In a colourful and rather detailed repartee to the never ending question of what’s more important, the person or one’s sexuality, Joe debates pre-conceived notions of the community in this brilliant narrative of coming out and accepting one’s self.
Joe Benjamin
After several asphyxiating years in the closet, last year I mustered the courage to come out to the walled, secure universe that is my college. It helped that it’s passé to be right-wing and intolerant in it’s hallowed portals. It was comforting to have feminist Marxists on the faculty. That it is a speck in the hinterland with immunity from separatist demonstrations, swine flu and other forces that conspire towards academic disruption was an encouragement too! There wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that folks back home would catch a whiff of what was going on.
My spectacular visions of a dramatic coming out were unkindly reduced to a disappointment by all who mattered. The roommate to whom I first made the startling confession did not wear the expression of one struck by an epiphany. After momentarily looking up from his laptop to offer a blink, he went back to type out his passionately held views on property rights for the Hindu widow in 1937. My ‘girl’ friends were far better sports. There were appropriate declarations of support, squeezing of hands, group hugs and the constant refrain of “a gay man is a girl’s best friend!” Maybe my high expectations are to blame, but the phenomenon still fell short of the feminine hysteria that would’ve topped off the situation deliciously, which makes everyday so much more colourful.So it was out. It trickled and crawled like honey, and within a few weeks, most people knew. In customary social intercourse with that blurry group of people we call ‘acquaintances’, every nod contained an understanding, every smile masked awareness, and there were insidious references to my sexual orientation with an ordinariness that gave it the air of historical fact. I played along. I laughed about it, said that act X was a gay thing, that where I came from, behaviour Y was routine. And that was just the beginning.
My coming out couldn’t have been at a more appropriate time. The college was witnessing a gay boom, and there were people from various batches proclaiming their sexual orientation to the world, like closely spaced out little pops. By some great fortuity, the Bangalore Queer Pride (the closest one to my hometown, excluding Bhubaneshwar of course, where sadly, most of us got to know of the parade only after it was long done and buried in the pages of queer history), coincided with this new rumble, and it was decided that we’d show up with an impressive contingent of the queer brigade, with an equally sizeable number of straight allies. The event was momentous; the march itself was high on chutzpah, and the celebration of togetherness was a visual demonstration of the colours of the rainbow itself. I welled with pride, and the after party was sexy enough for me to embrace my membership in the fraternity with a wholeheartedness I didn’t consider possible.
But when I returned, I was a different man. While the coming out of the pre-Queer Pride times involved private whisperings and smiling acknowledgements, I now took upon myself the mission of barking the fact in high decibels to oblivious souls still in the dark about my homosexuality. I took special care in wearing a smug audacity before the peripheral group of people who liked to publicise their intolerance. You know the sort. They’re typically built like a behemoth, unabashed about their inferior intelligence, and believe that they enjoy impunity by virtue of muscle power. In my mind, of course, I was doing much more — hissing at them and sliming them with sarcasm — but in the interest of self-preservation, I stuck to the wisdom of our forefathers and practised passive resistance. But, not even they could restrain me from being actively political about my sexual orientation. Never the quiet sort, and always a stickler for raucous laughter, loudly expressed irreverent observations et al., I was in my element! Meanwhile, the Sociology-I course taught by our beloved Kalpana Kannabiran was going full throttle, holding all of us enraptured and opening new windows of perspectives on every single realm of life. But my favourite theme, and one on which I can give entire discourses with practised elegance, related to the oppressiveness and hypocrisy of patriarchy and the hollowness of the argument that monogamy is the natural state of being. I drew on this extensively, and in my best pseudo-intellectual garb, gave aloof speeches that not only legitimised, but sexed up my promiscuity to myriad gatherings of all who were willing to listen. I fed my vanity well by rubbing it into all the few girls who thought me a prize catch that I was gay. I may have even added a dash of extra gait and let my hands fly in the air wispily while talking, all with full intention. I was militantly gay.
