My Flaming Valentine

When I came out of the closet, I painted the door pink and nailed it shut. Yes, I’m a dramatic, finger-snapping flamer with limp wrists, a slight lisp and tight jeans. A little too much sugar in the pants. Captain of the pink team. Maybe that’s why I’m spending Valentine’s Day alone with a box of chocolates from myself.

Homosexuals are attracted to members of the same sex; hence, a man is attracted to a man. For the flamboyant, effeminate homosexual, this presents a slight problem. With masculinity and virility as the ideal, the queen is often left without any courtiers—sometimes without any allies—in what can seem a lonely gay world. Walking into a room, I’m used to meeting the scornful eyes of other gay men who condemn me for perpetuating stereotypes. Last year, my gay best friend convinced me that I was always “acting,” that what little masculinity I had wasn’t enough. His honest appraisal painfully resonated with me because my flamboyance, I thought, did start with an act.

My lips were glossed, my wig was secure and my Nerf-ball breasts were supported underneath the Hooters halter-top I had borrowed from my waitress sister. After the standard introduction—“Live from Fayetteville, Georgia!”—the curtain rose and I flashed my Vaseline-laden teeth and marched confidently in the opening parade, introduced as “Contestant #7, Attila ’da Honey.” For the second year in a row, I was sure the crown was mine for the taking.

Being a veteran competitor, I found special meaning in my high school’s annual cross-dressing pageant. Not because I was finally a sophomore or because I had just turned 16, but because a week earlier I had been dragged, kicking and screaming, out of the closet where I had hidden with my sexuality since the sixth grade. I was secretly dating a senior, Joseph Ragsdale, the desire of many wistful females and the target of endless gay-bashing. In the past, students had spray-painted slurs on his car and adorned it with pornography. The student body even renamed him Joseph Fagsdale. I knew openly dating a popular gay figure on campus would not only “out” me but also intensify my own harassment. (I had been called a faggot regularly since the fifth grade. Bullies seemed to acknowledge my sexual orientation before I did.) Nonetheless, I decided to confirm the rumors that were already spreading. Though I thought things couldn’t get that much worse, they did.

The night of the pageant, the other contestants deliberately mocked me in their interview segments. “I just want to add that only 10 of the 11 contestants are actually male,” one said. During the group dance number, “Choco Latté” ripped off my wig and “Anita Man” punched me in the stomach. I tried to maintain composure by making my smile bigger and my dance moves faster. During the talent competition I threw my baton so high it hit the auditorium’s ceiling (but I still caught it).

I took home more than the crown that Friday evening; I took home a fear for my safety. If my classmates could get away with ridiculing me on stage, what could they do in my school’s unsupervised bathrooms and enormous parking lots? To make matters worse, Joseph dumped me after two weeks and moved to Colorado.

To limit my embarrassment, I became adept at dodging the food students threw at me during lunch. I located my classes on school maps and developed new routes so I could avoid the between-class hangouts of certain students (particularly the ones wearing tight jeans with large belt buckles). Within a few months, though, I was tired. As good as my navigation skills had become, I hated constantly rethinking how to get from point A to point B. It still hurt to hear students whispering about me in class and to feel too scared to say anything. I hated the sound of someone preparing to spit on me as I quickly descended the stairs.

Ironically, the pageant that alerted me to the difficulties of being openly gay eventually taught me how to stave off harassment. I won the crown through flamboyance, by accentuating every detail of my femininity. While my fellow contestants despised me, the audience erupted with laughter and gave me standing ovations after both the talent and swimsuit competitions. For every person who mocked me, it seemed like three others admired how comfortable I appeared with myself. At school, girls loved to hear me talk about the latest guy I met on the Internet. One of my female classmates told me, “I’ve always wanted a gay shopping partner like Cher had in Clueless.” Even if I had been reduced to a gay supporting character, I had friends. I was just one of the girls.

After enduring three months of harassment, I resolved to exude a sassy, in-your-face attitude for the remainder of high school. I walked down the hall swinging my hips and referred to all my friends as “honey” or “girl.” Rather than ducking when a jock or redneck asked “Are you really a faggot?” I responded: “Yes. Do you want a piece?” Sex and dirty jokes became my preferred topics of conversation: “What do gay horses eat? HAAAAAY!”

By appearing comfortable with my sexuality, I found life easier, relatively speaking, by the time I was a senior. The confident drag queen was more intimidating than the timid closet case. Whether my harassers feared my vitriolic quips or my confrontational finger snaps, they had stopped whispering, spitting and throwing. My flamboyance had worn them out. Well, most of them. One morning in October, as I left for school, I realized the mailbox was missing. I found my mother’s flower pots shattered on our front steps. I saw the word “faggot” etched in the driveway. I smelled urine on the front porch. At least my family wouldn’t have to decorate for Halloween—the white toilet paper hanging from our trees was eerie enough.

When I started at Harvard last fall, the harassment diminished but my flamboyance and inappropriate comments did not. Throughout freshman week, I filled awkward pauses in conversation by admiring the boys in Annenberg: “Is this the butcher shop? I am seeing way too much hot meat!” People laughed, but I began to question whether my flamboyance was a legitimate part of my identity or a socially constructed defense mechanism.

With so many supports in place, I felt Harvard’s ultra-tolerant environment should render such a defense mechanism unnecessary. During the first weeks of freshman year, I met my gay academic adviser, my two lesbian proctors and my gay assistant dean of freshmen. The gay dances and gay social events were a far cry from the hostile halls of my high school. To me Harvard was a homosexual heaven—there were seven other gay students in my dorm alone.

Still, my flamboyance persisted and transformed into the dividing factor between myself and other homosexuals at Harvard. Rather than fearing violence, I worried about critical stares from other gay men—many of whom had never been open with their sexuality nor harassed because of it. The same flamboyance that once attracted friendship and staved off harassment was now distancing me from my peers. I was too much of an act. I just wasn’t masculine enough.

It’s been four years since I crossed the stage in stiletto heels to be crowned Mr. Tiger Beauty Queen 1998. I’m still telling dirty jokes and swinging my hips. I grind at gay dance clubs and I am far too affectionate with my gay friends in public. Were my stereotypically homosexual traits a defense mechanism, I suspect they would have peeled off by now in Harvard’s gay-friendly atmosphere. But questions about my behavior and its origin seem irrelevant these past four months. When my mother had her will finalized in November, I couldn’t balance grinding and affection with words like “blood transfusion” and “cancer.” Instead, I dropped my social studies tutorial and retreated into isolation, eating alone in other Houses to avoid contact with the people who knew me best, locking myself in my single to keep out my friends. As I spent more time alone, free from the social entanglements supposedly responsible for my flamboyance, I realized I wasn’t all that different from before. In the vacuum of isolation, I was still a dramatic finger-snapping flamer with limp wrists, a slight lisp and tight jeans. Werden was du bist, suggested Goethe—Become what you are. While my harassment in high school may have exaggerated my latent traits, it certainly didn’t create me. Instead, it showed me who I really was.

By alienating myself from my friends, I’ve learned that being alone isn’t so bad. I’ve had time to think—about what’s important to me, what I want to study and what I want to do. I’ve also learned that I’m self-sufficient. Even if I spend Valentine’s Day with a box of overpriced candy and a valentine from myself, I’m happy. I’ve been alone before and I’ll be alone again, but at least I know that my friend was wrong. Yes, I’m effeminate, often loud and sometimes a tad raunchy, but I’m myself—and it’s finally enough.

William Lee Adams ’04 is a history concentrator in Winthrop House. He is currently screening applications from potential spring semester boyfriends.