queer in little rock; or, composing bodies

Scene 1:

Sarah, Luke, and I have been in Little Rock for only a few hours Wednesday night and decide to see what the city’s like. With the help of Google, we find a piano bar that seems kind of fun, though it is kind of empty. When asked how we managed to hear about the bar, since we’re from out of town, our compositions come to the forefront. I had googled “queer bar” and “little rock,” but what is the safe terminology here? How do we compose our [queer] bodies so that it is safe for us? The bar seems queer friendly, but is “queer” a safe word here? I state instead that we googled “cool bar” and “little rock.”

The owner tells us we should go to a bar called Midtown, touted as one of Esquire Magazine‘s top 100 bars in the country. The bar is so dive, and how we sit, how we talk, and how we move are all suddenly more self-conscious. We find that much of the time we are Little Rock, we are concerned with self-presentation for the sake of self-preservation. Where are we safe? What streets will lead to our criminally queer bodies being the object of violence — verbally or physically? We meet a very drunk man named Jeff who is obsessed with our Oregonian-ness. As to why we are visiting Little Rock, we decide to soften the blow — the Feminism(s) and Rhetoric(s) Conference is suddenly just “a conference on rhetoric” to him. We don’t call him out on the use of the words “gay shirt” and “art fag.”

We leave later; our only scar is the red smear on Sarah’s elbow: having placed her elbow on the table, she found it sitting in a pool of red. We at first hoped it was ketchup, but once she had wiped it on her shirt to clean her elbow and it dried a bit later, it was the deep brown of dried blood.

Scene 2:

We are in a taxi Friday night. The driver introduces himself as Chicago Tom. He develops his Chicagoan ethos, telling us he moved to Little Rock because he got shot at twice in Chicago. He’s been in fights. He says he threatens other drivers who dare to damage his car. In Chicago, he tells us, he used to carry beer in the front seat, offering it to riders for only $2.00 a can. He confides in us as well that he used to drink while working. Not as much as his day off, when he’d drive the taxi anyway, because police don’t pull over taxis, and he’d get drunk as all hell and then drive home in his taxi. Sarah is terrified and squeezes my hand. As we are dropped off at a bar, he gives us his own personal phone number so we can call him specifically for a ride back to the hotel. Luke punches his phone number into his cell phone. He does not hit save.

Scene 3:

Friday afternoon. We have thoroughly enjoyed all the panels we have gone to and feel our panel was a success. We are now sitting in the Featured Panel: Civil Rights/Civic Discourse with Joyce Elliot (Director of Legislative and State Outreach for the Southwest Region of the College Board and former Arkansas House representative), Rita Sklar (Executive Director, ACLU Arkansas), and Minnijean Brown Trickey (one of the “Little Rock Nine” and activist, speaker, and writer). I fall in love with Minnijean Brown Trickey for the wonderful things she says. Overall, the panel is amazing and great.

One thing is said that causes our row to inhale so strongly the air pressure surely changed in the room. One of the panelists is discussing an out lesbian who is currently in the Arkansas legislature. She has been hugely successful, the panelist says, in part because she does not “toss her sexuality in others’ faces.” We all gasp. This is the language we have heard to denigrate queers and people of color: You are fine as long as you do not throw it in our faces. What does that mean? Hiding a partner? Not talking about cultural homophobia or racism? The citation has been made, whether intentionally or unintentionally; I wonder who else in the room is disturbed. I would ask about it, but I wonder if it wouldn’t come out as rage, and there is such a long queue of questions that it appears impossible to ask.

Scene 4:

We are walking and I am told once again that I do not have an accent so stop it. I find myself unconsciously adopting a slight southern twang. I pull in the inflections of those around me, and the slight southern Iowa twang I had as a child comes out, exaggerates (it was hardly noticeable to begin with), grows. My vowels change and I kind of like it. I want to move to the South, develop a Southern accent, continue to attend these dive bars, wear my cowboy boots that are killing me after walking all over downtown Little Rock over three days, breathe in the humid air. I am sweating out the Oregon and breathing in the drawls around me.