A while ago, I received an unsolicited snatchmail from an editor at Xtra, the homosexualist fortnightly that is the flagship of the “nonprofit” empire that runs almost all the gay media in this country. The empire, which also includes several (“nonprofit”) “hookup” services, is run by one man, unemployable anywhere else, who is an occasional source quoted in “journalistic” articles in his own papers. We won’t get rid of him till he is forced to retire or croaks.
The editor wrote to say that I was a former contributor to Xtra (an understatement: I was a columnist for years and writer of many feature articles, including cover stories) and frequent writer of letters to the editor. He wanted to meet.
I wrote back saying “I smell an offer of a column.” I assumed that, despite access to every tendril of official homosexualist culture (they are that culture), Xtra couldn’t find a contrarian or oppositional voice. They believed I was such a voice. I surmised that someone noted my coinage of the term maladaptive and figured I was some kind of Log Cabin Republican who could be wheeled out every second issue to write articles deriding trannies and championing gun ownership among the “castrated effeminate population.”
In effect, somebody wanted me to be Xtra’s house nigger.
But what happened? Nothing. The editor refused to meet anywhere but a coffeeshop in the ghetto. I told him I didn’t want to end up at the Senior Citizen’s Timothy’s with grizzled positoids and pensioners overhearing our conversation. (I often retell this story by adding “and blogging it on their LiveJournal,” but these people cannot run a computer. Or afford one.) I suggested neutral territory, like Balzac’s. No dice.
Little did he know that, while I could write an oppositional or contrarian gay column, it would not oppose or be contrary to what he expected. And anyway, I had since decided I wanted to write “Fagonomics,” a column on gays in unusual professions. (You can’t handle the truth!) I would like to write this anyway, in fact, but I have enough unpaid work on my plate.