Months went by. Several men with forgettable names and a couple of months of unspeakable depravity in Delhi later, I was back in college. I was merrily prancing about class and making polite enquiries regarding health and new wardrobe acquisitions when a girl interjected, “Joe is obsessed with being gay!” For a moment I was taken aback, though I’m sure I rebounded with a retort just appropriately uncharitable, without indulging my acerbity.
It set me thinking. Come to think of it. In my staple after-dinner walks on ‘the lane’, the words ‘queer’, ‘gay’, ‘homosexual’ and “he’s so cute!” were heard with far greater frequency than any other words. To the casual observer, I may have appeared to be brandishing a banner with the word ‘gay’ in bold, throw in a tattoo of an underwear model on the forehead. Concerned, I asked my harem of friends. They confirmed the diagnosis. Was my sexual orientation taking over my life?
I can’t describe how deeply this realization disturbed me. I was cheering from the stands when Amartya Sen wrote about the incomprehensiveness and diversity of individual identity. And here I was fomenting a singular homosexual shade to paint myself with. Worse, among my biggest worries when I came out was that people may perceive me in terms of my homosexuality alone, ignoring the great many idiosyncrasies that I possess. And here I was tumbling down the very pitfall I sought to avoid! I was Joe the avid debater, believer in ghosts, the guy who wants Kiera Knightley in his showcase, who likes to read Neruda aloud to himself on rainy days, who hates washing, and is constantly whining about his poverty, and a lot more, who also happens to be gay. Not “Joe the homosexual”. I imagined some elderly relative shedding a tear on my epitaph bearing precisely those words. I shuddered.
The answer was ‘Project Parsimony with Homosexuality’. I would go on a fast for an entire day, without using the words ‘gay’, ‘queer’ or ‘homosexual’. Yes, I could totally do moderation and restraint. I would consciously avoid making references to my sexual orientation. I would concern myself with subjects of infinitely graver consequence. “Who wants to talk about health-care reforms in the USA?” “I certainly think China should head the negotiations for the de-nuclearisation of the Korean peninsula.” “[whisper] Somebody’s been eating a lot this holiday season!”
I tried, I honestly did. And although I managed some modicum of literal success by not using the forbidden words, I couldn’t resist broaching the subject through some verbal manoeuvre. Intriguingly, even when I stayed off everything remotely queer, I was inevitably dragged into talking about it by others. So it wasn’t entirely me, after all!
I wish I had some illuminating philosophy to expound on as the conclusion of my little experiment. But after much reflection and scratching of head, all I could figure was that I haven’t yet ceased to wonder at my new-found power! Every single day comes with an affirmation of how I am different, and on every such moment I am enchanted by how it is possible to be different without being shunned. I am still finding my way through the radically different, unwritten code of the gay world, where much more is permissive, and much more is an adventure! I am tunnelling my life with the joy of an explorer. And it isn’t that my complaining habits have abated by any measure; I still think Kiera Knightley would look ornamental with the rest of the furniture. But my coming out is still endowed with a mystical quality; whether it will dissipate or not is not something upon which I can comment. Perhaps one day it will all become part of the mundane, and my homosexuality may dissolve into the background. But for the moment, I am celebrating it. And others are celebrating it with me. And who can blame me, when for 19 years it’s been suppressed, unarticulated?
And then again, am I merely a part of a larger ferment, the awakened queerness of the post-Naaz Foundation era? Only time will tell. Till then, I am happy to be led by instinct.
Joe is a law student, professedly left-wing with a curious fixation for brands. He is irreverent and single.
My city, Hyderabad, has transformed from a sleepy town to a bustling metropolis in the last few years. Although colourful, this city’s identity with the people of the rainbow community seems to be a hidden secret. Yes, it does have people who are queer, like any other city. However, the city dwellers are ignorant and need to know that we are also part of the city and live among them.
