Stonewall Postcard

At a Pride party I attended last month, somebody I had just met asked me if I was gay.

“Can’t you tell?” I said.

“Sometimes with nerds it’s hard to tell,” he said.

I live for that kind of remark because I can’t wait to repeat it. My idea of the perfect material for a humorous anecdote is anything low-stakes hurtful with me as the target. Honestly, if I received more vague insults and backhanded compliments I’d never have to strain for blog content again.

I guess what my interlocutor meant was that neither nerds nor gay guys—the bespectacled and the bedazzled, respectively—are typically what you’d call macho, and on occasion it can get tricky deciding which kind of non-machoness you’ve encountered.

And as you’re talking to the potential nerd or homosexual, you think to yourself, I bet this person presented a doctor’s note to get out of gym class back in junior high—but was it because of a lack of coordination and physical prowess? Or because the class conflicted with Bye Bye Birdie rehearsals?

I’m here to tell you that the answer can be BOTH. There are plenty of gay nerds, after all. Pete Buttigieg, Prof. Dumbledore, and Bert from Sesame Street immediately spring to mind.

Course, you can be macho and gay, too. To me, in fact, hypermasculinity often seems gay as hell, as in the cases of Tom of Finland illustrations and the Brawny paper towels lumberjack in his previous Castro-clone iteration.

For the record, no one has ever mistaken me for that kind of gay. I’m reminded, for example, of the Halloween several years ago when I dressed up as a cowboy. Not a soul suggested I resembled the sexily butch Marlboro Man. Instead, everybody was like, Hey look, it’s Woody from Toy Story!

That was back when I lived in New York City, where I returned for Pride this year and got called a nerd for my trouble. If we’re making snap judgments, I would describe the person who made that observation as a “party gay,” meaning his shorts were very short and his pupils very dilated.

Generally speaking, I am not a huge fan of the parties that party gays throw. The snack selection is usually abominable. I mean, would it kill you to put out some crudités next to that bowl of loose pills?

While I was in New York, I stopped by the new Stonewall National Monument Visitor Center located next to the historic gay bar (Stonewall used to take up both storefronts back in the day). A small exhibit comprising archival photos and wall text tells the story—and recounts some of the impact—of the 1969 Stonewall uprising that helped ignite the modern LGBTQ+ movement.

I found it slightly gross that the parts of the space dedicated to selling souvenir merch and displaying big golden shovels emblazoned with the names of wealthy donors take up about as much room as (or maybe more than?) the historical info. But at least the curators made an effort to highlight the contributions of trans and gender nonconforming activists of color, starting with Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, who played pivotal roles in the 1969 rebellion yet were subsequently consigned to the margins.

Efforts to redress bullshit such as that should always be supported by we cisgender white folks of all flavors—Castro clones, party gays, jocks, nelly nerds, what have you.