Spicy, Vulnerable, Caring

And how to balance adult content and dating...

Hello friends, and welcome from another Ohio city, Cleveland! I hope you all had a lovely Halloween filled with whatever kind of joy you wanted it to have. This edition has a bit of a strange format and two guest writers! One, Jacob Hogue, wrote a piece specifically for Gay Buffet about the History of Cincinnati, and it's fascinating. The second is taken from a Substack I subscribe to by Leo Herrera. It's titled "Ode to Chandler” and is a piece dedicated to Matthew Perry. I wanted to include it not only because it's timely and beautifully written but also because he uses it to look at the impact that Friends had on queer representation among its flaws. It's a great piece, and I'll include the link to his substack as well, should you want to subscribe! But that's enough intro; let's dive in! 

The Paris of America

Cincinnati has always been positioned as a sort of backwater, conservative city without a queer history, but it was "The Paris of America" in the mid to late 19th century and hosted scores of queer people that defied explanation. Charlotte Cushman, one of America's first celebrity actresses, was a queer woman who became popular for her cross-dressing portrayal of Romeo on the American stage. She owned The Spencer House, a landmark hotel in Cincinnati's Public Landing, for several decades until her death in 1876. Charlotte was not the only queer celebrity making an impact in Cincinnati in the mid to late 19th century.

Annie Hindle, the country's very first "Drag King," had invented the performance genre of male impersonation in England in the late 1860s before moving to America. By the time that Hindle moved to Race Street in Cincinnati around 1872, they were one of the most popular names in

variety theater. Remarkably, it was reported in 1874 that Hindle had become the "sole manageress and proprietoress" of The Grand Central Variety Theatre, located on Sixth Street between Main Street and Walnut Street. While America loved Hindle, the fact that they were different was always apparent.

As the Cincinnati Post put it, "all of her admirers were women, as strange as that may seem." While the press overlooked Hindle's many relationships with women in the early part of their career, their overt queerness would soon threaten everything.

It's possible that Hindle had been married to several women prior to getting legally married to Annie Ryan in 1886 under the name "Charles Ryan," but the press caught on this time. The reporter who broke the story accused Hindle of pretending to be a woman in order to be a successful male impersonator: a male, impersonating a male impersonator. The speculation and criticism drove Hindle away from the stage, where they faded from the mainstream spotlight for a brief time. That was, until Annie Ryan died five years later, and the press was reminded about the truly peculiar circumstances surrounding their lives. Hindle became even more in the public spotlight when they married another woman named Louise Spangehl just a few months later. Like many of their previous relationships, however, this one doesn't appear to have lasted long. Hindle moved back to Cincinnati in the 1890s, where they performed primarily in the city's Dime museums while living on Mound Street for a brief time with a woman named Jennie Kramer. Despite being declared as "lying at the point of death" at their home in Cincinnati in 1897, Hindle appears to have lived until the early 20th century before falling off the face of the earth. No one knows what happened to the country's first drag king, but if their ghost is anywhere, I'm sure it has returned to the Queen City.

Jacob Hogue is a graduate student in Public History at Northern Kentucky University. He serves on the Board of Directors at Urbanist Media, is a contributor to Queens of Queen City, and is the founder of the popular Instagram account Queen_City_Queer_History. Jacob is on cast as a speaker with Stand Up History and is currently under contract to write his debut book: Cincinnati Before Stonewall: The Untold Queer History of the Queen City! And I am so so grateful to him for writing this section this week!

“A few weeks ago, I started watching Friends again as a refuge from the news. Any episode from its peak seasons is as comforting as warm mashed potatoes. There's been a recent condemnation of the show, think pieces on how white, homophobic, transphobic, fat-phobic it was (and it was all those things), so I wanted to see how it held up for my column on '90s culture. It's a bummer I finished it as Matthew Perry died at 54.

As a Mexican immigrant, assimilation meant survival in high school...I soon found that pop culture could be my entry point. I studied it like it was my SATs. Thursdays, when Friends aired, was my favorite night because the next day I'd have something to start conversations. A line from the show guaranteed a laugh, and Chandler Bing's zingers were perfect for awkward high school boys. 

The very thesis of the show felt fresh: failing at life going into your 30s was okay as long as you had people who loved you. This was a post-Grunge generation examining itself and the greed of the '80s. The show also captured a love for NYC before gentrification made it nearly impossible for a character like Phoebe, a masseuse, to afford a Manhattan apartment (although much has been said about the unrealistically large apartment Monica lived in, it was a family inheritance).

Friends is one of the last great American multi-camera sitcoms...Watching the show now, there are many issues with it, as with all media of the time. It's got really problematic moments, but for each of those, there were also progressive politics and Queer solidarity. Friends was one of the first times I saw Gay characters on TV that were not in a "special episode." The show premiered with Ross being left for a Lesbian and even featured a Gay wedding! It was a revelation to me, and so was his alternative family of raising a child with them.

