Tag: Queer

Pride Day 2005

Hey, that was fun.

Here’s the thing: I hadn’t been to the Pride parade in six years. I swore off in ’99 because I was disgusted at how commercial and corporatized the whole thing was, with the huge floats for the bars or mainstream sponsors (Air Canada, CIBC, Royal Bank, VanCity… come to think of it, is there a single major bank who’s not hot for gay money these days?), with less and less visibility for community or political organizations.

Hey, that was fun.

Dykes on Bikes

Here’s the thing: I hadn’t been to the Pride parade in six years. I swore off in ’99 because I was disgusted at how commercial and corporatized the whole thing was, with the huge floats for the bars or mainstream sponsors (Air Canada, CIBC, Royal Bank, VanCity… come to think of it, is there a single major bank who’s not hot for gay money these days?), with less and less visibility for community or political organizations. (The worst part for me was seeing parade volunteers with the KFC logo on the backs of their t-shirts.) It was all just a big show, long on glitz and short on substance and meaning, and I simply didn’t see any point in going if I’d just get riled up. So I didn’t, and everybody was happy. Plus, I got to keep sleeping in on Sundays.

Meanwhile, at the Hall of Justice...

Clown or Drag Queen?

So what’s changed? Well, for one thing, I’ve gotten used to getting up on Sunday mornings for volleyball. And there’s the news of same-sex marriage being legal now—which, I know, is not the end-all and be-all of queer politics, but is still a big deal. I’m still as cynical as ever, but not politically active, and I think I’ve gotten a bit more relaxed about some things, ready to take the good with the bad. And there is bad: corporate sponsors are even more visible now, especially at the after-parade festival at Sunset Beach, where booths for actual community groups were even more sparse than six years ago, edged out by the mainstream corporations. Though I have to say, I was grateful to the Fabutan booth for giving out free sunscreen. Sweet Jesus, but yesterday was a scorcher.

Square Dancing!

But there’s also good, because the parade and the Sunset Beach festival—KFC and Air Canada notwithstanding—are safe spaces where you can be as queerly outrageous as you want. And now that I’m back home in the suburbs, what are the odds I’ll see same-sex PDA’s, or gender-bending freaks, or topless women walking around? If I had a boyfriend, I’d never have the nerve to walk down the street hand in hand with him here. Hell, I’m not even 100% sure I’d necessarily do that in the West End either.

Pecs 'Til Tuesday

So. This was a good outing after all. I got out of the house, I ogled buff boys in their underwear, snapped some pictures… and I’ve got some food for thought. And you know something else? I think I’ll go back next year.

Thirteen And Counting

Every year around this time, it hits me: the nagging urge to write and post something for the anniversary of my coming out. I’m not sure what to write about, exactly: something deep and meaningful where I’d explore issues politics or identity, or just how I’ve changed and grown in the time since coming out.

Every year around this time, it hits me: the nagging urge to write and post something for the anniversary of my coming out. I’m not sure what to write about, exactly: something deep and meaningful where I’d explore issues politics or identity, or just how I’ve changed and grown in the time since coming out. But that essay kept on not being written, year after year. Maybe it was laziness. Maybe it’s that I always remembered at the last minute, and realized by the time I got my thoughts together and wrote it and posted it, it’d be too late. An essay like that has to be timely. Maybe it’s that queer identity and politics weren’t terribly important to me for a while, so—even though part of me wanted to—I wasn’t actually too inspired to write about the day I “officially” adopted that identity. Besides, why was this milestone any more important than all the others in my life: when I stopped going to church, or moved to Vancouver, or took up Taijiquan, or started playing volleyball again? I didn’t celebrate those anniversaries, after all. Still, this is the first milestone, the one that made all the others possible and drove a lot of my life for years to come. “Every saga has a beginning,” right? (Except my saga doesn’t star Ewan McGregor, although it’s still better written than those crappy prequels. But I digress.)

For a while, though, I did celebrate my coming-out anniversary. Between 1995 and 1997 I made up a ritual that involved going through my diary to sort of get the big picture, see at a glance how much I’d changed. (There was a bit more to it, but I won’t go into details.) Before that, nothing. The 1- and 2-year marks came and went with hardly any mention in my diary; but back then, I was just barely ex-Catholic, and still not big on rituals and spirituality. And no rituals after 1997, for a couple of reasons. One, going through years of diary entries was getting to be too much of a chore. Two, my Pagan-ish spiritual phase was over. Cynicism and skepticism became the thing, and this annual retrospective looked more and more like simple wallowing in the past, pointless navel-gazing (which, granted, is exactly what I’m doing right now. At least now I don’t pretend it’s anything more). Though it had felt important at the time, in hindsight all of this spirituality and pretty symbols and things hadn’t really made a difference in my life. Better to look at my present and future than my past. Better to live my life, and continue my coming out process, than count the days and years since it started. But… it is and always will be an important date to me. As important as my birthday, if not more so. And part of me still needs to celebrate it in some way, however small.

