Queer Librettist; Or, Notes on the Composition of â•œFox: An Opera Comiqueâ•š

Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Taboo: The Journal of Culture and

Education Education

Volume 19

Issue 5

The Messy Affect(s) of Writing in the

Academcy

Article 2

December 2020

Queer Librettist; Or, Notes on the Composition of “Fox: An Opera Queer Librettist; Or, Notes on the Composition of “Fox: An Opera

Comique” Comique”

Benjamin Arnberg

Auburn University

, [email protected]

Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/taboo

Repository Citation Repository Citation

Arnberg, B. (2020). Queer Librettist; Or, Notes on the Composition of “Fox: An Opera Comique”.

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Queer Librettist8

Queer Librettist;

Or, Notes on the Composition

of “Fox: An Opera Comique”

Abstract

My article is a writing process narrative for social justice scholars. Arguments

seem apropos, considering the academic genre in which I write. For clarity’s

sake, I shall list these arguments, then spend the article demonstrating (through

practice) how my arguments hold. (1) There is no universally accessible and

eective process for writing to/for contemporary academics, so (2) If anyone

gives you tips, read said tips with skepticism and open-mindedness, because (3)

Academe needs to reduce the amount of stylistic and onto-epistemological sim-

ilarity, which yields banal and esoteric (white-hetero-patriarchal) products, that

(4) No damn body wants to read, for 5) How useful is our work if no damn body

wants to read it, learn from it, and apply it in “everyday” life?

Introduction

Arguments seem apropos, considering the academic genre in which I write.

For clarity’s sake, I shall list these arguments, then spend the subsequent space

demonstrating (through practice) how my arguments hold. (1) There is no univer-

sally accessible and eective process for writing to/for contemporary academics,

so (2) If anyone gives you tips, read said tips with skepticism and open-minded-

ness, because (3) Academe needs to reduce the amount of stylistic and onto-epis-

temological similarity, which yields banal and esoteric (white-hetero-patriarchal

)

products, that (4) No damn body wants to read, for (5) How useful is our work

if no damn body wants to read it, learn from it, and apply it in “everyday” life?

Benjamin Arnberg

Taboo, Fall 2020

Benjamin Arnberg recently graduated with his Ph.D. in Higher Education

Administration from Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama. Email address:

benjamin.arnber[email protected]

Benjamin Arnberg 9

I am not here to give tips, so you need not immediately read this document

with skepticism, which I know is what I told you to do in Argument #2. Instead,

this document is a narrative of how I wrote the opening chapter of my dissertation

(now monograph) despite having no models, no timeline, and (almost) no encour-

agement from my peer group at-large. You can decide whether the product was a

success; your opinion on its ecacy is really not my concern. Rather, I hope you

read this and discover that meandering, discombobulated, ass-dragging, emotion-

ally-enervating, stumbling across a due date with god knows what in your docu-

ment is part of getting shit done. Anyone who tells you drafting can be simple if

you follow a model or a streamlined process* is lying or privileged or both (*My

statistics professor insisted all writing take the exact same form for each study:

“To what extent is there a statistically signicant dierence…etc.”).

I spent two years writing my dissertation (now monograph): Pink Lemonade:

An Autoethnographic Fantasia on Queer Campus Themes (the monograph had

a title change of Queer Campus Climate: An Ethnographic Fantasia as insisted

upon by Routledge). Two years is misleading. I started interviewing gay men at

my institution two years prior to completing the rst draft. I started making obser-

vations and notes thirteen years ago. My B.A. and M.A. are in English Literature;

I aspired to some literary career, hence I kept copious observation notes and char-

acter sketches of friends/acquaintances for future inspiration for my ction opus.

(Hint: Never came). Even after the dissertation and monograph left for review,

I conducted further interviews while my IRB was fresh. The subsequent inter-

views* yielded my rst victim of ex-gay therapy, my rst sero-positive partici-

pant, and my rst fraternity president. (*Check out the sequel to Pink Lemonade/

Queer Campus Climate within my lifetime; it’ll be a macabre, irreverent pipeline

of laughs and tears, complete with a “Scholar Strikes Back” agenda aimed at all

my critics and skeptics, one of whom suggested rejecting publication because I

did not cite a publication that never existed in the rst place.

A preview: Lucas,

recently sero-positive, described it being easy to remain sober in college, “Booze

costs; the dick is free.” Thus, there is much for me to curate regarding the experi-

ences of out gay and queer* men on my Bible-belt campus. (*I use the term queer

as shorthand for gender and sexual non-hetero-conforming students, or any inter-

section of gender and sexual non-conformity. I acknowledge that, semantically,

queer’s opposite is “normal,” and that usage may connote a problematic binary. I

do not intend “queer” to connote such a binary. I use it primarily as shorthand and

as a reclamation. When a participant refers to theirself through specic terminolo-

gy, i.e. “gay,” I honor their usage. While we’re on the subject of semantics, queer

writers who read this, I recently received a scathing review of my work wherein

the reviewer criticized my use of queer claiming that an “ongoing argument” ex-

ists in the eld about its acceptability and that I should cite a source supporting my

usage. First, a queer person should not have to cite a source supporting their own

usage of “queer” (I am queer, and I use the term because I use the term). Second,

Queer Librettist10

if there is an “ongoing argument,” then a single source is not enough the solve the

argument anyway. Use the terms your participants use for themselves. Move on.

I began reporting my curated data through conventional means (validating

data and presenting “sterile” and “reliable” results in ndings and discussion sec-

tions, bookended by a literature review and a conclusion). When I provided drafts

to the men I interviewed (member-checking to serve the “Eight Big-Tent Crite-

ria”

I felt beholden to kowtow before), these men were disappointed. The result-

ing drafts did not fully immerse a reader into a multi-sensory experience of their

lives.

How could I call the work a fantasia? Where was the magic? Why did it

read so hetero? Drag queens, in particular, lamented the lack of information about

the costumes they wore, the music they danced to, the wigs they teased, or, in

one case, how it felt to have a wig snatched o by a ceiling fan mid-performance

(it landed in a pitcher of daiquiris across the room, which rested on the table of

a bewildered group of self-proclaimed “diesel dykes.”). I revisited the data, by

which I mean I looked at transcripts, photos, videos, and notes. A few weeks

following, I came across MacLure’s

post-qualitative treatise on the importance

of “sense” and “glow” and the “frisson” that comes when the research context

generates a bodily reaction, not just an intellectual one. Soon after, I came across

Daza and Gershon’s

call to move “beyond ocular inquiry” through sonic cartog-

raphy; within their call, they asked us to consider sound data rather than visual

data. Finally, I revisited Jones and Adams’s

foundational piece on queer autoeth-

nography wherein the researcher captures “fragments of lived experience [that]

collide and realign with one another, breaking and remaking histories” to “create

good stories.”

I reconsidered what constitutes “good stories” (I was expert at

evaluating stories, as a B.A. and M.A. in English Literature; known to some in

my circle as “professionally unemployed” but rather well-read) rather than “good

research.”

I selected autoethnography to disrupt conventional qualitative inquiry

into queer lives; I selected autoethnography* to provide a liberating intellectu-

al space in which marginalized voices could be heard without over interference

from researcher (or disciplinary) interpretation. (*It may not be readily clear how

autoethnography provides a “liberating intellectual space” without “over inter-

ference from researcher interpretation.” My simplest response: Autoethnography

makes the researcher a participant; thus, the researcher’s life, not intellectual tra-

dition, becomes part of the project.

The researcher is in the experience rather

than interpreting the experience. Curated data are selected because they were per-

sonally resonant rather than epistemologically veriable and reliable).

I revised my initial chapters into sonic cartographies built around musical

genres that suited the context, the content, and the pattern of speaking for each

participant (and bystander). The last component was built on Deavere Smith’s

indication that people speak in organic poems; I extended that idea to lyrics.

One chapter became a transcript from a space ship built upon lyrics from Da-

vid Bowie’s “Space Oddity” (documenting the experience of interviewing Hamp,

Benjamin Arnberg 11

a “twink” with ADD who spent the whole interview moving around the room,

drinking my latte, and hacking my phone to send his phone number to my best

friend on whom he had a crush). I felt like Ground Control calling Major Hamp

back down to Earth, at rst; then I just let him act himself, and I recorded the

result. Another chapter became an opera-comique based upon the experiences of

a man named Fox who spoke in arias. Long-winded, impassioned, melodramatic.

He sometimes began to sing within his speeches; he called himself a tenor, even.

He was a former show choir member and university mascot. He narrated his time

serving an organization whose adviser became infamous in the 90s for revoking

the charter of the campus’s Gay/Straight Alliance, with the help of the state legis-

lature (an event that was covered by The New York Times). He spoke of working in

an oce in which his boss, upon hearing Fox was gay, called him into his oce to

let Fox know that he and his wife would pray for Fox. He spoke of gay sex shame.