It's easy to pile on Friends for what it didn't do, but we also have to give it credit for what it didn't do. Its Queer characters were usually played as smarter people not villains. The Gay jokes were nothing compared to the violent homophobia of other media at the time. In fact, the subtext of most of the homophobia, such as Chandler's disgust at the male body and eternal worry about being seen as Gay, was always about insecurity not prejudice. Chandler may not have been fully Queer-coded, but he had a Queer pathos, uncomfortable in his body, traumatized by his dad being Gay and then Trans (his worst Thanksgiving memory was his father sleeping with his Latino housekeeper). That plot conflated Transgender, Drag, and Gay together in a way that was ignorant but not malicious. When the show revealed his "father" as a woman, they were portrayed by Kathleen Turner, an A-list legend, not a mustachioed woman or man in a wig. Phoebe's bisexuality and radical hippie ethos were effervescent, she preached about radical acceptance and spirituality without becoming a New Age cartoon. Even the same-sex kiss between Ross and Joey (for Joey's audition practice) was a testament to their bond and not played for disgust. The friends in Friends felt like people who would accept me as a Gay person. Without much direct representation, Queer people in the '90s had to make do with reflected acceptance.

Revisiting media needs to be taken in the context of experience, too, not just to punish its era. We tend to do that a lot now. For someone who never watched Friends when it aired, its problems won't be balanced by context or memory. I get the jokes differently as an adult. After living in New York, I appreciate what it said about success. As a Queer person, I'm grateful for what it showed me within the limits of the time. Watching Matthew Perry's addiction become apparent in his face as the seasons progressed, I sympathize because it mirrors so much of the Queer struggle with substances. I don't have the same yearning behind my laughter at fifteen, but now that Matthew is gone, it reminds me of all the friends I've lost too. There is nothing sadder than when a group of friends loses their clown.”

-Leo Herrera
(Substack Link Here)

On our last day in Minneapolis, eleven of us went to the Spirit Day celebration for QUEERSPACE Collective. As the day and event approached, I found myself getting nervous. I thought that the nervousness stemmed from holding myself responsible for the happiness of all those coming with me. This wasn't my responsibility, of course, but I couldn't stop it from happening. But then I realized a big underlying feeling for the nervousness was due to the amount of vulnerability that I was showing these witnesses by caring about this event and cause. I've always been really passionate about being gay and gay issues. As soon as I came out in high school, it became a huge part of who I was. I organized an event for National Coming Out Day, to which I wore socks that said gay in huge purple letters and a tank top saying "I <3 my boyfriend." But since then, I've always felt there's something oddly juvenile about caring too much. We go through many big, new feelings during puberty, and as we grow, emotions settle and grow duller. This is a biological process that is as natural as it is inevitable. 

This deep caring has never left me, though. There's something inexplicable about the way I feel about my connection to queer history. It's the reason why, after one trip to Fire Island and the way I talked about it, Casey thought I'd been going there for years. It's the reason I read so many history books about Queer people, and it's the reason why I write this newsletter. But it still makes me feel so vulnerable to care so much. 

By inviting my cast members to this event, I was putting myself out on a limb and asking them to care, too. And they came through so beautifully. Watching them all have a good time and watching the folks at the event brought me to tears, not once or twice, but three times. And yet, what has stuck with me as well is how nerve-wracking it is to show that you care about something. Because when you show that you care, that's when people can hurt you. You're opening yourself up by caring, but also to negative emotions. It's the argument in countless stories. Love and caring is what makes us manipulatable, but it's also our biggest strength. 

And I feel like we're showing that less as a society now. We pretend not to care because apathy cooler and because sometimes we don't have enough information to 'care correctly.' So we just repost and share and slap emojis on statements other people have made rather than taking the time to show our own thoughts and cares.

How can you show your caring a bit more to those who you want to see it? Is there someone you can tell how much you care about them that you've been putting off? What is the thing that you get giddily passionate about? Or the thing that inexplicably makes you want to cry because of your connection to it?  

Dear gb: I've currently been exploring various kinks and started making spicy 🌶️ content, but I'm worried how that will affect dating. A - how do you broach the subject, and B - can you keep these things separate successfully?

Dear friend, Congratulations on embarking on this new endeavor! I bet that it feels sort of fun and freeing, no? Before we dive into your situation specifically, I want to just say that I'm a huge proponent of making spicy content and empowering yourself through that! I was listening to a great podcast by Food 4 Thot, and they talk about how Twitter/Onlyfans/JustforFans/etc. is the most ethical form of porn consumption and creation. Disclaimer: I speak about this from a gay male perspective, and I recognize that it might not be the same for straight porn and especially women in that industry. But this type of creator-made porn channel does help bring the power back to the creator rather than massive studios who have notoriously treated their sex workers terribly. And it puts more power into the hands of the consumers. It lets people curate what they want to see and directly (financially) support the folx they want to. 

Okay, so now back to you. My advice would probably be to bring it up early just so there's no chance for the other person to feel like they're being led on (which I don't think you would be by waiting, but just to be safe). I think that the more casual you treat it, the less of a big deal it will be for your potential partner. If you make it a big deal, they might pick up on that. More and more people now are getting into 'homemade' porn, and I think it signals a really cool shift in the sexual zeitgeist. But you do have to respect if your partners don't have the same mindset that you do. 

Now if your partner is cool with it and if you want to keep that separate from your partner, that's a totally reasonable request. If they want to be involved, make sure you listen to them, but that's a form of work for you, and it would make sense that you'd want to keep work and personal life separate. That being said, I know some folks who make videos with their partners or have partners who also make videos separately and about every other permutation there could be. So, feel really good about whatever you want and feel comfortable with, and then convey that to your potential partner(s). Who knows how they will react to it and they could happily surprise you! 

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Well folks, that’s all from me (and Jacob and Leo) for today. Thanks for reading along and reading some outside authors! And stay tuned because next week is another non profit and it’s a really exciting one to me!

-Aidan