How Queer Is Queer: Just Being Me by Donny Kaye

"SOME DUDES MARRY DUDES.  GET OVER IT"

“I HAVE A PHD. Pretty huge dick”

“BEST LICK ON A STICK”

“I LIKE GIRLS THAT LIKE GIRLS”

     These were some of the t-shirt messages I enjoyed while interacting with participants in this past weekend’s PRIDE celebration.  And the t-shirts?  The t-shirts don’t hold a candle to some of the titillating visual experiences of viewing participants in various costumes throughout the weekend.


     So, just how queer is queer? Can you ever be too queer? Is there an option to be or not to be? How Shakespearian!

     Yes!

     I am! Queer that is!

     It's Friday night of PRIDE weekend and I'm walking down Colfax headed into the action, as it were. My youngest daughter has just text me saying "it's your first dad” referring to it being PRIDE weekend. Actually last year was, she just didn't know it!  Then, that is. And yet when I came out she was the one of my three children who said "I've always known dad". In that instance I must've been too queer.

     That warm sunny Sunday afternoon in April over a year ago when I had my "I can't stand it any longer" conversation with my life partner, she said "I wondered when I first met you".  There must have been something there, I mean, like over-the-top in too queer.

     When I had breakfast with my dearest friend Grett who I've known since she was two years of age, amidst the tears and in the sense of shame in revealing to her that I kept the secret for far too long, she said "I've always known". 

     There seems to be a pattern; partner, daughter, best friend, all seemed to have known. In fact when I consider the many coming out conversations I had with my "then" circle of friends" not too many were surprised. It was the confirmation that sent them scrambling! 
I don't know if that was about me, or them, but definitely it was too much!

     And so this Friday afternoon as I walk through the cloudy streets in Denver headed into Friday night PRIDE celebrations I wonder about too queer and it being too much! In the question of too queer it seems more about them than it does about me, after all, I'm just being me.

     Yes, I do have an eye for design and color. I've always searched for just the right things to put together, like in clothing-wise and decorating-wise and in every-other-way-wise!

     If not HGTV and the shows on design always (or most of the time) presented by recognizably gay men, I enjoyed the food channel. Could that possibly be a tip-off, in terms of being too gay?

     Yes, I've always been on the sensitive side as my mother used to say. Even when I announced to my mom that I was getting married her response was, “Why do you want to get married? There is so much of life for you to experience!” I have an ability to listen to people and to intervene on others behalf as they need me. I sit and cry with them. I've always been able to put my arms around someone consoling them in their upset, doubt or grief.

     So, there you have it; my attention to design, my interest in food, the emotional sensitivities and then you add the fact that I've never liked sports, and I happened to choose a profession where I worked with women all the time--what else could you expect. Even before I began my career in education when I worked in the factory, I was one of the only stockmen who could keep all of my dyke female machine operators happy!! 

     Certifiably queer! I am just me! 

     The questions and the discomfort around my possibly being too queer really do rest with everyone outside of me and not really with me.  As I exist in that realization, I wonder if the pushback is about their doubt about themselves and the possibility that they are too much, in one way or another. Possibly at some point in their lives they’ve considered a variant sexual experience too! One thing for sure, I've certainly gotten their attention, if gaining attention is what the t-shirt slogans and the unique dress (or undress) are all about.

     When considering the question of "too much," the actual realization is that the quality of being too much exists in the eyes and mind of someone outside of myself and then gets projected back onto me, making me wonder if I am too much!  Those dirty rascals!

     And so I ask you my dearest of friends am I "too queer" or might I just be BEING ME?

About the Author

Donny Kaye-Is a native born Denverite. He has lived his life posing as a hetero-sexual male, while always knowing that his sexual orientation was that of a gay male. In recent years he has confronted the pressures of society that forced him into deep denial regarding his sexuality and an experience of living somewhat of a disintegrated life. “I never forgot for a minute that I was what my childhood friends mocked, what I thought my parents would reject and what my loving God supposedly condemned to limitless suffering.” StoryTime at The Center has been essential to assisting him with not only telling the stories of his childhood, adolescence and adulthood but also to merely recall the stories of his past that were covered with lies and repressed in to the deepest corners of his memory. Within the past two years he has “come out” not only to himself but to his wife of four decades, his three children, their partners and countless extended family and friends. Donny is divorced and yet remains closely connected with his family. He lives in the Capitol Hill Community of Denver, in integrity with himself and in a way that has resulted in an experience of more fully realizing integration within his life experiences. He participates in many functions of the GLBTQ community.