The Circuit Boys are coming for everything you love
This past Sunday I was at Nowadays (a club in Ridgewood, which I haven’t been to since before the pandemic when me and my ex-boyfriend got into a screaming match on the dancefloor about my thawing relationship with ex-husband), and I snuck up to a friend Igor from behind and kissed him on the neck. He grabbed me and swung me around to his front to make me sip the mezcal drink he had gotten, insisting that I order the same thing. I started to, then stopped and glanced back at a smaller, young man behind me “I’m sorry, did I cut in front of you hun?” I asked.
Noticeably relieved the young man said “Yes, but it’s okay, I don’t know what I want. But thank you for asking. I feel like no one can see me today. Like these two muscled guys just pushed me aside without even looking at me.”
“Ah yes, tall people supremacy huh?” And then off the look of confusion on his face I continued “It’s a theory that my boyfriend Fernando and I have been working out recently. It’s an analysis of tall cis gender gay white men - though not the word “tall” doesn’t quite take into account fully what we are trying to describe. It’s about gay boys who are tall and big - with large muscles, which are a sign not only of how much time you have to work out, but how much resources you have to eat and get big. And we’re not exclusively talking about white men - because this largeness and abundance of resources and thus power, can manifest in lots of different racial identities. At any rate, these large gay men take up space, psychically and vocally, but it’s really their physical space that is the most apparent - and how little they notice other people's physical space, especially if those other people are not other hot muscle boys. They push through you, they shove you aside, they don’t look you in the eye - and when they accidentally might catch your eye, it’s as if they see right through you. Like you don’t exist. Because for you they don’t. And while the drugs may be a part of it (God, knows that G seems to be a drug that makes people disassociate, though I wouldn’t know, I’m pretty uninterested in passing out in the middle of the dancefloor, know what I mean?) - I think that blaming it all on the drugs is to not hold these people responsible for their behavior. There is an intention and mentality to the way that they treat others. They don’t see you if they don’t want to have sex with you. I actually have some friends who behave that way and don’t even know it - and though I judge them for their prejudice, it makes me notice my own as well. ”
The boy paused for a moment and then said “My name is Tom. You’ve thought a lot about this.”
“It’s important to describe things right? Jesse, by the way. I’m gonna go catch my man on the dancefloor.”
When I got back to Fernando, he nodded at the circuit boys starting to dominate the front of the dancefloor and I shrugged “Yeah, this party is done. The A gays have found it. Time to move on baby…”