He spoke of nding a community of role models in the Washington Gay Men’s

Chorus. He spoke of being a sausage salesperson (literal sausage, folks; that is

not a euphemism for whore). I paired his experiences with ones I shared (we

worked with many of the same people and attended undergrad at the same time)

and transformed our shared story (and its counter-transference, under Langer’s

adapted denition) into opera-comique form, incorporating arias from Wagner,

Puccini, and Purcell (oddly enough, not composers of opera-comiques) alongside

songs from contemporary rock operas like The Rocky Horror Picture Show and

Tommy. The resulting text did two things: it disrupted standard reporting meth-

ods (resting on curation of multiple forms of data rather than analysis/validation

of “brute” data;

it (hopefully) generated a frisson of multiple senses, since the

incorporation of opera texts evoked sound. Indeed, I suggested opera recordings

to play as accompaniment to reading (such as Waltraud Meier’s “Mild und leise”

from Wagner’s Tristan and Isolde, performed in Berlin, 1995). The frisson was

essential for rendering the “research” resonant and immersive.

Fox

“I’m Fox, and Van says you’re thinking about taking my old job.”

I conrmed, and Fox swept me away to the Starbucks, one oor up, to oer

me career advice. Ostensibly. Really, it was more like a lunch break with the only

other gay man on campus his age that he could nd. A relationship was born of

our impromptu kiki.

Fox acquiesced to participate in my dissertation project.

Rendering Fox’s story was the most convoluted task of the whole project.

First, I needed to capture Fox, the man. The man who took me to Bear Pride at

Atlanta’s The Heretic (I am not a Bear, let me make that clear; if I am anything,

it’s a Secretary Bird). The man who consented to be part of a promotional shoot

for The Heretic, which included dancing shirtless on the stage with a Bear head on

while bumping and grinding* among a group of Brazilian (Papaizinhos?) Bears

Queer Librettist12

(Ursos?)

up for Pride from Rio. (*I have pictures of this event, but have been

explicitly forbidden from publishing them, research or no research). The man who

oered to take me to a bathhouse only to rescind the oer en route, since he was

not prepared for me to see him gang banged in a public swing. The man who sang

while going down the corridors of campus buildings, which enabled me to register

his pending appearance in my oce. The man who insisted that I document the

sole glory hole on campus, to immortalize it in a work of scholarship.

Second, I needed to capture the context in which Fox lived. Fox graduated

undergrad from our institution in 2006 (for reference, I attended from 2005-2009).

He was in a prominent fraternity, he was a university ambassador, he was a mas-

cot, he schtupped his fraternity’s president in the house* (*A dry house, at least

when it came to liquor). He interacted with ever major administrator, donor, alum,

and campus guest for over a decade. Thus, he, more than any other man I inter-

viewed, represented a generational window into the campus climate for gay/queer

men at our institution. I decided to eject the dissertation format* common among

my peers (*Introduction, Literature Review, Methods, Findings, Discussion); that

was too passé and conning for a queer project, especially for a swing-schtupped,

sausage-selling Bear.

As a result, Fox’s chapter would serve multiple purposes.

The chapter would provide: (1) Narrative of Fox’s personal experiences based

on his interview(s), (2) Historical overview of the campus climate for gay/queer

men in our context since 2002 (his freshman year), (3) Auxiliary autoethnograph-

ic narratives of my own, which complemented and/or expanded Fox’s accounts,

and (4) Methodological explanations for Fox’s chapter and the dissertation as a

whole. All this in addition to being a “hook” through which to enthrall readers and

compel them further into the depths of my study.

I had no model to follow. Even

the autoethnographies and queer narratives available to me (i.e. Adams

whose

work I admired, although it followed a more straightforward mode of inquiry and

dissemination; although I had some inspiration from Callier

and Edmonds

for

article-length post-qualitative ris on queer experience).

These purposes were to be supported by approximately twenty pages of

single-spaced interview transcripts, a one-hundred(+) page reection and audit

journal, dozens of pages of observation notes, photographs (including six photo-

graphs of a glory hole), scads of institutional documents, news articles covering

on-campus events, and my own thirteen-year corresponding narrative.

Suggested chapter length? Thirty pages.

Yeah, sure.

I began drafting while at the National Association for Student Personnel Ad-

ministrators Summer Symposium in Orlando, summer 2017. I identied the pieces

of data that were essential. I placed them in a Word document. The document was

200 pages. I went to Epcot, drank around the world, got overwhelmed, gave up.

I resumed drafting during the summer of 2018. I was in the midst of reading

Richardson’s Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life

and Saunders’s Lin-

Benjamin Arnberg 13

coln in the Bardo.

I immersed myself in alternative ways to: (1) Write research,

and (2) Write ensemble narratives. As an aspiring methodologist, I delved deep

into an idea I had, based on a new materialist paradigm, of curation-as-analysis.

EXPAND HERE.

My initial approach to curating Fox’s chapter resembled an

epistolary novel, such as Dracula,

wherein the narrative is told through carefully

ordered placement of documents. The cumulative impact is a sense of authenticity

at having reviewed a case le documenting a specic real, sensational tale that

could only be felt authentic if readers read the original, unltered documents. One

problem arose instantly: including original documents meant revealing identities.

Even redacting names from documents could not prevent readers from Googling

excerpts and locating online versions, thus putting pieces together and identifying

the gay/queer men and their networks. A second problem arose soon after: includ-

ing original documents as a means to generate authenticity was at odds with a

queer theoretical commitment to disrupt conventional onto-epistemological con-

ceptions of truth and reality. Gay/queer men spent such extended periods of time

being the victims of varying “truths,” I was reluctant to generate a text that con-

tributed to that victimizing impulse by using individual participants to articulate

monolithic conclusions.

Aside from these ethical and paradigmatic concerns, the text was dull

(non-immersive, non-accessible). The text’s arc was tenuously constructed. The

text did not do any of the things I advocated research should do: be non-ocular,

engage multiple temporalities, register viscerally. Here’s what I mean (excerpted

from a summer 2018 draft):

July 26, 2005. Oce of the President. The university convened its inaugural Stra-

tegic Diversity Plan Committee and reported its ndings and suggestions. The

membership included some student representatives; two were white, straight,

Christian men who presided over the most racially and socioeconomically ex-

clusive organizations on campus at the time.

2015. Strategic Diversity Plan Revisions Committee. The university convened

its second Strategic Diversity Plan Committee to revise the plan and report on

progress. The new membership included Circe, who would go on to re a black

man and a gay man in the same year that she promoted two straight, white,

Christian men who met their girlfriend and wife (respectively) while serving as

the women’s direct supervisors. Circe

also disciplined an organization adviser

for attempting to introduce a diversity component to the training curriculum.

Circe’s stated mentor is Helios,

who was responsible for revoking the Gay/

Straight Alliance Charter.

June 12, 2016. Orlando, FL. Pulse Nightclub was the scene of a mass shooting,

which killed nearly fty gay men.

June 13, 2016. The university president issued a two-sentence statement express-

ing remorse for the Pulse shooting. He did not reference the gay community. The

Queer Librettist14

statement was removed shortly thereafter and replaced by one from the Provost.

Circe’s department made no statement at all, despite being a student life depart-

ment. Circe did not attend the subsequent vigil. Notably, Circe made time to

attend the speech given by Milo Yiannopoulos,

who visited the campus as part

of his “Dangerous Faggots” tour. Circe told her graduate assistants, “He made

some good points.”

August 2016. Circe’s Corner Oce in the Student Union. Benjamin reports a

philandering adviser

who has also made racist comments to (and about) a stu-

dent. Circe discredited Benjamin as exhibiting the “melodrama” common of his

“kind” and for exaggerating circumstances. According to Circe, said adviser had

a strong track record of inclusion. This track record included sexual discrimi-

nation, an aair with an undergraduate student, blocking the nomination of a

Trans* student to the Senate, removing two African American students from ex-

ecutive oce for GPA violations (without removing White students guilty of the

same oense), outing a gay ocer through the campus newspaper as a publicity

stunt, leading an organization-wide discussion asking the question “Why isn’t

there a White Student Union?”, and lecturing Benjamin that academic diversity

was more important than demographic diversity.

April 2017. Circe’s corner oce. Circe removes Benjamin from his job for “bud-

getary reasons” despite Benjamin raising more money than any other sta mem-

ber in his department.

If this looks like an ornate grocery list to you, well spotted. Though this report

provides some impression of the campus climate, it comes across as personally

vindictive and mean-spirited.

Not to mention lifeless. In addition: Where is Fox?

Fox did not appear until page sixteen of thirty-three. What leading man makes

his appearance halfway through the text? When Fox does appear, he does so in a

rather lackluster fashion. I asked him to identify ve words to describe himself.