It’s been thirteen years and one day. Happy anniversary to me. I’ve come a long way, baby.

Hooray! I’m Popular!

And a warm welcome to visitors surfing in from GayVancouver.Net. Seems I’ve been chosen as the GayVancouver.Net Proud! Out Loud! Web site of the week. Thank you to those who nominated me! It’s quite an honour to be counted with such excellent sites, but don’t worry: I won’t let it go to my head. Much.

Proud Out Loud! Web site of the week

And a warm welcome to visitors surfing in from GayVancouver.Net. Seems I’ve been chosen as the GayVancouver.Net Proud! Out Loud! Web site of the week. Thank you to those who nominated me! It’s quite an honour to be counted with such excellent sites, but don’t worry: I won’t let it go to my head. Much.

(I have to say, that award graphic adds a nice splash of colour, doesn’t it? The rainbow flag sure is pretty.)

If you’re reading this in my archives, rest assured this did not go to my head. And take a minute to visit GayVancouver.Net, won’t you?

Comic Book Review: Alpha Flight

What originally got me interested in Alpha Flight was the fact that (a) it was a Canadian superhero group (in fact, the only Canadian superhero group in the Marvel Universe), and (b) it was the only series I knew of then to have an openly gay main character. Being gay myself, I was naturally curious to see how a superpowered queer would be treated. I got into the series only a few months before it folded in early 1994 and, over the next couple of years, collected most back issues, the two annuals, and a couple of team-ups with the X-Men.

What originally got me interested in Alpha Flight was the fact that (a) it was a Canadian superhero group (in fact, the only Canadian superhero group in the Marvel Universe), and (b) it was the only series I knew of then to have an openly gay main character. Being gay myself, I was naturally curious to see how a superpowered queer would be treated. I got into the series only a few months before it folded in early 1994 and, over the next couple of years, collected most back issues, the two annuals, and a couple of team-ups with the X-Men. It was a large investment of time and effort, which makes it even harder to admit that, in the end, Alpha Flight was a disappointment.

The story begins in X-Men #121 (May 1979), when the X-Men travelled to Canada and tussled with Canada’s Official Super-Hero Group, Alpha Flight. These six Canadians had been invented solely to give the X-Men someone to fight but apparently struck a chord with the public and so, four years later, they received their own ongoing monthly series.

All things considered, the series was off to a promising start. John Byrne—the writer and artist for the first 28 issues—did a pretty good job of creating personalities and histories for characters that were nothing more than powers, code names and nifty costumes. He introduced us to the distant and mysterious Snowbird, shapeshifting daughter of northern gods; Sasquatch (Walter Langkowski), a scientist who could transform into a monster; Shaman (Michael Twoyoungmen), a Native man who studied to be a medical doctor and rediscovered the magic of his ancestors late in life; the mutant twin speedsters Northstar and Aurora (Jean-Paul and Jeanne-Marie Beaubier), her with dual conflicting personalities, him a sarcastic and obnoxious loner; finally, Vindicator (James Hudson), founder and leader of Alpha Flight, wearing a special suit that allowed him to fly and project beams of energy. To this original core of six were added two in issue #1: Puck (Eugene Judd), a midget with excellent fighting skills and a Mysterious Past, and Marrina, an amphibian humanoid with a Mysterious Origin.

The stories weren’t exactly inspired, or even terribly original. Some of the characters were annoying knockoffs: for example, Sasquatch was a gamma-powered shifter like the Hulk, and in fact his origin story has him reproducing Dr. Banner’s experiments with gamma energy. Also, Puck was in my opinion too reminiscent of Wolverine, with the short stature, hairy body, Mysterious Past and unrequited love for a redhead (in this case it was Heather Hudson, Vindicator’s wife and later widow). The dialogue tended to be painfully artificial and expository, as you’d expect from mainstream superhero comics of that era, and the plots contained the usual tired shenanigans of “shocking” twists and retcons… but on the whole I thought they were mostly serviceable, and entertaining enough.

