Suddenly last summer

This is a recent mixtape I completed as a birthday gift for a friend of mine, who previously in these pages I've dubbed The Italian American, although that label does an exceedingly poor job of conveying anything about his personality. In some ways, it's more of an ironic label, at least if I even remember what irony is at this point, thank you very fucking much Alanis Morissette! (Just kidding, girl. You know I love you. Like a friend.)

We both enjoyed the movie and the book, Call Me by Your Name, although I think IA may have enjoyed both more than me. Increasingly I find I have a somewhat problematic relationship with media portrayals of the G in LGBT+ lives. However, I don't think it's so much the media's take that bothers me; It's more the wishy-washy, fuzzy-wuzzy, hyper-fluid, contemporary take on sexuality and gender identity.

No one seems to want to be Gay with a capital G anymore. Every identity, every gender seems highly mutable. Perhaps that's as it should be: The era I came out in (1980-1983) feels like a thousand years ago (and, let's face it, it was 40 years ago, a couple of lifetimes if we were peasants in the Middle Ages) and represented a very different time in gay life. Pre-AIDS for one thing but also in the midst or even a little post-liberation, a time when gay men seemed to know who they were and what they wanted--and that was to be men who unapologetically loved men. Gay identity was a political statement as well as a personal identity. We had to be united to get across who we were--sure of ourselves and our sexuality (this is not a phase!); men who wanted to be men and not women (I'm not a transvestite!); men who knew how to have fun (sometimes discreetly, sometimes not) but who knew how to present themselves so as to gain respect and further the cause of our safety and equality.

Maybe that's all an illusion. Maybe sexuality and identity were more fluid then than we realized, but back then the bisexuality of men often seemed like an excuse not to commit to being gay and marriage to a woman felt like a betrayal to the cause. That was perhaps way too rigid a view, but the rigidity was there to push us and our rights forward. No waffling! No backsliding! No second-guessing! We're here, we're queer, get used to it!

The rigidity could be chafing and stifling, even to me. It's not that I was interested in women or, other than for a couple of weeks after acknowledging my sexuality and figuring out how to explain it to my parents and friends, that I considered myself bisexual. I am not. I am a solid Kinsey 6, or at most/least a Kinsey 5.75. I can be intellectually attracted to women from time to time, although I'm not sure about physically, and I have no intention of exploring any other possibilities at this late date in life. And I don't feel as though I've missed a thing. If anything, when I think about what I missed, I recall missed opportunities to meet men, get to know men, date men, and have sex with men (although admittedly not exclusively in that trajectory)--and I recall missed opportunities to travel more, where I would have likely met men, got to know men, dated men, and had sex with men.

The stifling part for me is that I often wanted to date and be in love more than I wanted to have sex with more men. I had my share of encounters, sure, but sex, even when I was at my peak {assuming I had one, that is) has never been a hobby or a mission for me. I also think that what rapidly became the gay identity of the 1980s and '90s--well-to-do white urban gay men and their hangers-on (the party boys, the muscle studs, the lovers, just add rainbow flags)--fell flat for me. I didn't have the money, I didn't have the body, I didn't have the ego and extroversion, and I didn't have the interest to be like everyone else, at least for more than a fleeting moment.  

The '70s and early '80s liberation and the '80s and '90s Reaganomics/Dynasty/Pet Shop Boys approach to gay life both seem très passé nowadays. Subsequent generations, post-AIDS crisis, appear to enjoy the freedom created, but the old man in me questions whether anyone coming out after 1992 or so feels any of the responsibility. I see stuff nowadays--the outrageous characters on RuPaul's Drag Race (the Canadian version in heavy rotation here at the moment), the predominance of trans identity in the media, the fluidity of gender ("some days I feel like a man, some days I feel like a woman"--so you understand what it's like to be paid less for the same or more work and fear being sexually assaulted wherever you are, including your own home?)--that makes me cringe. And it makes me feel very old. I always strove fro normalcy, respect, responsibility, permanence, and even a certain level of masculinity. None of that seems to matter anymore.

No, Gay with a capital G life hasn't been a bed of orchids or tulips for me. Sometimes it's felt more like a field of dandelions. While I've employed the beautiful ideal of men loving men as one of my guiding stars in my life, it can sometimes be a lonely journey. Some men can't love you. Some men only want to have sex--all friction and no feeling. Some men stay true to the rigid limitations of masculine power and dominance, even when given a opportunity to be free of these bonds and experience a transformative life. And some men just don't understand you--and you don't understand them.

Truth be told, there never was a choice, there was no fluidity, no in-between state of being: I am Gay with a capital G. It is who I am, and I am proud of that reality and that I've dealt with it reasonably well and lived the best life I could live under sometimes trying, sometimes dire, and sometimes happy circumstances.

So even Call Me by Your Name makes me somewhat uncomfortable as the movie perhaps more than the book implies a choice and a mutability of sexuality that I never felt were part of my reality. But, hey, maybe it's OK--it is the reality for some for sure. It's just that I find the idea of men loving men exclusively and determinedly greatly diminished and undervalued in the current milieu. Maybe we had it our way for too long--we set the standard, we set the course, and expected everyone to comply with our worldview. Maybe this represents a deep generational change, and I represent an old guard that can't get beyond its suddenly evaporating status and privilege. Maybe I'm in the wrong. Or maybe I'm not, but to quote our illustrious Fearless Leader, "It is what it is."

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the mixtape. I took a couple of songs from the soundtrack--French and Italian pop hits from the early 1980s--and expanded upon that, trying to represent the story and the scenes through song. Some of it likely works, some of it likely doesn't, but I hope you'll have fun listening nonetheless. I know I had a lot of fun exploring the pop charts, discovering new music, becoming reacquainted with old favorites, and putting this all together.