He answers:

Witty. Anxious. Friendly. Loving. And deceptively sad. I accomplished all these

things that were really exciting and represented ambition, but all the while…I

was turning away from some really important growing opportunities. I feared

who I always wanted to be. That euphoria could not be sustained. I think that I

worked so hard to keep that going for so long that by the time that it stopped,

I was just tired. The recession prevented me from being able to nd jobs that

would give me the prestige and fuel that unhealthy place of self-worth. Choos-

ing to live in a liberal city, in Nashville, allowed me to be a little more anon-

ymous. I found myself in my rst relationship ever. After nine months, when

that relationship failed, that exposed wounds. I think we allow ourselves to use

accomplishments to plug holes in ourselves. We use people, especially romantic

relationships, to love parts of us that we don’t truly love ourselves. Not having

the jobs, being in my rst relationship, and it ending, revealed to me that I was

a pretty unhealthy person, and I’ve never been able to fully pull myself out of

that depressing discovery and space. I look back on my life with a mixed bag of

Benjamin Arnberg 15

emotions. It’s pride and happiness but also a lot of sadness because I feel like I

was tricked. A lot of tricking myself.

Curating this speech rst introduced readers to a common trope in social-science

research: the tragic queer. One who is depressed, suicidal, regretful, engaged in

risky behavior.

Though Fox could express feelings of depression and regret,

those feelings were not central to his being. One could not get a grasp of Fox’s

joie de vivre, his wit, or his sing-song way of speaking. In addition, one could not

get a sense that the dissertation as a whole would counter tragic-queer narratives

in order to provide a positive account of queer life.

In the midst of Fox’s transcripts and my month-by-month reporting of an-

ti-queer activity, I attempted to show how queer men became associated with

melodrama through a series of curated cultural artifacts in which, well, prominent

queer men were melodramatic. Interspersed in all of these data bits were chunks

of paradigmatic concepts articulated by scholars of queer theory and methodolog-

ical theory, namely Laurel Richardson and David Halperin. I closed with a series

of news reports about LGBT centers being shut down or vandalized. For example:

May 20, 2016. Knox News: “The University of Tennessee has disbanded its Of-

ce of Diversity, including eliminating four sta positions and a $131,356 op-

erating budget. Meanwhile, Donna Braquet, director of the UT Pride Center,

will resume her full-time position as an associate professor in the University

Libraries. On Friday, she wrote on the center’s Facebook page that she would no

longer head up the Pride Center. ‘We provided a brave space for students who are

the most marginalized on campus to be their true authentic selves with our space,

our programs, our resources, and our events.’”

Why bother with my dissertation at all? Why not just read the original documents

for yourself?

I presented the work to my dissertation co-chair. She liked individual data

points, although she did not care for a scene in which Fox’s cock ring fell out

in Starbucks* (*That scene will be in the sequel).

She suggested looking back

into Richardson as well as at a piece we read titled “Befriending Snow.”

I also

expanded my reading (including begrudgingly listening to reviewer suggestions,

such as reading Kohn’s work on screenplays). In December 2018, I traveled to

Syndey, Australia to present my work-in-progress at the Australian Association

for Research in Education. While there, I met a man from India who took me for

drinks at a private club, followed by shots at Arq, and…Hold up, not the point*

(*The point will be in the sequel). Midway through my trip, I saw Vivica Genaux

in Artaserse at City Recital Hall. Midway through the performance, I realized:

Fox spoke in arias. He was melodramatic. He knew how to walk in Louboutins

(like Genaux). He was gay. He was opera.

I selected an opera-comique

format, since I am not a composer and did

not want to expend too much eort making Fox’s transcripts map onto existing

Queer Librettist16

musical compositions. Data would accompany musical scores and musical scores

would complement the emotional tenor

of the data. The range of emotions

would include deep sadness all the way to irreverent silliness (hence, the inclu-

sion of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Tommy, and Jesus Christ Superstar). An

opera-comique would also enable me to summon varied data sources (memories,

senses, sounds, clothes, music); one instance included translating my memories

into a ghost named Longitude (so named because Longitude gave a longitudinal

account of my experiences and attitudinal changes). In addition, any scholarship

that was necessary would be included as if the scholar was a character in the text.

Formal documents took the form of newsboys (like Newsies) standing on street

corners, announcing their headlines to the public.

Fox liked the idea. He conrmed his vocal range was tenor and oered to

perform excerpts on the promotional tour* (*Academic books do not generally

receive promotional tours). I gave him an alto and a soprano aria, to reduce the

likelihood of his publicly performing the opera-comique.

In the opera, we are introduced to Fox in the Dramatis Personae as “A mem-

ber of the administration; self-described cub; tenor.” I am introduced in the Dra-

matis Personae as “A student and teacher; alto (or a soprano, if he’s had some

vodka and a few ibuprofen to relax his vocal chords.” The third primary character

is Longitude, introduced in the Dramatis Personae as “A spirit of Alistair Hall;

sometimes tenor, sometimes alto, sometimes soprano, sometimes mute; he is the

ghost of Benjamin’s straight identity who still sometimes haunts Benjamin to re-

mind him of his previous worldview.”

The scene:

SCENE:

(Persimmon University.

A semi-rural campus in the American South. Oft re-

ferred to as a Bible-belt campus; rated conservative, politically. The campus

rests on a plain, shaded by a canopy of oaks, crepe myrtles, and magnolias;

designated a “Tree Campus” by the Arbor Day Foundation. Buildings are pre-

dominantly Georgian, made of red brick with white detailing; a few buildings are

antebellum. The campus is a “pedestrian” campus, on which there are no roads

for vehicles. Students dress in athletic casual, mostly; however, Wednesdays are

known as collar and dress days, since Greek life organizations meet in the eve-

nings anexpect members to wear “preppy” attire.



Hall; it is a ten-story brutally minimal structure that is allegedly causing ocular



computer and a series of small stacks of books spread across a gray desk. It is

)

FOX: There’s a glory hole on campus.

BENJAMIN: New?

FOX: I guess?

Benjamin Arnberg 17

BENJAMIN: Found it mincing about, did you?\

FOX: Heard about it on Grindr. Want to go see if we can nd it?\

BENJAMIN: Don’t you have work?

FOX: I’m taking a minute. Came out to my boss. He said he and his wife would

pray for me.

BENJAMIN: It’ll take the prayers of millions.

FOX: This is sort of work; the glory hole needs to be documented for your dis-

sertation.

BENJAMIN: I could hear you before I could see you, by the way. Your tenor

oated down the hallway. I tried to hide.

FOX: (pointing at Benjamin’s shoes) Look at you, honey. She splurged. She’s

high trash, today.

BENJAMIN: Thanks. Gucci. Alessandro’s rst collection. And what is that on

your tee?

FOX: Two bears humping.

BENJAMIN: You wear that to work?

FOX: I told you: I’m taking the afternoon o.

BENJAMIN: Where is this glory hole?

FOX: Grove Hall.

BENJAMIN: Let’s move.

LONGITUDE: (mimicking the one drag queen she ever saw as Benjamin and

Fox exit an exterior doorway onto the campus green) Enema? Party of two.

Enema? Party of two.

BENJAMIN: (to Longitude) Pardon?

LONGITUDE: Once heard a drag queen restaurant hostess yell Enema, party

of two, to a crowd before correcting herself. Emily, party of two. With you two

heading to a glory hole, it’s for sure Enema, party of two.

SCENE:

(A gritty, emerald-green mosaic tiled men’s bathroom. Large: four urinals in a

row precede a string of four stalls. Across the walkway is a series of sinks and a

large mirror. The bathroom’s tiles echo sounds of leaks and drips in perpetuity,

despite Grove Hall being the home of many engineering courses)

BENJAMIN: Which stall?

FOX: Third. Take a look at the poetry etched above it.

Queer Librettist18

BENJAMIN: (reading from within) I got a blumpkin right where you’re sitting.

FOX: She took elocution lessons.

BENJAMIN: Well, I do try to read poetry clearly and elegantly. (photographing

the hole) Of course a glory hole survives in Grove Hall; the building is slated

for demolition.

FOX: (sitting on a sink) Well, shit. Then Persimmon will destroy its only re-

source for gay students!

BENJAMIN: I’m kind of surprised it’s here. Were it not for impending doom,

the glory hole would probably go the way of the sodomy drawings, racist com-

mentary, and pro-Trump Nazi propaganda that usually gets plastered and painted

over.

FOX: Watch out for that black mold growing behind the toilet.

BENJAMIN: I can’t believe I’m wearing Gucci where someone got a blumpkin.

FOX: It’s kind of tting it’s in Grove Hall. It was built in the seventies…

BENJAMIN: (interrupting) Your era?

FOX: Yeah, right after your swinging sixties. Anyway, this building was built

during the gay liberation. Just prior to the trauma and re-closeting of the AIDS

epidemic of the eighties.

BENJAMIN: Have you used it?

