āI donāt know, these underwear are too ratty.āĀ
āThese arenāt my show panties.ā
āI ate a pretty big dinner, so Iām a little bloated.āĀ
Try any of these excuses the next time you are at a queer space that has become the dreaded underwear party. They are all three liesā but youāll find that that doesnāt matter much. Weāll all say or do anything to not have to say the truth out loud, āIām afraid my body is wrong.āĀ
Body image and the gay community are no stranger to each other, and as someone who grew up in a big āole fashioned āclean the plateā Italian family, my own relationship with the BMI is strained at best. Iāve gotten better with this association, but it feels more like a divorced dad who still calls you every once in a while on birthdays and some holidays. Thereās a lot of that old hurt still there, but honestly, you donāt always have time to investigate it. That is until you are met face to face with it, and all at once you are an eight-year-old boy wearing a tee-shirt in the swimming pool at your best friendās birthday party.Ā You are what parents and department stores refer to as husky. Your body is otherāand you know it.
When asked, queer historians often cite specific queer traumas that resulted in the heightened masculine ideal of fitness which is seen time and time again in this community. These answers range from subverting the āsissy stereotype,ā therefore swinging hard in the opposite direction and becoming hyper-fit body-conscious jocks. There is also the idea that in a post-AIDS world, the masculine ideal for queer men was simply to look āhealthy.ā As AIDS resulted in rapid weight loss and skeletal physiques, it then became desirable to have a more athletic and chiseled body type. This was an often necessary precaution, a protective measure that has trickled down throughout this communityā still rearing its ugly head on the occasional ignorant dating profiles.Ā
Certainly, these aesthetic ideals do not exist in a vacuum, and culture at large, or at bestāmedium, has always fixated on a specific aspirational look. But particularly in gay male spaces, this shall we say, preference, is extremely opaque. That is to say, gay men are often saying the quiet part out loud. There is an undercurrent of body fascism that bars āfatsā fromĀ entering spaces, or at least feeling entirely welcomed.
When I showed up to the underwear party with my friends in Provincetown there was already a tangible electricity in the air. A friend of mine kept asking, āDo you think this is the highest concentration of cis-gay men anywhere in the world right now?ā I had taken a 10mg edible, so I wasnāt necessarily in the mood for statistics. Still, the density felt palpable. My group stood on the balcony of the hotel where the underground party was held, and looked down from above at the various huddles of men, most of which were still wearing all their clothing. We were largely silent, some of us likely studying the scene, some of us perhaps overwhelmed, and others simply working up the courage to join in. I was in the latter camp as my own jock strap purchased from Amazon dot com (ever heard of it?) dug into the sides of my hips under my shorts. I had in fact eaten a large dinner earlier in the night, but I was not going to allow that to stand in my way.Ā
The party itself was in the basement of the hotel, it featured winding hallways and dim red overhead lighting. Gay spaces often have this confusing dichotomy of being both an erotic space, and at the same time, what could very easily be the set for the next snuff film. Somehow both Sniffies and Snuff-ies.Ā
There, in massive swarming sweaty huddles, were men who looked like every hot TV bully on the CW network. Together they pulsed and swayed to a far-off, hard-to-place beatāsomething that sounded more like the score to a porno than any actual music you could identify. Their muscles glistened inviting you to touch, but also enacted a warning with their harnesses and chains. These men were still dangerous. And what is arousal if not some semblance of fear? There is a thrill in vulnerability, in giving yourself over.
My friends and I snaked through the various underground rooms and eventually came out on the other side, still fully clothed, still mostly silent. The fresh air was cold and sharp in its cleanness. It felt like we had just gone for a dive, and everyone wantedāno, needed a gasp of oxygen. Only I was not interested in breathing. Not yet. Not before I had given myself the real opportunity to open my eyes underwater, to fill my lungs with that salty brine, to scream out, āYou donāt have power over me anymore.ā I wanted to thrash and kick my legs in the ocean, beat it back ceaselessly, to prove that I would not drown. Iād already given too much of my life over to that feeling.
So, right there, in the courtyard, in front of everybody I stripped off all of my clothing and placed them in the brown paper bag in the clothes check line. I said goodbye to my friends and jumped back into the water, this time without a tee shirt to hide the parts of me I had long ago decided were unlovable. This time I was going to do it alone.
Hereās what I discovered: In that writhing mass of flesh, I was just a body. I wasnāt any more or less than anyone else around me. I was just skin and sweat and hair spackling the cheeks of my freshly exposed ass. There were men around me who would never have looked at me before, who were there looking to meet another mirror with a body hard like marbleāsomething like a pickup truck with testicles. There were men there with bodies Iād only ever seen in porn, and faces that must have been genetically engineered in a lab, and none of that mattered. I will repeat. None of that mattered.Ā
Somehow, in the anonymity of it all, in the mass-exposure therapy of the night, I found a connection to my body I was not expecting, but secretly always hoping to find. For once, it wasnāt just a phone call, it was a handwritten letter, a confession that my body was beautiful and it would be fine long after it wasnāt, just as it was fine long before I or anyone else had deemed it so. I danced and held my hands up to the ceiling. I allowed my stomach to roll and fold over itself, I let myself contort and move without holding my breath or sucking in my stomach. I stared men directly in their eyes, and smiled, and talked, and kissed, and loved, and did all the things that felt like me. I was outside of my body, and for once, truly inside it.Ā
I liberate my body from the cruelty of others by looking at theirs without arbitration. The folds of flesh and saddlebags dipping lollingly over underwear bands mean nothing to me removed from the context of comparison. The same contextual comparison that has held me captive all my lifeāwhich I perpetuate onto others with every disparaging thought or word. If you let it, this comparison will sit on your chest and asphyxiate youācracking your sternum like the fruit of a pomegranate. Or, you can hold it close to your bosom, and whisper words of love in its ear. Two bodies, one body, like nothing at all, like everything youāve ever held.Ā
Art by Sedgwick Guth