It seems that Northstar had been written as a gay character right from the start, and that his abrasiveness was just a way to hide his feelings and keep others at a distance. But that clue, and others in his personal history, were only there if you knew what you were looking for. In issue #41 (December ’86), there came a huge, not-at-all subtle hint about Northstar’s gayness. More hints followed, about one per issue. “Aha!” I thought. “They”re going to make him come out for sure!” Imagine my surprise when, in issue #50 (September ’87), Northstar’s nature was retconned as being part Elf, and he, Aurora and Puck were suddenly yanked out of the story. If I had to guess, I’d say that the execs at Marvel got a little nervous about this costumed faggot and wanted him gone. Plus, Elf, get it? It’s like, fairy. Yeah, my sides are still splitting.

Northstar stayed gone for two and a half years, returning in issue #81, his gayness forgotten for the moment. It was in issue #106 (March ’92) that he officially came out of the closet. I used to think I’d have a hard time finding that issue since it had to be a valuable collector’s item, but it turns out Alpha Flight was never that popular. I think I eventually got my hands on it for about $10 (Canadian!). “So” you might be thinking, “this is great! It’s a major step forward for gays and lesbians, right? An openly gay superhero is bound to open people’s eyes, make them rethink their positions, right?” Sure, but…

Let’s not beat around the bush: Northstar’s coming out was a joke. Yes, I thought it was done pretty well (a bit preachy, maybe, and it had to happen in the middle of a big fight scene, but there you go). Yes, it caused a reaction. Yes, gay readers loved it. But then Northstar went right back into the closet as fast as he’d come. The words “gay” or “homosexual” weren’t even mentioned once throughout the series’ remaining run. Northstar’s coming out was vaguely mentioned a couple of times, but never using those words: it was just his “revelation.”

If I had to pick a moment, I’d say that’s when Alpha Flight jumped the shark. In retrospect the creative team—never stellar to begin with—had been running on autopilot for a while now, and the last two years of the series’ life were filled with dull, pointless and/or derivative storylines, padded with mindless action scenes or focussing on new and completely uninteresting minor characters.

The 4-part Northstar miniseries, beginning immediately after Alpha Flight‘s last issue, only added insult to injury. I thought now they’d address his gayness. No such luck. It was just a mindless action-oriented plot, with the coming-out obliquely mentioned only once. We did see a former love interest of Northstar’s, but guess what? She was a woman!

Northstar’s brief coming out wasn’t Alpha Flight‘s only opportunity for really interesting and potentially groundbreaking stories, but the writers and management lacked either the balls or the imagination to do more than scratch the surface. There was Sasquatch, who at one point (through a very strange sequence of events) was temporarily transformed into a woman. There was the ongoing issue of Aurora’s multiple personalities, which merged and split and changed at the writers’ whims. There was Kara Kilgrave, an adolescent mutant with purple skin and the power to control minds introduced in issue #41: she left Alpha Flight for a short time to try to have a normal life, but failed miserably. The writers had a golden opportunity to explore what it means to be an outcast and freak.

One thing that doesn’t so much disappoint as piss me right off is the mangled Canadiana. Readers were reminded in almost every issue that John Byrne is an expatriate Canuck… but so what? The stories—even the exposition on Canadian landmarks and history—still all felt written from an outsider’s (ie: U.S.) perspective. I don’t know what a Canadian perspective or sensibility would look like in a superhero comic (or maybe I do?) but I’m sure Alpha Flight didn’t have it. This was not a comic written by us or for us. The geography and history could have been taken out of any high school textbook, what French there was was usually very bad or not real Québecois, and there were even several instances of the writers and artists disrespecting our national heritage with their sloppy work. Look, I’m no flag-waving nationalist, and I realize they didn’t want to make too much of an effort since most of the audience didn’t read French and probably couldn’t find Canada on a map, all tucked away down there. Really, I’m not asking for much: Maybe get the national motto right. Or at least learn to draw the flag correctly. Jesus.

I’m still missing a couple of issues, but have lost interest in searching for them. Neither am I interested in collecting the latest volumes (Alpha Flight was restarted twice; first in 1997, lasting about 30 issues, then in 2004). I hear Northstar temporarily rejoined the Flight in their second incarnation, has been with the X-Men for the last couple of years, and is a lot more out. Well, good for him, but I won’t be following his adventures anymore. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t even have started. Alpha Flight never reached much beyond “okay,” and many other comic books have done a better job of portraying queer characters without wimping out.

Between Québec And Toronto

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there.

