What I Wish I’d Said

I have a lot of weird interactions when I’m out and about. I’m very well known among my friends for running into complete strangers who will give me advice, or confront me, or offer to sell me stuff or just generally tell me things. Once, I had a random stranger in a parking lot aggressively demand to know why I had a canoe lashed to the top of my car; he seemed quite put out when I told him that obviously, I was a bobsledder. I’ve had people complement me on my various pins, t-shirts, and jewellery, and then I turn around and had someone insult me for the very same thing. After the Pulse nightclub shooting I’d been making a point of wearing my Pride rings and an elderly lady in a grocery store asked me what they meant, then wept and called me a “brave boy” when I explained. I recently had an anti-masker charge at me screaming for wearing an N-95 in public.

And don’t get me started on all the weird shit that’s happened to me at various LCBOs across this province. The trick to dealing with the weirdness is to keep calm and, when necessary, deploy a caustic wit.

Stuff happens to me, is my point. So when, coming out of my dentist’s office the other day, someone called out to me asking if I’d been at the drag brunch I was ready for pretty much anything. Having been doxxed by far-right scumbags there has been a certain amount of harassment lately, so I was ready to get yelled at (again) or maybe even have someone take a swing at me (again)… but instead I recognized one of the teen-aged counter-protesters who defended the venue.

We exchanged names and ended up having a chat, talked about the teenage experience of being an LGBTQ+ youth and how different it was in my day, and how their friends and family are cool and supportive and they couldn’t imagine what it must be like not to be open about who they are and so forth.

During the conversation, though, they told me that “they’d never done anything like that before”, referring to the counter-demonstration, but they thought it was necessary to go out and defend the community. And I said yes, it is. And then someone called out to them (I think a parent) and they had to go, but it was great meeting me. And I said, thanks, you too, see you around and that was that.

That conversation was one of the nicer things that’s happened to me recently.

But I’ve been thinking of that talk for days, and I wish I’d said something more eloquent than “yes, it is” when they told me it was their first time going out to a counter-demo. I wish I’d said what I felt, which is this:

I should have said thank you.

I should have said thank you for showing up. Thank you for standing against hate. Thank you for defending our community. Thank you for being young and brave and unashamed. Thank you for shouldering the burden and the beauty of our queer history for the first time.

These kids, this coming generation of LGBTQ+ teenagers, they fill me with such pride and gratitude. I touched on this during my last post, but seeing young people who aren’t ashamed to be who they are is just… it’s very emotional for me. There’s a tangled combination of grief and joy. A couple of years ago a bunch of teenaged boys passed me on the street, a standard gaggle of noisy awkwardness locked into the higher-barbarian phase of adolescence, and I remember being stunned to a complete standstill when I realized that two of them were holding hands, casually, as a couple does. And it was a complete non-issue for their friends.

I don’t begrudge them that, they deserve that. They deserve to live in a world where “the closet” is a place where you hang clothes and not a metaphor for protecting yourself. They deserve to have their space, and their lives, and their love. That’s the joy.

The grief is for all of us who were denied it and for the ones who are still denied it. For all the vigils and the graves. For all the vicious dead-naming, the heartless families, the blind hatred. For the lonely deaths by disease or suicide or violence. I pray these kids never have to wake up, as I have had to wake up, to the phone call at four in the morning starting with the words “we found him in his room.” That’s the grief.

And for those who read what I just wrote with a malicious satisfaction, who stand against us on the street shouting slurs and homophobic abuse, and even for those who just smirk and film it? For them I feel nothing but contempt. They look at us, at our community, and especially at these young people and they don’t see the courage, the history, the joy. They can only hate. And I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t care why they hate; It’s enough to resist their monstrous cruelty without plumbing the depths of their ugliness. I don’t care enough about them to try and make a connection, to convince them to be better. They’re not going to stop their hatred because of any word from me; there are other methods to make them go away.

I wish I’d been able to say any of that outside the dentist’s. I wish I’d been able to tell that young queer person how important they are to me, stranger though they are. I wish that I’d told them the mere fact of their existence, the ease which they can occupy the world, and their courage at embracing the defense of our community makes me grateful that I have endured.

So I hope you read this. You know who you are. I mentioned the blog in our conversation, so with any luck you will.

Thank you.