To me, Davie Street at 12:30 Sunday afternoon looks more like Davie Street at 7:30 Monday morning. Patrons wander the streets with their eyes glazed over searching for their first cup of coffee; their weary faces leave nothing of the apparent jubilation they held at two in the morning. Making my way to Celebrities from the train station is more like walking through a mine field of hangovers, but having been invited to observe the auditions for Vancouver’s Next Gay Top Model, I manage the mine field and take my spot in the well-lit room.
It can be a frightening thing for the sun to rise or the house lights to go up at the end of an amazing night. The faces of those around us take on a grim and pale expression that does nothing for the sexual attraction that only moments before was glaringly real and explosive. Seeing Celebrities in this state brings some of these same feelings for me, though the room has been cleaned, the floor retains traces of the Saturday night mayhem. A broken shard of glass in the corner that was missed by the brooms and the shine of light as it bounces off a lonely speck of glitter give my mind a sense of what went on in these walls last night. I realize as I sit and wait for the proceedings to begin, that everything really does change in the light.
As many of you may already know, I wrote a little piece on this here Stinky Stanky StinkWallet a little over a month ago regarding my feelings about Vancouver’s Gay Top Model, Mr. Gay Canada, Peter Breeze, and the whole concept of what it means to be a gay sensation. I must say that with a very critical eye I wrote the piece in question and it could be seen to be colored by my distaste for a world that I’ve feared at times is overly saturated with superficiality. Terry Costa, Director/Producer of VNTGM was brave enough to invite me to be a part of this whole venture, and with this opportunity I am hoping to see a different side of these events and how they relate to the queer Vancouver environment, and the environment of Vancouver in general.
So for the handful of potential top gay models the day has begun and as dreary as their little eyes may be, there is no longer time for beauty sleep. The group is much smaller this year and as with most sequels there is a skepticism that was more than likely not apparent in the last round. Thinking beyond the scope of a show of this potential, I reflect on what it means to be a part of the second round, to be the second child, or the second movie or book in a series. An often highly criticized position, it will be intriguing to see how the event will pan out this year. It will be a test to the attention span of an audience who some might say is in fact completely attention deficient.
Terry’s attitude is indeed a respectful one, and displays his capabilities as a director and professional. He makes it known that no matter the amount of people who show up to an event like this, it is the numbers and contestants themselves that shape and create it. These events are organic beings, dynamic works in an almost fictional world where the characters create the story.
The afternoon continues with an opportunity for the contestants to introduce themselves and do a whole lot of walking. The confidence of some shines through instantly and for others it becomes instantly apparent that their nerves may best them before the day is through. I can’t help but think about my own nerves and the opportunities that I’ve passed up over the years. It takes a lot of balls to enter into an environment that is ripe with judgment. Although I’ve happily lived on the outskirts of the community for most of my adult life, in confusion about some of the attitudes and behaviors of my gay brothers, I’ve always given credit where it is due, and to audition for anything is always a trying experience.
So like the brave contestants in the room, I set out on a journey myself. I hope that by watching these men learn something about themselves, I too can learn more about the community that surrounds me. By indulging in the workings of an event that is fueled by generosity and a genuine desire to raise money for charity (Friends for Life), I too may learn something about myself. We reveal a little more of ourselves every time the house lights go up, and like Celebrities on a Sunday afternoon or the pavement outside of the shops along Davie Street, there is always going to be someone judging us on the other side of the room. It is our composure and confidence that prevents these prying eyes from taking us apart piece by piece.
More from Stink Wallet
- The Characters of Vancouver's Next Gay Top Model | Writing | Vancouver | Musings, Tangents, Rants | StinkWallet
- Everything You Ever Wanted in a Man (Preamble to Vancouver's Next Gay Top Model Finale) | Writing | Vancouver | Musings, Tangents, Rants | StinkWallet
- A Baptism in the movie Milk–Review Writing | Writing | Vancouver | Musings, Tangents, Rants | StinkWallet
Very thoughtful and creative writing…
Wow, I can’t wait for further blogs, this seems like it will really uncover the true experience of Vancouver’s Next Gay Top Model.
