The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions

The strong women told the faggots that there are two important things to remember about the coming revolutions. The first is that we will get our asses kicked. The second is that we will win. The faggots knew the first. Faggot ass-kicking is a time-honored sport of the men. But the faggots did not know about the second. They had never thought about winning before. They did not even know what winning meant. So they asked the strong women and the strong women said winning was like surviving, only better. As the strong women explained winning, the faggots were surprised and then excited. The faggots knew about surviving for they always had and this was going to be just plain better. That made ass-kicking different. Getting your ass kicked and then winning elevated the entire enterprise of making revolution.

The women who love women wrote a song for the faggots. It was called, "Anything you do that the men don't like is o.k. by us.

The strong women told the faggots that the more you share, the less you need. At first the faggots thought the strong women were being either obtuse or utopian. But as they began to share their clothes and their secrets and their magic potions and their spaces and their incantations and their animals and their books and their visions and their food, they learned, slowly, that the more they shared with each other, the more there was that could be shared and the less any one faggot needed. The more that goes around, the more you get back.

The faggots remind us that to become undone is our greatest gift to ourselves. It is truly our greatest path to being response-able - to feel our feelings authentically makes us able to respond to the conditions around us with an open heart

The faggots have accepted all that they know and see as the way things are and so can no longer be shocked. The men live in the fantasy that everyone is like them and are so constantly shocked.

Nothing can defeat the spirit of the earth. The fairies know that the earth will not tolerate the men much longer. The earth, scarred and gouged and stripped and bombed, will deny life to the men in order to stop the men. The fairies have left the men's reality in order to destroy it by making a new one.

Let's drink to the old faggots who were there and helped make this happen just by being there.

Even weak links in the chain are links in the chain.

The men believe that activity results from frustration and frustration results from never being able to get what you want. The perpetual out-of-reach. The men frantically scurry about with great schemes and much noise to try and reach the out-of-reach. Each tries to be the first or richest or strongest or most potent. Each compares himself to the others and each is always inadequate; less than first, not yet rich enough, or strong enough, or potent enough. None of this leads to happiness, but then the men do not look approvingly at happiness. None of this leads to contentment but then the men care nothing for contentment. They fill their heads with inflated notions of total control and empire and strength and sexual conquest. They fill their bodies with meat and drugs and dirty air. And they rush about in a frenzy making messes and ugliness and fear everywhere. And when they tire they sit with each other and lament and blabber how little they are appreciated and how hard they try and how nothing ever works out quite as they plan.

Some of the faggots are trashy. In fact, with the inspiration of the outcast women, the faggots developed "trashy" into a high form of disruptive behavior. When the men talk about the freedom of work and dirtiness of sex, the trashiest faggots move fast to the nearest public place where danger from the men is always present and proceed to spend endless amounts of time having sexual glorious pleasure. The men will do anything as long as they don’t enjoy it or talk about it. The trashiest faggots love who they do and talk of it often.

Friendship was not an idea or a status you took for granted, but something you did, over and over:

NOTHING CAN DEFEAT THE SPIRIT OF THE EARTH. The fairies know that the earth will not tolerate the men much longer. The earth, scarred and gouged and stripped and bombed, will deny life to the men in order to stop the men. The fairies have left the men's reality in order to destroy it by making a new one.

It's been a long time since the last revolutions and the faggots and their friends are still not free.

There is more to be learned from wearing a dress for a day, than there is from wearing a suit for a lifetime.

In the shadow of structural abandonment, political alienation, family rejection, chronic illness, state violence, and medical neglect, queer friendship saves us. Queer friendship—that thing that is sometimes called mutual aid, solidarity, disability justice, care, organizing, abolition, or maybe just love—

There still exists a faint memory of the past when the faggots and their friends were free. The memory lives in the faggots' bones. The memory appears at night when the bones are quietest. In darkness the faggots remember that once they lived in harmony with each other and their world.

Warren wants to know who the leader of the faggots is so he can rationalize with him. But the faggots have no leader. They have only dead heroes.

The queens, named to commemorate the glorious past reign of the women, are also friends of the faggots. The men hate the queens and try in every way to exterminate them. The queens are not, however, afraid. They laugh at the men and taunt them for being so stupid and coarse. Sometimes the faggots join the queens to laugh at the men and tell them they are stupid and coarse. Usually the faggots sit and listen while the queens tell of their thrilling adventures and applaud while the queens, once more, escape from the clumsy clutches of the men.

The Queens are poor and raunchy. They live on what others no longer want. They have no power. They have no social place. They almost have no allies. All this makes them angry and amused. It makes then restless and out of place. It makes them high-spirited and disruptive. They know it takes all kinds to make the revolutions. Others do now know this yet. The Queens are out and are not coming back. They wait for the others to join them.

Ramrod has an empire. They have not had it very long yet already it is shabby and disreputable. Everyday the faggots and their friends can see, hear, and feel Ramrod's empire disintegrating as the men lose more and more things they never owned in the first place.

The faggots have no leader. They have only dead heroes.

In the winter the fairies live in long, log houses. They learned how to build the long, log houses from the gentle people who once lived on the land. The gentle people are now gone from the land. The men, believing that gentleness would disappear when the gentle people vanished, slaughtered them.

The queens luxuriate in variety. They often make fun of the faggots for their drab uniformity and their addiction to the men's fashions. The queens display infinite weirdnesses to the world. For them, style is the path into the unique self and so to transcendence. They long for everyone to reveal themselves wherever they are.

The faggots and their friends now live in Ramrod. The leader of Ramrod is Warren-And-His-Fuckpole. He is the leader of Ramrod because he is the most paranoid and therefore the most vicious man in the land. Warren wants to know who the leader of the faggots is so he can rationalize with him. But the faggots have no leader. They have only dead heroes. Ramrod is known to its neighbors for the fierceness of its weapons and the touchiness of its leaders. To support their violence, the rich men without color who own Ramrod send their tax collectors out to steal the people's work; they send their shifty-eyed ones out to sell the people machines which do not work and security which is not dependable; they send their thugs and goons out to take peacefulness away from the people. The more the rich men without color can steal from or take or sell to the people, the more violence they can buy. Ramrod is known to its neighbors for the elaborateness of its violence and its eagerness to use it.

The faggots have never been asked to join the vanguard. The faggots, it was noticed, do not know how to keep a straight face and the vanguard demands constantly straight faces. The faggots, it was noticed, want only to eat so they can play love play while the vanguard demands endless talk about the hunger of others and the seriousness of work. The faggots, it was noticed, are too quick to believe that the revolution had come and so too quick to celebrate. The vanguard demands that the revolution go on forever and so demands that the celebration only be planned, never enacted.

My political development, from militant anti-war activity to left-wing gay liberation had convinced me that we could not continue the endless, tedious struggle against the militarists or the patriarchy unless we had our own culture and community to nurture us, teach us and take care of us.

Our images are being extracted at a rate and on a scale that is unprecedented, while at the same time our self-expression is monitored, censored, and repressed. We are told that to make change we must take individual responsibility for systemic oppression, above all be respectable.

Each room in the house is devoted to a different living form. One is filled with velvets and feathers and make-up and sparkles and costumes and silks. It is where the faggots go when they want to transform themselves. Another room is for plants to live in; another is for quiet music; another is for silent eating; and another is for methodically drinking teas of healing herbs. All who live there move softly about the house, living all through it. At night they sleep all together in the central room of the house. The fire glows over the large pillows that cover the floor with the tribe covering the pillows.