by Christopher Constant

It’s times like these that we learn to live — Christopher Constant on Drag Queen Bingo and James Crump’s death at Pride: Everything we do should pave the way for a better world beyond the reach of our lives.

Editor’s note: We are glad to welcome Christopher Constant as a contributor to Bent Alaska.

This story began as a simple story about Drag Queen Bingo hosted by the Four As and the Anchorage Mpowerment Project. The initial story detailed the evolution of being young and gay over the past 20 years. The heartbreaking incident at the parade forced the story back to the drawing board.

To quote the Foo Fighters, “it’s times like these that we learn to live.” If we choose to learn.

My thoughts crystallized when I began to visualize the LGBTA community as an organic whole. A life. Every life is punctuated by waypoints on the journey from birth to death and beyond. This cycle also seems to apply to a community, not just a person; maybe even by society at large.

The following was written before the tragic death of James Crump.

Gay Pride in Alaska once again proves itself the most diverse and wide ranging of LGBT celebrations in the North, with an annual suite of parades, celebrations, gay and lesbian films at the film festival.

To the young, Pridefest can be an introduction to a whole new reality of community, family, and opportunity to be part of something great. To the more experienced among us it can be a great opportunity for fellowship, reconnecting, and building community.

Hopefully it is a celebration of life for everyone.

One event is quickly becoming very popular: Drag Queen Bingo hosted by AMP. Drag Queen Bingo also means many things to many people. Drag queens inspire all kinds of reactions. Some members of the LGBT community embrace the divas among us. Others are ambivalent. Some members of our community look down on drag queens in much the same way Religionists look down on the LGBT community in general.

I can’t tell you how many times I hear gay men say “I hate drag queens”. I feel sad for those people. We are all beautiful in our own right. It’s crazy to me that some people have “types” so deeply ingrained they won’t seek friends outside of that mold. How sad a life choosing to live in such a small and colorless of a community.

Drag Queen Bingo was co-hosted by one of the Anchorage LGBT community’s #1 allies, Snow City Café . If you want to see what the fruits of being a community that welcomes everybody look like, just go to Snow City on Saturday around 11:00 am for breakfast.

I arrived early to pitch in if anybody needed help. The operation was impeccably organized and ran like clock-work. So I sat around enjoying the people watching and waiting for the event to pick up.

Anchorage’s Drag Queen Bingo started out as a humble side-show in the gym of an east side nonprofit a several years ago, but now bursts at the seams like some of our beloved drag divas. Last year, enough people packed Snow City Café that it had to be moved outside. The Master of Ceremonies at the event is perennial favorite and Mayor Select, Daphne DoALL Lachores.

This year, hundreds of people showed up. If the trend continues, they might have to let out the seams a little more next time. The money Drag Queen Bingo raised to support the Anchorage Mpowerment project (AMP) doubled from last year to $8,043 and counting. AMP is a program of the Alaskan AIDS Assistance Association, (Four As) and is a proven success.

This week I sat in the company of friends, a small group demonstrating the very positive impact of a community celebration that supports a worthy cause. Perhaps you wonder what Drag Queen Bingo is and just exactly how it helps? Is it simply a bunch of drag queens on parade or is it something more? The best way to answer is by sharing the stories of the four people sitting nearest to me.

My friends Anne and her mom Patty arrived and invited me to sit with them. I’ve known Patty (left) for a decade. She lived next door to me, and is a former flower child from San Francisco in the heyday of the summer of love, the 1960s. A really lovely lady.

I’ve known her daughter Anne (right) almost as long and we’ve worked and played together in a variety of settings. A great family.

We started playing bingo and I just kept praying I didn’t win. Victory in drag queen bingo means you have to dress in drag and perform a money dance to help support the AMP program. That’s messy business.

As the fun progressed, Patty leaned over to me and told me that she hadn’t had so much fun in a very long time. Then she asked me if I knew about her son Mike, or Myk as he called himself (left). She then told me he was a victim of the AIDS crisis in San Francisco back in 1992. Sad.

Hearing Patty recount this story hit home. Suddenly I wasn’t playing Drag Queen Bingo, but instead, I was 21 years old again and it was 1992.

Raised on the Central Coast of California, I grew up in a small provincial town with little or no gay social network. I matured into a sexual adult alone and isolated in a time and place where people like me were dying indiscriminately from a plague nobody wanted to talk about. It was a damn scary time. Usually in a crisis, a person turns to their family for support.