Your honesty is so great
Thanks for the great article!
wow! very indept and poetic look into sundays events. I look forward to your future blogs!
Great article. I love that you are taking learning over judging. As judging is human nature………the learning part is not so easy.
Steve.
Awesome just read your blog for the first time. you kept my eye’s on the page with excitement of what i was reading. will read again.
Wow ,thats’s the ony word to describe this articale,my jaw is still in shock!I loved it …very very thought ful
Very insightful, you have a great way opening peoples eyes to a perspective they wouldn’t have otherwise considered
Every Gay person enters into that phase of whether or not they should exist as a Gay Person. This, I hope will convince you that you must and carry that strength on to others.
Dane
FUCKIN’ FAGGOTS!
Yet another innocent person has been laid to the ground by a homophobe and I’ve decided to write down a few things to make you see the world a little queerer.
The man, a father of two, 62 years old, was playing pool in a Gay pub when the man he was talking with suddenly punched him in the head. The victim, Ritchie Dowie, slammed into the floor, head first and now lies in a hospital bed in a coma.
The attacker, 35, said he did it because “Dowie is a Fag, touched me, and deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it, he deserved it…”
Mr. Dowie may not recover.
This is what happens in the big world. Even the small world.
Homophobia has not been erased.
Homophobia.
Yes. That’s what this is about.
Now you’re probably about to turn a page, flip a channel, go away…
(yawn)
You’re probably saying what I always said when I was a naïve love child, “Well, that doesn’t mean me. So bye bye …
So, just quickly, I’ll ask you:
How do you take on fear, anger and RAGE mixed with a big dash of testosterone, all at once, without seeing it coming?
Depends on who, right?
Fists?
Defiance?
Running shoe escape?
Some will say Love…la la. (they’ll sway while they say it and get slightly misty-eyed).
Others will say, “I’ll fight them. We’ll fight them. We’ll stand up to them. Show them we’re not mincing nancy’s.”
Still others will say, “Well”…(long pause)…(meditating on the question) “we would talk to them. Reason with them”.
Most will say, “911”.
The smallest group will say, “Scream bloody murder”.
Why the smallest?
Because for most, the primal man in us has been tamed. We react with reason. Reasonably well.
Okay, now let’s imagine that you have a boyfriend. You’ve been going out for about 3 weeks (long time for you). You’re in the ‘love zone’.
Everything is rosy red.
You’ve done the flippity flop in bed.
You’ve introduced each other to each other’s friends.
Now it’s the dance.
Small things together as a couple.
You start to go out ‘together’.
You start to make meals ‘together’.
You start to hold hands ‘together’.
Where do you hold hands?
And when?
It doesn’t make a difference.
Anytime and anywhere you hold hands, in the bright white light or dark hard night, you take the risk of having the shit knocked out of you.
Yes. I know. It’s pathetic.
But.
It’s true.
The world….the people….human beings ….are an unpredictable species.
Here’s the scene:
It’s sunset.
You’re by the (submit place here).
Could be a beach.
Could be a tree lined suburban street.
Could be in the Gay village.
You’re both doing the stare.
At each other.
Oblivious to the outside world.
It’s all him him him.
You reach out in the middle of a sentence and just grasp his hand.
Why?
It’s love, stupid.
Doesn’t matter.
You just…do it.
Or he to you.
You both saunter and talk and share and gab and might even go a little bit (P.D.A.) further.
Arm around waist.
You like that.
You do the same.
Isn’t life grand?
That little flower lady smiled at you both. Said what a lovely couple you make.
She even gave you a free flower.
That big puffy garbage truck driver gave you a small wave…hell, he even smiled at you when you happened to look up and see him pass in his massive smelly mobile.
The sunset, the temperature, the feelings welling up inside you.
Isn’t life ducky?
The first word hits you from somewhere.
You’re not sure from where.
You’re not sure it was the word that you thought it was.
But there was that strong, HARD,’ K’, that stood out.
It punctures the air.
Ricochets off the asphalt. Off the bricks. Off the closed windows.
