Gaypril

I want to prove to myself I am capable of writing a short blog. It’s a form, a simple one so it should be easily standardized. I just got off a train from Baltimore today. I read at Goucher College where I met with the gay students in the afternoon. They told me about the Gaypril problem. Gaypril is the gay pride festival they have at this former women’s college that is now co-ed and where there are plenty of gay students. And so they gay students put up 75 posters around the campus for Gaypril and all of them were subsequently torn down. And also at a gay event there was organized booing. No one knows who the boo-ers were since Goucher doesn’t have cameras on its campus which is nice to not be surveilled but this is one of those moments when you’d want a video of the homophobe cheerleaders. So there’s a creepy feeling afoot here and there were about four or five students at the event in the afternoon where I read and spoke who told me all of the above. I offered the theory that’s been floating around lately that homophobes tend to be just as aroused by gay things, pictures, poems probably etc. as gay people are which suggests a link between homophobia and well gayness, the conclusion being that homophobes are indeed gay. They’ve even done tests so it seems pretty true. At night I read to a master class which was huge. There were outside attendees as well. But many people had to be there because they were in the class. Anyway I read some poems and from my novel and I couldn’t stop talking about being gay. People were theorizing earlier in the day that practitioners of a certain sport, not equestrians nor field hockey players, but players of a certifiably male sport were the most likely perpretrators of the pulling down of the 75 Gaypril posters. I remembered while I was reading that they also tore down posters publicizing this event. My meeting with the master class. Why because I look like a lesbian. I thought about the jocks who probably did this and I looked around. This could be them. And I kept reading them my work. Explaining my world and how it works. It felt good. That’s all I can report.