PART I: INTRODUCTION
Hey, you there! That’s right. I’m talking to you. I’m hailing you. It’s time for me to tell you afew things about dee bait. What? You’d rather us assume a different physical arrangement than this one, this one with me, walking in front of you, facing four ward, walking at a fast pace, with you hot on my trail in your Segway or your Rascal or your Razr scooter or your moped or your Big Wheels or your unicycle? You think it just might be easier to communicate if our comparative stance were somehow to be altered, and you don’t want to impose, but it doesn’t seem like that would be all that difficile at the moment? Let me tell you something right now and you’d best listen if you don’t want your business to be flattened like a pound a pancakes in a quick one two minutes: The physical, spiritual, various and sundry, which is to say all, the conditions of this encounter are completely at the mercy of my whim. I woke up today, ate a craw’s aunt, poured a few ounces of caffeine into my gullet, and decided that there is no more opportune time for me to tell you about the birds and the bees, so to speak.
What? You say your parents already sat you down and explained that ladies have a special part that only ladies have and when a man and a lady love each other very much they decided to do something with that part and the man’s equivalent part, the plug to the lady’s outlet, and nine months later, if they are good god-fearin’ folks and everything goes as it should, a little person pops out of the woman and between eleven and sixteen years later that little person begins to develop secondary sex characteristics and that’s why you need to wear deodorant and wax your entire body and learn how to put this piece of fluorescent pink rubber over a large banana? Is that really what you’re telling me?
You just don’t get it. See, I was not being literal when I used the idiom, the adage, the old saw that you misinterpreted and look at all those memories it evoked. Would you just fucking look at them. Now you don’t know if I’m being literal or not? Well, how should I adapt to your stupidity? Should I assume a South African accent when I’m being figurative and/or sarcastical? Should I roleplay? I’ll assume the position of a white female South African artist with the dream of erecting a statue that is a male version of the Statue of Liberty clad in skinny jeans with lasers shooting from its eye sockets and it will be installed somewhere in Los Angeles. This is someone’s sincere wish, but for me it is nothing more than a communicative tool. Now, watch out, because this is a sharp right turn coming up here and I wouldn’t want you to crash.
You navigated that well. Yes, you’re welcome. I think this exchange of pleasantries has brought our conversation around a corner. How apropos. Just the other day, I was at a high school debate tournament. I was at this tournament, an important one to people who think such a thing capable of being important, and something terrible happened. But let me backtrack just a bit because you need to know one thing about me to understand the narrative that will follow after the next while when I cover the background information I just spoke of. Okay? You’re prepared to make this temporal leap with me? I’ll take your word for it, although frankly I have my doubts.
What you need to know is that I’m a person who sympathizes with the political goals and critical analysis emerging from the field of queer theory. My academic background is quite thorough, but it’s also an issue that has personal importance for me. What’s that look? Do you want to ask me if I’m a gay queer homosexual? Go ahead and ask. I don’t know why people are so afraid to just go and ask such a question, like it’s going to ruin the mood or something? I mean, how hard is it to say, Are you gay? Three syllables. I could name nearly a hundred euphemisms for inebriation, not to mention inebriation itself, all comparatively prolix. Listen, I like competitive figure skating and interior design and I cried when Heath Ledger died, although his death had a personal significance to me you will never understand. So go ahead and ask.
. . .
Spit it out, motherfucker.
. . .
Finally. Aren’t you relieved now? We’ve got it all in the open and finally I can come clean and admit my crippling minority status that has subjected me to a lifetime of intimidation and verbal attacks and constant pressure to dress like a fifteen-your-old. Let me serenade you in my high, girly voice with tales of woe that will make you so happy you would never touch a cock except of course your own which you do frequently thank you very much.
Unfortunately, though, I cannot give you the satisfaction of a simple affirmative answer to your question. You all want things to be simple, a switch, a binary, a dichotomy, two pigeonholes, the happy normal hetero hole, and the significantly—if also potentially ironically—smaller homo hole, where you’ve always imagined I was comfortably nestled. But queer theory teaches us that such a foundational construct is fictive, which isn’t to imply that there is a clear alternative that is itself foundational or factive, but simply that there’s a fluidity, a constructedness, a performativity that underlies our notions of sexuality, and that can be utilized to expose the fallacies of our phallousy thinking. How could that be done, you ask? Well, drag, of course! Drag and writing essays about David Cronenberg films. And so much more, but that’s not the point. The point is, simply, that I know a bushel or two worth of queer theory information, and when given the opportunity, which is sadly infrequently in the debate community but big surprise that is to anyone familiar with the debate community, I happily and proudly flex my queer theory muscle. And now, as I have sufficiently filled you in on the background information I admitted was necessary for the full appreciation of my story involving a recent, important debate tournament, we can travel through time and space to that tournament and get on with the damn thing.
