The Pride edition of Broad Universe‘s podcast, Broadly Speaking, is now available for download. It features writerly chicks talking about queer stories we love and queer stories we’re writing.
The podcast includes Catherine Lundoff, JoSelle Vanderhooft, Elissa Malcohn, Cecilia Tan and me, and is hosted by Trisha J. Wooldridge.
You know how matter can neither be created or destroyed? Or all those stories where every boon has a price? Patty and I sort of had a weekend like that.
On Friday night, New York got marriage equality. We stayed up until about 3am, her reading and me messing about on the Internet telling her what various celebrities she doesn’t care about had tweeted.
Saturday, we went out to the farmer’s market, to Dean & Deluca, to get Indian food, etc. It was lovely. And then we came home.
Our front door was open. The lights were on. One of my swords was in the kitchen where I most certainly did not leave it.
We backed out of the apartment and called the police. It turned out they were already in the building because the apartment above us had been burglarized too.
Both our laptops and ipods were stolen. Our bedroom, where a window that hangs four stories over the street was shattered all over our bed (our bed, the first furtniture we bought together).
Aside from the financial expense, the computers are work tools for us, but also the tools through which we see the world. If I cannot write, I can’t talk, I can’t think, and Patty plays music at every second of every day.
The super wouldn’t cover the window with plywood. I had to use my Blackberry to get Twitter to find us an all-night hardware store (it’s called the Nut House, and it is amazing, although sort of staffed by rejects from the X-Files‘s Lone Gunmen), get a piece of plywood cut, somehow get a cab to take me back uptown (this was nearly impossible) and then have a friend from the Internet (oddly, the same woman who helped me get my Harry Potter book deal) and her date come over and screw it over our window.
And the next day was Pride. And we went anyway, and I kept bursting into tears over Pride, because this was victory and victory feels different from pride, and then we had to come home and clean the glass out of our bed.
Today, we’re dealing with window replacement and lease drama and potential brokers and our ridiculous travel schedule for the rest of the summer and our frightened cats and all the rest of it.
We’ll be fine, because we’re fucking amazing. But this shit sucks. And, more than anything, it’s days like this that are why I use the word partner for Patty. It’s not about being more grown-up than girlfriend; it’s not about euphemisms or the void in vocabularly that necessarily exists in a homophobic society with its patchwork of marriage laws — it’s just that sometimes, even when you’re sleeping with someone, you have to sit down, talk it through, nod seriously, shake hands and get it done. And we are really, really good at that.
So this post is sort of about what’s been going on. But mostly it’s just about how we’re made of awesome.
Life happens out of order. It’s one of the only things I’m really certain of.
It’s a screwed up certainty, though, because it’s this thing in my head that comes solely from being too attached to story, where even complicated, unsettling events are neat and always driving towards a conclusion, or at least a pattern. Non-fictional life isn’t like that; hence that out of order feeling.
But if you have the relationship with fiction that I do, and considering how many of the people who read this come from fandom, you just might, there’s always a drive for narrative that distorts our non-fiction messiness into something neater and more elegant. It is, at its most basic level, why we play where were you when games. It’s how we make stories about the true things that happen in what is generally a clumsy manner.
A week ago, I was at a gig at Irving Plaza, half distracted by the NY Assembly’s passage of the marriage equality bill. When I got home, amped up and a bit tipsy and my voice hoarse from singing along with the show all night, and Patty was asleep and I knew I wasn’t going to get even four hours of rest myself, I emailed my buddy Christian and said: “This is a stupid thing man, but I want the Senate to pass the bill tomorrow, so Colfer can reference it in that stupid skit about the proposal at Glee Live.”
Christian has a narrative compulsion too, and we met through Torchwood fandom, so he got it immediately. It was a trivial desire in the face of a non-trivial thing, because it made for shinier narrative and thorough distraction. It was also a way to make fiction seem a little more real — although whether that was about the skit, or the bill I didn’t think would pass, it’s hard to say.
Of course, I actually saw Glee Live in New Jersey (it’s one of the cruel ironies of living in New York City, that many convenient stadium shows are in another state, that we hate, and the shout-outs are never for us), and it never came up. Then it did, in the reports from the shows on Long Island later that weekend.
