Queer Spirits: A Gay Men’s Myth Book

“This vibrant collection, woven into a seamless fabric by Roscoe’s thoughtful commentary and insight, lights our way on the healing path toward wholeness.”

—Mark Thompson

FROM THE PREFACE . . .

This collection was compiled to inspire, guide, and challenge gay men who are seeking a deeper understanding of their sexuality and identity, of the community they live in, of their history and place in society and culture. For many gay men today, the questions posed in 1950 by the Mattachine Foundation, the first grassroots gay organization in the United States, are just as urgent now as they were then: “Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we for?” The harsh realities of HIV and rampant homophobia have awakened us to the fact that being gay is a serious matter. It’s time to ask ourselves, what does it all mean? This intense eroticism that pervades our lives and pulses through all our gatherings—this instinct for reversal, for improvising roles and identities—this sense of flair that shows up in the leatherman no less than the queen? Instinctively seeking to become, in the words of American Indian writer Clyde Hall, “persons of substance,” we hunger for clues to the meaning of our lives.

Don’t we lead mythical lives? Even the most unassuming of us can tell amazing stories of victory against overwhelming odds, self-respect forged out of mind-boggling hate, invention and wit mothered by inescapable necessity. When Joseph Campbell spoke of the hero’s journey he should have used us as his example—although he never did. We’re the ones who arrive at wholeness after an oblique journey to the margins of the social order and back again, who suffer inordinate wounds and are healed, who win the gift of “insider-outsider” vision and can therefore speak with authority to men and women alike. But you would never know this from a reading of contemporary Western culture. Where are the myths, the adventures, the legendary and semi-legendary heroes, the symbols and images that portray the real drama of gay men’s lives? . . .

FROM THE INTRODUCTION . . .

What makes a myth gay? Is it just a story with gay sex in it? Or are there other themes and elements that might make a myth relevant to gay men today? In other words, is “gay” just a synonym for “homosexual”? Or do we share traits besides sexuality? What about gender? So many of us don’t identify with the dominant definitions of masculinity and femininity. Then again, some of us do. One gay man’s myth might be another’s stereotype.

Over twenty-five years after stonewall we still have little consensus about the meaning of the terms we use to define ourselves and our community. We can agree on negative images of gayness—the closeted McCarthyite lawyer, Roy Cohn, for example, has become a kind of gay anti-hero—but we rarely agree on which images portray us as we wish to be seen. While feminists have produced a small library of books on the subject of women and mythology, the shelves in the gay men’s section are nearly empty. Many gay writers are beginning to cite mythology, including Harry Hay, Judy Grahn, Mitch Walker, Mark Thompson, Robert Hopcke, Arthur Evans, Randy Connor, and others but Queer Spirits is the first readily available collection of myths and tales for gay men. Why is this?

Of course, no single myth or image can speak equally to gay African-Americans, Chicanos and Hispanics, Asians, Native Americans, Anglo-Americans and all the other people that get lumped together with that deceptively simple term “gay community.” But this should be no excuse for failing to explore ourselves, whatever our starting point. Instead, I find that merely bringing up the subject of gay patterns triggers heated objections. Many refuse to even discuss the subject. If a generalization about gay men is offered, it is quickly countered with an exception. The whole conversation grinds to a halt.

Why? Perhaps because the process involves the telling of almost forgotten episodes of humiliation and loneliness that are just too painful to recall. Perhaps, too, we are afraid of what we might find, afraid that the whole picture of ourselves might yet reveal something we hate.

Yet, how can we say our self-image is “positive” if we’re unable to actually describe what that image includes?

I know many people dislike the idea of defining themselves. They find labels and categories limiting and even dehumanizing, and they complain about being “ghetto-ized.” There’s a tendency now to dismiss the whole question of gay consciousness by labeling it an example of “identity politics.” But this is only a higher form of closetry. It is society’s homophobic reaction to our identities that is limiting, not the labels we freely assume. As much as we might like to, we can’t do an end-run around oppression. Given the death-dealing consequences of homophobia, I believe we have no choice but to define our difference from our oppressors. If we do not, we will be defined by them—right-wing Christians, psychiatrists, academics and so forth. Finding the myths and archetypes we identify with and then asking, “Why?” is one of the most effective ways of discovering who we are that I know of.

