As my plane landed at JFK I could feel the excitement thumping in my chest.  I was in dire need of a New York getaway.  Overall the northern aesthetic gives me terrifying chills of my youth - but it wasn’t winter get and I felt okay dealing with the weather-beaten ancient buildings.

If my Tampa friends are my heart then my New York friends are my hands and feet.  Mobile.  Fast paced.  Creative.  Manic.  With no desire to join the “rat race” I do enjoy making occasional cameos.

And so my fourth night in the city I found myself in the middle of a dance floor.  The millisecond the song began I knew what it was.  I’d heard those same opening chords at my high school dances nearly two decades earlier.  My ears will never deny the power of Madonna’s “Deeper And Deeper”.  It truly was the perfect moment.  Me in New York City.  Madonna’s music circa 1992 getting spun.  I whirled around the dance floor like the ghost of my former dance floor self.  Unlike the Jeremy Gloff who closed down Buffalo’s Club Marcella every weekend in 1995, after I heard Madonna I was ready to call it a night.  My friends were getting more and more drunk, the obligatory fights were breaking out, and my New York adoration was wearing thin.

But before I left I made myself stand in one spot and survey the room.  Here I was in the biggest city in the United States - the creative mecca of the western hemisphere - the top of the ladder - and all I could do was roll my eyes.  Different city, different club, different sub-culture, and what do you know - everyone was dressed exactly the same.  That night in New York I wasn’t surrounded by goths, circuit party boys, punks, or hippies.  Nor was this the boring “mainstream”.  This was a different kind of party - a “Queercentric” one.

It wasn’t I who labeled that party in New York “Queercentric”.  It was a word tossed around the entire evening.  Eccentric queers?  I was game.

Immediately I noticed a good majority of the boys were wearing dresses.  Challenging gender expectations is always a plus, but it didn’t feel very triumphant to me inside a bubble where all the non-conformists seemed to be conforming to eachother.  Perhaps outside of that room a hairy large man wearing a tight pink latex jump suit would turn heads.  Inside of that room it felt more like a uniform than an expression of free thought.  Drop that same man in the middle of West Virginia then we can call it a revolution.

Beyond the clothing were my the behavioral observations.  Much like at hip hop clubs, swing clubs, rave clubs, and country-western clubs, at this Queercentric party in New York the boys’ dancing style was rather universal.  Whereas perhaps I was supposed to feel like I was observing unbridled self-expression, instead I felt like I was watching a flock of sheep trying to out-weird each other.  At this point in my life I’d opt for a room full of old crotchety bridge-players above a room full of people enraptured by their own scripted bizarreness.  Nothing felt sincere about this counter-culture.  It was an intentionally ugly anti-fashion show.  Which is basically a mainstream fashion show turned inside out.  Same posturing - different budget.

I understand the gimmick.  Embracing what is stereotypically “ugly” and re-dressing it as beauty.  I’m also aware that parties like these are a wonderful opportunity for men to explore their femininity in a safe, danger-free zone, free from judgment (unless Jeremy Gloff is there.)

I only mourn the sense of uniformity and conformity you find in so many counter-cultures.  Will these boys ever embrace this androgyny beyond the walls of that dirty Manhattan club?  Or is it merely a tool to get attention and status amongst a group of like-minded (and like-attired) people?

I arrived in New York ready for creativity and expanded intellect.  Instead, I left only with memories of a group of people imprisoned by their limited empowerment.

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