There was just one tiny, embarrassing problem (other than this whole post) — marriage equality still hadn’t passed in New York; our congress is bicameral. But it sure didn’t stop the screams for Colfer giving a shout out to the law (supposedly) passing or delivering the most marriage-y of the non-marriage proposals the skit (in which Kurt asks Blaine to join glee club) had yet seen.
I sent Christian a link to a vid of it someone had linked me to. “When this doesn’t pass, I’m going to be gutted because of these fictional kids being dumbasses.”
“Maybe it’ll be okay,” he said.
“Maybe it’ll just be like how everything always happens in the wrong order,” I said.
Thank god.
My whole fixation with it seems stupid now, but I’ve been involved with the marriage equality story for twenty years now, and maybe I just needed a buffer from it that was young and optimistic and not all this life and death; a whole hell of a lot of people didn’t get here with us.
When I joined my LGBT student group in college, I was 17. And other than a lot of really bad crap happening to me and mine, the other thing that happened was we talked about marriage equality a lot. I knew people who were involved in some of the earliest court cases about it, and we all spent endless hours shooting the shit about how we could get a marriage equality case to the Supreme Court.
“Can we do it on a religious freedom basis? If a religion recognizes gay marriage, doesn’t the government have to?”
I was so young. And I was, and remain, of a generation that was taught (even if we didn’t believe) that marriage was not just a marker, but perhaps the only marker, of adulthood. A wedding, in my eyes, those 21 years ago, seemed like the only way I was ever going to be something other than the property of my parents, with whom, at that time, I had an extraordinarily difficult relationship.
21 years I’ve been talking about marriage equality, because I was precocious and wounded, because I wanted to be chosen, because I was a born a girl, because I felt like property. It’s never been anything but a bucket of screwy symbolism and pedestrian magic for me, and despite a profound, sometimes yo-yo’ing, ambivalence about the institution now, it’s been a huge part of my queer story.
Which is probably why I spent the last week, not just frantically tweeting about the New York bill and calling senators all the time, but also trying to insulate myself from my own history and from an expected legislative disappointment with stories about fictional kids who weren’t even a potential concept on the narrative landscape of my childhood.
See, this sort of painful, annoying drive I have to personalize everything and make everything a narrative? Well that was the only way I was ever going to get stories about people like me twenty, twenty-five years ago, because there weren’t any. I had to be self-involved because there was no one else to be involved with instead.
Marriage equality doesn’t change my life. It’s just a thing that makes it seem like the fight’s a little smaller, and I’m a little realer. It makes me feel safer walking down the street (although, in truth, anti-gay violence is expected to rise in the city in the wake of this), more comfortable calling the cops, and freer to say “my partner” without getting any damn backlash. With marriage equality in my state, the idea of being in any closet seems antiquated.
This morning, I’ve seen a flurry of emails and tweets along the lines of “did that really happen?” And that’s when I smile at my supposedly petty defense mechanisms of the last week. Of course it did.
You know how I know?
It happened in the wrong order.
But it happened. It really did. And I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t as happy for the idea of stories as I am for all the real people (myself included) who never should have had to fight to get here.
It’s been a long week of hard work and hard play, and I’m paying for it today.
That said, Glee Live was super fun last night, with the added bonus that they were filming for the 3-D movie, so we got some extra treats, like Jane Lynch and Gwenyth Paltrow. I was also pretty much in the perfect seats by the small stage. So, life was sweet, and while it was entirely less emotional than the somewhat surprising even that was the Darren Criss show, it was pretty lovely. Also, hilariously, it was Marci’s first concert ever. I can’t get over how weird that is.
In other news, I have news I can’t news at you yet. But some nice contract issues got resolved this week for things I have coming out in 2012. Announcements soon.
Additionally, we seem to have a pregnant squirrel nesting at least-part time in an empty flowerpot on our windowsill. This has caused much excitement on Twitter, so if you want to follow along I’m @racheline_m over there.
Mostly though, I’m preoccupied with the looming marriage equality vote that may or may not happen in New York State. Briefly, our Assembly has passed a marriage equality bill every year for years, and every year the Senate manages to either block its passage or its even coming to the floor. Last year, I watched the vote live, thinking I’d get some sort of West Wing miracle of human decency, and even while I wasn’t expecting it to pass, I cried when it didn’t.