You both or just one of you blinks and loses a fraction of concentration.
It’s taken you unawares.
See that small slice of “Wha…?”
It’s too little time to recover because then…
the second word…
Faggots!
The double G.
The black equivalent has all but disappeared.
The N word.
Nigger.
The most powerful man in the world is an N.
But they only call him that behind his back now.
We’re trying to take Faggot back.
We laugh and try to tickle each other with it.
To become like Queer.
We’re a little more comfortable saying it to each other.
But then, ‘THEY’ don’t know that.
‘They’.
Straight Males.
Sometimes Straight Females – slightly drunk, jealous, joining in the fun of gang ridicule. Most often, they’re the calming influence. Standing between us and ‘them’.
‘Them’.
Straight males.
Men between 18 and under 30 or the older, still-confused.
Doesn’t have to be just straight men.
99.9% are.
There are a few self-loathing guys who want to get the ‘eyes’ off them…but mainly it’s raging, angry, drunk or sober (rarely stoners) young males.
They can be short or tall. Big or small. Cute or ugly.
It doesn’t matter.
They are man. The male. The bull warrior. The mostly young, insecure, uptight, running in packs, Raging Male.
Now they have your attention.
There is almost no way you can avoid the fear that you feel creeping around your body up toward your now backward-thinking brain.
It can’t grasp insanity.
You feel a liquid thumping just under your ears.
The closing of your throat, and later, making you gasp, retch or even vomit.
Both of you cling maybe a little tighter to each other. Smile. Even shakily laugh a little.
“Just ignore them”, you hear your brave self say.
Your boyfriend agrees.
Small “yeah”.
You may even look in their direction.
You keep walking.
Others around you, have noticed, have heard the yell.
They keep walking as well.
Immersed (it’s not about them) in their own moments.
You push yourself back into your former dangling words…
“Where were we?”
“Oh, yeah, you were saying…”
But.
You don’t get to finish.
You hear a rush of sound coming from outside your little sphere.
Feet slapping the concrete. Scream of tires (or was that you?)
Shouts of anger
Then ‘that’ word, FAGGOTS! again
But it’s blurred, slurred with some other saliva’d words spat out in the frenzy of confusion and you turn and you see faces of men eye-diving on your body – contorted to a brutalizing hatred.
Your arms move upward instinctively like when you were a child defending itself from the bigger boys.
Now,
Do you have a heart of gold?
Do you have a chest of armour?
Fists of iron?
No.
You’re blood and bone.
You’re feeling their ragged clawing of conscience.
Someone has taught them hatred. Pure. Rage.
You’re hit. Punched. Torn. Kicked hard again and again. Spat on.
Now bloodied and broken
Streaks of light criss cross your eyes
Your hearing is pound-muffled
Coming back in spurts of mad voices
Body parts move without directives
No pain. Yet.
Just a mass of confusion
A moment of why? Who? How?
Cries
Yours?
Where is he? Your boyfriend.
Why are you on the ground?
Upside downtown.
You feel and see the bottoms of shoes.
You’re covering your face
But there is now a sharp pain here and there and there and down and up and over oh God help me please hepl m eeeeeee nhep’ehurhndn
There is a sound like a small child’s siren that blocks out all other sounds. Your eyes may be open or closed but all you see is a jet black darkness that mercifully holds at bay, the things that are going on that would make you stop and pause if ‘you’ were walking by this person lying in a pool of their own blood and rocking drunkenly or mumbling nonsense.
Sounds return. Quickly. There is a disembodied feeling of “I’m not here, I can’t be”. You’re trying to regain a footing. Your head is moving. Inside and outside. You just blink your eyes to someone or something.
You’re babbling, you know. You taste your own blood. You touch your face and one eye sees thick crimson-pulped water. But it’s not water.
You rush words out to make yourself connect with yourself or someone. To make it real again. There are voices. Some fast some slow.
And then, oh God, there is an unmerciful pain…
Everywhere
This is just the beginning.
From here on in.
You will never be the same again.
How the hell do I know? you say.
Well, I’ve seen the after ‘birth’.
The birth of fear.