FOX: No. But not because I’m shy. I’m into well-endowed daddies. Not college

twinks.

BENJAMIN: A man of taste.

FOX: Anyway, I’m not trying to violate human resources policy by sleeping

with students. Lance was red for his tryst with an intern. Fired the same day he

was outed.

BENJAMIN: Meanwhile, Acontius lives large. (exiting the stall) Is this a meet-

ing spot? Had anyone invited you here as a rendezvous point? Is that how you

heard?

FOX: I haven’t been here for a clandestine sword-sheathing. Maybe you should

linger here a few hours a day over the coming week to determine just how widely

known the hole is.

BENJAMIN: I’m not doing a mixed methods study.

FOX: Come again?

BENJAMIN: You’re suggesting I count the number of times used. That’s quan-

titative. I’m strictly qualitative. Although, at this point, an opera-comique with

a scene in a glory-holed bathroom stall, I’m not so sure I still can call myself a

researcher…

Benjamin Arnberg 19

FOX: This is research. You’re examining the one safe zone that we have on this

campus.

BENJAMIN: My foot is stuck to the oor.

This scene enabled me to provide a capsule of the campus climate (one in which

the only queer resource was a non-plastered glory hole in a dilapidated, soon-to-

be-demolished building). Fox also comes across as a multi-dimensional person

rather than a stereotypical tragic-queer. The scene itself is somewhat tragic, when

accounting for the undertone: Fox’s boss said he’d pray for him for being gay;

Fox and Benjamin live on a campus with no dedicated resources for queer faculty,

sta and students; A queer sta member was red for irting with a student, while

straight men were promoted; The only available option for social and/or sexu-

al networking is an app, and even then, the context dictates extreme discretion

among the people using the app. Yet, the scene is comic and high-spirited. The

two men are self-aware, witty, and able to rise above an otherwise bleak situation;

most important, they are able to bond over a common experience of otherness.

I wanted to build on Fox’s verve to demonstrate how queer individuals can

overcome tragic and oppressive circumstances. I also wanted to have his experi-

ences counterbalance my own. Fox was a sexual extrovert, while I was a sexual

introvert. How can the same context produce two opposing results? An analysis

of this question risked taking on a clinical tone; moreover, there is no “valid” way

to conclusively answer the question. I found it better instead to depict the two of

us operating sex lives in tandem.

SCENE:

(Benjamin sits on the patio of a local deli, well bar, situated in a shack-like build-

ing just across from campus. The patio contains dozens of iron outdoor furniture,

a few television sets play ESPN

LONGITUDE: Fox likes to talk sex, doesn’t he?

BENJAMIN: I think he views himself as my sex mentor.

LONGITUDE: You need one.

BENJAMIN: I’m celibate by everyone else’s choice. Not my own.

LONGITUDE: When you had insomnia and visited the doctor, he told you,

quote: The bed is for sleeping and sex. And how did you respond?

BENJAMIN: Could you prescribe the sex so I can go to Walgreen’s and get

some?

LONGITUDE:

Pathetic. I’ve had more sex than you.

BENJAMIN: With women.

Queer Librettist20

LONGITUDE: Nevertheless.

BENJAMIN: I’m a lady. I don’t care for people touching my handbag, much

less my body.

FOX: (approaching from behind, his favorite direction, and sitting; pouring

Benjamin a cup of beer from his pitcher) It’s internalized homophobia, I think.

Drilled into you through years of hell re dogma that painted sodomy as the

reason the world ended.

BENJAMIN: I mean, sodomy is just unappealing anyway.

FOX: I don’t get you guys who get prissy about anal. Like, given the circum-

stance, not to mention the sexual preference, sometimes there’s going to be a

little shit.

BENJAMIN: I suppose we could say the same about life.

DAVID

: (from behind a nearby azalea; almost a serenade) Sodomy, that utterly

confused category, was applied historically to masturbation, oral sex, anal sex,

and same-sex sexual relations, among other things. I use the term active sodomy

specically to denominate a certain model or structure of male homosexual rela-

tions for which there is no single proper name.

FOX: When was the last time for you?

BENJAMIN: The last time? Well, this one guy on Grindr asked me a few weeks

ago what kind of freaky shit I’m into. I responded, quote: I have an abandonment

complex fueled by masochism and low sense of self-worth, so if you could leave

your Rolex and wallet on the coee table and leave me here by myself, that

would really turn me on.

FOX: What?

BENJAMIN: One guy was trying to explain how to get to his house over the

phone. He asked, “Masc?” I thought he meant masking tape. I looked in my

drawer. Found none. Replied: No, but I could stop by the Home Depot on the

way over and pick some up.

FOX: Why don’t you come with me to Atlanta tomorrow? I have to give a fund-

raiser. After, I’ll take you to Swinging Richard’s.

BENJAMIN: What in God’s name?

FOX: What’s short for Richard?

BENJAMIN: Rich.

FOX: Get your mind o Givenchy for a minute, sister. Richard. Dick. Swinging

Richard’s…

BENJAMIN: Swinging Dicks? Sounds classy.

FOX: All nude. All male. We’ll go to Blake’s, then Swinging Richard’s, then Fort Tro…

Benjamin Arnberg 21

BENJAMIN: I don’t go anywhere with a trough…

FOX: Tro. T. R. O. F. F. It’s like a bath, kind of.

BENJAMIN: Absolutely not.

FOX: On second thought, I’m not prepared for you to see me in that environment…

BENJAMIN: I don’t even walk around my bedroom nude.

FOX: The Heretic, then. It’s got a leather shop and blacked-out sex room.

BENJAMIN: Someone might try to steal my jewelry.

FOX: Those people don’t know the dierence between Claire’s and Tiany.

BENJAMIN: How dare you? This is Cartier.

FOX: Not the point.

SCENE:

(Benjamin sits outside Joe’s on Juniper in midtown Atlanta watching Kamala

        



Fox enters and sits beside him, orders a Red Bull and Vodka)

FOX: Why are you in a nude tank? Are you dancing in a ballet later?

BENJAMIN: I spilled a latte on my Rag & Bone henley. This was underneath.

New topic. How is your relationship with Todd?

FOX: Complicated.

BENJAMIN: Why?

FOX: My prolonged period of closetedness and coming out in my mid-twenties,

it, well, caused a type of a relationship disorder. I mean, I didn’t have my rst full

sexual encounter with a man until my mid-twenties. Hadn’t had a real relation-

ship until then either. I spent so much time denying sexual impulses that when I

came out, I started having sex so frequently and with so many dierent partners

that I started to strip away emotional reactions to sex partners.

MARY MAGDALENE: (singing from a karaoke machine on the patio of Joe’s)

I don’t know how to love him

What to do, how to move him

I’ve been changed, yes really changed

In these past few days, when I’ve seen myself

I seem like someone else

FOX: (joining)

I don’t know how to take this

BENJAMIN: Don’t you take poppers?

Queer Librettist22

FOX:

I don’t see why he moves me

He’s a man. He’s just a man

And I’ve had so many men before

In very many ways

BENJAMIN: You’re just a whore.

MARY MAGDALENE:

Should I bring him down?

Should I scream and shout?

Should I speak of love?

Let my feelings out?

FOX:

I never thought I’d come to this

What’s it all about?

Yet, if he said he loved me

I’d be lost

I’d be frightened

I couldn’t cope, just couldn’t cope

MARY MAGDALENE:

I’d turn my head

I’d back away

I wouldn’t want to know

FOX:

He scares me so

I want him so

I love him so

FOX: (to Benjamin) Do you have that problem?

BENJAMIN: Yes. My emotional reaction is: Get away from me and don’t touch

my jewelry.

FOX: I nd it dicult to sustain long-term relationships with men with whom I

slept. I’m accustomed to using men as sexual partners only. Not as potential life

partners.

MADAME ARMFELDT:         



Too many people muddle sex with mere desire

And when emotion intervenes, the nets descend

It should on no account perplex, or worse, inspire

It’s but a pleasurable means to a measurable end

Why does no one comprehend?

FOX: I identify as gay. But I can envision myself marrying a woman.

Benjamin Arnberg 23

BENJAMIN: Because female companionship seems more plausible than male

companionship?

FOX: I could be married to a woman, start a family with a woman, and use men

only to extinguish same-sex urges.

SCENE:

(Benjamin reapplies his YSL Shade 10 lipstick in the mirror of Swinging Rich-



are brass. The light overhead, combined with Benjamin’s nude tank, makes Ben-

jamin appear as much an apparition as Longitude)

BENJAMIN: Isn’t that a more evolved

form of being closeted?

LONGITUDE: Maybe? Does it matter? You’re no further along.

BENJAMIN: I am at the opposite end of the same spectrum.

LONGITUDE: Are you though? You don’t sustain relationships with men.

BENJAMIN: I do not try to establish them either.