Now we’re going to bear left at this fork in the road, and if you need to take a break and have a drink of water, or some electrolyte-enhancing beverage resembling urine, just let me know. I may seem like a right bitch but I understand how important hydration is to some people. Just let me know. Sure you’re okay for now? Okay? Okay.
Here we were, and now are, not in actuality but in the sense that we imagine being there to give the story an immediacy, a relatability, that might make it easier and more enjoyable to follow, at a really big, important, national debate tournament. Where is this tournament? It’s not important. It could be in a megachurch, or a high school, or a horse farm uncannily recalling the antebellum American South, or a college campus. Imagine a combination of all these places, with plantation architecture and a student center, classrooms with windows overlooking stables, and an auditorium where poorly dressed people are rolling on the ground, speaking in tongues, while a white guy with a toupee and a tan suit avers scientifically questionable utterance into a microphone.
There I am, an educator wearing chaps, boots with spurs, a shirt with an uncanny likeness of the torso portion of the Shroud of Turin silkscreened on it, and a miter with a flashing LED scroll on it. Welcome, it reads, to the 2009 National Tournament of Champions, the most prestigious event in the national circuit high school debate calendar. It has several other sequences programmed for this occasion, including a list of local bars and liquor stores, my favorite music albums of 2008, and quotations from canonized philosophical texts ranging from Boethius to Robert Nozick. I am feeding an oxheart carrot to a particular large stallion, whistling a tune inspired by the idyllically bucolic surroundings. Suddenly, my reverie is crushed by two teenage boys sprinting toward me, an act more difficult for one than the other due to the unnaturally low position of his waistband.
Who are these boys? Are they twin brothers? Homosexual life partners? Tag team wrestlers? Please realize that those options are not mutually exclusive. They are, though, whatever you want them to be, whatever further qualities your active young mind may ascribe to two boys, separated by an inch or two in height, one testudinal in appearance, the other notably ratlike.
As they screech to a halt, an effluvium of masculine toiletries was present in and around the vicinity of the part of my body where the ability to locate such a thing is presumably located. They had something to tell me. They had, they said, something to say. I cocked my right ear archly. I arched my left ear cockily. Do tell, I said.
They told.
After listening attentively to their tale, then ensuring its veracity had been attestified to by a variety of members of the debate community whose trustworthiness is unimpeachable, I reacted to the story. What nerve! What chutzpah! But in the most problematic sense of that word, of course! This person, this idiotic excuse for a participant in an allegedly academic communicative educational activity! This was the argumentative equivalent of spitting in the face of the debate community, or the kindly elderly person at the helm of this particular weekend in the community’s annual schedule. Or perhaps even worse. An act of nonconsensual watersports.
Listen up, I say to my two young informant friends, this imbecile is going to get the reaming of his lifetime right here and right now, and everyone in debate welt is going to find out about it, and I’m going to use my extensive knowledge, my thorough background, in the multi- and/or interdisciplinary discipline (that is (not) one) called queer theory the correct way, to right the wrongs that have been done to its reputation in this here debate monde, so fasten your seatbelts.
No, I said that to them. The quotation is part of my story, not a piece of advice for you here in your vehicle now in the actual present, except of course there is no actual present of spoken language because by the time I’ve said it and then you’ve heard it and processed it the moment of its utterance is gone forever, which may remind you of the works of P.D. Ouspensky, if you’re the kind of person who’s interested in obscure metaphysics and physics from awhile ago, Quaternions, that sort of thing. In fact, if I knew as much about physics as I know about queer theory, and some asshat showed up and had the audacity to present a debate argument based upon physics, I would flex my physics muscle and crush that twerp until it was lying in a pool of sweat and bile and bilgewater and mostly its own bitter tears and then use a freshly washed white V-neck tee shirt to mop up that liquid combination and pour it into a bowl decorated with a plot of the Riemann zeta function along the critical line for real values running from zero to thirty-four and force that pathetic excuse for a member of the mundo del debate to drink it, drink it, take it!
