What Queer Will Be

[thunter34]

Just something I wrote last night, sort of a belated response to Coming Out Day and my online talk with a young man coming out who had contemplated suicide mingled with thoughts yet again on the passing last year of my friend, Michael.

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I spent an evening tonight on the back porch in the crisp Autumn air, gazing up at the array of stars and thinking about time.  I thought about the time it takes for starlight to reach the earth and meet our eyes, the time it takes for changes to occur, for things to progress and evolve.  The time it takes to heal.  The time it takes to forget, and when it is proper to remember.  Remember nooses, maybe....nooses discarded, nooses used.  One, tied and then abandoned only recently.  Another, tied and used successfully just barely more than a year ago now...an anniversary that I let pass without comment at the time.  Tied and used successfully to put an end to the pain of an emotional wound that had never properly healed.  And here now again, a similar  stain on the spirit of another young man has quietly coaxed the working of another knot, though this time thankfully surrendered.  I leaned back on the post and turned my watery eyes up to this kaleidescope brightness in the sky and thought again of change, healng, progression.  And somewhere along that rail of thought as my eyes fixed firm on a particular rail of light, it brought my mind to a singular point of space and time.  And for a few moments, I'd swear that I could almost see into this place.

There will be a day, and not too very far off I believe (though perhaps still after I'm done & gone) when "coming out" as we know it will no longer exist.  People will be accepted at the outset as having a range of sexual and romantic interests, and these will just be other characteristics that people will discover of them incidentally as they develop into adulthood...like handedness, artistic talent, temperment, athletic ability...just one more facet of what makes a person a person.  Just as it should be.

And kids will learn about the old "coming out process" and gay stigma from studies in school, and they will puzzle over it and maybe even giggle about it a little uncomfortably as they scratch their heads and wonder about how weird it was when society was really like that and how could people have ever thought that way....kinda like some of us raise eyebrows and puzzle over old textbook pictures of "separate but equal" facilities and history lessons about slavery...about people actually owning  people, thinking it was OK to do so.  And try as a few of them might to get a mental handle on what it must have felt like back then, it will in the end remain foreign and curious to them.  Just as it should be.

On that day, that  stigmatization descibed on the pages will be what is "queer".  That  will be the embarassment, the shame, the uncomfortable subject to talk about.  It won't be us, but how we were once regarded by society...and what so-called reasons were offered up to jusify it.  That is when "queer" will find its rightful place in this human dialogue.  It isn't today, and it isn't even tomorrow - but it is a day that's coming.  And not too far off, I believe.  And the light from the stars that will shine down on that night, already well on its way here.

[GSOgymrat]

I hope your vision comes true one day. Thanks for sharing it.

[Basquo]

Thank you, Tim.  That was beautiful.

[Robert]

tim....

I just read a post by BriGuyNY,NY . Then I read your most excellent essay and thought of what I had just read:

"Dripping water hollows out a stone...Ovid"

Briguy has this written at the bottom of his profile.

When I think of what has come before and where we are now, things seems to be just about where they ought to be.

robt

[emeraldize]

I hope we're alive to see this manifest.

[LatinAlexander]

Tears on my eyes. Many tears...

ALex

[Joe K]

Tim,

Absolutely stunning prose.  Thank you from all the people who will benefit from your dreams.

[David_CA]

Tim, it'll be a happy day when it happens (and I honestly think it will). I just hope to be around when it does.  Somehow, I get the feeling that I might!

David

(edited to add this is my 2000th post!  What a good thread to reach that number.     )

[allopathicholistic]

 

And kids will learn about the old "coming out process" and gay stigma from studies in school, and they will puzzle over it and maybe even giggle about it a little uncomfortably as they scratch their heads and wonder about how weird it was when society was really like that and how could people have ever thought that way....kinda like some of us raise eyebrows and puzzle over old textbook pictures of "separate but equal" facilities and history lessons about slavery...about people actually owning  people, thinking it was OK to do so.  

 

there are definite parallels here and  i never saw them until your post, so yeah. thank you. quite beautiful...

[BT65]

Timmy, that was very well and thoughtfully written.  Thanks.

[Jeff G]

Thanks Tim , that made my day a little brighter and that's something I could use today .

[Queen Tokelove]

Well keep your dream alive, Thunter Bunny....Never say never and all that.