In conversation with a local friend, whose identity I will conceal because I’m going to say some nice things about them that might embarrass them …
I’m trying to think of ways to tell people that I aim to be outrageous but not threatening. Maybe even admit that I think every organization should have at least one highly visible fag, because we’re so decorative.*
Actually, a fair number of people will find me threatening and contemptible and will wish me ill (a startling number will wish me dead). A hard fact, but the real world.
Defending myself against them takes a good bit of care and real work. I have to figure everybody out. You got weighed in the balance like everyone else I meet — and showed me your character when we first met. You deserve praise (and thanks) for being who you are, and it’s a mark of this character that you now will not understand why I’m thanking you. And you will think, sweetly, that if other people just get to know me, they will like me.
I have already baffled some of the nicest people around by thanking them for being who they are (meanwhile, I mourn those who died unexpectedly, before I could celebrate them), but I know that they might have moments of self-doubt or discouragement and can use some bolstering. It’s something I learned from Ann Daingerfield (Zwicky), who, astonishingly, did this with all of the friends of her lifetime that she could contact, in the six months she had before dying.
I mean, it’s not like this will turn them into boastful megalomaniacs, that would be utterly against their character. That’s the fucking point.
— *the footnote of reservation. The trap here is the counterpart to entertaining presentations of Blackness, which open the entertainers up to malicious mockery as mere performing monkeys; I don’t want to get tagged as that figure of fun, hypersexual super-priss — Paul Lynde on steroids. (see also: dumb blonde)
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