This year, there are two days left in the legislative session — today and Monday. We are within one vote, with several swing votes in play, of it passing. The general consensus is that it will pass, if the Senate lets it go to a vote, which they seem disinclined to do. 58% of New Yorkers support marriage equality. The bill has carve-outs (which aren’t even legally necessary) to “protect” religious institutions from having to marry people they don’t want to marry.
I’ll be frank, marriage equality is a ridiculously fraught issue for me. Marriage is a fraught issue for me — I have a lot of feelings, often conflicting, about it around gender, generational expectations, queer culture, and desire. But it’s utterly central to my being deemed fully human by the state. It is to me not a referendum on my relationship, but on my humanity and safety. And it’s been all I can think about for the last week (seriously, half my tweets from the shows I was at this week were about marriage equality).
It is so heartbreaking to wait. It is so heartbreaking to be told that human rights or desire or activism or love are simply not enough for people to be able to stomach my full inclusion in society. It is so heartbreaking to hold my breath while people have a nice little vote that feels too much like an exercise in junior high bullying on whether or not I get to be one of their kind today.
That we are on this cusp of change is a place I never expected to see in my lifetime. But now that we’re here, I am impatient; I am scared; and I am unable to fathom how people can say “this is a hard issue” when we’re just people with messy apartments and funny pets and boring jobs and so much goddamn resilience asking to be heard, when the ask should never, ever, not once have been necessary.
For those that say patience, for those that say next year, for those that say we have endured so long we can endure a little more or wait for demographic change to save us, I say this: every day we don’t have marriage equality is another day that someone doesn’t make it to the finish line with us. There are already so many people who should have gotten to see a day that isn’t here yet and didn’t get to because of ignorance and fear and disease and hatred. We can’t wait. It’s so cruel to make us wait.
If you live in New York State, please, call the undecided senators immediately. Please also call your senators to either thank them for their support or to tell them where you stand.
I know not everyone can call for all sorts of perfectly legitimate reasons. But “I don’t feel like it,” “I really unprefer the phone” and “I’m not an activist” aren’t really good enough today.
To be fair, I avoid live music in NYC nearly as much as I can. We have a lot of venues here with bad acoustics and terrible sight lines, and shows here are expensive and difficult. I lived in DC in the early ’90s where I went out every night and saw everyone AMAZING in tiny clubs for like $10, and I’ve been ruined for most shows ever since.
So when I dropped a bit of change to go to the Darren Criss gig at Irving Plaza, I was very clear with myself: this wasn’t about seeing a gig; this was about being fannish, and it would be a silly, wacky lark, the end.
Um, no.
It was seriously one of the most ridiculously amazing live shows I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen everyone.
Criss’s show could have been negligible in any number of ways. And, at the top of that list, at least if you push aside the inherent oddity of being in a crowd that’s 98% female and 90% under 22, was that it could have been very trite and fluffy. He’s a joyous performer known for singing pop hits on Glee and writing ridiculous musicals. Sure, it’s fun, but the “there’s no there, there” argument isn’t really that hard to make.
Except there was real ballast to this, even as he was able to have all sorts of people join him on stage (from Starkids to Warblers) that certainly hit all the fandom buttons. Maybe it’s got something to do with the way we see so much more of the fame process in the age of Twitter and Tumblr, but there was just a touch of sorrow to his acoustic version of “Teenage Dream” and the whole crowd I was with sort of all looked at each other with a wordless sort of ache during key lines in “Part of this World.”
But perhaps most remarkable (I mean, other than my hearing may never recover from the screams that greeted certain on stage guests — oh my god, Naya Rivera), was how an audience that was the epitome of kids screaming “I love you,” somehow morphed into a whole lot of people loving themselves and the moment more than some untouchable idol.
We hung out in the balcony (because we are clever and wise), sang along with all the songs, watched scads of people in the crowd below blow bubbles (yes, really, it was that much of a hearts in my eyes love-in), and kept checking Twitter for updates on the equal marriage legislation currently on the move in New York State. It was, sort of by accident, a whole bunch of things that matter to me, all happening in the same room at the same time; and it’s always that sort of serendipity I go for more than anything.
