Now We Are Become the Suits

I just finished, for about the third time, The Future of Queer: A Manifesto by Fenton Johnson in the January 2018 edition of Harper's Magazine.

It implicates me, as a queer white woman aspiring to relative comfort. A selfish part of me bubbled up, indignant as I read the manifesto: "It took me long enough to find my love, don't I deserve to enjoy it?"

To hear Johnson tell it, I don't.

On the one hand are the far left queers, including all out trans people, who are activists and teachers who fight daily, not for the right to marry or anything so conventional, but for the right to completely deconstruct the way society thinks about family and community. And build something more beautiful in its place.

It was the kind of fantasy I certainly had as a bisexual in my twenties -- a commune-style space where relationships are communal rather than transactional and there are plenty of old folks around to care for the children that come up.

On the other hand we have, though a I am loathe to admit it, me and most of my friends. Increasingly, I know almost no single people. The lesbians and queers among us are building our comfortable lives in the image of our straight-couple friends, buying houses and marrying and having babies.

"Now to be LGB (T remains beyond the pale)," Johnson writes, "is no longer to be forced to look outside the norms, since our largely white, entirely prosperous leadership has so enthusiastically embraced the norms. Now we can forget AIDS. Now we can get married. Now we are become the suits."

It stings, but he's right. There are no lesbian or queer couples I know of who will decline the right to marry. In most cases, we point to children as the reason. If Sonia is the birth mother, I have more rights if we are married before she gets pregnant. The reason that most of us marry is to keep our children inside our chosen clan -- so they don't end up with their evangelical grandparents or a cousin in a distant city, far from the community that raised them.

For Johnson, the idea that we marry to manage these kinds of relationships under the keen eye of the state is part of the problem. It's a cop-out, and it's opposed to the early queer communities that may very well have been stronger because they had to navigate the messiness of these relationships on their own. Or maybe they just grew closer together because their children were more often taken away.

Johnson, a professor, activist and survivor of the AIDS era now teaching somewhat reluctantly at the Koch-funded University of Arizona, tells the story like this. "The assimilationists have won, with state-sanctioned marriage as the very mortar cementing the bricks of the wall of convention that separates us from ourselves, from one another, from all that is unfamiliar, strange, challenging and thus from learning and growth."

He goes on, "state-sanctioned marriage is precisely analogous to gentrification -- the creative outliers do the heavy lifting, and when a certain level of safety has been achieved, the assimilationists move in, raise prices, and force out the agents of change."

And on (he's a beautiful writer), "Because our salvation, our literal salvation in the here and now, in this nation, on this planet requires our abandoning those ancient clan divisions in favor of the understanding that we are all one. As the Buddha abandoned his family to undertake the search that led to enlightenment, so Jesus, that communitarian photo-feminist celibate bachelor Jew, rejected the ancient clan divisions in favor of a new order."

Johnson might be a gay man, but he knew how to strike an arrow right to my heart with a sexy and original description of Jesus.

I want a new order, too! I want to wander the countryside in sandals with twelve women! I want to occasionally settle, all together in a house, and plant a garden! I'm grateful to be reminded of all this, but of all of the battles that I choose in this life, I'm not sure this societal restructure will be one of them. I'm 36, I've found someone to love and I'd like to have a baby soon.

"And so what defines queer, finally," Johnson writes, "is not what one does in bed but one's stance toward the ancient régime, the status quo, the way things have always been done, the dominant mode, capitalism."

While I'm sure I'd disappoint Johnson with my comparative lack of revolutionary spirit, I will continue to define my life in small ways against capitalism: taking care of my mind and body, shopping at the co-op and abstaining from the pervasive impulse to buy and consume. Such simple steps can be incredibly difficult for those of us who were raised in a strongly mainstream and consumer culture.

Difficult on any given day, and still not enough. But I am grateful for the worthy struggle, and for Johnson's resounding wakeup call.

How Much Family Is Too Much Family?

To talk to most mothers, mine and Sonia's included, there is no such thing as too much family. In my parents' rural American culture, they look forward to every four-hour meal, every one-year-old birthday party and every high school play.

It's easy to forget from the vantage point of my coastal elitism: most of America is built this way. Or at least, the rural and suburban part of America that is lucky enough to be moderately comfortable and middle class.

This weekend, I skipped out on some family events in favor of getting my head on straight for springtime, exercising and creating some new health and writing goals. I felt more relief than guilt, a true accomplishment for a veteran of 13 years of Catholic school.

My favorite cousin, a sweet 41-year-old man with two kids, was in town from Washington state. His little brother, a self-righteous Christian who is difficult to be around, came along too. Families and girlfriends stayed at home so Thursday night, Sonia and I had dinner with the two cousins on their way to my aunt's house.

They drove their rental car our house and we walked to a nearby gastropub. I apologized for and tried to explain city life. My favorite cousin recounted a story from when we were little.

"You had this little pink mirror with a handle," he said. "I looked into it and said, 'I'm in the mirror!' and handed it to you to prove it. 'No, I'm in the mirror!' you said. You were so confused. We went on that way for a long time."

"Did you try that with your daughter when she was that age?" I asked.

"Absolutely," he said. "It's a classic. You find a classic, you stick with it."

I can't explain my love for this cousin except that we were the two oldest, so right around the time I was starting to be aware of the world, he was there, five years older than me and awesome. He's also got a way of breaking the ice.

In another moment, we were explaining the structure of high schools in Philadelphia and Sonia's school pride came out, a little more aggressively than usual. I was worried that she sounded a little racist, which she is not.

"Honey," I said. "Watch it. You're sounding a little elitist."

The favorite cousin was quick on the draw. "You would be too," he said, "If you went to Central!"

It was great to see him. Even the Christian cousin and I tolerated each other, as he engaged us in stories about his new hobby: deep-water diving.

That was Thursday night. Saturday, we were invited to may aunt's for all-day conversations and meals. Tonight, about a dozen family members are doing the same thing at my parents' house. We declined both invitations.

It's true that Sonia and I are trying to say "yes" more often than we say "no" to family, but I live in the city for a more engaging job (which I love), for a chosen family (which we are building) and for the opportunity to write about where I come from (which requires distance).

Looking back on my past few blog posts, I feel like a pendulum. My boss and Sonia have a related observation about me that drives me nuts. They both claim that I can have very passionate, completely opposing views on a topic two days in a row. They're not wrong.

At work it looks like this:

• Monday: So-and-so isn't working hard at all. We should give them a warning because they're not meeting expectations. 
• Tuesday: The same person is amazing! They really stepped up today and it's so clear that they're putting in more of an effort. 

Both of these things can be true, but few people would make such a quick shift. I think it means I'm always open to being proven wrong. I want to believe in people. 

At home it looks like this: 

• Monday: I haven't heard from the cousins who are coming to visit, so we can skip seeing them this time. 
• Tuesday: I heard from them! We have to change all of our plans so we can see them in the three-hour window they gave me for a dinner together. 

When it comes to writing, this tendency leaves me a little schizophrenic-feeling. I want to write about family and belief and happiness, but my ideas about these topics are constantly shifting and internally contradictory. 

This blog is an opportunity to build a body of memior-style vignettes, to note themes as they evolve over time and to nail down a story about family that feels fresh enough to turn into a book. To do all that, sometimes requires a break from said family.