As I worked on this collection, however, I began to understand why our attempts to explore and define our gayness so often get stuck. Many of us in gay politics and spirituality have been trying to understand gayness as if it were a single, unified thing. Understandably, we felt that a shared sense of identity would provide a source of political unity and shine light on our presence in the past. I tried, for example, to find ways of understanding contemporary gay s/m experience and drag balls as aspects of some common underlying gay trait. After all, both involve images of gender carried to an extreme that reveals the artificiality of gender altogether, and many gay men I know are adept at both. But this was really forcing the issue. As the myths and stories included here indicate, gay men follow not one, but many different paths—just as the actual practices of same-sex love and identity found throughout the world take many forms. The fact is, our present way of labeling people on the basis of sexual preference lumps together men and women with very different emotional and psychological orientations, gender identities, and sexual role preferences.

The work of anthropologists and the emerging voices of lesbians and gay men from non-Western cultures has contributed immensely in recent years to our understanding of the various forms that homosexuality and gender difference can take. We are beginning to realize that while the patterns are diverse, they are not infinite. Three of the most common are:

A gender-based pattern, of which the North American third gender or two-spirit role is the most well known;

An age-based pattern, in which sexual relations between males of different age groups and at specific times of their lives are approved, of which Classical Greek homosexuality is an example;

An egalitarian pattern, characteristic of contemporary North American and European lesbian and gay lifestyles in which individual erotic attraction guides the choice of partners more than social traits, and relationships are based on reciprocity.

Some of these patterns are more common in certain parts of the world than others; each has a definite history. More importantly, each pattern is associated with its own system of images, stories, heroes, and gods. I call these archetypes, respectively, the Two-Spirit, the archetype of Initiation, and the Divine Twins. . . .

CONTENTS

The following is a list of the myths, tales, and other materials in Queer Spirits organized by geographic area. Specific tribe, region, or author appear in parentheses. The book itself is organized thematically, in relation to the Two-Spirit, Initiation, and Divine Twins archetypes.

AFRICA

When You Piss, I Shall Piss as Well (Fang); Why Lizard’s Head is Always Moving Up and Down (Ekoi)

SOUTHEAST ASIA

Future Spirit (Burma); Gold is Put into our Eyes (Borneo)

CHINA

Linked Jade Disks

EUROPE

A Different World (Quentin Crisp); All Ills Grow Better (Scandinavia); Auld Scratty’ll Git Thi (Northern Europe); First Contacts (Jean Cocteau); The Golden Key (Peter Cashorali); Sun and Flesh (Arthur Rimbaud); The Ugly Duckling (Hans Christian Andersen); Two Pretty Men (United Kingdom); A Vast Hermaphrodite (William Blake);

GREECE

Apollo and Hyacinthus; Attis; Becoming One Instead of Two; The Gallus and the Lion; Snatched Away

INDIA

Future Spirit; The Power of the Hijras; Respect; Wearing Rings on My Ears and Bangles on My Wrists

JAPAN

He Fell in Love When the Mountain Rose Was in Bloom

LATIN AMERICA

Strap of My Bra, Hem of My Pants (Brazil)

MESOPOTAMIA

He is an Equal to You; His Appearance is Brilliant

NATIVE NORTH AMERICA

A Very Great Doctor (Plains Cree); The Basket and the Bow (Papago); Dekanawida and Hayonhwatha (Iroquois); Don’t Look Back (Yokuts); First Contacts; Future Spirit; I’m Going to Have You (Kwakiutl); I Alone Keep Up Life (Navajo); I Am Holy (Hidatsa) Son of the Sun (Navajo); There Was Great Rejoicing (Crow); They Have Been Given Certain Powers (Sioux); What One Dreams, That Will Be (Mohave); You Will Now Perhaps be Less Angry (Zuni)

PERSIA

That Moon Which the Sky Ne’er Saw (Rumi)

POLYNESIA

Hurrah for the Mahu! (Tahiti); None Like Him (Hawaii); Future Spirit (Hawaii)

SIBERIA

Soft Man (Chukchi)

ROMAN WORLD

And He Remained with Him that Night; Sweet to Me Above All Sweetness; Their Beastly Customs and Inordinate Desires

UNITED STATES

Behind the Hill (Samuel M. Steward); Blue Light (Steven Saylor); Dionysus at the Disco (Will Roscoe); The Moth and the Star (James Thurber); Muscle Bound (Christopher Morgan); A Temple of the Holy Ghost (Flannery O’Connor); Our Spiritual NEITHERNESS (Harry Hay); We Two Boys Together Clinging (Walt Whitman)

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