Nl> 111l('.1I11i\ ip.liI'd 1111.'htlr:;l':;, IIIl' 1'"IlIl'.lloIllI'·111 .11 • "I':" II,,· 111.1:;:.. Ii

rests, lht' 1(lIn~ lIsl'd again:;!. litt'lll. '1111'I"'''' 1·11I1VI};il11('\.11111'SIIIIII'IIIIII)',else. It became a moment when queer 1'l'lll'k', i'rllslr.lk! I .\11l1skk or .illthe violence they had endured, saw our musses. 'liI(' 1,()lin' rl'spollll(·" Ilvbreaking up the group} factioning off segments of our groupings, ObS('111

ing our mass.The state understands the need to keep us from knowing ourselves,

knowing our masses. It is ready, at the drop of the proverbial dime, [IItransform public transportation into policing machines} to call out thousands of cops to match thousands of activists} to wield clubs and fists. 'III!'state} like Delany, understands the power of our masses} a power that CUi

be realized only by surpassing the solitary pervert model and accessinggroup identity. Doing so entails resisting the privatization of queer culturefor which the gay pragmatists such as Andrew Sullivan} Gabriel Rotello,and Bruce Bawer clamor. The next day the New York Post headline read,"Gay Riot." It was more nearly a queer riot} where queer energies manifested themselves and the state responded with calculated force and brutalprotocols. The riot was sobering because the mechanisms of policing werepartially displayed} revealed for an evening} and it became very dear toeveryone present how the idea of queers making contact in a mass uprising scared the state. The utopian promise of our public performance wasresponded to with shattering force. Even though this impromptu rebellionwas overcome easily by the state} the activist anger} a productive} genera-tive anger} let those assembled in rage glean a queer future within a repres-sive heteronormative present.

Making Utopia

J

Adorno provided a succinct rendering of utopia when he described it asexisting in "the determined negation of that which merely is." This ne-gation points "to what should be.?" The work I have considered in thischapter looks to what is and fashions important critiques of the presentby insisting on the present's dialectical relation to the future. Our criticismshould} like the cases I have surveyed} be infused with a utopian functionthat is attuned to the "anticipatory illumination" of art and culture. Suchillumination cuts through fragmenting darkness and allow us to see thepolitically enabling whole. Such illumination will provide us with accessto a world that should be} that could be} and that will be.

"Ic"ture, Ephemera; and Queer Feeling

/llmwching Kevin Aviance

I III', C HAP T E R HAS two beginnings. 1 One is a story culled fromfill) Jltlll,llll1cmorYi and the other is a poem by a prominent twentieth-cen-IIII}' North American poet. Both openings function as queer evidence: anIl\>iolnlcc that has been queered in relation to the laws of what counts aspH 1111: (~teerness has an especially vexed relationship to evidence. Histori-,.111)1,evidence of queerness has been used to penalize and discipline queerdp'llrl's, connections) and acts. When the historian of queer experience at-~1")I'ls to document a queer past} there is often a gatekeeper} representing

'1 'II r.light present} who will labor to invalidate the historical fact of queerIt\!~'K ·present} past} and future. Queerness is rarely complemented by\.\vldl'llcc} or at least by traditional understandings of the term. The key toqlil'I'ring evidence} and by that I mean the ways in which we prove queer-I\I'SSand read queerness} is by suturing it to the concept of ephemera.'1ldllk of ephemera as trace, the remains} the things that are left} hangingIiI Ihe air like a rumor .

.l.icques Derrida's idea of the trace is relevant here.' Ephemeral evidencejN 1..ircly obvious because it is needed to stand against the harsh lights ofI II,Ii 11stream visibility and the potential tyranny of the fact. (Not that all{dcls are harmful} but the discourse of the fact has often cast antinormativeIksirc as the bad object.) Ephemera are the remains that are often embed-!II'.! in queer acts} in both stories we tell one another and communicativephysical gestures such as the cool look of a street cruise} a lingering hand-uhuke between recent acquaintances} or the mannish strut of a particularly(oufident woman.

In this chapter I want to approach the idea of queerness and gesture. So111I1.ehcan be located in the gesture. Gesture) I argue throughout this book,/lignals a refusal of a certain kind of finitude. Dance is an especially valu-.ihlc site for ruminations on queerness and gesture. This theoretical workIN anchored to a case study; a living body, a performer who is a master of

65

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66 Gesture. Ephemera. and Queer Feeling Gesture. Ephemera. and Queer Feeling 67

the pose. Kevin Aviance is a mainstay of New York City's club world. Heis something of a deity in the cosmology of gay nightlife. He is paid to per-form, to sing, and to move-at clubs in New York City and throughoutthe world. He has been flown all over North America, Europe, and Asiaand has performed for devoted cognoscenti, men and women who share aglobal sphere of queer knowing, moving, and feeling. At the center of thatinternational sphere of queer experience are gesture, Aviance's resonantposes, and the force of queer ephemera.

'Ihis chapter builds on and speaks to themes that animate at least three\If the other contributions to the edited volume in which an earlier version\II' this chapter appeared.' Like Jonathan Bollen, I look at the dance floor:IS a stage for queer performativity that is integral to everyday life. I am onllu- s.unc page as Bollen when he considers the dance floor as space where1'1·1.11inns between memory and content, self and other, become inextrica-bly intertwined. Furthermore, I also align my project with Bollen's Man-dl \' Mcrlcau-Ponty-inspired proposition that the dance floor increasespur tolerance for embodied practices. It may do so because it demands, int tH' openness and closeness of relations to others, an exchange and altera-Iiuu \)f kinesthetic experience through which we become, in a sense, lesslil«: ourselves and more like each other. In my analysis that does not meanIh"t queers become one nation under a groove once we hit the dance11\ H Ii'. I am in fact interested in the persistent variables of difference andhll'quity that follow us from queer communities to the dance floor, but I:1111nonetheless interested in the ways in which a certain queer communalIllgk overwhelms practices of individual identity. I am also interested inIbt, way in which the state responds to the communal becoming.

