This is why you're leaving New York

I've been having more "I love New York" moments than not in recent weeks, largely due to the full knowledge of my leaving, and the electricity that has brought to my life. But suddenly the past 2 days have been more in the vein of "get out" than before. The clearest moment of this was Sunday night, at Miss Lez. Might I say that the performances were amazing and hysterical; it was spectacularly wonderful entertainment. But the evening's merits end there. There was something emblematic of the evening, the side of the city that you remember has been carving scars into you and those you love since the day you arrived. While the pageant was its own showcase of "lez" absurdity and hyper-sexuality in the city, there was a more tragic piece of the city on display, at least for me.

There's a lot of people's personal shit that is not my right to call out in any detailed form, but there were certain tension points in the evening that were undeniably harsh. The best way for me to speak of it in sum is to note that the night had a whole lot of gay scene, with almost no single strand of queer community (barring the crowd-sourced "it gets better" video murray hill solicited from the audience, will be looking forward to that one on youtube, as well as a couple shining moments from contestants). On the darker side of the evening though, there were instances of such serious sadness that I was fucking overwhelmed. For one, when the show was over, it was nowhere near over. There's something about the queer performance space that always jars me a bit, and maybe it's a little bit more like New York. I can get through movies without hating the actor that portrays the villain because in some way I have the hope or belief that in reality, they're a decent person who could probably level with you. To see the intense flocking post-show end of self-congratulating, perpetuated egoism and ass-kissing made my skin crawl. Too many people were not "turning it off" because this is what they've actually become in this city; there's a reason why queers have so many performance names, because social interactions have become a stage.

There was also dramatic tensions from bad blood. The implications of a masculine-presenting person threatening past violence putting others in very bad headspaces, the presence of past lovers, not just stressful due to awkward nearness, but outright directly impeding on people because some people thought this was the perfect night for confrontation. Nasty statements heard here and there, expectant glances from people who thought you owed them something, or looked at you with some great hope you had felt them place on you years before. Gossip, and worry, and vanity. Violence, and sexual baggage, and addiction.

And I think all the awkwardness, and the terribleness, and the sad angry tears that some were hiding would just be a proto-typical bad night, if it weren't for the remarkable reflection of what was happening on stage. There was a level of celebrating this terribly unhealthy way of being in the performances. Alcoholism was given a wink and nod by the host and part of performance pieces while people near you, touchable, were launching into deep dark drinking corners. Self-obsession was touted as a gimmick by multiple contestants while persons around launched into bouts of egoism and self-gain, conveying minimal warmth and love to those who supposedly "mattered." A worship of the masculine and the immense entitlement that goes with it crowned the winner, while certain butches and transguys hung around smirking with bravado and emboldened with entitled rage mistaken as power. Jokes about u-hauls, and co-dependency and body image issues and gender exploratory issues were dished out often without any self-aware tone, and after looking to those around you with those same struggles, I wondered who are these jokes for, who am I supposedly "laughing with?"

I cannot stress enough how important humor is to me, and that I really can't take people seriously who don't know how to laugh at themselves. But the premise behind that humor has been a lot of the times a means of stepping away and really having some better understanding of what the hell is going on, and why it may actually be fucked up, and hell, may even need to CHANGE. George Bush jokes are FUNNY because we needed that mother fucker OUT of the white house, not because we wanted him there forever to tickle our funny bone. And that's where I got kind of sad, because as entertaining as the night was, that's all it was. No real called out masculine entitlement, no real call for better lives without addiciton and co-dependency, no real warmth and connection once the curtain came down, just more show-stopping gimmick, and costume, and self-congratulation, and ego inflation and boozing and worry and avoidance and social climbing and lovers' guilt and desperate want and violence and dare I say, the theme of the evening, feminine objectification without enough analysis, ownership and politik?

I went home feeling that the fondest moment of the evening for me was the chicken and shrimp tacos I got from Yola's, real, warm, invigorating, feeding my stomache and soul. I went home saying to myself "this is why you're leaving New York" because sometimes, in the agonizing search for worth, in the desperate plea that was why so many of us "transplants" came here, so expectant of New York being this huge means to our new shiny happiness, we sold ourselves and our struggles and our pains, for farce.