I want to be where all the drag queens are. I want to be swimming in tulle and sparkled with faerie dust. I want Gene to come over and plant big gay wet kiss on my lips while we look at each other adoringly, the way a dyke and a fag do when they fall in love and hate each other all at once.
He was someone I admired, found alluring and who often angered me. Like in seminar when we would get to discussing a book I had only read one chapter of. He, of course, would have read the entire thing. But my lack of knowledge didn't stop me from having an opinion, and whatever mine was, it was always opposite of his. While I was reactionary, he was argumentative for the love of the argument itself.
But then, after seminar was over, when we were sitting around chatting at night, it was a whole different experience. Gene was the first Radical Faerie I ever met and his stories of weeks spent each summer on the Rogue River were enchanting. This beautiful man with long messy blond hair, golden red beard and blue electric eyes; he had a slight lisp, a light southern accent and wore skirts over jeans and beads over his bare chest.
Gene showed me pictures of bearded men in drag, or naked, or naked under drag. They were frolicking by the river, under the trees, across green and golden meadows. They were hippies like my people before me, but gay and exuberant. Beautiful men celebrating mirth and magic. I wanted to be one of them, to wear gowns in mud, have sex under a canopy of green, sing songs late into the night with the frogs and the crickets for company.
In my mind, Gene is always smiling. He is bright with crinkly happy eyes and a tiara of flowers on his head.
God, I miss that man.
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