Coffee
I'm not bothered with subtitles, so I'm going to use these spaces as signposting. Wrote this off-the-cuff to get out an idea I had while reading - my first real post, about Westport, is in progress.
One thing I don’t like about being a tourist is how it makes you straight again. Take for example coffee.
I would never dream of drinking coffee that I didn’t like at home, unless it were to escape from the sometimes stifling quality of being gay. So, I go to Starbucks - this is the best place to be straight again, and therefore to be invisible. No self respecting gay would be caught dead in Starbucks, save for the obligatory once-a-year Pumpkin Spice Latte, or Christmas drink. That is a holy communion and should not be counted. Gays who go regularly to Starbucks are straight-brained and therefore also can not be counted. I won’t delve too far into the evidence for this, but it is most abundant in their fixation on the bearers of celebrity culture in the form of Little Mix. When I go to Starbucks it is to hide from the real gays, and it always works.
Straight Greece is full of frappes. Frappes are sweet, milky, iced coffees that can barely even be termed coffee at all, because they are more like milkshakes. Straight Dublin used to have a corresponding problem, which is that it was full of Americanos and cappucinos made with coffee that is so bitter and so enthusiastically roasted that it is nearly burned. This has changed in recent years, because Dublin is in the middle of becoming both more and less gay. I won’t elaborate on this. These are just two examples of straight coffee cultures. Gay coffee culture, like gay sexual culture, is international and of a much higher quality.
The problem with being a tourist is that the only way I was able to get a gay-standard coffee, i.e. not a frappe, in Athens, within 4 minutes of arriving at my destination from the airport and without having to resort to the dubious helpfulness of Google searches, was gay sex. Google searches privilege straight ways of knowing and must therefore be read with an eye for decoding gay subtext behind straight paywalls, which takes time. Time is not something you have a lot of until you have coffee.
Being a tourist thrusts you back into the dominant culture, which everywhere is straight, with very few exceptions. The only way to circumvent it is by having someone to act as your gay Virgil (or just Virgil, who was in fact gay) and guide you through Hell. Hell is just another name for the state of being removed from Goodness, or in other words, being immersed in straight culture without a way out. The only way out is to have a Virgil who acts as both guide and friend, and as Morgan Bassichis notes, “How many enduring queer friendships start this way, with mediocre sex?” (Bassichis, The Faggots & Their Friends Between Revolutions).
Without commenting on the nature of the sex in question, which was obviously earth-shattering, the parallels are self evident. Thus it is that gay sex is once again the key to something much larger than the small death. It is the key to community, which is what you leave behind when you leave home.
Really enjoyed this, love how it felt you were going full tilt. Reminds me of why I enjoyed Effing DykeS and The Toast?? I'm so ready for Jess's Guide to Gay Europe