This is Sitting Queerly, a newsletter focused on the late blooming queer experience, the lofty goal of opening up conversations and celebrating those who embrace their full selves.
Growing up, I knew there were artists that were queer or suspected of being so. Freddie Mercury. Elton John. George Michael. Prince.
Then and now, there have been intentionally queer anthems. Among the innumerable, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way.” The Weather Girls’ “It’s Raining Men.” Katy Perry’s “I Kissed A Girl.” “The Origin Of Love” from Hedwig and the Angry Inch. The soundtracks from Avenue Q and Rent.
And since accepting my queerness, I’ve gravitated toward some of those queer anthems and other queer artists such as Orville Peck, Zee Machine, Bentley Robles and Jordy.
I didn’t start listening to any of these artists or songs until fairly recently, though. Some, of course, weren’t on the scene yet. But others, well, I subconsciously couldn’t let myself enjoy. They were queer and I (hoping, refusing, denying) was not.
But I was queer. Am queer. And from my teenage years that led me to associate the feelings that came with that part of myself with other songs, songs that either were only vaguely or not at all associated with queerness. Given my shame and guilt, some of those songs also inspired darker feelings and inclinations, but some also allowed me to daydream about what it could be like to be who I thought I could never be.
These are my top five secret queer anthems.
I’ll Be That Girl (1998)
Barenaked Ladies’ Stunt was one of the first CDs I ever bought once I had my own walkman. It was at the height of their popularity and a lot of other guys had the album, including the cocky and athletic upperclassman in my French class who I couldn’t help but steal glances of when he came into class after our lunch period.
The first two tracks—“One Week” and “It’s All Been Done”—were my favorites because I was unoriginal and boring. But Track 4, “I’ll Be That Girl”, also drew me but I would never have admitted it.
The band has said the song is about autoerotic asphyxiation—
...All the things I’d do to make myself turn blue…
Tie my pantyhose around my neck…
—which I did not know about because hello, sheltered youth, and thus didn’t make that connection. A lot of fans interpret the lyrics to be about unrequited love of the male narrator for a woman, who could be in another relationship with a man or a woman or is just supremely narcissistic…
If you will not have me as myself'
perhaps as someone else
perhaps as you I’ll be worth noticing.
I, however, heard it as something else: the sorrowful lament of a man for another man.
It’s a messy interpretation, given the band’s explanation and that it does sound like the narrator is speaking to a woman and offering to be like her to get her attention.
But I connected with the idea of becoming a woman to get a guy’s attention, especially any guy I knew and was secretly infatuated with because they were all straight. Even the line “If I were you, and I wish that I were you” spoke to this as I liked to pretend that my infatuation was just my wanting to be like guys I admired.
Of course, I couldn’t become a woman, I could never become someone they could love. And that’s where the song’s references to depression and suicide came in
If I had a gun there’d be no tomorrow…
It’s time to kick off your shoes
Learn how to choose sadness
It’s time to throw off those chains
Addle our brains with madness
And now, revisiting the song and its lyrics so many years later, I find an expanded meaning in the last lines before the final refrain, which seem to hearken to my late-blooming queer journey.
When you’re done
With being beautiful and young
When that course has run
Then come to me.
Ordinary Day (2002)
Oh the amount of music I hoarded in college thanks to the likes of KaZaa and Limewire. I had roommates who tuned me onto a lot of music I otherwise never would have considered and many of which became some of my favorites, such as Explosions In The Sky, The Appleseed Cast and Daft Punk, among others.
But I was also drawn to particularly poppy songs, and Vanessa Carlton was among the singer-songwriters I gravitated toward.
“Ordinary Day” is…ordinary, at least in intentional message. About a girl dreaming of loving a boy and upon waking finding him to be real. But by this time, my growing understanding that I was queer or at least wanted more from guys than just friendship, led me to inject myself into the song as the narrator, as I secretly dreamed I could wake to such a reality.
Just a dream, just an ordinary dream
As I wake in bed
And that boy, that ordinary boy
Was it all in my head?
Didn't he ask if I would come along
It all seemed so real, but as I looked to the door
I saw that boy standing there with a deal…
La Valse d’Amelie (2001)
My college girlfriend introduced me to the movie Amelie, which remains a favorite of mine. The whimsy of the story, the setting, the characters drew me in from the first time I saw it. And the same goes for Yann Tiersen’s soundtrack of charming instrumental music.
There are several versions of Tiersen’s “La Valse d’Amelie” in the movie but it’s the main score played at the end of the movie that fed my queer longings. This was because it was played over the end scene where Audrey Tautou is in bed with Mathieu Kassovitz, his head on her chest as she gently held his head and ran her fingers through his hair. I would simultaneously imagine I was in both actor’s positions, as I secretly longed to embrace a man in that way and to have a man embrace me that way as well. It didn’t hurt that Kassovitz was cute.
Resurrection Fern (2007)
This song by Iron & Wine probably has absolutely nothing to do with queerness.
Sam Beam, as far as I know, has not offered an official explanation of the song’s meaning. However, many others have postulated that the song and its heavy allegories is about the civil rights movement…
Grandma’s gun, and the black bear claw
that took her dog…
When sister Lowery says ‘Amen’
We won’t hear anything.
The story woven throughout it all implies the awkward, uncertain relationship between whites and Blacks, a dark history that could always revive or the possibility for a miraculous harmony, much like how the resurrection fern, which is native to the American South.
From my first listen of the song, though, I immediately identified it with my own queer feelings, specifically with my first understanding of my queerness tied to my childhood best friend. The opening lines set the scene immediately, suggesting two boys just living as they’ve been told to live. And yet, there’s that sense of shame around what the boys both want…
And the falling house across the way
It'll keep everything
The baby's breath, our bravery wasted
And our shame.
Growing up, those feelings remain and yet are unfulfilled…
In our days we will say
What our ghosts will say
We gave the world what it saw fit
But what'd we get?”
But it’s the refrain that most spoke to me, the first two lines reminding me of those feelings I had as a boy…
And we’ll undress beside the ashes of the fire
both our tender bellies wrapped in baling wire…
Then the oak tree and its resurrection fern.
…calling to mind the man I became with the seemingly past feelings for my friend still capable of springing to life.
Brothers On A Hotel Bed (2005)
It’s more recently that I’ve associated this Death Cab for Cutie song with my queerness, specifically with my embrace of who I am.
I’ve seen folks explain it primarily as a song about two lovers growing apart, and some also see it as a metaphor for growing up. I take that latter interpretation a step further, with the song being about the acceptance of my queerness and how the person I had lived my life as was gone.
You may tire of me as our December sun is setting 'cause I'm not who I used to be
No longer easy on the eyes but these wrinkles masterfully disguise the youthful boy below
Coming in next week’s newsletter…
A letter home from camp about my queer unemployed summer vacation.