LONGITUDE: Proving my point.

BENJAMIN: My mind is poisoned against men.

LONGITUDE: I was indoctrinated to believe gay men were promiscuous, dis-

eased, sexual deviants.

BENJAMIN: I internalized that homophobia. Believed that any partner would be

interested in me only as a sex object.

LONGITUDE: I never sought companionship among gay men; I assumed such

a thing was impossible.

BENJAMIN: My only prior attempt includes a two-month period with a peer in

my Master’s program.

LONGITUDE: The one who’s life story is now a major motion picture starring

Nicole Kidman.

BENJAMIN: You were watching?

LONGITUDE: It was me.

BENJAMIN: Oh, yeah. That’s right.

LONGITUDE: He was older.

BENJAMIN: But a year behind me in the degree program.

LONGITUDE: He grabbed me by the rib cage and asked . . .

BENJAMIN: Who do you think you’re kidding with this straight boy act?

Queer Librettist24

LONGITUDE: I eventually acquiesced to his advances.

BENJAMIN: We’d spend time making out in my living room with the door

dead-bolted to prevent my roommate from a surprise entry.

LONGITUDE: Then he’d disappear for days to work on his memoir.

BENJAMIN: I still haven’t read it.

LONGITUDE: Our relationship ended at an impasse. I wouldn’t come out.

BENJAMIN: He wouldn’t be in a closeted relationship.

LONGITUDE: We kissed goodbye in the parking lot.

BENJAMIN: Right after I touched his penis.

LONGITUDE: Way to turn this moment into something crude.

BENJAMIN: You died that night.

LONGITUDE: But you were born.

DESIREE ARMFELDT: (singing from a bathroom stall)

Isn’t it rich?

Are we a pair?



You in midair

Send in the clowns

BENJAMIN: (singing from an adjacent bathroom stall)

Isn’t it bliss?

Don’t you approve?

One who keeps tearing around

LONGITUDE: (singing from atop the paper towel dispenser)

One who can’t move

DESIREE ARMFELDT:

Send in the clowns?

There ought to be clowns

BENJAMIN:

Don’t bother

They’re here

BENJAMIN: While Fox feasts grandly on sexual experience, I abstain out of a

desire not to be outed or cast aside.

LONGITUDE: See? You are also in an evolved closet.

BENJAMIN: I can say: I am gay. But only to one person at a time, and I can

never imagine possessing a companionable partner of the same sex.

FOX: (entering the bathroom with his hands full of cocktails, which he places on

Benjamin Arnberg 25

the counter) Enter Xanax. Enter a bottle of Ketel One. Enter Quincy.

BENJAMIN: Quincy?

FOX: The name of the BBC

that you just purchased a private dance from.

BENJAMIN: Jeezuss.

FOX: I think it was therapeutic for you. In a way. Quincy came on stage, singled

you out, irted. Well, by irt, I mean he took o your Ferragamo sandal, slid it

between his thong and thigh. You freaked and climbed on stage to fetch it. You

crawled a few yards with your Givenchy sunglasses on. The more you crawled,

the more Quincy receded into the heart of the room.

BENJAMIN: There was no room for skittishness when four-hundred dollars of

Italian leather hung in the balance.

FOX: Oh, it was hung in the balance. For sure. You stood, walked, stuck your

hand in his package, plucked out the shoe, and returned to your seat.

BENJAMIN: I recall you vibrating with glee. Didn’t you give me a tip when I

hopped o stage?

FOX: Well, it was money you gave me as my allowance. I slid it back into your

nude tank and said: She works hard for her money.

(The scene shifts back in time by thirty minutes, as Fox narrates Benjamin’s

encounter with Quincy. Benjamin and Fox sit at a two-person cocktail table ad-

jacent to the catwalk. A tall, muscular man does a handstand in front of Benja-



handspring, walks back to Benjamin, squats and says)

QUINCY: You’ve got style.

BENJAMIN: I know.

FOX: (narrating as Benjamin and Quincy reenact next to him) You threw money

at him. He followed you back to the table. He prodded. Rubbed. Poked. Pinched.

He liked tugging your chest hair.

QUINCY: I’m forced to shave mine.

FOX: You were intrigued by his hustle. You bought a half hour with him in a VIP

suite at the back of the bar.

(Benjamin and Quincy leave the table, walk a few yards, pass the catwalk, enter



a pole)

LONGITUDE: (narrating the action from the VIP suite, since Fox could not see

it) You talked. You sat. You dgeted with your jewelry. Looked any which way

but straight.

Queer Librettist26

FOX: Not the rst time she looked anything but straight.

QUINCY: Why are you so nervous?

BENJAMIN: I need a Ketel One and Cranberry.

QUINCY: What is that? (nodding his head toward Benjamin’s hands)

BENJAMIN: Xanax. (taking the pill and chugging his cocktail, to wash it

down)

LONGITUDE: You took the whole glass in one gulp.

QUINCY: Give me your hands.

LONGITUDE: He pinned you to the wall. Gave compliments. Kissed. Stroked.

Hugged you to him.

FOX: He said it was his last night on the pole.

BENJAMIN: Me too.

QUINCY: I start a job as a fork lift operator next week.

BENJAMIN: Good for you.

FOX: You came back without your sunglasses.

BENJAMIN: I think he dick-slapped them o.

FOX: You got carried away by Quincy.

BENJAMIN: (returning to the table with Fox) I think I settled into it because he

was a stranger. He wasn’t in my social network. There were no witnesses. It was

a mutual hustle. He was into me because I paid him.

FOX: You were also the only man in there, besides me, under the age of sixty.

LONGITUDE: Hot by default.

BENJAMIN: I was into him because I knew that I could have the moment and

move on. No need to worry about being cast o, unloved, deviant, unattractive,

found out, unworthy of something more than…

FOX: Whack, bang, wiggle wiggle.

DAVID: (speaking from an adjacent table to Troye Sivan, who is in town for a

concert) The male sexual penetration of a subordinate male certainly represented

a perverse act, but it might not in every case signify a perversion of the sexu-

al instinct, a mental illness aecting the whole personality: it might indicate a

morally vicious character rather than a pathological condition. Implicit in this

doctrine was the premise that there was not necessarily anything sexually or psy-

chologically abnormal in itself about the male sexual penetration of a subordi-

nate male. If the man who played an active sexual role in sexual intercourse with

other males was conventionally masculine in both his appearance and his manner

Benjamin Arnberg 27

of feeling and acting, if he did not seek to be penetrated by other men, and/or

if he also had sexual relations with women, he might not be sick but immoral,

not perverted but merely perverse. His penetration of a subordinate male, repre-

hensible and abominable though it might be, could be reckoned a manifestation

of his excessive but otherwise normal male sexual appetite. Like the somewhat

earlier, aristocratic gure of the libertine or rake or roué, such a man perversely

refused to limit his sexual options to pleasures supposedly prescribed by nature

and instead sought out more unusual, unlawful, sophisticated, or elaborate sexual

experiences to gratify his jaded sexual tastes. In the case of such men, pederasty

or sodomy was a sign of an immoral character but not of a personality disorder,

moral insanity, or psychological abnormality.

Earlier, I mentioned that I wanted to demonstrate how queer men are culturally

stereotyped as melodramatic. A supervisor in my department brushed aside my

report that a colleague was making racially derogatory comments to and about

his students; she said that I was probably exaggerating since my kind are always

melodramatic. I wanted a way to depict the cultural context that justied, to peo-

ple like her, believing that “my kind” were melodramatic, and thus untrustworthy.

SCENE:

(The tube. A Samsung with an AppleTV. Benjamin appears on screen. He enters

a mad tea party as if he stepped through the looking glass.)

BENJAMIN:           

Georgetown, DC.) I became notorious like my girl Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I’ll

take it, I guess. Notorious for melodrama. Typecast in the role. But how did

melodrama become our type?

LUCILLE BLUTH: (Yelling from her yacht nearby) Everything homosexuals do

is so dramatic and amboyant. It makes me want to set myself on re.

LAUREL RICHARDSON: (Sipping a tea) The cultural story is told from the

point of view of the ruling interests and the normative order and bears a narrative

kinship to functionalism. Since, for example, the central character is a patriarchal

system is the male, a cultural story of adultery is about the normative status of

marriage and how an other woman tries to ruin a family by stealing a man from

his wife. The central character in this story is the husband, and the story line

blames the minor characters, the women: the wife for her deciencies in sex,

love, and understanding; the other woman for her decient morality. This partic-

ular cultural story, in the United States, transcends race and class lines, making it

seem true and giving it a hold on the imaginations of men and women. Cultural

stories, thus, help maintain the status quo.

STANFORD BLATCH: (Stopping at the other end of the table, where Carrie

Bradshaw sits with Oliver Spencer) If it isn’t Mr. and Mrs. Down Under.

