So I spent Friday night hanging out with some friends, watching a recent Swat grad competing on Jeopardy. She didn't win, but it's okay because she goes to Harvard Law, so in the grand scheme of things, she really did win.
Anyway, we'd traveled all the way out to Queens to watch the damn thing, and after watching that and Wheel of Fortune, it was still only 8 o'clock. So we watched Candleshoe, this Disney movie from the early 70s with a preteenaged Jodie Foster. I don't really have a main point to this entry, but if I did, it would be that young Jodie Foster is the cutest little gaymo in the world. Probly if you look closely at the Water Babies sunscreen bottle that she posed for, you'd think, what an adorable little lesbian. It's interesting how when someone is young enough to still be labeled a "tomboy," they can act so unrestrainedly gay and no one will raise an eyebrow or label their behavior as "queer." As we watched the first scene, where young Jodie is running around with a bunch of street kids wearing an oversized army vest, my friend Jason commented, "See, people think that Jodie came out this year, but actually she came out in this movie." It's funny that Jodie's sexuality has been in debate for so long. If you just pay attention- the clothes, the attitude, even her interaction with the other girl her age all scream gay. It's cool to watch a little girl acting gay and know that she will grow up to become a lesbian, because most talk of homosexuality begins at puberty, when sexuality becomes part of the public consciousness. As a homosexual, your life is sort of divided into before and after your coming out. Of course, on an individual level, you do your best to reconcile these two very different selves, looking for earlier signs of your sexuality in order to see your life in an organized, linear fashion. But I feel like on a societal level, even within the gay community, homosexuality is seen as adult. You see kids you might suspect will be gay, but mostly its kind of left alone until they come out. This makes the coming out experience, which varies in its degrees of painfulness and upheaval, a necessary part of a gay life. Few gay children see themselves becoming the adults they imagined, and I think that kind of fracturing makes a huge difference to a person's life. Not that I view coming out as negative; I would never go back to the way that I failed to question aspects of society before I came out, nor would I trade the thrill of finding a fulfillment I hadn't previously thought possible. There are many facets of what it means to be gay that one does need to be an adult to truly understand and appreciate. But still, it seems weird to me how compared with straight life, the homosexual life requires a point in which there is some sort of huge turnaround. And that's why its so refreshing to see that, retrospectively, the homosexuality is present in a child, even if it was unacknowledged. You want to be able to set them on track early, so they never have to re-evaluate, they can just plan it the right way from the beginning.