Queer, Just How Queer by Phillip Hoyle

      I love to use the word queer, the term brought into gay prominence in political and academic queering movements of the 1960s through the 90s. I also like it for the memories it raises of my grandma Pink, who in old fashion used the word for anything odd. I like it for its political symbolism and for making positive a word too long used as a pejorative. I like it for its strength. I like it for its inclusive quality covering the bases of LGBTandQ concerns. I like it for its exclusive quality, as in not too many people I run into want to be called by this moniker. I especially like the discomfort its use raises among some of my gay friends! It’s a word of wide potential and great humor. So just how queer am I? It’s a fair question. I’ll try to answer it once and for all.

     This morning I looked through the photographs on my digital camera that included those I took last summer at Pridefest Denver 2012. I was surprised to find there quite a few more images, ones I thought had been erased when I uploaded them into my computer. I flipped through frame after frame and saw so much of my life there, even photos from Pridefest Denver 2011. First I saw a photo of my partner’s 90-year-old mother, sitting at the kitchen table drinking her morning coffee. I often kid her about all her gay sons although only one of her offspring turned out to be gay. Her multiplicity of gay sons is made up of all of Jim’s and my gay friends. I call them her growing family of gay kids. She smiles for me and takes delight in these others who bring her presents of chocolate, humor, and unaffected affection. She represents in this picture a nine-year connection I have with her son and the growing numbers of her other gay sons. The photo reveals layer after layer of queer experience and relationship, but it’s just the beginning. I did mention two sets of photos taken at Pridefest, but I haven’t yet told of the hundreds of photos of the family of plastic pink flamingos that live in our yard shown standing alone and together among a variety of ferns. I took these and many more in the past couple of years, the queer obsession of a queer artist! I also haven’t mentioned many photos of flowers, of my artwork, of self-portraits, of extreme Christmas decorations at a local gay bar, of the bunch of men I run with at parties, in restaurants, and on the street. I haven’t told you of pictures of an art display, of drag queens, of small, large, and supersized lesbians, of gay architects and engineers, of employees of Chipotle restaurants, of young people polling for the Obama campaign, of great arches of rainbow colored balloons, of a guy wearing fairy wings, of a barely-clad muscle man standing by a muscle car, of the model in a platinum blond wig and red bikini sitting in a red convertible advertising At the Beach, of a parade on-looker smoking a huge stogie, of people dancing, of a young drag queen posing sexily for me, of a young man in shorts sitting on the curb with his little dog watching the parade, of political signs urging the election of sane officials, of leather studs, of a drum and bagpipe band in their smart kilts, of religiously motivated anti-gay protesters, of two young guys in interestingly revealing slacks, of Senior Citizens doing a dance routine with their walkers, of youngsters calling attention to Rainbow Alley, of the prominent landmark The Center makes along the route, of the partiers on its roof sometimes watching the parade passing by below, of the poignant reminder of the ongoing presence of AIDS among us, of wild hairdos, of the Imperial Court, or of the leathery Uncle Sam who stopped to ask me, “Where’s the free beer?” I haven’t said a word of many other pictures of musicians, dancers, activists, on and on. These photos are my people whom I celebrate with my little digital camera as passionately as Walt Whitman in the nineteenth century celebrated the democracy of America, the endless variety of life, the human body, his own body, and his sturdy comrades with whom he liked to lie in Leaves of Grass. 

     So just how queer am I? Really, really queer. I’ve been trying to tell you just how queer in my stories! In summary of all I’ve said to you in the past, hear this: 

* I’m as queer as the little boy who wanted to wear both cowboy and Indian costumes in public.
* I’m as queer as the boy who donned his great aunt’s wig and sister’s skirt and went to the family grocery store to show himself to his dad.
* I’m as queer as the teen who used to lie in bed next to his dad, not only to read alongside him but also to smell him.
* I’m as queer as the teen who bragged to another boy about marking his friend with hickies.
* I’m as queer as any teen boy singing in the school choir and more than most of them.
* I’m as queer as the high schooler who looked forward to each issue of House Beautiful.
* I’m as queer as the boy who ordered prints from a NYC art print company and treasured the company’s catalogue with its variety of homoerotic images.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered the striking 
International Male ads and catalogue.
* I’m as queer as the young man whose first male friend in adulthood was homosexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who read all the homosexual-theme books in the public library.
* I’m as queer as the young man with wife and children who at age thirty fell in love with another man.
* I’m as queer as the young man who reveled in the idea he was bisexual.
* I’m as queer as the young man who discovered that his homosexual proclivities lay at the center of his sexuality.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who had sexual affairs with other men.
* I’m as queer as the writer who when he was asked to include cultural diversity in an adult religious education resource anthology quoted gay writers and HIV-related themes alongside many other cultural writings.
* I’m as queer as the middle-age man who left his wife to live as a gay man in a large city.
* I’m as queer as the old man who snapped photos at Pridfest knowing he was as queer as anyone there and loved the notion and the reality of it.

     I am the old man who says all these things proudly and with love, deep love for all my companions:
* Male and female
* Educated and uneducated
* Professional and worker
* Wealthy and dirt-poor
* Crazy and sane
* Chic and tasteless
* Laughing and crying
* Hale and exhausted
* Living it up and overwhelmed
     
     So, how queer am I? Pretty darn queer and happy as a lark about it.
     And now, if you’ll pose, I’ll take even more pictures with my camera, snapshots of the folk who add so richly to the queerness of my existence and the joy of my gay life. 

About the Author

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, giving massages, and socializing. His massage practice funds his other activities that keep him busy with groups of writers and artists, and folk with pains. Following thirty-two years in church work, he now focuses on creating beauty and ministering to the clients in his practice. He volunteers at The Center leading “Telling Your Story.”