From a man sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, another man standing next to him arms akimbo, face cut, blood dotted, shirt torn, breathless wonder spilling from his frightened mouth to anyone…
He’s dazed and bleeding. Body shaking. People, we, around them, pointing, shouting for help. Three young guys came from behind and took them down to the concrete. They wouldn’t stop raining terror down upon these figures (they have no names, yet).
And everyone, except the stumbling innocent wounded fallen men on the sidewalk… is angry. The two men, the three or four people standing/moving about, are trying to understand why we have to have this happen in our world today.
I can’t tell you what will happen.
To each comes a different journey.
Some will recover.
Some will not.
This may make you wince:
These men. These homophobes will attack anyone at any time if they see man as feminine, different.
If they see a drag queen with a man’s voice talking to someone. If they see a nancy boy flicking his wrist playfully in the street at his friends. If they see a straight friend hugging his Gay friend. If they see two straight guys hugging goodbye. If they see a woman with a crewcut hug her boyfriend. If they see two men holding hands. If they see men in a Gay bar, restaurant, club or street corner that they know is Gay, it will make them mad. Not angry. Mad crazy mad.
Why?
Because to be feminine, a woman, is weak. It is, in their mind, the worst a man can be. That is what they think.
That is what they have learned or worse, have been taught.
These are true:
A girl with a boy’s crewcut was walking with her boyfriend. Holding hands with him.
They heard the word Faggots and were attacked. Mauled. Slugged senselessly.
The young men fled.
Got away.
The girl later grew her hair longer.
The two lovers limp in different places now.
Suburban skinhead punks funnel themselves into an Eastside Gay Pride celebration in Vancouver. Happy people are out. Angry people too, with fists ablaze. Punches. Cuts. Arrests. On at least one of the attackers arm’s is is a swastika. They’re let go. No one stays to complain. No one follows this to a courtroom. The year is 2008.
A man limps permanently. Doctors had to put a steel rod in his leg to replace shattered bone.
A man sips liquid meals. Doctors had to replace a part of his jaw. The year is 2008.
Two Gay men on vacation in a wonderful new country. They hold hands in public. They are swarmed. One boyfriend is smashed over the head with a crowbar and now his boyfriend feeds just a body. The year was 2007.
‘Faggot!’ is heard shouted, by all these people.
In 2008, people march in a Gay Pride parade in Budapest, Hungary. An old woman – old – lashes out, hits Gay people trying to walk in the parade. Six young men surround one man and boot kick him over and over. Until he lies in his own blood, unconscious, over.
A lesbian is punched squarely in the face by a man. A big man. Much bigger. More powerful than she.
She bleeds. She gasps blood and falls to the pavement. He walks quickly away.
A Gay and Lesbian Pride parade that was supposed to have over 3,000 people had 900 people.
2,100 Gay and Lesbian people were too terrified to march.
Neo Nazis there, were organized and dangerous.
All 3,000 of them and their …kind.
3,000 police were ordered to protect the marchers.
I can tell you worse.
I can give you bigger numbers.
But I won’t.
It won’t be pictures.
It won’t be news footage that makes you get angry and get up.
It won’t be stories.
If this does not make you (fill in this blank with your own self-centred little reply).
It will be a fist hit.
You could be one of us. Or a friend. Or a parent. Or a bystander.
What I’m saying is that this …THIS …effects everyone.
We live in a world of Gay authors who have millions of straight fans.
We live in a world where 3 fags can give fashion tips to straight people watched on mainstream television by millions of straight people.
We live in a world where there are openly homo politicians. Mayors, Senators, Ministers.
Where Queer and Lesbian actors are seen and loved by millions of straight people.
There is hope.
We now live in a world where the most powerful leader in the world is black. And he has said, and I quote,
“Their voices can make a difference. It’s the answer spoken by young and old, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, Gay, Straight, disabled and not disabled.” Unquote.
One day: All gay, all out, 24 hours a Gay.
But right now, we ‘are’ still hated. You can be out to some of the people some of the time but not out to all of the people all of the time.
They can come in to our bars and slow dance.
