FROM THE THUNDERING UNDERGROUND--THE MAZE of the New York subways--the world pours into Times Square. Like lost souls emerging from the purgatory of the trains (dark rattling tunnels, smelly pornographic toilets, newsstands futilely splashing the subterranean graydepths with unreal magazine colors), the newyork faces push into the air: spilling into 42nd Street and Broadway--a scattered defeated army. And the world of that street bursts like a rocket into a shattered phosphorescent world. Giant signs--Bigger! Than! Life!--blink off and on. And a great hungry sign groping luridly at the darkness screams:

F * A * S * C * I * N * A * T * I * O * N

I had been in the islandcity several weeks now, and already I had had two jobs, briefly: each time thinking now I would put down Times Square. But like a possessive lover--or like a powerful drug--it lured me. FASCINATION! I stopped working. . . . And I returned, dazzled, to this street. The giant sign winked its welcome: FASCINATION!

---John Rechy, City of Night

The Answer

Baseness is the secret knock of the base
Integrity the epitaph of the noble
Look how the gilded sky drifts full of
The inverted crooked reflections of the dead

The ice age has past,
So why are there icicles everywhere?
The Cape of Good Hope has been discovered
Why do a thousand sails contend for the Dead Sea?

I came into this world
Carrying only paper, rope, a silhouette
To speak aloud before the trial
A voice that has already been judged

I tell you, world
I—do—not—believe!
If a thousand challengers lie trampled beneath your feet
Count me as number one thousand and one.

I don't believe the sky is blue
I don't believe in thunder's echoes
I don't believe that dreams are false
I don't believe in death without retribution

If the sea is destined to breach the dykes
Let all the water of bitterness flow into my heart
If the land is destined to rise up
Let humanity choose a new summit for existence again.

A new turning point and flickering stars
Embroidered now across the unobstructed heavens
These are the pictographs of five thousand years
These are the staring eyes of future generations.

--Bei Dao

_____________________________________________


A bouquet

Between me and the world
You are a bay, a sail
The faithful ends of a rope
You are a fountain, a wind
A shrill childhood cry

Between me and the world
You are a picture frame, a window
A field covered with wild flowers
You are a breath, a bed
A night that keeps the stars company

Between me and the world
You are a calendar, a compass
A ray of light that slips through the gloom
You are a biographical sketch, a bookmark
A preface that comes at the end

Between me and the world
You are a gauze curtain, a mist
A lamp shining into my dreams
You are a bamboo flute, a song without words
A closed eyelid carved in stone

Between me and the world
You are a chasm, a pool
An abyss plunging down
You are a balustrade, a wall
A shield’s eternal pattern.

Bei Dao

‘To Patrick Swayze, Thanks for Everything’

From the Gatsby-esque snobbery of Gossip Girl to the  glittery cast of Glee, it seems  the gays of the public imagination are finally exiting their pink closets. And they’re more fabulous than you would have thought—except when they’re demanding equal rights. As the National March for Equality, draws neigh, it is curious to reflect on our nation’s pubescent relationship with gay sexuality.  From the underground shadows of America’s political theater, the 2009 march emerges as a national rallying cry at a time when our public is finally bracing itself to talk.

                To follow LGBT footsteps in the White House backyard is to encounter a national coming-of-age story. The first March on Washington for LGBT rights stormed the district in October, 1979—a decade after stonewall and 75,000 LGBT folk and allies made their first big steps on Washington soil. The White House remained silent. By the mid-80s, this silence had given way to one of the most frightening denials of modern politics. As AIDS ravaged homosexual communities across America, corporate and civic leaders remained tight-lipped. Epidemics were suddenly a private matter, and the question of gay integration assumed a socially repulsive face. As we buried our lovers and died in droves, we were the lone pariahs of a zealous Christian nation. But from tragedy came mobilization, and in October 1987, 500,000 people had had enough. The cry to shake Washington made unlikely soldiers and a memorable encounter with a community whose awareness of itself was more robust than ever before. Legislation came, AZT drugs rolled in, and as the plague years crept beyond shuddering thoughts of anal sex to claim third world citizens, drug users and, gasp, even straight people, the socio-political problem of gay equality diffused into a thing of the past. Silence played again.

                But the arrival of the 90s brought the dawn of a notorious political meme: “I’ve got nothings against homosexuals, per se, I just don’t want them near my kids.” Missed the social evolution there? As the lingo of counseling goes, the first step is admitting it. Will and Grace, Wong Foo and fabulous Cher idolatry made marks in the public conscience that were impossible to ignore. Like watching your kids ride their car for a first time, a reticent attitude of acknowledgment crept in around the millenium. Today, the pathology of fear and freakishness that have long surrounded gay sex, a man in pink or Katy Perry’s girls kissing other girls, are beginning to rapidly dissolve.  Still some ask, is it time enough yet? When America’s runner-up Idol is gay and Iowa proudly shouts, “Corn-fed and Ready to Wed!”, is the nation there yet? When the world’s most powerful corporations sponsor LGBT recruiting and the year’s runaway blockbuster is a drag-queen reality tv show, are we really ready yet? To confront our deepest stigmas about identity and morality? To form a social contract of equality between straight and gay alike?

                I’ll tell you one thing: this has to be our now.  We see the scales shedding from the public’s eyes. As we pile into Washington this weekend—freaks, pariahs, outcasts of history—we come just as we are, knowing that it’s no more use to hide. No more putting up with false compromise, no more selling out. This Sunday the movement grinds forward. “Not a movement for battle or boundaries,” Kathy Najimy says, “nor a movement for religion or arms. [But one] that simply says I would like the right to love and kiss who I choose.” As we watch ourselves grow and our America change, it is our business to rise up and make sure we are counted. I’ll be there. Will you?