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Profiteers, Politics & Gay/Lesbian Liberation |
| By Perry Brass
My sister and I grew up as the poor relations of wealthy people in the
South. My father died when we were small children, our mother was
disabled, and our relatives knew that they could literally "buy" us at
any moment.
At that time, getting three meals a day was a major accomplishment for us, so you might be able to understand how this could be. All they had to do was offer us food when were hungry, or hand-me-down clothes when we had none, and we were theirs. No questions asked. In fact, we could not ask questions. We were never allowed to ask questions, because poor relations are never allowed to "look a gift horse in the mouth." Even if the horse's teeth are rotten, you are just supposed to smile back at it. At that point, as they say, we did not have two nickels to scratch together, so it was easy to buy us for just about that much. Later on, I left Savannah, Georgia, became independent—not rich, by any stretch of the word, but just independent—and I could not be bought by my relatives for any amount of money; by this, I mean, they could not buy me at the expensive of my being gay, or of being independent, or being a writer. In short, for any amount. I would simply be myself and, for better or for worse, they could take a running leap. I started feeling this way when I was quite young—at least by the time I was twenty and had already been living on my own for three years—which meant that as far as my family was concerned, I had never had to be "in the closet," because I had nothing to give up by coming out. All the "nickels" were now mine, and I could not be bought for one of them. My mother's very well-off family became extremely pissed off with me—saying that I was irresponsible, difficult, "neurotic," sexually "abnormal," and "would never grow up." But, at that point, since there was nothing I wanted from them, there was nothing they could do it about it. All the nickels were now on my table—three of them at least—and that was enough to make me happy, which is always the nice part about being young certainly, especially being young, out, and gay. Then, little by little, they started to come over to me. After all, I was a member of "their" family, and as usual when you stop asking people for anything, they start to wonder what is it you've got that they can possibly use. Since they realized I could demand things on my own terms and there was no bargaining anymore, they began to reverse themselves. I was now "independent," and "self-determining," rather than merely neurotic, sexually "delicate," and headstrong. From then on, out of their own sense of "tact," they let the sexual part of my life stay in their own closets. They never mentioned it except obliquely when they were forced to deal with my lover, but they continued their campaign to bring me back into the family, now that they realized I wanted nothing, whatsoever, from them—and anything they could get from me would be to their benefit. This made me understand that there is nothing like starting off with nothing to make you realize how strong you can become by the addition of, virtually, anything.
Of course, this is not a situation that, usually, you get into by
yourself. The fact that by coming out early I managed to have a lot of
gay friends and support helped a great deal. So did the fact that I
managed to live in a New York apartment I could afford, so—as it often
does—real estate had something to say in the matter. As long as I could
afford to live on my own, and in the city I wanted to live in, no one
could buy me for anything. The fact that I had willed myself, no matter
how much it cost me in terms of comfort and security, to be outside the
"corporatocracy" that was gearing up to run most of America, allowed me
to be more independent and "unbuyable" than most people of my age at
that time.
But it was also people my age (in the late 60s and early 70s), who started the next phase of the Gay Liberation movement. This phase radicalized and energized the movement enough to get it out of the closet and on to the streets. We are still seeing the effects of this with the reaction, say, to Matthew Shepard's murder, or the religious right's attempts to destroy the lives of gay men and lesbians. So precisely when the gay movement stopped trying to buy its respectability for a nickel, we started to earn real respect. It seems lately, though, that some gays have gone back to the old "bought for a nickel" situation, like we haven't learned a thing from the past, either our own individual pasts or any sense of a class, outsider past we have.
The Human Rights Campaign's recent endorsement of Al
D'Amato, a man whose homophobic expense account is so generously well
padded that he could take us all out for steak dinners on it (as he
carved us up for the meal) is a perfect example of that. But it's
certainly not the only one.
