Relentlessly Gay

Dear Outspoken Yet Pointedly Anonymous Author of the Now Famous “RelentlesslyGay” Letter:

Allow me to introduce myself. I’m Roger. I strive, everyday, to be more #RelentlesslyGay. So you can imagine my excitement when I read your rather unhinged letter to a neighbor regarding their #RelentlesslyGay yard. A yard that disrespects God. A yard unsuitable for children. A yard that  might force a mild-mannered good Christian neighbor like yourself to call the police. Oh my! That must be one gaygittygaygay yard!

I couldn’t help but wonder, what does it look like???

I imagined the offending yard was as over-decorated as your letter is over-capitalized. I had visions. Visions of two botanically obsessed queens cross-pollinating a fuchsia, inverted triangle-shaped flower with a sequined ball gown and dubbing it the Phyllis Diller Rose. In my head it covered every square inch of the lawn until its bedazzled petals turned a house on a private, bucolic lane into a shimmering, iridescent disco ball. I imagined a yard that looked like a Liberace piñata had exploded. I envisioned lawn gnomes with expressionless faces and blank eyes strewn about wearing nothing but harnesses and assless chaps like some kind of post-Black Party nativity scene. I saw cannons beglittering the house in pink fairy dust every five minutes giving the distinct impression that it was encased in a cotton candy-colored snow globe. Surely the front door was so covered in lube that you’d need gloves to turn the handle.

And then it happened. I saw the actual yard ~ the God-offending yard ~ and I gotta say, I’m not sure I’ve ever been more disappointed. By anything. Ever. Multifuckingcolored mason jars? That’s it? Are you fucking kidding me with this? Have you ever even met a gay person. Oh, honey, that’s not #RelentlesslyGay. That’s not even #KindaGay, or #JustExperimentingWhileMyWifeIsAwayGay. If anything, it’s #BorderlineMetro. And that’s if I’m being generous. Mostly, it’s just #Meh.

This entire incident is more offensive than I had previously realized. My people have worked too hard ~ relentlessly, one might say ~ and have come too far for you to define #RelentlesslyGay as a single strand of multi-colored mason jars. We have a history of fabulousness to live up to and let me tell you, sugar, your brand of bargain basement queerness ain’t cuttin’ it. Even buy provigil fast Grace and Frankie had a giant pink mechanical dildo on the lawn. Mason jars are not over the top. They’re not even under the top, and honey, let me tell you, if there’s one thing I know, it’s what it means to be under the top.

But in the interest of being the change I wish to see in the world, I’m going to take a deep breath and put my anger on the back burner. I want to take advantage of this “teachable moment.” It is Pride month, after all, and I’m feeling especially generous. I’m going to give you, for free, a quick lesson in #RelentlesslyGay. You’re welcome.

Gregg Burge in the movie A Chorus Line. Flitting and floating and as gay as a 3 dollar bill, he hilariously and shamelessly sings about fucking a girl in a cemetery as he dances the shit out of his number. Now that’s #RelentlesslyGay. Can’t Stop the Music. #Relentlessly. #Gay. Lady Bunny and RuPaul. Paul Lynde on Hollywood Squares parading his faggotry in front of an America that flat out refused to acknowledge what they were watching even as he told them, explicitly. Erasure and the Scissor Sisters. Audre Lorde and Rita Mae Brown and Adrienne Rich. Larry fucking Kramer! The Daughters of Bilitis and the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries. Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon and Harry Hay. Bayard Rustin! The Indigo Girls and Elton John and Melissa Etheridge and Frank Ocean and k.d. lang. The queens, queers, and trans folks at Stonewall who threw the beer bottles that shattered closet doors and changed the world. Harvey Milk and the White Night Riots. Suddenly, Last Summer and Angels in America and Torch Song Trilogy and The Boys in the Band. George Hearn singing I Am What I Am and Harvey Fierstein in…anything. Frank Kameny, who sued the United States government in the late 1950s when they fired him for being gay. And in the age of marriage equality, we can’t forget #RelentlesslyGay Jack Baker and Michael McConnell, who applied for a marriage license…in 1970…and are still married today. Relentless! Vito Russo and Randy Shilts. How about Joseph Beam and Armistead Maupin and Oscar Wilde and James Baldwin? Edie Windsor! And, while they may or may not identify as gay, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention our #RelentlesslyTrans brothers and sisters. Activists like Janet Mock and Laverne Cox, Leslie Feinberg and Sylvia Rivera and Ali Forney and Rebecca Juro and Buck Angel. And just so we’re clear, I haven’t even begun to scratch the surface of the brilliant, vibrant, passionate, #RelentlesslyGay culture and history I am proud to call mine ~ haven’t even come close to delivering an exhaustive list of those #RelentlesslyGay heroes and superheroes who have made living in a #RelentlesslyHostile world infinitely more bearable.

I aspire to be as #RelentlesslyGay as they are, Remarkably Anonymous Letter Writer. And let me leave you with one final thought: #RelentlessGayness is much more powerful, colorful, interesting, insightful, thoughtful, brilliant, courageous, and beautiful than mason jars hanging in a yard. What a drab world you must live in. You worry that children will see too much, I worry that you haven’t seen enough.

Sincerely,

Roger #RelentlesslyGay Rosen