CARRIE BRADSHAW: (in an aside to the audience) I was so preoccupied with

my gay boyfriend, I kept forgetting about my gay husband. (to Stanford and

Oliver) You remember Stanford? From brunch?

Queer Librettist28

STANFORD: Apparently, it was more than just brunch. Don’t fall for him; he’s

just another pretty face. He doesn’t love you like I do. I knew this woman when

she took the subway and wore Candies.

OLIVER: (laughing) Candies?

CARRIE: I assure you, I never wore Candies.

STANFORD: You wore pink suede Candies, and I adored you anyway. (to Ol-

iver) And how dare you try to steal her away with your dreamy eyes and your

probably fake accent?

ZANDRA: Oh look, the crying fag!

BENJAMIN: (Discussing methodology with a disinterested Lily Tomlin, who’s

busy speaking into a microphone narrating The Celluloid Closet for the table’s

entertainment) I once interviewed a drag queen. I asked what he’d have me do if

I wanted to get a taste of what it was like living as a drag queen and genderfucker

on our campus. He told me to wear makeup and get nails done and walk around

campus for a day. I wore Steel Waters Run Deep by OPI, Clinique Matte Bisque

powder, and YSL Shade 10 lipstick to Circe’s oce the day I reported Acontius.

She stared at my nails the whole time. If my hand moved up, so too did her atten-

tion. Each time she challenged my report, she looked at my nails.

JACK MCFARLAND: (wrapping his arms around Karen Walker) Before lan-

guage, people communicated through intricate choreography, costume changes,

and lighting. Language was only invented when unattractive people were born

and needed to be commented on. My grandfather was one of the rst ballerinas

to land on the beach at Normandy. Fact: D-Day stands for Dance Day! Now, let’s

start with a simple box step. It is called that because we lead with our box.

BERNADETTE: (chastising a woman who mocked her hair) Now listen here,

you mullet. Why don’t you just light your tampon and blow your box apart?

Because it’s the only bang you’re ever gonna get, sweetheart.

ALBERT: (standing from the table with such force that Benjamin’s mimosa top-

ples) Don’t give me that tone! That sarcastic contemptuous tone that means you

know everything because you’re a man, and I know nothing because I’m a woman.

ARMAND: (placing a palm over his face) You’re not a woman.

ALBERT: You bastard!

BLAZING SADDLES DANCERS: (singing behind Lily Tomlin)

Throw out your hands

Stick out your tush

Hands on your hips

Give ‘em a push

You’ll be surprised



(stopping due to a burst from stage left and the entry of a horde of rowdy cow-

boys who begin rumbling with the dancers)

Benjamin Arnberg 29

CHOREOGRAPHER: Not on the face!

COWBOY: (punches him)

DANCER ONE: (squeals) Come on, girls!

DANCER TWO: (squealing) You brute, you brute, you brute, you vicious brute!

(collapses)

BENJAMIN: (facing outward as if talking to the TV viewing audience at home)

I worked for three years in Persimmon’s Department of Student Aairs. In that

time, I was called: petty, catty, sassy, queen, melodramatic, storyteller, trier,

shit stirrer, sarcastic, cynical, a bad inuence, alcoholic, crazy, paranoid, foul-

mouthed, tactless, blunt rude, critical. Twice, I was granted interviews for pro-

motions. In one, I was asked, quote, Will you be able to develop tact and diplo-

macy so you can better represent our oce to external stakeholders? end quote.

In another, as you know, I was asked, quote, How will you maintain professional

boundaries with your students? end quote. In both interviews, I was asked, quote,

How do you inspire trust in others and build relationships with people who are

dierent from you?

FOX: 

keyboard, dozing, while Absolutely Fabulous plays on the screen) What are you

watching over there, girl?

LONGITUDE: (painting her nails Steel Waters Run Deep, based on a recom-

mendation she recently heard about it) Girl, she’s over there trying to demon-

strate how media portrayals of gay men caused him to be red.

FOX: That’s a stretch.

BENJAMIN: Shut the fuck up, both of you. Haven’t you ever seen The Celluloid

Closet.

FOX: I mean, those questions you were saying you were asked, I can add to

those. And I can add feedback I received. We’re looking for a service leader. Or,

We’re not the multicultural aairs oce. Or, We’re looking for someone who

will t in with our team. According to my friend in human resources, the line,

We’re looking for someone who will t in with our team, is a maneuver to dance

around discrimination by claiming that the gay candidate’s personality does not

jibe with the oce.

BENJAMIN: The way they perceive of my personality is largely inuenced by

the gay personalities these people see in the media.

FOX: Didn’t I see you take a day o work to drive to Saks in Atlanta to exchange

a pair of Gucci loafers that were shipped in the wrong color?

BENJAMIN: I needed them for a wedding reception the next day, and I was

going to be photographed.

LONGITUDE: Yep. It’s all the media’s fault

Queer Librettist30

BENJAMIN: Fox, while you’re here. I want you to tell me ve words describing

yourself. It’s for my campus climate study on gay men’s experiences on this

campus. I’m trying to describe you in my opera on the dramatis personae page.

FOX: Opera’s aren’t melodramatic?

BENJAMIN: Word one: Bitch.

FOX: I’ll tell you this. That’s always been my hang up. Like, who am I? And

who do I perceive myself to be? And what do I prefer others to see myself as?

Right? Those three people have always been present and they always look and

feel dierent. Who am I?

PAUL: (singing)

Who am I anyway

Am I my resume

That is a picture

Of a person I don’t know

What does he want from me

What should I try to be

So many faces all around

And here we go

I need this job

Oh, God

I need this show

LONGITUDE: Does anyone else hear that singing? Or is it just me hearing shit

in purgatory that you live ones can’t?

BENJAMIN: What is most important to you in the moment? One of Nora Eph-

ron’s, whom I stole this exercise from, in the middle of her life was divorced.

And then later it was mother. Independent of what you think anyone else thinks

of you, what is you?

FOX: Witty. Anxious. Friendly. Loving. And deceptively sad.

EXPAND HERE.

Notes

I spent a year as a graduate assistant in my institution’s Oce of University Writing,

and I have taught English Composition at the collegiate level for many years. As a result,

I’m about to throw some writing pedagogy your way to help demonstrate the pervasive-

ness of white-hetero-patriarchy in academic writing/discourse. It’s annoying as fuck. I’ll

start with Laura Greeneld, who notes that, “‘Standard English,’ ultimately, is invoked as

that ideal, superior language. The assumption that ‘Standard English’ is superior to other

English varieties is also prevalent among language educators in the United States…the

language varieties deemed inferior in the United States (so much so that they are often

dismissed not simply as inferior varieties but not as varieties at all—just as conglomera-

tions of slang, street talk, or poor English) tend to be the languages whose origins can be

Benjamin Arnberg 31

traced to periods in American history when communities of racially oppressed people used

these languages to enact agency. It is no coincidence that the languages spoken by racially

oppressed people are considered to be inferior in every respect to the languages spoken

predominantly by those who wield systemic power: namely, middle- and upper-class white

people” (p. 36). See Laura Greeneld, 2016, “The ‘Standard English’ Fairytale: A Rhe-

torical Analysis of Racist Pedagogies and Commonplace Assumptions about Language

Diversity,” In Writing Centers and the New Racism: A Call for Sustainable Dialogue and

Chance, ed. Laura Greeneld and Karen Rowan (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press):

33-60. I must acknowledge that I am a privileged white person, with advanced language

training; thus, I cannot claim to be a victim of exclusionary language practices based on my

racial and economic background. However, many of my participants communicate through

conglomerations of slang, street talk, and ancestral dialects. Often, our academy pressures

scholars to sanitize this communication for consumption by a racially and economically

elite community. In my work, my participants also speak in a community-based language

that intersects race, gender, and sexuality: queer speak. Queer speak is derided as crass and

vulgar, since much of it was developed as code/euphemisms for sexual activity; moreover,

large swaths of queer speak emerged from communities dominated by queer people of col-

or (for example: “kiki” is a commonly used queer term that originated among queer people

of color, and it is immortalized (and white-washed) in the 2012 song “Let’s Have a Kiki”

by the Scissor Sisters. I could go on and on about queer slang, but that’s not the point of this

extensive footnote. The point is that the dominant discourse in academic publishing does

not provide space for “Non-Standard” English; if space is provided, it’s only for directly

quoting participant transcripts. Researchers are not (usually) permitted to participate in

the “Non-Standard” language communities to which they might belong. A recent reviewer

of my work, for example, criticized my “personal tone,” which exhibited itself in an au-

toethnographic project wherein I spoke in an irreverent, assertive, even sassy tone that was

laden with slang and abstract queer references. Harry Denny writes that scholars, teachers,

and administrators who oppose the racist standardizing forces of academic discourse are

often derided and relegated to/as institutional backwaters, whose work is taken less seri-

ously (I mean, really, how many of you humanities scholars out there doing social justice

scholarship have been condescended to by a “hard scientist”?). “Like queer people, writing

center professionals continually confront our marginality: we daily encounter students and

faculty alike who approach our spaces with uneasiness. Though some might understand

writing centers as ‘safe harbors’ of progressive politics and pedagogy, our spaces are also

liminal zones, transitory arenas always both privileged and illegitimate. Writing centers are

known as cutting-edge and institutional backwaters; they are celebrated and denounced;

they are noisy and silent/ed; they are spaces where much organic, lasting learning hap-

pens, but spaces where often no record of achievement or assessment gets granted. Writing

centers are places overowing with structuring binaries: directive/non-directive, editing/

tutoring, expert/novice, teacher/student, graduate student/undergraduate, professional/

peer, women/men, ‘American’/ESL, advanced/basic, faculty/administrator, administrator/

secretary, faculty/lecturer, lecturer/teaching assistant, teaching assistant/tutor, white/people

of color, black/Asian, Latino/black, straight/gay, etc. These binaries and their negotiations

of which side is privileged and which is illegitimate are ubiquitous in sessions” (p. 97). See