It was also one hell of a nostalgia trip — for being 16; for sinking into Harry Potter fandom in my 20s; for having silly day dreams about boys when I was twelve.
Finally, it was also a lesson in ambition and graciousness (of the sort I probably need early and often). I’m not always kind, and I don’t always want things for the right reasons; of course, none of us always are, none of us always do. But if there was ever a demonstration of the links between generosity and success and love shared being love multiplied, this was it.
Utterly freaky, gorgeous experience. If you are even slightly maybe a fan, if you get to see Criss play a gig, it’s a don’t miss. Just, bring ear plugs; my hearing may never be the same.
It’s hyperbole to say, when looking around our very crowded apartment, that I don’t have a lot other than my name. But maybe, when you have a name like mine — that everyone tries to shorten or thinks you made up — it’s easier for it to seem a bigger and more solitary possession.
I haven’t always liked my name. I still don’t always. I got teased for it a lot as a kid (“Do you have a rash?”) and everyone still mispronounces it. Auditions and business meetings invariably begin with explaining to people how they’re getting it wrong and then being all cute and flirty about how I’ll give them three tries to get it right.
And I do give people three tries, before just sighing and resigning myself to all sorts of things that aren’t right but will totally do.
All that before we even get to my last name.
Despite this, the name is more or less here to stay. I went through a whole thing about becoming an Alex (for Alexander) or a Heather (the name I always used on a terrible job when I had to cold call Wall Street execs whom, upon hearing my last name would say, “Oh, like the dog?“) when I joined SAG and then then, once I decided to keep it, never really looked back; I’m not like other girls, so why should my name be? And the deed is done now anyway.
But sometimes it needs saying:
– No, I didn’t change my name.
– No, you can’t call me Rachel; my name doesn’t even sound like that.
– No, it’s not French.
– No, I do not have the falcon.
– No, I am not a dog.
– No, it’s not polite to ask people of Italian descent if they are related to mobsters.
– No, I am not to my knowledge a Maltese princess.
– And yes, I know it’s a handful.
Very few of us get to be in the world in the way we ask to be, and I would have never chosen this name for myself. But it’s still mine, and how I wear it matters even more than what it is.
Sorry I missed trash day last week folks. Housekeeping has never been my strong suit.
Around here life is quiet, but busy. I’ve just worked two 14+ hour days in a row, and Patty’s been recovering from an awful cold/flu thing. It’s also about a bazillion degrees in New York so we’ve been sticking charmingly close to home.
That said, we’ve been enjoying ice cream from Jeni’s. It’s an Ohio thing, but us New Yorkers can find it at Dean & Deluca. The price will appall you, but trust me, worth every penny. Honey pistachio? Brown butter almond brittle? Goat cheese and fig? Yes, please.
The week ahead promises to be sillier than I’m necessarily comfortable admitting. Friends are in from out of town; Marci and I are going to Glee Live, and just to own the concept of a week without any dignity at all, somehow I’m going to both the Darren Criss concert and the Charlene Kaye gig the night before (look, she does a jazz version of “Mad Tom of Bedlam,” so no matter what you think of the rest of this paragraph, you sort of have to admit that’s made of win).
Sometimes I think I’m in fandom because I was so bad at being twelve when I was twelve; I’m much better at it now. And speaking of the fannish experience, Patty’s got me watching Yami no Matseui which is so fandom’s id I don’t know what to do with it. It’s an education, and I’m enjoying it more than I would have expected.
All of that aside, I’m still doing stuff and some of it I’ll even talk about here!
First up, I just recorded a podcast as part of an amazing panel of women for Broad Universe that was super fun on LGBT themes and writing. I’ll link to it when it’s up.
Also from the department of the sound of my own voice: if you want to hear me talk about gender identity, bullying and be sort of loopy before getting on a plane to Los Angeles, the recording of the Livestream I did with the Harry Potter Alliance is up. There are things on there I wish I’d done better or said more clearly or judiciously (this is always true), but overall, I think it’s decent and hopefully useful to someone. It was a valuable learning experience for me and really fun.
