Queer - Daniel Benson
Hearing my now ex-girlfriend butcher my favorite song at an open mic night was a defining moment, helping me come to terms with my sexuality. A book I forgot to read which is still sitting on my desk came with the tagline: “Queer love is healing,” Which is maybe the truest thing there is. It turns out that kissing another boy for the third time, although nothing can ever erase the past, I’ve experienced the things I’ve experienced so long as someone still remembers them but kissing a boy. I love my favorite song again. A scrap of hearsay that made me want to die just a little bit suddenly hurt a little less. Not that I’m forgiving anyone, but lips stripped the power from the statement “Daniel isn’t gay, he just needs a good woman,” something that was relayed to me by best friend of eleven years, eavesdropped by him from a conversation between his mom and mine. Now I’ll admit, part of me did want to date a boy just to prove my mom wrong, but the one I have in mind is also a really good kisser. I should have started kissing boys sooner, it was the right decision. The tradition of viewing baby pictures every time I visit my grandparents continued recently, and one picture stood out, that of a Daniel, approximately five years old, holding a pool cue twice his height, wearing a sesame street hat, and staring excitedly at several shirtless men bent over a table rather suggestively. I think that was where it started, there or Jewish sleepaway camp of course, my favorite songs brief state of ruin only helped. It wasn’t love if I couldn’t enjoy it. I can’t love a person who attempts to learn a song, but is so disconnected from themself that they spend all their time mimicking someone else’s mannerisms rather than learning the song, and then spends five minutes on a stage in front of a room full of people fumbling through lyrics, and pausing to move fingers from fret to fret because they couldn’t perform as them, they had to use someone else’s vocal fry, and laughter, and exaggerated pronunciation of sibilant consonants. Something about romance with another man just feels satisfying, it feels familiar, like what was always missing was loving and being loved the way I love and want to be loved. Queer is a wonderful, wonderful word.
Daniel Benson is a first year History major, minoring in Anthropology. These are his first writings published in ARCH magazine. Identifying as queer, his writing is often explorative of what it means to identify with a community, and how it can bond young adults together, while simultaneously separate them. Apart from writing, his interests include art, folk and indie music, and cool rocks.