The support my family could lend was minimal. Only my sisters welcomed me. Most of my family grudgingly accepted that I was gay. My mom did her best but continued to ask uncomfortable questions about girlfriends and marriage. My father could only parrot the creed of the religious bigot, “Love the sinner, hate the sin.” In Fox News shorthand this loosely translates to “hate the sinner.” Thankfully they have evolved.

So, lacking a close network of support, I turned to the nearest urban center. Having grown up exactly the same distance from San Francisco as Homer is to Anchorage, I would travel to San Francisco whenever possible where I found a playground and some escape from the isolation I felt as a young adult. It was there that I learned that I could be gay and normal. It was there that I realized how lucky I was to have survived the crisis. It was there at the corner of Castro and Market Streets at the Harvey Milk monument that I decided I had to fight for the lives of the LGBT community…my community.

Bingo

Now my attention turned to Daniel and his mom Amy. Daniel is my roommate’s boyfriend and he’s attended Drag Queen Bingo with his mother for the second year in a row. This year, she decided to join her son fully and dressed up as a drag king. Amy demonstrates with her actions that she loves, embraces, supports, and will participate in her son’s life. Exactly what a young LGBT kid (or any kid) needs to make a healthy transition from youth to adult. Another great family.

Daniel, an incredibly bright engineering student at UAA, is the model of self-discipline and caring. He’s also filled with love. His mom Amy is equally amazing. She has raised a small family, worked at the Anchorage School District, and shows her son Daniel her love by embracing him and his love; and goes as far as actively partaking in the activities that are important to Daniel.

So there I was in the company of two loving families and we were surrounded by hundreds of merry-do-wells! (or is that Mary-Do-Wells, you decide.) We were all playing together to raise money for AMP-a group that focuses on HIV prevention for young men through education, community service, and fun. The group is dedicated to empowering young gay, bi and curious guys to get involved with and build a better community for themselves and their friends in Anchorage. AMP creates a safe place for young people to express themselves and to build community.

So, to the left of me sat a loving family who suffered the loss of their loved one due to a preventable plague made worse by a system that ignored the problem until it was a full blown crisis, having a blast supporting AMP. There I was, having survived those same years without getting sick, but enduring endemic isolation and disconnection from much needed support, now helping to create a safe, connected community for young men by supporting AMP. And to my right sat a family filled with love and acceptance, playing together and simultaneously benefiting from AMPs work and supporting it financially.

What a difference a generation makes. Things didn’t just “get better”. Things have improved because people have worked really hard year after year to raise awareness and to actively build a safer world to be LGBT. It really does get better, but not by itself. It gets better when we all pitch in and help where we can and show up! And boy does Anchorage show up!

Bingo

The rest of this note was composed nearly a week after the terrible accident. I have had a chance to grieve, an ongoing process. I have been able to help my grieving friends. And I have stood up to the leadership of my community to give them a piece of my grief and rage.

So after the accident, the first official “therapeutic” event I attended was a circle at the University. It turned out mostly to be a gathering of Mr. Crump’s associates at the University who needed a moment of reflection on the James they knew. Sitting next to one of the only actual witnesses to the tragedy in this circle, I felt a little awkward and out of place. Just as I am sure he did as well. I recognize that could simply be an intellectual defense against feeling sad.

Either way, when that young man began to tell his tale in that circle, on what had been a grey and gloomy day, all day, a sunbeam radiated directly down upon him as he spoke. Heaven calling!

Tearfully recounting his story, he stated he couldn’t see what the future holds, what good could possibly come because of this senseless loss.

Strangely, I felt sure I did understand the treasure that Mr. Crump paid for with his life. From this sacrifice, this is what I believe the future holds. If you are wondering, I think this is what it is all about: Everything we do should pave the way for a better world beyond the reach of our lives. As they say, your reach exceeds your grasp. Any confusion or obfuscation of our mission as a community just evaporated.

Watch. We will recommit ourselves as individuals and as a community. We will fight harder, organize better, and love more. We will have more fun. We will reach more people who don’t understand the nature of our community. We will shine our light to dispel fear and darkness and to illuminate understanding.