Meanwhile, someone quoted a bit from my essay in Whedonistas as the lead-in to a discussion/poll about the “Xander gives Buffy advice about Riley” scene. I find that scene appalling. But other people don’t. I’ve already said my bit in the essay and am not engaged in the convo, but you can chat about it on LiveJournal.
Nearly finally, I have a story coming out in an anthology edited by Joselle Vanderhooft. The anthology is called Bitten by Moonlight, the story is called “Sanquali,” and it involves lesbian werewolves (as the whole antho does) and an alternate mannerpunk Rome. It’ll be out from Zumaya Books super soon, and when I have a link, I will update/share.
And last but not least, while I’ve already blogged this on LJ, my awesome nerd buddy of awesome, Christian, needs some help taking his top off (totally safe for work; he’s a transman working hard to afford some expensive surgery; and you can help by buying his stuff).
Have a great weekend, and remember kids, no matter how fannish you are about someone, unless they’re trying to crowd surf, don’t pull them off the stage.
It’s Pride month here in the US (see, we get a month, but we don’t get lots of basic human rights), which means, among other things, that it’s the season of Pride parades.
I’ve been going to New York Pride since I was in high school, missing it here and there for travel or rehearsals, but mostly going year after year. And I’ve watched Pride change from something angry, or at least defiant, in the 80s to the corporate excess of the post-2000 era to whatever it is now, which seems like a shadow of what it once was. And so, as it approaches this year, I’m a little bit torn about what to do. I don’t want to go if the whole thing just feels sad.
But it does feel sad, and not in the right ways. Because it’s not sad like it used to be when the moment of silence seemed to make the whole city hold its breath. Now it’s just sad because the route is shorter (due to city budget cuts that have impacted all parades) and the fact that fewer people turn out in favor of skipping right to the parties.
But honestly, I thought I was just being cranky and “hey you kids, get off my lawn” about this. But then a friend who has recently moved to Texas from NYC tweeted about Pride there, about how different it is in a state actively trying to take away your rights.
Which means all of this is about the evolution of community and about assimilation again. About how we’re not supposed to be able to have it both ways, but how we are supposed to be grateful for floats from Chipotle and Delta (do they make you feel more human?). And let’s not even get into the marginalization I feel as a woman at Pride — there’s the dance and the women’s dance. I am just as gay as you, and people shouldn’t make assumptions about gender, and I hate the many, many types of segregation that go on in my community (along lines that include orientations, genders and race).
My community. Which I feel like I need more than ever because we are in this fight for so many things that are so close, so close, right now. But that community feels more fractured, apathetic, and lost than it ever has. We weathered crises and have wound up at sea.
I’m working on a bit of fiction right now that requires me to imagine what it will be like — on the news, in certain cities — on the day when equal marriage is legalized on a national level here. I lived in DC for a long time, so it shouldn’t be that hard for me to find the image, the moment, my story needs. Certainly, I can list all sorts of things people partied or held vigil in front of the White House over; after all, I lived just a few blocks away for nearly five years.
Yet imagination is hard when you’ve spent your whole adult life waiting on something you’re sure will never come and yet can almost taste. You get muddled. You get confused. You forget how in a lot of cases life will just go on like nothing is different: you’ll still get stuck in traffic, lose your dry-cleaning ticket, and come home from work too tired and pissed off to flip on the TV, and so you may not even find out until someone tells you at the water cooler at work the next day.
Of course, for all those people, there will be the people that hear the second it happens, that will celebrate on the street, or honk their car horns or phone old friends from college or pour into bars, talking to strangers about all the people who didn’t get here with us. So many people will not have gotten there with us.
Right now, though, Pride in New York feels like a victim of the economy and so many years of waiting. I can’t not go, but the thought of it feels disappointing already.
Anyone out there got an answer, other than wait, about how to make it matter or at least seem enjoyable this year?
It’s Friday and I’m in Boston for the International Communication Association conference. Like a fool, when I flew up here early on Wednesday morning I was working under the “I’ll sleep in transit” plan that I engage in pretty much all the time. However, it’s slipped my mind that the flight between New York City and Boston is only 36 minutes. “I’ll sleep in transit” works just find when you’re popping between New York and California, or even if you’re doing the whole Northeast Corridor Amtrak thing.