However, my physics muscle is unfortunately grossly underdeveloped, and in fact even if it were not underdeveloped and were buff and worth flexing frequently and very publicly, that would be beside the point because no debater has presented an argument that I would need to crush with my physics muscle if I had such a utile physics muscle. Instead, some worthless piece of trash has gone into a room, whipped out a few sheets of paper, and presented an argument based on a horrific bastardized misinterpretation, inappropriation, of queer theory, and now it is time for me to get to work in preparing a document that will give every other debater at this tournament a surefire way to destroy that so-called queer theory argument, and that is only the first step in several that will, in tandem, work to instill fear and pain and a sense of extreme inferiority onto this debater who is indeed inferior to, most of all, me, but also probably most if not all the other people here amongst the horses and the Christers, and indeed probably a good percentage of the horses and the Christers as well.
The animallike twin sex lovers nodded encouragingly during this explanation, and then left to debate or have sex of perhaps seek sartorial advice from a mysterious young man I have personally seen nearly one hundred times, all coincidentally, in front of a Parisian bus station I enjoy writing about. I waved, not feyly of course, because one must, and even more so when one is wont to be considered a homosexual, one must be careful not to let one’s wrist go limp as is its, the wrist’s, wont upon delivering such a gesture, and for similar reasons was careful not to let my gaze fixate on the nearly obscene position of the taller boy’s pants, which seemed to have crept several centimeters southward during our brief colloquy.
It was time to launch into the first step of the six that would constitute my official reaction to the crime against potentially subversive, destabilizing public praxis of liberatory sexually deviant experiential modes of existence not currently being coopted by the right wing-dominated media and political wings of interpellation comprising late modern American public culture. I installed myself at a nearby bar, ordered a pint of locally brewed pilsner, a hint of skunk but that doesn’t bother me, whipped out my laptop, and began typing out a list of fifty responses designed to be read at lightning speed during a debate round rebuttal to expose the horrific shortcomings of the offending argument and rip it, the argument, a new one. I drained half my beer in one sip, belched loudly and purposefully, and began typing furiously.
Number one: The argument presents a psychological claim with no psychological warrant, and unlike the erudite experts publishing in the academically viable and in fact critically importantly field of queer theory, a stupidass high school student from some podunk Midwestern suburb is not capable of acting as an authority the likes of which can be trusted as an expert on matters of the human psyche. This is independently sufficient to defeat the argument, incidentally.
Number two: The quotation from Judith Butler comes from a publication written nearly ten years ago, one which does therefore not take into account the dynamic changes percolating since within the queer theory diaspora, such as the influence of posthumanism, work on whatever the accepted term for apotemnophilia is today, andsoforth. Even more damagingly, Judy herself has called the piece a polemic and taken, perhaps not literally, but perhaps, steps away from its extremity, and done so in a widely available compilation of essays by like-politically-goaled thinkers that the stupidass debater could certainly have found in the library if it, as it certainly does not, possesses the knowledge of the Library of Congress system used in the library at which the newer, better book would be held.
Number three: Queer theorists have long held near and dear to their physique, which, despite the seeming concreteness of biological reality that makes certain claims about relativity infuriating to some scientists and individuals who have a tendency to think very literally or very little or both, a strong belief that it is the obligation of queer theorists proposing a new argument to list all the sources necessary in the development of that argument. Needless to say, stupidass over there has not done so in its debate argument, so by the contemporary, consensus-accepted beliefs of those who actually matter within the field it is attempting very poorly to represent, the argument fails before its feet even hit the ground.
I ordered another beer and continued hammering out my list, utilizing quotations from both in and near the queer theory experience as well as other disciplines, statistics about the necessity of questioning the methodology and essentializing tendencies oftpresent but not completely unavoidable in the use of statistics, ad hominems relating to the horrific grooming, dressing—in two senses of the word—as well as gustatory habits of stupidass, and so forth, until I had finished my fiftieth argument coterminously as my ninth pint of pilsner and it was time to return to the debate tournament for a lunch break between rounds two and three.
