Flag Life, Rural Edition

I’ve never, ever been into rainbows or flags, and especially not rainbow flags. I was an edgy, little queer when I moved to San Francisco at 25 and thought rainbow flags were for people who were a different type of queer than I was. I guess I thought rainbow flags were for the mainstream gays. I was, or thought I was, different than that. I certainly thought I was way too cool for flags.

“I have an extremely queer face,” I remember saying more than once. I felt that was all I needed to be out at all times.

That said, flags in general, I’ve never understood. A friend of mine once dated a man from France who visited her here in the states, and could not get over how many people had American flags hanging from their porches and mail boxes.

“Don’t they know where they are?” he’d asked her.

I imagine him worried about Americans’ collective amnesia, which it turns out he was right about all along.

(See?! Edgy self-portrait at a train station with my queer face in Croatia, 2008.)

I’m beginning to think that as an urban queer, I didn’t need flags, but as a rural queer I do. In my very small coastal town there’s a house on a side road with a trans flag and a black lives matter flag hanging in their yard and when I first moved here it was one of the main indicators that it was all going to be okay. There are five LGBTQ people who live in my town that I know of and I’m dating one of them. Sometimes I drive slightly out of my way to see the house with the flags and feel this little wave of comfort. Same thing with driving up to Bandon. On the side of the highway is an old trailer with a queer pride flag and a black lives matter flag and besides all the gorgeous trees, it is the best part of driving to Bandon. 

Recently, my partner’s eighteen year old daughter asked us if we’d heard of Project 25. As she explained it to us, I let myself hope for a moment that this was some TikTok hoax, but I knew better. I could write a lot here about Project 25 and the impending November election, but you already know. It’s at turns awful, terrifying, embarrassing, and exhausting.

Last night they came in the mail: two flags and the accompanying flag poles. I was very tired and the sun was setting as I grabbed my drill from the garage, threaded the flags onto the poles and put them up at each end of the porch. They are huge and perfect. I’m not sure what having them does for anyone other than us, but perhaps someone will drive down our road, lost in this town with no streetlights and dark skies, and get the same feeling of safety that I get when I see other homes with these kinds of markers now.

(Our house, officially fully flagged and bedecked.)

As for me, I can’t stop staring at them. I am no longer the punkass little homo who thought I was so special. I’m just a person who wants to help others feel a little bit safer, the same thing I want for myself. 

(Also…this shirt is looking a little bit…GAY. So…yeah.)