My teacher in this lesson right now is Lisa DoALL LaChores. Daphy the Drag Queen’s wife. She is teaching me lots about love. (She has even been trying to teach me that cleaning is a language of love. But that may be a lost cause)

Without ever saying it, Lisa has made me think: Do we meet hate with hate? No, that will never work. Shall we continue to reach out only to our “Allies” expecting anything to change? That seems to be what the lead equality advocating organizations do over and over and over again as they burn through the treasure dedicated to making change. To what end? Ah. More of the same. Fail. Enough already. Show some results or move on. And don’t take on battles we can’t win. While it fills your corporate treasuries, it simply costs our community too much. The numbers are in. And guess what? You don’t have the support. You don’t have the votes. You don’t have the confidence. We have to change the game instead.

Even after this dark time, we will continue facing the forces that oppose us. We will continue to fight our battles. We have no choice. We have to fight. The only choice we have is what tools we wield and how we wield them.

There’s a quote from an old Grateful Dead song called Help on the Way, that reads “without love in a dream it will never come true.” I believe it.

Sometimes we fight with politicians. Sometimes we fight persecution from sanctimonious religious zealots who celebrate as we lay dying. Sometimes we fight in elections. Sometimes we fight with the law. Sometimes we fight for our physical safety, and sometimes we are killed. Sometimes we kill ourselves. Fight, fight, fight. We fight because we have to win . It is a matter of survival.

But how do we win? We win when we use the best tools in our arsenal. We win by building friendships of mutual respect and love. We win by giving love. Love is an orientation not a by-product.

We have to love each other and we have to turn our love outward even on those who hate us out of ignorance. In this way, eventually, one handshake at a time, we turn ignorance into understanding and understanding into support.

There really is only one path. We must band together with our allies. That’s the A in LGBTA. We need to focus on building new alliances. We extend our hands together, building new alliances in new places. We need to ask for help when we need it. And just as importantly, we need to offer our allies help to our allies when they need it. We need to go to new churches, Rotary groups, Community Councils, Union actions, on and on. Heck, maybe I will join the Masons. I’ll take an ally wherever I can find one.

The way we win is by showing up and representing our best in places that we don’t usually go or may not necessarily be welcomed in. Show up, prove yourself useful, and it’s amazing what happens. That’s my plan. Please join me in this effort.

Last night, a friend sent me a message that expresses my hope perfectly:

I love what you do and your courage. I was so complacent until my husband’s daughter came out and took over mothering her 9 yr old nephew and I found my cousin in a 35 yr relationship with her female partner, of color as well, in Philadelphia and I was kept from her for my entire life, found each other after my dad died. I’m so angry at my elders and so thankful to love my gay relatives at the same time. LGBT takes on a whole new meaning. For so long I said, who cares, leave “them” alone but now it is personal. It’s people I love and that makes all the difference.

Bingo

Just one generation ago, an epidemic was killing us and our families while we lived in quiet desperation. Hopelessness was the rule of the day. Today, a mother loves her son so much she joins him in playful drag on a public street crowded with love and support; raising money to educate, protect, and provide a safe place for our children. They stand as a waypoint on our march to equality. Their example stands as a model for change. Imagine the next generation. What freedom will Daniel’s children know?

In exactly the same manner as we fought through the brutal age of the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and 90s, our community will grow stronger through this tragic time. Our happiness will bloom again like the lilacs in my garden and our branches will grow stronger and more full.

Our happiness will continue to ripen like wild strawberries growing delicately in the weeds in Fairview.

Like the flowers and fruits of our gardens carefully tended or wildly prospering, our happiness will be greater, stronger, sweeter than the year before. Year after year. Generation after generation. As long as we keep up the fight.

The most important theme emerging from this year’s Pridefest came from the homily delivered at St. Mary’s Episcopal Church the day after the passing of Mr. James Crump.

I share these words in his honor that they become our vision; not just in our demands for equality from others, but also in our actions toward others in our community, outside of our community, in our actions toward those we disagree with, even those who hate us.

I write these words knowing fully that I will have the hardest time living by them. I‘m strongly opinionated and I tolerate no bullshit. But I am going to try to be more of an example. We will know we have arrived as individuals and as a community when we live by this simple creed:

ALL ARE WELCOME, ALL MEANS ALL!

Bingo

This post dedicated to Phyllis Rhodes.

If you or someone you know has been affected by the tragedy at the Pride parade in Anchorage, please be reminded that generous support has been offered by our allies in the community. You can get more information by calling the Gay & Lesbian Community Center of Anchorage at 907-929-GLBT, 907-929-4528. Or you can call the Psychological Services Center at UAA (907) 786-1795.