Besos for Orlando

Olga García Echeverría

 

 

 

Back in 2014, soon after posting the above picture on FB, Sylvia noticed that the photo of her and her girlfriend Lillian, interlocked in a kiss, had suddenly disappeared from her wall. Someone had “disapproved” and reported the picture, claiming the image contained nudity.

 

Este beso

tu miedo

tu odio

tu repulsión

es nuestra bella revolución...

 

Being queer doesn't violate any official Facebook Terms; however, nudity, bullying, graphic violence, and spam do. I imagine whoever reported Sylvia and Lillian's picture must have felt limited by the FB categories that constitute “offensive.” What? No box for Homosexual Activity? No box for Against My Religion? Nudity, I'm assuming, was the closest category to reach for, although even this seems illogical and desperate, since there isn't even an exposed forearm or a hint of cleavage in the photo. Es puro beso. Es puro amor. Yet, someone was so bothered by it that he/she went out of her/his way to attempt to erase it.

 

Este beso que tanto te molesta

está hecho de cuerpo

sangre y miel

 

 

 

 

It's one of the most ancient expressions of love. Whether learned or instinctual, it's become one of the most natural ways to demonstrate affection, un beso, a kiss. Who doesn't love a good kiss? The lips, the tongue, the taste of someone you desire. Neruda said it well:

 

There was thirst and hunger, and you were the fruit...

Oh the bitten mouth, oh the kissed limbs,

Oh the hungering teeth, oh the entwined bodies...

 

 

 

Los besos nos salvan y nos llenan de pasión, a veces de ilusión, even if for brief delectable moments. In mainstream culture, the heterosexual kiss is pimped beyond belief. It's ubiquitous. It's romanticized. It's sanctified by Church and State and Media.

 

And the queer kiss?

 

 

 

 

 

 

“the queer beso

breathtaking

magical

not of this earth”--Mónica Palacios

 

Some may argue that a kiss is a kiss is a kiss, and sure it is, but queer kisses are, still, too often repressed, deemed obscene, viewed as unnatural, sinful. Whereas the hetero kiss prances around full of entitlement and legitimacy, the queer kiss gets hated on, bullied, pushed into the shadows, silenced, ignored, shamed, condemned. It gets reported on FB as offensive.

 

 

 

 

Like women's wombs, the queer kiss also gets heavily legislated, regulated, controlled. It gets attacked with laws and bills and bibles and when that doesn't work, it gets assaulted with non-regulated semi-automatic weapons.

 

Este beso es dulzura

 

 

 

Es la cereza de la vida

¡Oye tú te comes la tuya

y después me quieres quitar la mía!

 

Which brings me to Orlando on June 12^th, 2016. To Pulse Nightclub on Queer Latin Night. To a 29-year-old assailant named Omar Mateen. To a semi-automatic weapon that was a piece of cake (a joke) to purchase. To the horrific murder of 49 men and women and the wounding of 50 others whose only crime was being themselves and seeking out a good time on a Saturday night. Goddamn!

 

 

 

 

It's hard not to talk about Orlando in fragments, in broken pieces with a broken heart, because that's what Orlando is—so many lives shattered in an instant; the ugly faces of extremism and homophobia and violence (both homegrown and foreign fed) staring back from the broken mirror that is our country, our failed government, our own terrifying reflection. I know that if we're not sickened and enraged enough to act, then we're doomed. Again. And again. And again.

 

Yet, I don't know exactly how to deal with Orlando. Like so many others, I've spent a good part of the week in shock, wondering, “What makes a person hate so much?” It's the question I keep coming back to. I'm sure Mateen wasn't born hating queers. Nobody is. Just like nobody's born being a bigot.

 

On Tuesday, I stopped by to visit my mother after work. She didn't know I was coming. I could hear her TV as I made my way up the stairs, the news in Spanish blasting. Everything was Orlando. Orlando. Orlando. When she saw me at the door, the first thing she said was “Ay, que terrible.” I nodded in agreement. Then she turned off the TV and walked over to hug me. There was fear and sadness in her embrace, and also something else I couldn't quite name. Maybe it was a sense of relief that I was there in her arms, alive and well. She has two queer children, my brother and me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

It hasn't always been easy for her to accept and make sense of our queerness. She's an immigrant from Mexico who's pretty traditional. She's a devote catholic who still covers her head with a scarf when she enters a church. She's never worn a pair of pants or driven a car. She doesn't speak English. When I first came out to her, she resisted. “You're confused. You're just being influenced by who you're hanging out with. Maybe you haven't met the right man...” Eventually, though, she stretched beyond her comfort zone to meet me somewhere. In the end, her love prevailed.

