If You Knew Then What I Know Now

by Ryan Van Meter

  Especially the French and Italian threads of origin (the Italian actually means bassoon) disappoint me. I wanted to see in print the connection between burning sticks and burning gay men. I pull down book after book, hunting through pages for proof. There’s no denying that violence is carried inside it—centuries of burning heretics alive and “abuse” toward women—but I hoped to find actual documentation, validation of my feeling. Something like the smoking gun, instead of just smoldering handful of sticks.

  And I’m surprised that the word was first used as an insult to women, four centuries before homosexual men. I’m surprised because I’ve always considered “faggot” as implicitly misogynistic, so finding this proof—however disturbing—is heartening. To call a man “faggot” is to brand him as too effeminate, too feminine. Which implies there’s something wrong with being feminine, especially for a man. So doesn’t hating a man because he acts like a woman suggest some hatred for women, too? Or, at the very least, doesn’t it demand some neatness to our categories? That goes there and this goes here, let’s please keep everything tidy. But the reason behind such tidiness—why we comply and keep everything and everyone in their separate boxes—and whether that reason is always already ingrained in us, seems too impossible at the moment to root out.

  I have only ever been called “faggot” by men, never by women.

  In middle school, I stopped wearing dress shirts with that small sewn-in loop of cloth on the back beneath the yoke and between the shoulder blades. Boys would snag their hooked fingers on this loop, yank it and yell, “fag tag!” Some even tried tearing it off, as if saving you from something dangerous, like a wasp you didn’t see clinging to your back. I never told my mother why I suddenly stopped wearing half of my wardrobe; I just said I didn’t like them anymore and hoped she didn’t notice the tiny feature the unwanted shirts had in common.

  So with the single syllable fag, I began to fear and hate a small inch-long strip of cloth. But why was that thing called a “fag tag”? Because only fags would want shirts with such unnecessary embellishments? Or because the loop is like the string, ribbon, or cord bundling all those bundles of sticks? I look for the actual name of the cloth loop, but find nothing on my own. I ask a reference librarian if there is such a thing as a fashion dictionary, a garment glossary? I tell him I need to know the name of a certain part of a man’s shirt. The librarian says there might be apparel guides with this kind of information—which part am I looking for?

  “It’s that loop of cloth on the back of a man’s shirt, sewn under the yoke, in the middle.”

  “Well, I know the rude slang term we used in school,” he says. “But that probably doesn’t help you.”

  And it turns out there isn’t any one agreed-upon term for that loop, even in apparel dictionaries, though in one clothing company’s catalogs, my librarian does find “locker loop.” Even so, the most common name for a nameless thing is a hateful one.

  I thought of that loop of cloth when I read one of the obscure definitions of faggot, the one about heretics having to wear “the embroidered figure of a faggot . . . as an emblem of what they had merited.” The small embroidered figure I imagine is cartoonish—half Boy Scout badge, half small-green-alligator sewn on polo shirts. It’s a symbol simultaneously of the crime, the punishment and the confession. We’ll let you go, says the little patchwork bundle, but always remember what could have happened. It’s another enforcement of rules—but whose?

  So it feels impossible for me to not pull together the persecution of heretics and the hatred of faggots, that is, homosexuals. Some have suggested, I discover, that because homosexuality was a crime punishable by death, homosexuals became known by the same name as the sticks that fed their fires. Burning at the stake was a common method of execution because it showed the criminals the kind of suffering they would soon endure in Hell. And it was surely spectacular, as public executions go. But this theory has been disproved because, at least in England where most of the burning of heretics took place in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the period when “faggot” referred to those burning bundles, homosexuals weren’t executed at the stake, they were usually hanged.

  But I’m just not satisfied with the coincidence that one word has so many violent connotations over several centuries without any connections. Especially when I can string them together, however naively. “Faggot” is the bundle (noun), the burning of the bundle (verb), setting a heretic upon the bundle and the burning of the heretic (verbs); it’s the small cloth picture of the bundle as a sign of recantation and the recantation itself; it’s the action of bundling together sticks, or iron bars, or hands and feet, or people—all being tied down and into place, which makes me think again of those tidy categories, and of power, specifically the misuse of it. And the little patch of the faggot worn on the sleeve makes me think of the pink triangle patches worn on the shoulders of homosexuals when the Nazis shipped them off to camps. Which makes me think again of persecution, heretics, and witches; of witches, mostly women, burned at the stake, and of faggot as a term of abuse for women. Persecution of homosexuals, of being hanged. Is it gratuitous, then, to see the noose wrapping around the neck as a kind of bundling? Because later in the dictionary, under “fag,” I find from the fifteenth century, this definition: “a ‘knot’ in cloth.”

  More words to consider: As I write, I begin to question how I place “faggot” into my own sentences. Should it be “to call a man a faggot” or “to name a man a faggot”? The root for name comes from Latin nomen, which literally means “name.” Not much help. “Call” comes from late Old English ceallian, which comes from Old Norse kallōn, and means “summon loudly.” There’s a difference, even if it’s slight—naming a man a faggot means to identify him as a homosexual man, albeit by using a hostile “name”; calling a man a faggot, remembering the root, means the caller (loudly!) wants the attention of the man, even wants him closer, as in come here, you faggot.

