The sixth annual Gay and Lesbian Business Expo was in town this week at the Javits Center, sharing space with the Vibe Magazine event and Erotica 99 (It's Hot). For the first day, I was only there for two hours, and I was at the LGNY booth. At one point I was the only one there. I wound up being in the official sponsor photo.
On the second day, I spent the whole day there working the booth of the fabulous Brini Maxwell. I helped run the sound system I hawked videotapes. I chatted folks up. I spoke with Brini's mother about marketing and the Web. For someone who is not really corporate, it's amazing how much I have picked up from school and work.
Meanwhile, I noticed an abundance of mainstream companies -- realtors and investment houses. Century 21 "wants" us up in Connecticut. Read: Spend your money with us. The suburban movement includes gays, but does it include gay civil rights?
I know a lot of couples, gay and straight, who move off to the 'burbs and seem to forget about city life. Urban life is demonized, and "politics" are forgotten, like they are somehow city problems. The suburbs in and of themselves are not objectionable, but the idea that somehow politics and race relations and other issues are just "city things" takes root faster than a green lawn. It's as if you have arrived, safe and sound from those "city problems." Like they are all behind you. But they aren't. They are just carefully hidden.
And the realtors want you? The investment brokers want you? What they want is your money. Do they care about your rights? There is a safe warm feeling they are selling, that says, "be like everyone else and you'll fit right in." Until you get fired for being gay, or lose your health insurance because you're sick with HIV, or your kids get it between the eyes for having gender-concordant parents. And then that safety is gone.
I must sound like such a wild-eyed city boy, but I know about the 'burbs. I was raised in Great Neck and believe me, I spent 18 years dying to get away from every last person I knew there, except my parents. They moved us there to avoid the horrors of the city school system, and I learned. I learned three foreign languages, but I also learned how to fear being found out, being found out that I was different. So while I learned things, like where the Carpatho-Ukraine is, I also learned something else. Fear and loathing is born in the safest of places.
So go to the suburbs if you must, but don't think for a minute you are leaving all your problems back in the cities. They are just hiding better between the fences and the trees.
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