Harry Denny, “Queering the Writing Center,” The Writing Center Journal, 30 no. 1 (2010):

39-62. I nd that one way “Non-Standard” communication is encouraged out of scholarly

discourse is the insistence that researchers speak on behalf of their participants through in-

Queer Librettist32

terpretation, representation, conclusion, and dissemination. In addition, researchers them-

selves are often shuttled out of the conversation through reviewers who insist on citational

inclusions of privileged scholars who may or may not have had any impact on the develop-

ment of the project/methods nor on the composition of results. In writing and sharing “Fox:

An Opera-Comique” (and subsequent chapters) the most common criticism is that I do not

provide enough interpretation(s) of Fox’s story, nor do I provide discrete conclusions about

Fox’s story to inform policy decisions at an institutional level. If Fox had given me dis-

crete conclusions about policy decisions, I would have shared them with the audience. He

does not. Who am I to say, on his behalf (as a privileged researcher), what should be done

for gay/queer men like him? That question becomes even more complicated when one

considers that I interviewed a Latino/Native American drag queen, a Cuban/Puerto Rican

gay man, a survivor of fourteen months of ex-gay therapy, a lesbian woman, and a trans*

woman. After all this talk, I do not know the essence of what I am trying to tell you, other

than writing on behalf of your participants is tricky, especially when you’re supposed to

be translating these marginalized people into the language of their oppressors so that their

stories may be taken seriously. For additional information on how white-hetero-patriarchy

pervades the academy and collegiate pedagogy, see: Frankie Condon and Bobbi Olson,

“Building a House for Linguistic Diversity: Writing Centers, English-Language Teaching

and Learning, and Social Justice,” in Tutoring Second Language Writers, ed. Shanti Bruce

and Ben Raforth (Logan, UT: Utah State University Press, 2016): 27-52.

The reviewer also wrote: “It reads as if the researcher found postqualitative research

and thought that it was really neat and added it in, to be quite honest.” Only a straight

man would write something this condescending, especially right after admitting he knew

nothing about queer theory and right after suggesting I cite a scholar of colonial-era navi-

gational practices (for a contemporary queer research project). Seems legit.

A transwoman, who consults the Department of Defense on gender inclusion, once

told me to teach my students to simply: Ask our names; Call us by our names; Refer to us

as we wish to be called. Is actually legit.

Sarah J. Tracy, “Qualitative Quality: Eight ‘Big-Tent’ Criteria for Excellent Qualita-

tive Research,” Qualitative Inquiry 16, no. 10 (2010): 837-851.

One way I wanted to create an immersive, multi-sensory experience of their lives

was by allowing their words to dominate the project. In my “Prologue” to Pink Lemonade,

I wrote that the body of the project was composed near exclusively by data (interviews,

observations, notes, reections, memories, sounds); scholarly commentary took place in

footnotes, which served as scholarly “live tweets” accompanying the fantasia going on

above. Within the footnotes, I attempted to preserve a queer spirit through code-meshing,

as dened by Vershawn Ashanti Young. Young is foundational to my work in countering

“standard language ideology” and academic elitism, which forces marginalized scholars to

assimilate into white-hetero-patriarchal writing and research styles. Young writes, “stan-

dard language ideology insist sthat minority people will never become an Ivy League En-

glish department chair or president of Harvard University if they don’t perfect they mastery

of standard English [don’t believe him…take a look at the Cornel West/Larry Summers

dispute at Harvard University]. At the same time the ideology instruct that white men will

gain such positions, even with a questionable handle of standard grammar and rhetoric

(Didn’t George W. get to be president for eight years, while all kinds of folks characterized

his grammar as bad and his rhetorical style as poor? And hasn’t former vice presidential

candidate Sarah Palin made up words like refudiate for repudiate and lamestream media to

Benjamin Arnberg 33

poke fun at mainstream media? Just askin…[Stanley Fish] must don’t like [this informa-

tion[. He say we should have student to translate the way they talk into standard English

on a chalk board. He say, leave the way they say it to momma on the board and put the

standard way on paper. This is wrongly called code switching. And many teachers be doin’

this with they students. And it don’t work. Why? Cuz most teachers of code switching

don’t know what they be talkin bout. Code switching, from a linguistic perspective, is not

translatin one dialect into another one. It’s blendin two or mo dialects, languages, or rhe-

torical forms into one sentence, one utterance, one paper…But since so many teachers be

jackin up code switching with they ‘speak this way at school and a dierent way at home,’

we need a new term. I call it CODE MESHING! …it’s multidialectalism and pluralingual-

ism in one speech act, in one paper” (p. 66-67). See, Vershawn Ashanti Young, “Should

Writer’s Use They Own English?” Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies, no. 12 (2010): 110-

117. I bet you $5.00 that someone is going to take issue with my minor code-meshing in

this paper as well as my cavalier bending of Chicago Style by having jacked up, extended

footnotes (since Chicago Style recommends footnotes be brief complements to the body,

not a forum for ongoing scholarly conversation). Fuck that.

Maggie MacLure, “Researching Without Representation? Language and Materiality

in Post-Qualitative Methodology,” International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Educa-

tion 26, no. 6 (2013): 658-667.

Stephanie Daza and Walter S. Gershon, “Beyond Ocular Inquiry: Sound, Silence,

and Sonication,” Qualitative Inquiry 21, no. 7 (2015): 639-644.

Tony E. Adams, Narrating the Closet: An Autoethnography of Same-Sex Attraction

(New York, NY: Routledge, 2016).

One good, semi-autobiographical story that I attempt to emulate (though I most assur-

edly fail at) is Ocean Vuong’s On Earth We Are Briey Gorgeous (New York, NY: Penguin, 2019)

Here are some examples of “good research” according to my eld, which intersects

queer theory with higher education administration. Thomas Ylioja, Gerald Cochran, Mi-

chael R. Woodford, and Kristen A. Renn, “Frequent Experience of LGBQ Microaggrees-

sion on Campus Associated with Smoking Among Sexual Minority College Students,”

Nicotine & Tobacco Research (2018): 340-346; Michael R. Woodford, Perry Silverschanz,

Eric Swank, Kristin S. Scherrer, and Lisa Raiz, “Predictors of Heterosexual College Stu-

dents’ Attitudes Toward LGBT People,” Journal of LGBT Youth 9, no. 4 (2012): 297-320;

Perry Silverschanz, Lilia M. Cortina, Julie Konik, and Vicki J. Magley, “Slurs, Snubs, and

Queer Jokes: Incidence and Impact of Heterosexist Harassment in Academia,” Sex Roles

58 (2008): 179-191; Jill M. Chonody, Michael R. Woodford, David J. Brennan, Bernie

Newman, and Donna Wang, “Attitudes Toward Gay Men and Lesbian Women Among

Heterosexual Social Work Faculty,” Journal of Social Work Education 50 (2014): 136-

152; Michael R. Woodford, Jill M. Chonody, Alex Kulick, David J. Brennan, and Kris-

ten Renn, “The LGBQ Microaggressions on Campus Scale: A Scale Development and

Validation Study,” Journal of Homosexuality 62, no. 12 (2015): 1660-1687; Susan R.

Rankin, “Campus Climates for Sexual Minorities,” New Directions for Student Services

111 (2005): 17-23; Susan Rankin and Jason C. Garvey, “Identifying, Quantifying, and Op-

erationalizing Queer-Spectrum and Trans-Spectrum Students: Assessment and Research in

Student Aairs,” New Directions for Student Services 152 (2015): 73-84; Jodi L. Linley,

David Nguyen, G. Blue Brazelton, Brianna Becker, Kristen Renn, and Michael Woodford,

“Faculty as Sources of Support for LGBTQ College Students,” College Teaching 64, no.