I’ve lived in Vancouver for over eight years, having moved here from Ottawa—where I was born and spent all my life—and there’s nowhere else I’d rather be. In fact, I believe moving out here was the best thing that happened to me since I came out of the close twelve years ago. I’ve changed a lot in that time and, looking back, I feel very far away from Ottawa, and the me who lived there. From where I’m sitting it sometimes feels as though very little changed for me in those first four years after coming out, and even less in the two decades that came before. As though the only important decision I made in Ottawa was to eventually get the hell out, and find a place—the only place—where I could be who I needed to be. I have to force myself to remember there was a lot more to those four years than coming out and dreams of the West Coast.

I remember my graduation, in June of ’92. I’d come out to myself less than two weeks before, and still felt completely lost. The ceremony wasn’t helping, either. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, what they wanted, where they were going. But me? I had no clue, and no confidence that I could handle it all. Nothing I’d gone through so far had prepared me for this. My life—safe, routine, familiar—was being turned upside down and for the moment I had no one to talk to. I was alone.

At some point in the following weeks I got the idea to go on a short trip by myself, to shake up my routine and hopefully give me a bit of perspective and confidence. After some thought I decided on Québec, a few hours away by train. Familiar enough—I’d been there a couple of times when I was much younger—but still far from my everyday life. So I travelled there in early August, staying at the Université Laval residences. I did the tourist thing by day—the Zoo, the Aquarium, Sainte-Anne-de-Beaupré, Île d’Orléans, exploring the narrow streets of Vieux Québec—and wrote in my diary by night. There was a lot of self-doubt, confusion and loneliness in those entries… but also joy at this new adventure, and hope (or at least wishes) for the future. When I came home I felt a bit more relaxed, a bit more sunburned, a bit more confident, a bit more determined.True, I wasn’t changed as much as I would have liked… but I’d taken that important first step.

That fall I came out to Ottawa’s gay community, and my immediate family. And then, one by one, to some of my friends and classmates. I was nervous as hell the first few times, but with each person I told the fear got a little weaker and I got a little stronger.

And I became politicized. I read up on queer issues, got in touch with my anger and joined activist groups. Tentatively, at first; for a long time after coming out I lacked the confidence to pull my weight and be more than an observer.

I stopped going to church; for years I’d been going more or less out of inertia, and I suppose it was only after I came out as gay that I could also come out as a non-Catholic. For a while I flirted with Wicca, then began a gradual slide towards atheism.

And I stayed in school. For the first year after coming out I took higher-division Physics courses, thinking I could go on to a Master’s. Then I realized Computer Science was more my thing, and began a new degree in the fall of ’93.

I don’t remember exactly at what point I thought of moving to the West Coast, but the more I thought about it, the more appealing it seemed: the mountains, the sea, the unknown… and, just as importantly, it was far away from Ottawa. By late ’95 I was feeling a growing need to leave, make a fresh start somewhere else. I’d changed a lot, grown, and made friends I’d miss, but Ottawa held too many painful memories, of loneliness and need and failure, both before and after coming out. I also wanted to do graduate studies, but preferably not in Ottawa. I applied to a number of universities and, to my delight, was accepted in the Master’s program in Comp Sci at Simon Fraser University.

At the end of June ’96 a bunch of us from Outlook (Ottawa U GLB group) went down to Toronto for the Gay Pride weekend. Until then I’d only seen Ottawa’s relatively modest Pride parades, so I was really looking forward to this. The weekend started off with a trip to Canada’s Wonderland on Saturday. Great fun, and another first for me, though I was too afraid of heights and motion sickness to go on the wilder rides. The weather turned to rain in the middle of the day, but it was warm enough that after a while I didn’t even feel it. That night we took a walk through the gay ghetto—there were Pride flags everywhere—and made a brief stop at an incredibly crowded club.

On Sunday, Church Street was a riot of colour and noise, with people in all sorts of costumes, everyday clothes, or no clothes at all. Toronto is a different world; back in Ottawa I never saw more than one or two pairs of breasts a year at the parade. But here there were topless women left, right, and centre, as well as a few naked men (or just about naked; but really, what do you call someone wearing only (a) a leather harness, or (b) a translucent gown and cock ring?). The crowd was so thick I only caught a few glimpses of the huge, elaborate floats as the parade looped around the neighbourhood. That was fine, there was plenty to see. Church Street was closed off for a street fair kind of thing, and I spent the afternoon people-watching, checking out the booths, and trying to keep hydrated under the blazing sun.

In a way this weekend trip to Toronto felt similar to my earlier trip to Québec, both being preludes to something big and intimidating: my journey out of the closet, and moving across the country. Part of me was still worried that I wouldn’t be able to live on my own and it was nice to be reminded that, yes, I could handle it. These two nights in a youth hostel could be seen as a bit of a test, that I passed with flying colours. Then again, in hindsight I’m sure I was looking for patterns in all the wrong places. Though there was a nice superficial symmetry between the two trips, the differences far outweighed the similarities. I didn’t go to Toronto to reflect or work up my courage—though that was a nice side effect—but only to have fun, and connect with the greater community I was now a part of. Most importantly, I was different. For all my doubts and insecurities—still there after four years—I finally knew I had the strength to make it on my own.