The first time I heard about the Fonz's endorsement, I thought, this has got to be a hallucination. Something left over from some old acid trip of mine. D'Amato? Who's next, Jesse Helms? Maybe we should just endorse him because Jesse is so good with foreigners. Then of course there was Peter Vallone, who ran for governor of New York. During his years on the New York City Council, Vallone had worked overtime to keep a "gay rights bill"—that is, a bill that would give us the same rights as anyone else—from coming to a vote. For years and years we New York gays thought: eventually Vallone's got to die. Instead he ran for governor. Where he quickly got enough gay endorsements to appear as least nominally "pro-gay," or at least pro HIV services, which recently have started to exclude gays whenever possible. The usual feeling among certain gay men, men like Andrew Tobias, for instance, who was all for endorsing both D'Amato and Vallone, in these circumstances is that it is better for us to be acknowledged by fairly homophobic (read: "successful") politicians, than for us to be ignored by them—and then vocally endorsed by politicians who don't "stand a chance" (read: our authentic friends). We are perfectly willing to be bought for a nickel, even though in real political terms we have a lot more going for us than just a bunch of damn nickels. But the ardent, political "careerists" among us, as usual, can't see other gays that way. They can only see them as "poor little queers," who'll do anything to jump onto the train of power, even if we have to hang out in the caboose with Jesse Helms there and his crew spraying us with nicotine poisoning. The fact that gays and lesbians are one of the few truly efficient urban voting blocks left in America is only too evident. We also have enough sense to know which way the wind is blowing and, since our family structures are more fluid, we can resist, if we use our brains, the relentless "Corporatization-at-all-costs" of America. But we'll always have a few pinstriped queens who'll tell us that being "bought for a nickel" is a sign of growing up and "moving up"—instead of just selling out, cheap. Lately I "dumped" two acquaintances of mine who felt that they had to keep dumping their own "glories of Capitalism" down my throat, whether I wanted it there or not. I started to feel like the Red Menace herself, when basically, having grown up dirt poor, I believe that people should be allowed to live within their own means and the poor—who now in America only keep getting poorer—have the right to live in decent surroundings; even, and this is a pretty radical idea, in surroundings of their choice. (This idea is in sharp contrast to the current belief that some areas, like Manhattan, should become reserves of the very rich, while the "servant and service" classes should be stuck out on the fringes of, say, New Jersey for their own good. But, as ever, I am willing to be dubbed as "retro" in this regard.) Like many gay neo-cons of various stripes (whether Jewish, Catholic, or, as they claimed to be, "libertarian") their basic concept was that if we cooperate with the emerging corporate state by tying "gay liberation" to it, everything should end up in Glorious Living Color for us. "We live in a capitalist country," they told me. "Why not just let Capitalism go to work? If left alone, Capitalism itself will kill the Church, the state, and everything else that's been in the way of gays being accepted." (I swear this was their argument. I'm not making this up.) I am afraid I am suspicious of such simple solutions, especially in the hands of complicated (read: greedy) people. Since unalloyed capitalism (which I think can work in certain environments, like GAP boutiques or the relentless world of microcomputers) puts everything up for sale on the same basis—from ideas and products to human beings—I still don't want to be included among those sold by it, mall-fashion, for a nickel. No matter what kind of nickels we're talking about in 1999 dollars. In other words, I am worth more than that. And I feel that most people—gay, straight, or indifferent—are as well. And I don't care who thinks he's got all those little nickels to buy me, I'll keep my own worth in my pocket until I, alone, determine the price. Perry Brass's newest book is How to Survive Your Own Gay Life, an Adult Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships. It is available at gay bookstores nationally, as well as Amazon.com and the usual suspects. Related Stories from the GayToday Archive: Book Review: How to Survive Your Own Gay Life, an Adult Guide to Love, Sex, and Relationships Interview: A Visit With Author/Poet Perry Brass Great Gay & Lesbian Wealth Myth Debunked Related Sites Perry Brass Web Site GayToday does not endorse related sites. |
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