Upon entering the food court, I hurried past a group of Christers saying grace over buckets of KFC and piping hot biscuits, a debate team listening to misogynistic rap music while blotting the grease off slices of pizza from Sbarro, and a posse of ranchers watching two of their more manly specimens armwrestling to determine the recipient of the last piece of an order of popcorn beef puffs from Beef Fantasy, a fast food chain autochthonous to this part of the country. I felt a pang that could have been hunger, although I feared it might instead be arousal, hopefully caused by the grunting, strapping armwrestlers rather than the waifish debater with a silky blonde afro working the straw of his Jamba Juice product like it were something quite different. Several minutes later I realized the physical feeling was more likely a strangely delayed intense need to piss a whole lot, understandable given my consumption of approximately one hundred and fifty ounces of beer between 10 a.m. and noonish. In those interim minutes, though, I carped that slice of the diem and launched part two of my plan.
So doing consisted of presenting, in my outstretched palm, my dongle, for seizure by the coach of a very competitive debate team, one from the Midwest, from the same state as stupidass in fact, not that that necessarily matters to you, but people tend to follow stories when they feature that type of semi-coincidental aside that gives a realism, a humanity, to the story that might not otherwise be there, and I certainly don’t mind sacrificing a bit of my artistic integrity to get butts in the seats, particularly in these economic times, and any artist who tells you otherwise is either pretentious or stupid or both. So there I was, dongle in hand, and it is a red dongle, just another piece of information for you, adding some color to the proceedings, no need to thank me. I explained that I had, stored within my dongle, a document that would be extraordinarily helpful in the violent destruction of this allegedly queer theory argument being run by this tiny, worthless debater. There’s more knowledge of queer theory, I said, in the tip of my little finger, or in fact the tip of this dongle, than it possesses in its entire tiny, antlike body. And isn’t it strange that so many of these debaters look like animals? Actually, the most successful debater on your team looks more like a special needs child than an animal, which is neither necessarily better nor worse, and I guess maybe I shouldn’t have said that right in front of him, but I’ve had a few beers recently. Another effect of the beer consumption I just referred to is, is that I need to go piss like a racehorse, so while you copy the file from my dongle and laugh about my apropos racehorse comment, I’m going to go install myself at a urinal for a short while.
Yes, I guess I have been going on for alongbit now, and I’m sorry that the latest twists of the plot have made you realize that your own bladder is nearly bursting, but I’m almost done, so bear with me for just a few more minutes, and by that time we will have reached a bathroom so you can segue comfortably from the intake of narrative to the outtake of urine.
Speaking of which, I suppose it would be unforgivably rude for me to tell you how satisfying it was to empty my bladder after consuming so much delicious beer, to recreate the sighs of pleasure I emitted so frequently and loudly, to the seeming horror of at least one person in the bathroom who ran out before even taking the time to properly dry his hands. Not only is it rude to boast about lavatory relief in this situation we find ourselves in now, but I’ve always found it rather tasteless to seek pathos in primitive and disgusting shared experiences like joyful bodily excretions of all sorts, for one. Some disagree, and think that such baseness is relatable, humorous, worthy of a hearty laugh and the urge to find the person behind the author function, to think them for their discursive act with a slap on the back and perhaps a firm handshake, depending on the cultural meaning of that act, because a handshake isn’t just a handshake in some world cultures. Me, however, I think real pathos is earned, not found, and toilet raunch, while it has its place, it not a priori brilliant and hilarious. I may dress like a teenager but my sense of humor, like my queer theory muscle, is far more developed compared to even farabove average teenagers.
One of which, and one which is certainly notabove average in any sense, was about to get the lambasting of his life, or at least weekend, because that was step three of six in my master plan. I coolly emerged from the bathroom and strolled toward him. He was watching a video of an obese man screaming profanity for no apparent reason, a fat man who possibly suffered from Tourette’s syndrome which of course there is nothing funny about. Excuse me, I said, I hate to interrupt this probably hilarious although also possibly offensive video offering you are wiling away your lunch break heretoforewith, but you are probably wondering why I was just conspiring with your statemates at the table over yonder.