And Vancouver was only five weeks away now! Over those five weeks I ping-ponged between excitement and terror as I said my goodbyes and packed and dreamed about my new life. I was massively nervous and insecure, but I never considered not leaving. I was doing the right thing: Vancouver was where I belonged now, not Ottawa.

But moving thousands of kilometers across the country wasn’t some kind of magical rebirth. It didn’t immediately remove all my issues and insecurities, no matter how much I would have liked it to. Just like I had before, I grew up and changed one step at a time. And I’ve only just come to wonder if maybe it didn’t matter where that happened. There was nothing special about Vancouver, or Ottawa, for that matter. I was doing pretty well by the time of my second fateful trip, and I think now I could have built a fine life pretty much anywhere, or continued to build it if I’d stayed in Ottawa.

That’s not to say I made a mistake eight years ago. It felt like the right thing to do then, and I don’t regret it one bit. Vancouver is my home now. But the truth is that I didn’t have to move here. At some point between Québec and Toronto I made a choice. Maybe it didn’t feel like much of one, but there it was. There were any number of roads open to me, not just the one that led to Vancouver. There’s not much point in playing what-if games and wondering how my past could have been different, but I can think about the future. And I can choose where the road out of Ottawa will lead me.

My Coming Out Story

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

It happened in late May of 1992 and became official on May 28th, the day I started my diary to come out to myself on paper; I was seven weeks away from my 21st birthday, having just finished my first undergrad degree. Suddenly, without warning, denial took a permanent holiday and I accepted the simple truth: I was gay. Had been all along.

Of course, it wasn’t really “without warning” and looking back, I’m amazed it took so long for me to come out. I’d liked boys for years, fantasized about them with every spare neuron. It’s true that I’d never actually done anything about it… and denial is a powerful thing. Since I understand how pointless it is to obsess about wasted years, and even though I wish I’d done it earlier, I can only say I just wasn’t ready to face the truth.

So I was out to myself. but now what was I supposed to do? Who should I talk to? Where should I go to find other gay people? Too many questions. Internalized homophobia was really the least of my worries: I felt lost and confused, full of fears and self-doubts, and not just about this particular issue. In the first week of June I attended my graduation ceremony; though I was proud and happy to have completed my degree, everything intensified my insecurities. All the other graduands seemed so sure of themselves, of where they wanted to go, what they wanted to do. Me? I didn’t have a clue. Only that I was staying in school, postponing any major decisions about my life for as long as possible.

When classes started again in September, I decided it was time to get off my butt. I’d spent the summer getting my head together, and felt a bit more confident about things. I remembered seeing posters for a gay/lesbian/bi group at Ottawa U, but that had been a couple of semesters ago, so I didn’t know if they were still active. Of course, back in those days, there was no centre or Web site. However, the student info guide was helpful in other ways: I found out about GO-Info, Ottawa’s G/L monthly paper (now defunct), and several gay or gay-friendly bookstores. And in GO-Info, I learned about various discussion and support groups held by local queer organizations. That was exactly what I needed.

In mid-September I came out to my twin brother Martin. I’d been working up the nerve to hell him for a couple of months… and as I expected it went perfectly well. I told him, and that was that. I’d been hugely nervous before, needing to tell somebody, and here I was with a totally anticlimactic coming out.

A week later I went to my first gay discussion group. I’d chosen one that took place on Sunday afternoons, since all others were on weeknights and I wasn’t ready to come out to the rest of the family. I told my parents I was going to study on campus—a plausible lie, since I sometimes did do this.

I took the bus to the ALGO Centre, at 318 Lisgar just off Bank Street. As I walked up those stairs (stairs that would become very familiar), I knew I was entering a different world. A world where I could be myself; where I could spill my guts; a world of people like me, who knew what I was going through because they’d been there too.

We went out for coffee after the meeting. Later, at home, I explained the smell of cigarette smoke on my clothes by saying I’d gotten together with friends—this time, not a lie. I kept my excitement and brand-new optimism to myself. Partly it was habit… and partly, I didn’t think even Martin would understand.

And so began my life out of the closet. Over the next few months I came out to my immediate family, read quite a lot (and especially got interested in queer history), and very gradually became politicized. It was slow going—change only came one small step at a time—but at last I was on my way.