There is a fine line between being a harmless eccentric and being sufficiently different or queer as to present a threat to the status quo.
I normally use the word queer to describe anyone who does not fall easily and neatly into the heterosexual category. I'm too lazy to remember all the letters or repeatedly explain to people that yes, I am bisexual/asexual and it's entirely possible to be both.
In this diary, I am using queer to mean a threat to the status quo sufficient enough to foster anger and violence. This can come about because of one's orientation, religion (or lack thereof), family background or personal behavior.
The South has a great fondness for Eccentrics. I daresay we love them, in a peculiar way, bless their hearts. It is almost a cultural stereotype. The North burns them as witches, the South turns them into local legends.
We love the men who dress in costumes and re-enact battles from a long lost war. We love old women who wear long black veils, walk with silver-headed canes and smoke cheroots. (Let me tell you about Mad Tillie.) Here in Texas, we especially dote on people who tattoo or emblazon or embed the Lone Star somewhere on their flesh.
We love them as long as they remain eccentric and pose no threat to the statues quo. I find it fascinating, as one of the Eccentrics myself, how people face a world that despises them and how they cope with it.
There is a woman in my hometown who performs psychic readings, tarot cards and the odd spot of crystal ball gazing. She openly advertises as a curandera, a folk healer and shaman.
The first time I saw her sign, I pulled a muscle whipping my head around to see if I had read the sign correctly. A curandera? Someone was actually calling themselves a witch in my small, extremely Baptist town? Was it actually happening? Was my town finally stepping into the 21st century and away from their crippling, narrow-minded beliefs?
No, that was just a moment of optimism. My town is just as hateful as ever, but she has found a way around it. To most of her clients, she is exactly what they are looking for. A warm hand, a gentle smile, a reassuring voice. Herbs that make the air smell clean and help clear the mind. An outside perspective that gives counsel and reassurance that there is something larger than ourselves and life does not end when we close our eyes the last time. She is skilled at reading people and offering alternative choices, one that tends to rely more on hope and inspiration than reality. Don't misunderstand me, I am not calling her a fake. She has a talent that is just as real as any psychiatrist or counselor. That's her job, after all.
To outsiders, to the ones who look at her sideways and wonder uneasily what exactly she is burning over the candle, she presents a show. She is almost a carnival act, with the scarves and the weird noises and the odd voices that come from uninhabited corners of the room. She gives them exactly what they expect and they go away feeling superior and reassured that their small interpretation of the world is still the valid one. How her act is any different from some of the religious ceremonies I have seen over the years, I do not know. They seem to have a lot of things in common.
The curandera is part of the fabric of the town. In October, she extends business hours and lets herself be 'hired' out to parties. She refuses to go to the local graveyards, though. They give her the creeps.
When I was in high school, the chemistry teacher, S, was not so successful or so willing to blend in. He was fired because he was an atheist. S was a great teacher, I enjoyed his classes a great deal. I wish I could say the same about the other science teachers, one of whom was the basketball coach and the other a Baptist preacher. (I'm not making that up. Biology was taught by a Baptist preacher, a believer in Intelligent Design a decade before it was a watchword on the evening news.)
S had a great sense of humor and an outstanding rapport with the students. When Homecoming Week rolled around with it's daily 'theme' like hat day or twin day, he always participated, usually in unexpected ways. My favorite memory of S involves a lime green poodle skirt. He was intelligent, glib, funny and always willing to do whatever it took to get the point across, no matter who it pissed off.
Unfortunately for him, it pissed off the Baptists on the school board. He was unwilling to back down or refrain from speaking and at the end of the year, they did not renew his contract. In the long run, it was probably for the best. Last I heard, S was teaching in Berlin and eagerly awaiting the birth of twins. Every time I see a poodle skirt or understand a chemistry equation, I think of him. The biology professor, on the other hand, the 'normal' one, I think of only with contempt.
Being gay in a small town is a tightrope like none other. Hell, being a bit different as a teenager, no matter the size of the town, is a tightrope with hungry lions slavering beneath your shaking feet.
Within minutes of meeting J, a high school senior in a town of only a couple thousand, I was laughing and telling him if he flamed any harder, he would burn down the school. J is gay as a duck, as he likes to say, and he says it often and to great effect. His protection, his shield, his identity is the stereotype he embodies with such ease. As long as people are laughing, they are not beating him up.
I asked him, shortly after meeting him, what his plans were for after graduation. He said to get as far from 'here' as possible, somewhere he could flame quietly and no one would care.
M is a sophomore in another small town. M is a lesbian caught between her identity and the desperate desire to be normal. She has carved a place for herself halfway between the popular kids, who think she is an amusing diversion and the outcasts, who recognize her as one of their own. I worry about her. Like the chemistry teacher, M is unwilling to compromise her identity, but like most teenagers, she also wants to be part of the popular crowd. One day, they will turn on her for being queer and no longer amusingly eccentric.
As for me, it's okay that I am vocal supporter of gay rights, among other nasty liberal things, as long as I am not gay myself. If someone asks, I tell them it's none of their business. The kids suspect the truth and the adults turn a blind eye. My protection lies in my Eccentricity. The clothes I wear, the books I read, the outrageous things I am willing to say and do. I'm an Eccentric in the truest sense of the word. One day, I will be Mad Tillie, sans the cheroot.
How much of it is a show and how much of it is real? I don't know. J is a flamer and the curandera is a witch, but how much is an 'act' and how much is actually their personality?
And the rest of the Eccentrics, how much pretense is hidden within our reality? Do we even know any longer? What happens when that pretense fails? What happens when we become a threat?
What happens when we cross that thin line between eccentric and queer?
More important, what happens when we get tired of walking that line and dance across it gleefully to wallow our in differences?
The world is not perfect. There will always be some group that is shunted to the side, whose members have to pretend to be something they are not, or pretend to be more than they really are. I suppose if I were a good person, I would worry about that. I don't, however. I worry about the kids like J and M, the teachers like S and yes, people like me. The Eccentrics in a straight world.