2 (2016): 55-63; Jason C. Garvey, Dian D. Squire, Brett Stachler, and Susan Rankin, “The

Queer Librettist34

Impact of Campus Climate on Queer-Spectrum Student Academic Success,” Journal of

LGBT Youth 15, no. 2 (2018): 89-105; Martin A. Swanbrow Becker, Stacey F. Nemeth

Roberts, Sam M. Ritts, William Tyler Branagan, Alia R. Warner, and Sheri L. Clark, “Sup-

porting Transgender College Students: Implications for Clinical Intervention and Campus

Prevention,” Journal of College Student Psychotherapy 31, no. 2 (2017): 155-176; Jason

C. Garvey, Susan Rankin, Genny Beemyn, and Shane Windmeyer, “Improving the Cam-

pus Climate for LGBTQ Students Using the Campus Pride Index,” New Directions for

Student Services 159 (2017): 61-70; Jason C. Garvey, Laura A. Sanders, and Maureen A.

Flint, “Generational Perceptions of Campus Climate Among LGBTQ Undergraduates,”

Journal of College Student Development 58, no. 6 (2017): 795-817; Kimberly F. Balsam,

Yamile Molina, Blair Beadnell, Jane Simoni, and Karma Walters, “Measuring Multiple

Minority Stress: The LGBT People of Color Microaggressions Scale,” Cultural Diversity

17, no. 2 (2011): 163-174; Robert D. Brown and Valerie

J. Gortmaker, “Assessing Campus Climates for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender

(LGBT) Students: Methodological and Political Issues,” Journal of LGBT Youth 6, no. 4

(2009): 416-435; and Matthew J. Mayhew, Alyssa N. Rockenbach, Nicholas A. Bowman,

Tricia A. Seifert, Gregory C. Wolniak, Ernest T. Pascarella, and Patrick T. Terenzini, How



Century Evidence That Higher Education Works, Volume 3

(San Francisco, CA: Wiley: 2016).

I primarily incorporate evocative autoethnography, as described by Arthur P. Boch-

ner and Carolyn Ellis in Evocative Autoethnography: Writing Lives and Telling Stories

(New York, NY: Routledge, 2016). I also mesh autoethnography and queer theory, as the-

orized by Stacy Holman Jones and Tony Adams, “Autoethnography is a Queer Method,”

in        

Research, ed. Kath Browne and Catherine J. Nash (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2010): 195-

214.

Anna Deavere Smith frequently refers to “organic poetry” in interviews and speak-

ing engagements. However, her most concise rendering of the concept occurred in her 2007

TED Talk “Four American Characters,” available on YouTube.

Phil C. Langer, “The Research Vignette: Reexive Writing as Interpretive Representa-

tion of Qualitative Inquiry—A Methodological Proposition,” Qualitative Inquiry, 22, no.

9: 735-744.

Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, “The Appearance of Data,” Cultural Studies: Critical

, 13, no. 4, 2013: 223-227. See also: Elizabeth Adams St. Pierre, “Haecce-

ity: Laying Out a Plane for Post Qualitative Inquiry,” Qualitative Inquiry 23, no. 9 (2017):

686-698.

An example of code-meshing. In queer subculture, “kiki” refers to social gatherings,

largely for queer people of color, to dance and socialize (and, presumably share gossip).

Adolfo, one of my participants, seems to use it to underscore the insular nature of kikis, in

which participants develop inside jokes and tastes.

More code-meshing!

A reviewer, previously mentioned, suggested rejecting my monograph for omit-

ting the work, on scriptwriting, of Nathaniel Kohn. So here it is: Nathaniel Kohn, “The

Screenplay as Postmodern Literary Exemplar: Authorial Distraction, Disappearance, Dis-

solution,” Qualitative Inquiry, 6, no. 4, 2000: 489-510.

Benjamin Arnberg 35

Adams, 2016.

Durell M. Callier, “Living in C Minor: Reections on the Melodies of Blackness,

Queerness, and Masculinity,” Qualitative Inquiry 22, no. 10 (2016): 790-794.

Shaun E. Edmonds, “Connected to Orlando: An Autoethnography in Three(ish)

Acts,” Qualitative Inquiry 23, no. 7 (2017): 519-526

Laurel Richardson, Fields of Play: Constructing an Academic Life (New Bruns-

wick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1997).

George Saunders, Lincoln in the Bardo (New York, NY: Random House, 2018).

A paper I co-wrote for this very journal discusses a curation-as-analysis approach.

Benjamin Arnberg, Hannah C. Baggett, and Carey E. Andrzejewski, “[…] Resurrecting

Dead Data,” Taboo: The Journal of Culture and Education 19, no. 3 2020: 43-61.

I told you I was going to model an imperfect writing process. Well, here you go. I

planned to “EXPAND HERE,” but it seems easier to just point you to another source that is

yet to be published. See, Arnberg, et al. “[…] Resurrecting Dead Data.” I seriously cannot

explain it anymore.

Bram Stoker’s, obviously.

For additional reading on how queer subjects have been characterized through un-

truths, see Patrick A. Wilson, Pamela Valera, Alexander J. Martos, Natalie M. Wittlin, Mi-

guel A. Munoz-Laboy, and Richard G. Parker, “Contributions of Qualitative Research in

Informing HIV/AIDS Interventions Targeting Black MSM in the United States.” Journal

of Sex Research 53, no. 6, 2016: 642-654; Tamara de Szegheo Lang, “The Demand to

Progress: Critical Nostalgia in LGBTQ Cultural Memory.” Journal of Lesbian Studies 19

(2015): 230-248; Sara Ahmed, “Queer Feelings,” in The Routledge Queer Studies Reader,

ed. Donald E. Hall, Annamarie Jagose, Andrea Bebell, and Susan Potter (New York, NY:

Routledge, 2013): 422-441; Jose Esteban Munoz, “Feeling Brown, Feeling Down: Latina

Aect, The Performativity of Race, and The Depressive Position,” in The Routledge Queer

Studies Reader, ed. Donald E. Hall, Annamarie Jagose, Andrea Bebell, and Susan Potter

(New York, NY: Routledge, 2013): 412-421; Tim Dean, 

on the Subculture of Barebacking (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Jose

Esteban-Munoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York, NY:

NYU Press, 2009); Judith Butler, “Critically Queer,” GLQ, no. 1 (1993): 17-32.

An alias for an administrator in my department.

An alias for an administrator on my campus.

Not an alias, because this gasbag deserves all the criticism he gets.

He was caught having an aair with his student in his former fraternity house;

another student turned him in. He was subsequently promoted; in the same time frame, a

queer man of color was red for the same oense.

I try to limit my pettiness to ve acts per day.

Dean, 2009.

More code-meshing! Well, code-bouncing.

Pauliina Rautio and Anna Vladimirova, “Befriending Snow: On Data as an Onto-

logically Signicant Research Companion,” in Disrupting Data in Qualitative Inquiry: En-

tanglements with the Post-Critical and Post-Anthropocentric, ed. Mirka Koro-Ljungberg,

Teija Loytonen, and Marek Tesar (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2017): 23-33.

I refer to opera comique the genre, not the opera company in France. According

to Allison Latham,  (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

2011), “the use of spoken dialogue remained a distinctive characteristic” of the genre,

Queer Librettist36

despite “traditional requirements” of French opera requiring all acts be sung through. I

adopted the genre of opera comique to accommodate spoken data. My opera comique

does not contain original music and lyrics, nor does it contain references to classic works

of opera comique (such as Bizet’s Carmen); it does, however, contain arias from classical

operas as well as contemporary rock operas.

OMG, a pun!

I used footnotes to provide additional insight and information in the libretto so that

it remained free from distracting scholarly intervention. In addition, I didn’t want to mesh

the irreverent tone of the libretto with the serious tone of the scholar.

As in David M. Halperin, “How to do the History of Male Homosexuality,” GLQ 6,

no. 1: 87-124, 2000. Quote from page 92. Here is an example of where I included scholar-

ship as a character. Dr. Halperin is no personal acquaintance of mine, and, as of yet, has not

agreed to appear in any productions in a cameo.

BBC is slang for “big black cock” and is common parlance in gay discourse. How-

ever, the acronym is culturally problematic, since it simultaneously stereotypes and fe-

tishizes black men’s bodies. I was rst made aware of the problems of fetishizing black

gay men when reading Donovan Trott, “An Open Letter to Gay, White Men: No, You’re

Not Allowed to Have a Racial Preference,”  , June 19, 2017, https://

www.hungtonpost.com/entry/an-open-letter-to-gay-white-men-no-youre-not-allowed_

us_5947f0e4b0f7875b83e459

A last bit of imperfect process. I intended to conclude, but the August 1, 2019 dead-

line snuck up on me. That’s life. That’s writing. If you need an expansion, just email me at

[email protected]. Let’s chat soon. XOXO.