It’s the moment. Max and I are looking at each other outside the restaurant, their slender frame smaller than my larger, lumpier one. I am wearing what I thought would appeal to them: a pink linen shirt, slightly flowy, I wore my light chinos and rolled up the cuffs, wore derby shoes with non-visible socks. In short, I look like a queer snack. They are wearing a poncho, blue eye shadow, I swear that there is glitter in their beard that I have been staring at all night over dinner. They stretch their arms wide for the embrace and I lean in for the kiss; they turn their head and I get a mouthful of beard and glitter. Okay, friends, I think and pat their back in a brotherly way to let them know I’m on the same page. We walk our respective ways and I look back to see if they turn around. They do not.

Later, I ask them out again over text. They reply “Sorry, had a blast. you’re not queer enough.”

It’s a weird and wonderful and heartbreaking and horrible time to be gay in America. I grew up in a Catholic household in the 80s in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This was when the AIDS epidemic hit during the Regan administration, and this period of my adolescence was formative in the first iteration of how I presented as a gay man when I eventually came out. I remember my first fantasies of getting married, having a white picket fence in the suburbs, me and my husband having a talking cat-butler (okay I was already a little weird as a kid). My type at the time was cis-male, preppy, masculine, and boring as fuck.

It wasn’t until I moved to Los Angeles in 2001 that I started expanding my ideals of beauty. Although I moved there with a day job, it didn’t make ends meet so I took a side job doing coatcheck and occasionally door for Micky’s in West Hollywood. Now for those of you who know this bar, this was Micky’s PF (Pre-Fire). It was dim, dingy, the second floor was used only for the manager’s office and storage. The owners would always joke about setting the place on fire on purpose and collecting the insurance money to remodel the place. It came as a huge coincidence when there was a large fire that gutted the club a few years later, and the bar was remodeled to have a second floor bar, shiny surfaces everywhere, and basically looked like the bridge of the Enterprise.

Being suddenly immersed in gay culture was good for me and I lapped it up like a thirsty man in a very gay desert. Gay culture is taking a large poop and checking out your ab definition in the mirror afterwards. I went to drag shows, had many gay friends for the first time, and the large city meant I could now date men with cultures and backgrounds far different than mine. Surprising myself by being attracted to the feminine was a breakthrough to Mike in his twenties.Still, there was a feeling of otherness I had, a sneaking suspicion that though West Hollywood was paradise for some, and a necessary safe space for so many, I always felt a little strange, a little…queerer than some.

It wasn’t until I moved to Portland in June of 2013 that I truly started embracing my queerness. If you’re reading this and you don’t know the difference between queer and gay, well I’m living it, and I don’t even understand some days. Growing up, the word used to be an insult at Albuquerque High School, a softer version of calling someone a faggot. Part of why I call myself queer is a certain reclamation of the word; in the same vein, the same rules apply  when I call my gay friends “fag”. We can say the word, straight people cannot.

There’s a certain otherness, a certain living outside heteronormative, that queerness demands. Queerness rejects the gender binary and embraces the vast spectrum of how love is expressed. But what role do I have, as a (latino, but “passing” as) white, cismale, in being a champion for queer culture? Do I, as a cismale who wears preppy shirts and prefers monogamous relationships, even have a right to claim queer culture as my own? And the more I ask questions, the more pop up: Do I act more femme around femmes to fit in? Is my queerness performative? Do I just want to be in the Cool Kids Club, and if that club is an exclusive one, isn’t it the opposite of queer? Is it a form of privilege even to live in a country where this is your dilemma, this is your debate?

And that’s where I sit now, in this weird limbo between gay and queer culture. I sometimes feel like I don’t quite have the right to identify as queer. What do I have to contribute? Is dating a man made up of wine boxes enough to include me in queer culture? What if I’m simply too old to become more queer, to be heard and respected by queer youth? And what role does me being a white-passing, cismale man play in my feelings about being rejected from the queer community? I wish I could wave a magic wand and get the answers I want. There is a certain part of me that feels like the homonormative, assimilationist influence of my past still bubbles up. To shine a light on that is exercising my queer power, to embrace it as evolving into something else even more formidable. To be queer is to practice radical compassion, to be soft. Sometimes soft is an armor, sometimes being soft is a way to be hard. You just need to practice compassion just as radical to yourself as to others.

Identifying as queer isn’t all roses and cute lip gloss, and it sure isn’t glitter beards. Then there are the divisions we create inside our own community: there is the entitled queer who rejects people’s slow journeys to queerhood, there’s the ageist queer who dismisses the art not created by his peers. Yes, it’s a brave new queer world, but only if it’s a world for everyone. By its very definition, queer culture embraces people who don’t quite fit in anywhere else, it celebrates the marginalized and the gender nonbinary and the beautiful femmes. And while I wasn’t queer enough for Max, I’m not butthurt about it (wait is butthurt homophobic?); that’s just where they’re at in their queer journey, and I love their journey anyway. I don’t have to be queer enough for them.

I’m queer enough for me.

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, then you’re a terrible person you should sample that recent time it was my birthday, or the time I was worried about my rotten cat. Let’s be horrible people together!