  When faggot meant “to recant,” it wasn’t a name, it was a command. And by recanting to stay alive, the heretic complied, guilty or not.

  Maybe because I am a gay man, or maybe because I’ve never actually used the word against one, I realize I’m not even sure why we are called “faggot.” When I try joking about the word, I always say, “Don’t they think we know?” As if the reason to shout out “faggot” is because gay men need reminding—reminding that they’re gay, or maybe that they’re hated for it. And there’s something there too about the need to categorize, to put everybody back in the places where they supposedly belong. But. There are “gay” and “homosexual,” and other words to distinguish us, after all. These are the “real” names, but ones rarely shouted out, or used as taunts like “faggot.”

  I understand the reason why a straight man would call another one “faggot”—which isn’t to say it’s any less offensive. But the suggestion is that the man in question isn’t really a man—he’s soft or weak or effeminate, etc. It’s a jab at his manhood, at his gender but also his masculinity—that mysterious concoction of biology and swagger and toughness and ease that is nearly impossible to fake. I’ve tried. But—and I’m assuming this, that’s all I can do—because the man is straight and because he knows he’s not gay, he feels the word differently than I do. It’s certainly insulting, and possibly threatening, but there’s some essential difference in the intention that carries something more demeaning for gay men.

  But isn’t calling a straight man “faggot” always still an insult to gay men? Conservative writer Ann Coulter tried denying this fact in March 2007, after she implied during a speech in Washington that senator and Democratic presidential nominee John Edwards was a faggot. A few days after her remarks, on Fox News’ program Hannity and Colmes, she offered this defense: “The word I used has nothing to do with sexual preference. It isn’t offensive to gays. It has nothing to do with gays. It is a schoolyard taunt meaning ‘wuss.’ And unless you’re telling me that John Edwards is gay, it was not applied to
a gay person.” She’s right on only one point—she didn’t call John Edwards “gay.” Calling him “a homosexual” would have been toothless. But with his $400 haircuts, bright smile, and lovely moisturized skin, calling Edwards “faggot” actually bites—which is why the story had so much traction in the media in the days following the slur. Because she’s not saying that John Edwards is sexually attracted to men; she’s saying he passes for a man sexually attracted to men—and also implying such slippage disqualifies him from politics. We all know of his marriage and mistress but that doesn’t make him a man, and only a man can be president. And yes, it is a schoolyard taunt, but not one that simply means “wuss,” and that was clear in fourth grade. What’s also clear is calling John Edwards “faggot” is perceived as an insult to him because it’s an insult to gay men—straight men don’t just laugh it off; they fight back because a faggot is someone already pushed aside and trivialized. Even in A Bundle of Sticks when our hero Ben finally stands up to the bully, he defends himself by asking, “How can I have a girlfriend . . . if I’m supposed to be a faggot?” But defending yourself against the taunt when you’re actually gay doesn’t come with any such reliable escape hatch.

  We learn our names only by being called them.

  I was most recently called “faggot” two months ago. I was riding my bike in my Midwestern college town, late at night as the bars were emptying. While I pedaled through an intersection, a young guy, probably a student like one of my students, called the word out to me. I just kept riding. I’ve never found a good enough comeback. There really isn’t an argument because according to the dictionary, it’s true—I am gay, so yes, I am a faggot.

  There’s something else going on underneath that I wish I could ignore. Once, as a very closeted undergraduate, I was at a party with my two closest friends, a straight woman and a gay man. The party was crowded, and most of the men there were straight. In those years, when I was being honest with myself, I knew I was gay, but I was trying desperately not to be—bargaining with God every night in prayer to help me stop thinking that way about men, and occasionally even dating women. Before the party, we had some drinks and, after arriving, did shots together in the kitchen of the too-hot house. As we wiped our tingling lips and shook off our quick jolts of vodka, I looked across the living room and a single face stood out.

  He was the best combination possible of pretty boy and those clichéd chiseled features of tall, dark, and handsome. Except he wasn’t that tall—he was about my height with the veiny, tight skin of a runner shown off by rolled-up sleeves. Lovely clean-shaven cheeks, short brown hair, a jawline as sharp and solid as a table’s edge and big, soft eyes. I couldn’t stop staring.

  And in my drunkenness, I forgot myself, and kept staring. I forgot I was pretending I wasn’t gay, and forgot too that not all men appreciated adoration from other men, confused, innocent, or otherwise. After a couple more hours of drinking and gazing, on our way out the front door, stumbling behind my two friends, we passed this man, and as I looped my eyes toward him to snag one final glance, he leaned in a few inches from my face, and sneered, “Faggot.”

  No one heard it but me. My friends and I walked outside and got halfway to the car before I said anything. “Some guy just called me a ‘faggot,’” I said, nearly chuckling. “What?” asked my gay friend. I repeated, and he was incensed, certainly fueled by his own relationship with the word.

  “Who?” he asked.

  I shrugged. “Some guy by the door.”

