(the) gay trauma convention(s)

on impossible healing

Can you imagine expressing your sexuality in public without having to look over your shoulder? Because America has brutally commodified most of its commons, the majority of us cannot, save for in rarefied spaces where cash has temporarily suspended the forcefields of the moral panics that bestride us¹. If I personally am to even have the option of this kind of normalcy among cis people, I must pay for it. What’s more, the cis must be of the resolutely not-normal sort.

This weekend, I went to IMsLBB—which I cheekily referred to as the gay trauma convention over on Twitter, but which is more like Spring Break for perverts—where attendees dress, socialize, and fuck as animals; get fisted on motorcycles; carefully drown their lovers; host salons to discuss the pros and cons of moistening one’s cigar on a stranger’s asshole; sexually identify as sixteen, eight, or two years old while having been born during the Carter administration; become aroused by the sound of