But it’s a complete horror if your flight is only 36 minutes. So, since then, despite having a lot of editing and writing deadlines, I’ve either been running on pure adrenaline or unconscious. So I’m trying not to do the same thing regarding my 7am flight to Pittsburgh on Sunday, but you can see how this might get away from me. Most importantly, though, I have a14 hour work day ahead of me, and hope to be able to get said editing and writing done in the various inevitable downtime that comes with manning a conference booth. We shall see.
In news of the world, the New York Times has a piece on the controversy about mandatory skirts or dresses for female players competing in badminton at an elite level as well as a big interactive feature on teens coming out. There’s nothing about the teens coming out story you haven’t heard before, but it’s important to keep hearing it. It’s also important to note the problems in the Times’s intro piece to the feature, in which the journalist actively conflates sex, gender identity and gender performance in a way that’s, well, rude.
Finally, I’ve been sitting on something I’ve been meaning to write about Real Person Fiction for about a week, because I’ve been busy and got distracted by yesterday’s flying monkeys piece, but know that’s coming or something. Also, with the end of Glee for the season, you can probably anticipate pop-culture content here switching to my other preoccupations, which are about to start up (or which I’m slightly behind on) for their seasons: Doctor Who, Torchwood and Covert Affairs. That said, I totally have tickets to Glee Live, which may well be too ridiculous not to write about.
While Glee often causes me to ask somewhat bizarre questions, I never really anticipated that one of them would be Why is Kurt Hummel dressed like a flying monkey? And yet, this is the first thing I thought when filming stills started to leak weeks ago from the season finale finally broadcast this past Tuesday night. Even more surprising to me than the question, however, is that the question actually has an answer.
While that answer is obviously embedded in Kurt and Rachel’s performance of “For Good” when they break into Wicked‘s theater; there’s a lot more going on with Kurt, the Wizard of Oz (and Judy Garland) and its place in gay culture, and magicianship than I noticed, or would have expected, at first glance. It’s why I keep writing about this show, even when the other questions it evokes are often inane things like “Wait, Quinn swore vengeance and executed that vengeance by… getting her hair cut?” Alas, I don’t have an answer for that one.
When Kurt and Rachel get to the Wicked theater, break in, and are not chased off by a security guard (who gives them fifteen minutes on the stage to confront their dreams), Kurt tells Rachel that the only way for her to solve her dilemma (a career vs. love conundrum that is both annoyingly conservative and relatively common) is to sing. As they stand in front of the Kansas set background and Rachel protests the lack of orchestra, Kurt tells her to imagine one, and then, with a wave of his hand, not only is there an orchestra, but the set has switched to the black and green of Oz, at which point Rachel launches into the song with the lyrics, “I’m limited,” which go on to say that Kurt (who is cast here in the Glinda role), can do all the things she can’t.
Which leads us to wonder, what are those things? After all, Rachel gets far more solos than Kurt. His voice may be beautiful, but no one knows what to do with him half the time, and as much as the glee club is happy to have him back, his song choices, performative styling and apparent gender variance are still a sticking point, albeit one that’s fonder than it’s been in the past.
The thing is, Kurt does have a skill, a magic, that Rachel doesn’t have. And it is an imagination that wills things in the world. It’s no accident that Kurt’s imagination transforming the stage comes a week after “Funeral,” an episode in which he leads the glee club in “Pure Imagination.” Nor is it an accident that this performance also follows closely on the heels of his return to McKinley with “As If We Never Said Goodbye,” re-purposed from its original meaning into another moment where Kurt makes what is unreal (sets, stage craft, performance) real.
Kurt, of course, has always been doing this, but until his adventures at Dalton (which is explicitly faerieland in Glee — even moreso than McKinley. At Dalton there are no classes, no teachers, no sense of home or context or place. One of the first things Kurt asks once he meets with Blaine and the Warblers council there is “is everyone here gay?” And let’s not forget, once having consumed food (okay, coffee) in faerieland he winds up staying so much longer than previously anticipated), Kurt’s imagination has been a site of toxicity for him. This toxicity, and failure, was highlighted particularly strongly in his pursuit of Finn, a situation in which Kurt tried to use the force of his imagination to will his desire into the world — and fails with significant consequences for multiple people. He later tries the same thing with similar results, to a lesser extent, with Sam.
