Queering Sh*t Up

 

G says, 

The faggots, passing as men, procure spaces all over the devastated city. Although the men have divided all the city space up and given each space a name so it could be used for only one purpose, the faggots turn everything they can get into spaces to live in and to eat in and to love in.

The queens elaborate their dens in the rubble to create hidden places where one can live for long periods of time safe from the cold, sharp eyes of the men. And they elaborate their forms of outrage.

~ The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions; Larry Mitchell & Ned Asta

 

Next to you I do nothing

to perfect my safety

~ Nightletters; June Jordan

 

The world has attributed an extraordinary quality to the word ‘love’, ingrained it into the minds of people and unnecessarily dimmed the purpose of men and women living together–consequently, for the sake of love, people lead a troubled life lacking pleasure and satisfaction. We seek to destroy this.

~ Love, from Why Were Women Enslaved?; Periyar, tr. Meena Kandasamy

 

**

 

When I say that I am queer, I am often asked what I identify as. As, over the years, the labels that I have attached to myself and found comfort in have shifted, ‘queer’ has been a resting place, always there with open arms, allowing me to breathe in its comforting expansiveness as I get tired of performing and trying to belong to labels and groups. It allows me to be, to be just a person, to transcend the pressing weight of always-there societal boundaries and norms which is ever-ready to smother you under its crushing weight if you so much as let up an inch. 

 

So, what does it mean, then, to be queer? Having thought about it for some time now, I have come to disagree with the question itself (which queer also allows). Queerness, for me, now, is located in the becoming and doing, rather than being. It has come to mean to me the act of allowing complexity. It is the act of caring, and caring deeply. It is wearing my heart on my sleeve, refusing to let go of softness and tenderness, even when the possibilities of hurt and heartbreak threaten to take me over. It is to dare to want the world. To want goodness, and to dream of it, and to think it possible. Not that it is to transcend today, but to live, or try to live, as if the tomorrow of the dreams were today. A refusal to give up on hope.

 

It is also to me a kindness that one shows to oneself: I allow myself multitudes. I allow myself hatred, ill-feeling, bitterness. I hold on to the grudges of abuse (of care). And I thank my friends, profusely, as I explain to them that I am not doing it as a matter of formality but as a refusal to take them for granted. 

 

Queerness is that act which resists containment. I try to be open. I want to be as expansive as ‘queer’. I want to bring to others the comfort that queer brings me. The rest that queer has enabled me, I want to make possible for others. 

 

It is also to allow myself, and others, to be and do more than queer. Queer is, after all, only one of the things that I am, that I do. It may intersect, and entwine, with other things and interests and doings but it need not be all-encompassing. It is the possibility of being and becoming more than just (anything). To fall back on the contemporary cliché, it is to “yes and” instead of “but also”. 

 

There are surely those who disagree with what I have to say and think of queerness on many, or perhaps, all accounts. And we would stand equal in our queerness. It becomes, in that sense, a deep challenge, or different possibility, to capitalism, for its sheer capacity to accommodate. 

 

To queer is to invite people into politics. To allow for mistakes. To allow ourselves and others the possibility of expansion, transmutation, difference. To sit beside people with disagreement. To let people be. To refuse satisfaction at mere loosening of noose-like rules (legal, social and any others). To want abandon - in everything. To refuse absolutes. To want, want, want want wantwantwant. To refuse the denial of wanting. To dare to want (which I am still learning to do). To want to be seen. And also to want to just hide. To want to live in a commune. And also to want to have a room of my own in it. To want a world of no coming-outs because what is there to come out from. To be staunchly against marriage and to rally for marriage equality. To let people save themselves, and hold them through it. To step back, as much as step in, in care. 

 

To want to carry chairs and tables. To get on the said chair to put up a poster or that flag. To hold open the door for someone out of muscle memory and yet feeling a shimmering sliver of joy at doing so. To flirt outrageously, or not-so-outrageously, with friends. To adore friends with full passion. 

 

Queer is also the ugly laughter of sheer helplessness upon the betrayal of those you had considered safe. It is the moment when all feelings burst out in tears, shared with those who have been similarly betrayed. It is to hold onto each other. It is to cry angry tears and feel angrier yet at the loss of articulation. It is to gossip and accrue bad name for it, but to continue gossiping because what other way do we have to warn our fellow queers of the dangerous ones.

 

It is to love cats. To recognise and keep running into people that you've matched/unmatched with on Hinge. To stop yourself just short of wondering whether you're queer enough. It is to tell myself that I do not have to be friends with every single queer person while wanting to be friends with every single queer person. It is to be envious of that cute fellow’s cute-cute piercings because you want to run your tongue over them and also because you want one of your own. And then wondering whether you could even pull it off. And in the same breath thinking, fuck it, who cares. And wanting to look pretty. And also wanting to fuck looking pretty, or even just looking. And everybody stop looking at me right now; and looking up to realise, whoosh, sigh of relief, nobody is looking at me; and also wouldn't it be nice if someone somewhere did and we shared a smile. And it is to love love love cats.

 

And I'm so tired of identifying and identifying and identifying and identifying and can I please just be and do and not keep isolating myself in identifications and definitions? So these days, when they ask me what I identify as, I say, queer, that’s it. And smile what is hopefully an aggressively don't-ask-me-any-more-questions smile.