Getting Yelled At: An Unorthodox Timeline
Dedicated to those five beautiful souls killed at Club Q.
I got yelled at a few minutes ago. I was walking down 16th street, just having been boosted and de-flued. I had paused for a moment — trying to get my bearings after dual shots — when a man started screaming: “It’s only been a few days and you’re already pretending things are back to normal!”
Confused and trying to tell myself he wasn’t talking to me, I stood still — inexplicably making eye contact with him. He was on fire.
“You can’t ignore that five people were just murdered! You’re acting like nothing happened!” On this touristy, shopping district in Denver, I suppose he took my presence as evidence of anti-remembering.
His hands held a six-pack of Gatorade, something I took notice of — and felt was important — but couldn’t decide why. I didn’t say anything back to him. My eyes stayed focused on the surfeit of orange energy drinks in his arms — thinking to myself that, maybe, he didn’t need any more.
It wasn’t necessarily shocking. I’ve been yelled at plenty of times. But the moment quickly devolved into sudden flashbacks. I disappeared into another time and place where I’d been yelled at — one on a street not too far away from Club Q.
I was a teenager in Colorado Springs. It was the mid-90s. I was leaving high school for the day when a group of “kids” drove by and, out of a window (was it many windows?), yelled “Faggot!”
I think I understood their impulse. People are quick to share (and yell) when they feel threatened by you. They are more likely to share (and yell) it when something’s been ramped up to a fever pitch by other people in their circle.
They learned the word from somewhere, ya know. Words never spring from a vacuum. And though the 1990s were a difficult time for all queer youths in America, there was a special education happening in Colorado Springs at the time.
Back on 16th street, the man had moved on. Yet I kept reflecting. I opted to walk the two miles home instead of jumping on the train. Along the way, flashbulbs of memory continued to flicker and fade.
There were other times that I walked (because it’s always when I’m walking), when a truck (because it’s always a truck) filled to the brim with men or boys (because it’s always men or boys) lowered one or many windows just far enough to be clearly heard:
“Faggot!”
***
Being yelled at has never been limited to my time in Colorado. I had a political bumper sticker on my car after we invaded Iraq. An old man, fluffed with rage, proceeded to spit out any number of vile sentiments at me. In a time of patriotic coercion, a lot of folks took a lot of heat to express their ur-American right to disagree.
But I’ll admit: I heard the ‘F’ word lobbed in my direction less and less the farther and farther I got from the Springs.
In Colorado, I had been a target for a word that seemed to always be lingering on people’s tongues.
I went to high school on the north end, in an area populated by a wide range of Christian sects with varying layers of religiosity. In the early 90s, Colorado Springs had changed its laws to be more inviting to “nonprofit” church groups. In only a few years, the cityscape had become defined by Evangelical fervor.
My district included the headquarters of Focus on the Family. It’s then-leader Dr. Dobson’s teachings on homosexuality were a part of my “sex-ed” curriculum (abstinence only, of course!). Though effectively stifling discussion in the classroom, the providers of such education made sure to condemn the sex acts that were particularly abhorrent. (I watched a video once in which a Church elder chastised a hetero-couple for holding hands. “She,” I remember him saying, “may end up as someone else’s wife one day.” Such forward-thinking tales about adultery certainly didn’t bode well for dudes hoping to hold hands with other dudes).
The megachurch now infamous for its pastor’s dalliances with Denver rentboys, New Life Church, was at the height of its influence. The congregation included tens of thousands; and their children were my playmates. I drove by it every day on my way to school. It was — as were so many people and places in the 90s — obsessed with homosexuality.
My Catholic Church, too, had focused part of a homily each month to ensure the congregation knew that homosexuality wasn’t just a sin, but a burn-in-hell sort of sin.
Military families were also a big chunk of my district. I was in high school when Clinton signed DOMA and when the military affirmed it’s Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy. Dissent melted into air.
“The Gay Agenda,” now wonderfully ripe for ironic meming, was a sincere worry echoed daily by prominent politicians. In my district, a relative of its long-term Congressman — the ultraconservative Doug Lamborn — went to high school with me. She used to drive a car that had a sticker “Pave the Rain Forest” affixed to the back window.
We were the only state to pass a statute legalizing discrimination of queer people — let’s call it the first modern “Religious Liberty” law. (Incidentally, ask a Colorado queer how they feel about that anti-gay-marriage wedding cake baker and you’ll understand why their rage is more complicated than yours.)
