A: About a year ago, I heard a cishet art curator say she didn’t include sculptures of queer people because you can’t see queerness. I shifted in my seat. My eyes bounced around the room. The museum room. So it doesn’t matter is the end of the sentence. Left unspoken. Inside the Bronx Museum where she curated a show of sculptures of individuals who once lived in this neighborhood. My neighborhood. She said this so openly. No one even asked about queerness. Though it seemed she’d been asked by someone. At some time. Just not today. In my presence. A queer she could see. Right across the room. The museum room. Shifting seat. Bouncing eyes. Not wanting to cause a stir. Not wanting to be the raging white queer. Not today. You can’t see queerness. Said as fact. An agreed upon assumption. An expectation of nodding heads. Knowing eyes. She said she asked her kids. Young people know these things. It was them that laughed and said mom, you can’t see queerness. She didn’t say if said young people were young queer people or just young people who know about pronouns and Drag Race. Slay girl, Slay. Words I do not use. She admitted without prompting maybe she made the wrong choice. But her tone suggested she didn’t believe so. More of a laugh it off moment. A nobody is perfect moment.A nobody can include everybody these days moment. So many bodies. So many identities. She said she wanted diversity. Diversity is important. There were sculptures of known queer people by the artists. Queers who lived in this neighborhood. Queers who could have been included. I wanted to know more about her inability to see queerness with her art curator eyes. With her straight cis eyes. With her eyes that raised children who told her what she wanted to hear. They do that until a certain age. I wanted to tell her so many things. To tell the room so many things. I wanted to tell her all the ways I saw queerness before I even had the word for it. Before I ever called myself queer. I wanted to tell her how many men in cars have seen my queerness. Shouted faggot out of windows. Driving at high speeds. I wanted to tell her about the teenage boy who followed me the other day through the park in this neighborhood. My neighborhood. Probably his neighborhood too. Who kept in exact step with me. Mimicking my movements. Until I finally turned and said, Is there a problem? He wasn’t expecting my confrontation. But I am in my forties. This is not the first straight male who has tried to intimidate me. He stepped off my step. Held back. Then from a safe distance called me queer. Yes, even without years of education and experience in the art world, he saw queerness. My queerness. Clear and vivid. In his neighborhood. My neighborhood. And I wanted to tell her about standing in a museum just the other day. A different museum. The Whitney. Downtown. I stood staring at a wall of paintings by different artists. Long dead now. But I immediately saw queerness in the brushstrokes. The choices. The colors. The way bodies moved on canvas. A quick Google search confirmed all the painters were queer. On the wall. The museum wall. Some even fucking each other. As queers are known to do. And I wanted to tell her about all the strangers I’ve locked eyes with for that split second. That knowing second. That queer second. A quick passing by. A sidewalk. A subway car. A café. A classroom. A park. A museum. I wanted to tell her how I scan every room I walk into searching for my people. For our story. For a way to be seen. All without words.
Stephen S. Mills (he/they) is the author of the Lambda Award-winning book He Do the Gay Man in Different Voices (2012) as well as A History of the Unmarried (2014) and Not Everything Thrown Starts a Revolution (2018), all from Sibling Rivalry Press. His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Fourteen Poems, The New York Quarterly, The Los Angeles Review, The Rumpus, and others. Two of his books were placed on the Over the Rainbow List compiled yearly by the American Library Association. He is also the author of the plays Waiting for Manilow and Is That All There Is? His fourth book Final Slash Boy is forthcoming from Broken Sleep Books. He lives in New York City. His favorite revenge story would be Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. It’s one of his favorite musicals (he loves Sondheim). Plus a story about the working class rising up and taking revenge on the wealthy and powerful never goes out of style. Website: http://www.stephensmills.com/