He said he wasn’t, an obvious lie, but this was not surprising. I took it in stride and continued. You, and I’m not the kind of person who is easily bothered, but you have done something today that bothers me quite a great deal. I’m sure you’ll claim you innocently wrote an argument you thought was good, persuasive, a legitimate representation of your personal readings of various queer theory texts, an academic discipline you are interested in for whatever reason. Perhaps you have found its antiessentialist denaturalization of the sex/gender binary, et cetera, permanently alter your weltanschauung in a liberatory way, that you feel more comfortable with yourself as a person struggling to come to terms with sexuality in a hypermasculine, homophobic society. Perhaps you have never felt such a profound stake in any academic outing, so to speak, and realize you want to devote your life to the study and praxis of matters relating to queer theory. Perhaps your interest in debate has been enhanced by this newfound ability to bring in material you love, both because it’s academically fascinating, but also because it has so much personal significance, and the value of your researching and debating is the highest its ever been. Perhaps you’d think someone like me, who obviously knows a massive amount about queer theory, would be supportive of a newcomer to the discipline, promoting this material that I also feel is incredibly vital to subversive dissentional resistance-focused action in late capitalist Western social culture. Perhaps you’d think I would forgive any minor inaccuracies in your attempt to channel a complex and sometimes internally inconsistent field or even offer my expertise to ensure your interpretations were legitimate.
Obviously you are completely idiotic if you think any of those perhapses are perhaps happening at this time and place. Although I realize I am risking shattering your hopes and dreams and turning you off from something that would make your college and professional careers enjoyable, politically useful, and even exciting, that is a risk I am absolutely happy to accept. It is one I feel is necessary to accept, because you are wrong and you are stupid and you are incredibly wrong and I’m not going to let my queer theory muscle lie dormant when I know someone in the same debate community as me, at the same debate tournament is me, is off in a classroom somewhere with this horribly bastardized bullshit sack of heresy that you are unleashing upon poor unsuspecting children who wouldn’t know better except, thanks to me, now they will.
Now excuse me as I must go distribute a list of argument written by me, the God of queer theory, to everyone at the tournament lest you have the sheer audacity to use your argument again, in which case your opponent will read the document, incanting the language of the God of queer theory, proving you are wrong in a manner so thorough, punishing, intelligent, and decisive that you’ll realize you didn’t even know what wrong means hitherto.
At this point, I had to go to the bathroom again, so I did so before returning to step two and providing every team at the tournament with the argument via my dongle. And now he were are at the restroom, just in time as I have nothing more to say to you today, so go dangle your parts over the toilet or urinal, sigh in relief as loudly as you feel is warranted, then continue on your unique life trajectory until I reappear with another cautionary tale.
Yes, you may ask me a question.
. . .
What? I don’t understand the question.
. . .
What?
. . .
Did I feel like a bully? Why would you ask that? If exploiting my position of authority, my superior knowledge, the power inhering in my role, to try to either scare someone off using an argument they spent insufficient time and intelligence preparing, or to warn them that using the argument would result in a punishing defeat, if that’s bullying. If explicitly telling someone they are wrong and stupid, then laughing at them and sharing that opinion and laughter with the rest of the debate community, if that’s bullying. If grabbing the microphone from the head Christer and telling the Christers, the horse people, and the debaters about this stupidass child who is ruining the integrity of the debate community with its unbelievably ludicrous pieca shit argument that would be an embarrassment if a ten-year-old was the one making it, if that’s bullying.
When I wake up in the morning, I don’t see a bully. I see a man who looks and dresses several years younger than his age, who can attract and has attracted real celebrities to seek time in the conjugal bed with him, whose surprising hypercompetitiveness may not be endearing but it sure makes him run self-importantly at critical moments during debate tournaments, whose academic credentials may not be the best, strictly speaking, but who can more than make up for it in self-confidence and inflated rhetoric. That’s what I see and I’m okay with it. More than that, I’m happy with it.
And you, you should consider yourself lucky to have had the privilege of experiencing this time with me, of me having shared something so personal and valuable with you, imbuing your young mind and body with the sweet nectar of my essence in discursive form. Best of all, although I’m done addressing you personally, for now, this is only the beginning of a series of lessons in which you and so many others will have the opportunity to hear about my thoughts, think about my experiences, and experience, inna weigh, my life in the debate community. Sometime soon, maybe not right after you’re done using the bathroom here but soon enough, you’ll be able to access those lessons I just mentioned in textual form. Isn’t that exciting? I’m excited.
Now go enjoy yourself in the bathroom. I’ve got more teaching to do.
