It makes me feel funny about making out (I mean seriously kissing, not just little smooches) in public. I’m used to keeping my eyes half open, my ears listening, a good-old fashioned queer survival skill. Then I realized that, especially when we’re front-to-front, Mr. GF and I are probably being read as straight. Like a lot of us, I justify my verging-on-obnoxious displays of affection with the romantic idea of my partner and I as a mini Queer Nation kiss in. So what to do when you realize that you’re not flying the rainbow flag high, you’re just obnoxious? Maybe we should carry a “smash the family, smash the state” sign wherever we go.
November 26th, 2008 at 3:46 pm
realizing that when people saw us together they assumed that we are straight was a HUGE adjustment for me/us to make. when we got together we were fags, and very obviously queer- i had just stopped T and K. hadn’t started yet, over the past 5 years the way we are read has shifted dramatically, and there are still tiems that i forget people see us as a ‘nice young straight couple’ instead of queermos when we are affectionate in public…