We cannot go into their bars and dance, slowly, face to face, loving arms around and around body to some body. We would be hounded and pounded.
Sometimes we can slow dance, on their floors, as ‘Guerilla Gays’…sometimes.
You see, we get on nerves.
The insecure males. The secure males.
The insecure females. The secure females.
The religious right.
The religious left.
Even the religious middle hole. The holier than thou.
We Gay people are powerful and decrepit.
Nothings and somethings.
Vulnerable and almighty.
We have changed and continue to change the manufactured fabric of the world.
For this we and our friends and allies are degraded.
We are compared to dogs, pigs, monkeys and shit.
We are disowned.
We are shunned.
We are spat upon.
We are punched.
We are beaten.
We are tortured.
We are shot.
We are raped.
We are hung by ropes until dead.
We are mutilated and our bodies left to rot.
In the United States of America, around 18% of all hate crimes are sexual orientation- biased. Here in Canada we’re a little more open-minded with 11%.
Here in British Columbia, the most victimized group is Gay men, followed by people of colour and religious groups (Dept. of Justice Canada).
So. What can you do?
Stand or sit tall.
When you hear a bad word said about us, stand up and say…something. When you see injustice, to us, to anyone, sit and write…something.
There are many of us G.B.L.T. people who have held hands with our boyfriends and girlfriends in the most dangerous of places and have never met any hostility. I’m one of them.
I’ve held hands in amusement parks , on bicycles, cars, on sidewalks, in stores, malls, restaurants, parks, movie theatres, on trains, ski hills, planes, beaches, on buses, in schools, in offices, in libraries, at concerts, in swimming pools and churches and synagogues and mosques and houses and houses of government.
I will not be bowed.
So far.
Written about a week ago · Comment · LikeUnlike
You like this.
Krista Callen at 18:58 on 17 March
Wow. That was really good Dane. It makes me sad. It’s not okay. I support you. xo
David C. Jones at 10:44 on 18 March
This is horribly sad.
Tanner Fehr at 11:28 on 18 March
Wow-very moving. Profoundly done Dane.
Greg Campbell at 22:17 on 18 March
Yeah, Dane, this is very powerful. You describe in-the-moment very well. And I like the way you free-associate words sometimes, and use poetic turns of phrase.
Have you thought about writing a play? Yet?
This piece already has several clear-cut characters. Hume liked it too.
I have decided to take on “People Who Say ‘That’s So Gay!’”. I am … Read morereally tired of the word “gay” being used to describe what sucks, is bad or lame or awful, and I’m going to speak up whenever I hear it, within reason, of course. Like, if they’re bigger than me…Greg.
Dane B. McFadhen at 22:33 on 18 March
I’ve actually heard from a few people who say these words are etched in their minds after they’ve seen them scrawled on school walls, church halls, places of peace and places of doom.
It must begin to dawn on hatred that people are capable of love and compassion, no matter what…no matter what.
Dane B. McFadhen at 13:19 on 19 March
Your piece is very powerful. It captures clearly and insightfully my feelings on this subject. Having been called a ‘fucking faggot’ myself while holding my partner’s hand, I have felt deeply the range of emotions and conflicting thoughts you describe so well. As a Christian I know we are all called by God to see everyone as a child of God and to endlessly forgive them. However this is incredibly hard
when you feel threatened, and even more difficult when done within the framework of a loving moment with your partner. It seems as if every response is inadequate or too much, while you instinctively that some response is desperately needed. As you say, ‘I will not be bowed,’
but neither will I return hate for hate.
It may not seem enough, but I know that God walks with us in love as we walk in love with our partners. Let us pray that someday all will see this truth…. Read more
Myself and all the clergy here at the Cathedral thank you for your support.
Peace,
Rev. Patrick Blaney
Curate
Dane B. McFadhen at 08:07 on 20 March
Rev. Patrick Blaney
Curate
Christ Church Cathedral
Dane B. McFadhen at 08:09 on 20 March
This letter above is a reply to my piece Fuckin’ Faggots from the Reverend Patrick Blaney as you can see above. Limited space on Facebook made it difficult to print in one box.
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