Dalton changes all that. Not because it is a safe environment, but because it is part of the ordeal. There is initiation (“Teenage Dream”), apprenticeship (his failed audition with “Don’t Cry for Me Argentina” where his giftedness is a flaw because it is untrained and unapproved; this is then followed by his misery during “Soul Sister” where he must accept a place of smallness that’s alien to him and feels cruel even in its necessity), acceptance of powerlessness (present not just in the events that drive Kurt to Dalton, but include that whole mess with Jeremiah and Blaine), evolution of perception through events related to altered states and sexuality (Rachel’s car crash of a party and the events of “Sexy”), and, ultimately a reclaiming of power (challenging Blaine about all his solos) before being elevated to various statuses long sought through group (the Warblers granting him the duet with Blaine) and personal acclaim (Blaine’s “You move me.”).
That Kurt is finally able to make himself seen, not just professionally, but personally, because of a performance regarding a dead bird (yes, it’s ludicrous and actively ignores the original context of the Beatles song “Blackbird,” but that’s nothing new for Glee) in which he is dressed in black and wearing an animal skull brooch (Kurt, in fact, has a collection of brooches in the theme of “dead animals,” even if most of them are little plastic replicas of the mounted heads of much larger beasts), clearly portrays Kurt as a magus, newly arrived and stating his desire to be recognized.
Death is transformation and alchemy, and as Kurt chooses to take control of his situation by moderating everyone else’s interaction with that death by being chief mourner and mortician for Pavoratti (okay, I know, I know… dead bird, just stay with me folks), Kurt is finally able to will what he’s been wanting for a while (a boyfriend, Blaine, and center stage) into being. It’s also the start of the path that gets him back to McKinley (because he makes people desire his presence — Santana may be self-serving, but she’s also serving Kurt and his gifts), New Directions and eventually New York. All of these are, as mentioned above, locations and situations in which we see repeated demonstrations of Kurt’s power to make what he imagines real, and, thanks to Rachel, in the season two finale we see that power recognized externally on an overt basis for the first time.
Which gets us back to Why is Kurt Hummel dressed like a flying monkey? (a phrase, which, I’ll admit, is just really fun to say over and over again). In the land of Oz, the flying monkeys were free creatures who did as they pleased until they were enslaved. In pop-culture (and political cartoons), they often appear as minions and irritants, powerful only in their ability to serve and to be disruptive — that is, they cause decay to what already exists, but do not transform or create newness, at least not in their abused state.
So, Kurt arrives in New York in that guise (Kurt’s clothes, while always outrageous, are rarely actively ugly, at least to my eye, but the furred epaulets on that jacket from Lip Service are truly ridiculous and both it, and the hat, are sort of out of the range of Kurt’s more typical fashion vocabulary, even if he wears a lot of stuff from Lip Service); sheds it when he gives Rachel her magic moment (in which she points out that he’s actually the magic — she sings to him, and he sings out to the audience); and then returns to Lima, Ohio, to declare victory, dressed in Oz’s colors — silver and green — having been liberated and having brought the magic home. This possession of magic is here confirmed to us both with Blaine’s “I love you” and with Kurt then declaring that, all in all, he really has had a pretty good year.
Giving Kurt a “hero’s journey” on Glee was always going to be a daring choice, because he’s a gay kid and because he performs gay in the particular way he does. But to take a gay kid who the world too easily wants to read as weak and make him a magician — that is, someone with the power to change others and bend reality to his will — is a truly risky and starling choice. It makes Kurt powerful, threatening, and seductive. It normalizes his gender presentation through function (because in a dichotomous system magicianship requires a union of the genders and an ability to step outside that union); and it confronts, side-steps and perhaps even embodies Glee‘s awkward preoccupation with the “predatory gay” stereotype, with a sort of enviable power.
Kurt, like most of Glee‘s main characters, has another year in Lima, but his season two arc shows us that he’s already gotten out.
Letters from Titan 