 

 

 

 

 

I went home Tuesday night thinking about how love, in so many of its forms, can potentially transform. How it can teach tolerance. How it can challenge us to stretch in small but significant ways.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The next day, as I contemplated this blog, I felt an urgency to solicit photos of queer kisses. I wasn't sure how it would all come together, but I knew that if I was going to sit down and attempt to write anything about Orlando, I was going to need lots and lots and lots of kisses. 

 

Y empezaron a llegar los besos...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

y no nos tragó la tierra...

Since the mass shooting in Orlando last week, much has come to light about Mateen's past. His troubled school record. The domestic abuse against his first wife. His extremist views and political ties. His questioning sexuality. Was he gay? Was he gay? Was he gay? Inquiring minds want to know. The FBI wants to know. Was he really triggered by having seen two men kissing weeks prior to the assault, as his father said? The narrative is still being spun (in several directions) and it's likely to change repeatedly.

 

In the end, I really don't care if Mateen was gay or not, nor am I inclined to believe that the sighting of a lone queer kiss drove him to murder. Hijole, what power! Sounds like a Marijuana Killer Weed Ad from the 1950's, only that the contemporary version would say, "The Queer Kiss: If you see it...You Will Kill People."

What seems more plausible is that Mateen's vicious act of violence at Pulse last week was not completely an aberration (we've had too many mass shootings in recent history to call it that), nor was it an inexplicable sudden snap; it was the culmination of years of indoctrination and intolerance. Mateen's extremism was/is nurtured by the homophobia (the micro and the macro) that is perpetuated every single day not only by Church and State and Media, but also by individuals like you and me. We choose to challenge homophobia or remain silent. We choose to either minimize or attack queer love or we see it, accept it, and hopefully we celebrate it.

Which brings me back full circle to Sylvia and Lillian and their temporarily banned beso on FB. Their kiss is a metaphor. It's a lesson. It's a doorway...
 

 

 

 

Orlando, you are in our hearts.

Este beso

sigue bailando

sigue brillando

sigue pulsando

sigue

y sigue

y siguirá

amando

 

6 Seconds of Whirling Pride: by Maritza Alvarez

 

 

Besos Para...

 

Stanley Almodovar III, 23 years old

Amanda Alvear, 25 years old

Oscar A Aracena-Montero, 26 years old

Rodolfo Ayala-Ayala, 33 years old

Antonio Davon Brown, 29 years old

Darryl Roman Burt II, 29 years old

Angel L. Candelario-Padro, 28 years old

Juan Chevez-Martinez, 25 years old

Luis Daniel Conde, 39 years old

Cory James Connell, 21 years old

Tevin Eugene Crosby, 25 years old

Deonka Deidra Drayton, 32 years old

Simon Adrian Carrillo Fernandez, 31 years old

Leroy Valentin Fernandez, 25 years old

Mercedez Marisol Flores, 26 years old

Peter O. Gonzalez-Cruz, 22 years old

Juan Ramon Guerrero, 22 years old

Paul Terrell Henry, 41 years old

Frank Hernandez, 27 years old

Miguel Angel Honorato, 30 years old

Javier Jorge-Reyes, 40 years old

Jason Benjamin Josaphat, 19 years old

Eddie Jamoldroy Justice, 30 years old

Anthony Luis Laureanodisla, 25 years old

Christopher Andrew Leinonen, 32 years old

Alejandro Barrios Martinez, 21 years old

Brenda Lee Marquez McCool, 49 years old

Gilberto Ramon Silva Menendez, 25 years old

Kimberly Morris, 37 years old

Akyra Monet Murray, 18 years old

Luis Omar Ocasio-Capo, 20 years old

Geraldo A. Ortiz-Jimenez, 25 years old

Eric Ivan Ortiz-Rivera, 36 years old

Joel Rayon Paniagua, 32 years old

Jean Carlos Mendez Perez, 35 years old

Enrique L. Rios, Jr., 25 years old

Jean C. Nives Rodriguez, 27 years old

Xavier Emmanuel Serrano Rosado, 35 years old

Christopher Joseph Sanfeliz, 24 years old

Yilmary Rodriguez Solivan, 24 years old

Edward Sotomayor Jr., 34 years old

Shane Evan Tomlinson, 33 years old

Martin Benitez Torres, 33 years old

Jonathan Antonio Camuy Vega, 24 years old

Juan P. Rivera Velazquez, 37 years old

Luis S. Vielma, 22 years old

Franky Jimmy Dejesus Velazquez, 50 years old

Luis Daniel Wilson-Leon, 37 years old

Jerald Arthur Wright, 31 years old