  He marched back toward the party, leaving me and my other friend standing in the street. “It’s not a big deal!” I called out, but he kept going. Of course I’d left out the most important piece of the truth. And it makes me wonder if there are moments when gay men might actually deserve scorn—at that party, leering at an obviously straight man, was I being a faggot?

  If I’ve known since fourth grade that what is intended by the word is not how it’s defined, then why does it still burn? There must be violence and hatred carried in it, even if I can’t locate the satisfying, definitive connection on paper. If it isn’t to voice a desire to destroy us, then why call gay men “faggots”?

  But even after what I’ve uncovered, I’m unsettled because words aren’t simply good or evil. Shouldn’t I feel inspired because as a writer I need words to be beautiful, and even powerful, as well as ugly and dangerous? Shouldn’t I of all people know that a word’s potential for comfort or harm rests in how it is used? So if the letters themselves are innocent, if the meaning isn’t in the word, or just in the word, then it’s us carrying around those threats and violence. Like a recanting heretic, I’m the one complying with the word’s hatred, and allowing it to bear down on me—the way it surely will until I harden myself against hearing it. Such a revelation is both startling and obvious, and I’m stuck there, bound up in that original trick of the word: When I wince at its sting, I share its intention—if only for a second.

  The Goldfish History

  Hope is a goldfish in a plastic bag of water: the weight of the bag in your hands, how the cold bundle must be cradled to prevent jostling the poor creature inside; the transparency of the bag, how white your hands look through the water, the plastic wrinkles that gather around the ridges of your fingers; the goldfish itself, which isn’t really gold, or just gold—it bobs around and if you’re driving home from the fish store, riding beside your roommate, there’s the inevitable moment when the fish will ease into his surroundings, float to the bottom of the bag resting in the warm palm of your hand, and as the car rounds a curve, you feel the flutter of his translucent tail against your skin through the plastic.

  This goldfish meant hope because we hoped the one in our bag would be one to survive. Not just three weeks, but years, the way goldfish are supposed to. We hoped it wasn’t one with that goldfish parasite called “Ich,” short for “Ichthyophthirius” but everyone thinks is “Ick” because it’s a parasite, which is gross. We hoped we wouldn’t have to flush the fish in a few days if we found him with his pale belly turned toward the ceiling of the water. We hoped that buying all this fish stuff wasn’t wasting our money.

  But also because of the delicacy involved—floating the bag in the new bowl for an hour to allow the fish to adjust temperatures, treating our Chicago tap water with mysterious chemical drops—the goldfish was hope: this fragile thing who was dependent on us and our care, silent and colorful and ours to name.

  I can’t remember if it was my roommate Kim or me who first thought of getting a goldfish. And I can’t remember who suggested his name—Rufus—though it was probably me. After Rufus Wainwright, our favorite singer at the time, and the man I called my boyfriend because I had the biggest and most hopeless of crushes on him, and because I didn’t have an actual boyfriend. I used to say that Rufus the man brought me more pleasure than any of the men I’d actually dated. His picture was taped to the refrigerator door, I owned all his albums, went to every nearby performance—that kind of thing. Rufus the fish was always supposed to have a companion, another fish that we planned to name after a cute actor from some TV show, whose name I can’t remember, but we never made it back to the fish store.

  So on a bright Sunday afternoon in Chicago in March, Kim and I ripped open a sack of brown gravel and dumped an inch in Rufus’s new glass bowl. The guy at the fish store had steered us away from pointy plastic seaweed and gave us instead a clipping of some soft green vine—an actual plant—that coiled through the water like a spiral staircase. We also got a chunk of driftwood instead of one of those pink plastic castles or bubbling sunken treasure chests. The moment we untied the watery sack and poured Rufus into his bowl, we stared at him swimming around, and it felt good, because it was something we could share, and something that we needed.

  Kim and I had been best friends for five years, since our freshman year of college. After I graduated a year ahead of her, I moved to Chicago. A year after that move, one weekend when she was visiting, I came out to her—she was the first perso
n to ever hear me say, “I am gay.” When I told her, we were standing in a gay bar. In the women’s restroom of the gay bar—a bar we’d been to several times before that night. In this private bathroom, giant mirrors stood all around us with their backs against the walls; as I told Kim what I had to tell her, I watched our dim and infinite reflections do exactly what we were doing. Before finally speaking those words, I had known I was gay but wasn’t ready to admit it. Before that, I knew I was gay but made myself date girls because I didn’t want to be. Before that, for almost all of my teenage years, I thought I might be gay and was afraid, so I prayed every night for it to be taken away. And before that, I didn’t know I was gay, but I knew I was different, and I didn’t want to be that either.

  At the time, when I had to offer a reason for picking up and moving to Chicago with some savings, my car and two splitting boxes crammed too full of books, I said I wanted to live in a big city. Only later would I see it more precisely as looking for a place big enough to get lost in, with space to figure out if I wanted to allow myself to be honest. Coming from the Missouri suburbs, Chicago felt limitless—the way it probably feels for any twenty-two-year-old looking for something. Even so, those possibilities felt private and singular, like finding something everybody else had overlooked—a quarter waiting and shining right there on the sidewalk.