So let’s just say that “faggot” was in the air, both figuratively and literally. Such syllabic soundscapes were rudimentary.
It was a rhetorical corrective that only boys-in-trucks could successfully deliver. And, so, they took on their duties with both pride and joie de vivre.
(I wore a lot of Zach-Morris shirts and sweaters in an attempt to beef up my own hetero-cred. Never worked, though. “Faggot!” they’d cry.)
***
A friend of mine took me to Club Q one time. I was visiting from away — far away by then. I’d come back to visit family — taking a detour to this other and sometimes more supportive family.
I made a comment about how stifling the Springs had been for queer kids. Going to Q was an intense moment.
It’s not that gay bars were completely absent from my hometown. There was a place for (what we affectionately labeled) “misfits” called The Underground. But the goth-tilt of the place freaked me out. I was a closeted Zach-Morris type, so I never went. In many ways, that place of total freedom felt more dangerous than the streets around my high school.
I’d internalized a narrative by then (marginal and maniacal): don’t go near those fags.
And, anyway, I desperately wanted to be straight. So I hid myself deeper and deeper — assessing my worth by whether (and by how many) people had called out my queerness that month.
***
Flashforward to the flashback: so it was a relief to be sitting in the humble setting of Club Q with my friend. We were there too early; the place was empty. We had a couple drinks, listened to the mix heavily laden with early Gaga and, soon after, left to meet up with more friends downtown.
But the place stayed in my head. And though I’d been to The Underground by then, it was about to close. It was in this way that Q always loomed over me. It was the place. I knew it would be a refuge, if ever I needed one.
As many queer folks will tell you: whether they go to the bars or not, just knowing they’re there can be a sign of comfort.
***
When I moved away, I went to St. Louis. I had connected entrenched homophobia to the mountains. By the time I left for college, Matthew Shepherd had already been tortured and killed in Wyoming. The Mormons had declared full-out political warfare in Utah and Idaho. I left for the Plains in an attempt to de-elevate — to deescalate — the rampaging.
I kept going east. When I went to Q, I was visiting from New York. I remember turning up my nose to the quaintness of the bar.
No. It wasn’t snobbery per se. I remember sinking into the Camp of it all. Gay bars in NYC are serious. They are ubiquitous. I took them for granted.
Only weeks before that visit to Colorado, I’d been to a club on the Lower East Side where naked men had somehow been trapped in cages — making do with their newfound captivity by dancing.
***
Q wasn’t my place; but it was definitely my speed. It wasn’t my Church; but I understood its sacredness.
For a community whose history was steeped in demonization, it was a refuge. It wasn’t the place in which I sought comfort (it came along after I’d left); but because others like me did…it was mine, too.
I am often at odds with the place I have called “home” for so long. Its beauty is resplendent. And, as such, people want to live there. The community has changed, to be certain. I have never heard “faggot” pitched at me since leaving all those years ago. But to suggest that the hatred which unfolded last week is outside of time and place denies the complicated and overlapping folds of history and language in my community.
It is not unusual for certain words to be in the air. When they are supported, affirmed and codified by people who play fear against queer lives, they have a habit of materializing.
Physical violence is the same. When it’s in the air, it only needs a push.
Violence was inevitable because Colorado Springs has been replete with other forms of [slower] violence against queer communities for as long as I can remember.
It does not take much to set something on fire when kerosene has been leaking for decades.
***
The man and his Gatorade walked away; his yelling-streak largely subsided.
I have never been a person that yelled back at those trucks-full-of-men. And I decided not to yell back at this man now. Part of me wanted to defend myself; I wanted to debate — to state firmly that I was far from forgetting the murders of those five beautiful souls.
But he’d spent a lot of time looking around at the same set of facts I had in front of me; he’d seen the writing on the wall as well.
He knew that the world was full of tinderboxes. And he knew that forgetting was a match.
Like me, he’d probably been yelled at a bunch of times in his own life. And he was probably just as sick of people in power continuing to fan the flames.
People in power aren’t using “faggot” much these days. But they’re finding words adjacent. They continue to burn pyres and throw the effigies of drag, transgender and queer communities onto their reelection fires.
And from that violent rhetoric? Violence.