'l'\I this end r consider Paul Siegel's contribution to that aforemen-Iillll~'dvolume, 'J\. Right to Boogie Queerly: The First Amendment on theI )\llIn' I:I"or/' ;l valuable resource for students of queer dance who wishIn 1I111lnsl~llldIIO\'only the social significance of queer dance but the vari-IHl~;W,I)'Sill which ;l repressive state apparatus counters queer movements1111111li"'I'," ;11111sY"lbolic. Siegel's essay discusses the ways in which First1\lllI'!\lII1H'111discollrse has ultimately served queer dance movements.V('I Iii:: ,1i.'1dn dll('s not considor recent' developlllt:Jlts in New York City,::11I11.1.";II", (:ildi,1I1i ,lIllllilli:;11',11illll'S n::lllilll,lIilllllll',II'l'll<\i,' cah;\lTI-li"ense1,1\\",111.11h.iv. h('I'11 iist'd .IS .1hilllill shill "'IIVII .111l111.1I';1::::v.uiuus '1'11'1'1'.IIIlII,lIi," IlIilllllil), 11,11:,ill Nl'\v Vllik (:ily. '11111:.1'h,II:: Ih,l\ .nu vlv.: ,lisl'I.I)!1'"1',1'',il',II',III,11 II',HI, "1'\1111\.111111')',I'}I \)l'd"1 (11'1111'NJ'\ov )'111'''\'11)/ II"1',1111111'111,"('1111'.111'11'11\11.111','"'IIII'. I·dlll 1i,I',1\(\11"'1'1111'1"',11<-11,,11111111

this instance Siegel's optimistic appraisal of the juridical sphere does nothold. Nonetheless, the stories of queer legal victory that he recounts serveas a valuable resource for hope.

In a similar vein Paul Franklin's historical account of Charlie Chap-lin's dance also stands as an incredible analysis of how queer movement,despite dominant biases against queer dance, can nonetheless provideus with a narrative of queer iconicity's force within popular culture. Al-though Kevin Aviance and Charlie Chaplin are an unlikely match, one alittle white tramp and the other a big black queen, both are masters of thehistorically dense queer gesture.s Aviance, like Chaplin before him, callson an expressive vocabulary beyond the spoken word. For both men, thebody in motion is the foundation of a visual lexicon in which the gesturespeaks loud and clear.

Dance studies has focused its attention on the idea of movement. Al-though a movement analysis of Kevin Aviance's work could certainly beelucidating, this chapter is instead a gesture analysis. Iam not as interestedin what the queer gesture means so much as I am interested in what suchgestures perform. Such an analysis is inspired by what Elin Diamond hasattempted to articulate, after Brecht's notion of Gestus, as gestic feministcriticism.' There is certainly something quite gestic about Aviance's per-formance practice, one that I argue does attempt to show its material con-ditions of (im)possibility and historical positionality. But although Gestussuggests a lot more than gesture, Iwish to concentrate my focus on theprecise and specific physical acts that are conventionally understood asgesture, such as the tilt of an ankle in very high heels, the swish of a handthat pats a face with imaginary makeup, and so many more precise acts.These acts are different, but certainly not independent, from movementsthat have more to do with the moving body's flow. Concentrating on ges-ture atomizes movement. These atomized and particular movements telltales of historical becoming, Gestures transmit ephemeral knowledge oflost queer histories and possibilities within a phobic majoritarian publicculture.

Beginning One: Memory

I am yOlllll'" muyl«: five or six, 0111' house is crowded hy relatives who11;IV\'jllsi :ll'l'ivl'd Crllill \ '11\.,1viu :I bl'ilo( :,lllIl\lv,'r"l·xil.l' in Spain, Thcy ar-l'ivl',J lik\' tllV 1.11I1iI)'.11.1.1 fl'\\' I't'.II': 1',ldll'r, lVilllIlIlI ,11I)'IIIill!,.'lilw:, till.'

t H'""lll'", I 111,1'1111"101, .11111 \.'IIl"'-' 1'""11111"'. f I

(;,:nl!cl\h:lI! I sl!II'l:l·d ;IS.I Ilurksqu(' d.lI1! \'1 III 1'.,"llIlllIll· ill Ihe fiHil's, ;llId1.~Iill gol ill" 'J his line conjures a lot or sl \(.wbl'/. di V.IS (Ill the dedi 11\'.

'Ihat tap-dance number itself indexes a sick camp aesthetic that the lunsill' Kild and Herb love. Their camp celebrates virtuosity while reveling in;111 .uuinormutive degeneracy. In this instance camp works as an index to;l shared aesthetic and a communal structure of feeling. The dance is overanll seemingly gone, but it lives as an ephemeral happening that we re-member, something that fuels anecdotes we tell one another. Because theshow was weekly, the devoted went week after week, and it all took on thefed of a ritual. It lives, then, after its dematerializations as a transformedmateriality, circulating in queer realms of loving and becoming. The storywith which I began this section functions that way too. It is an ephemeralproof. It does not count as evidence in some systems of reading and un-derstanding proper documentation and loving. Malting a case for queerevidence in theory seems to beg the use of such "unreliable" proofs.

Here is one of my favorite poems, Elizabeth Bishop's "One Art," and asecond opening:

P'\ll'lI 11l~.illl;)'''11 (lIlt' j,.killg voice, a gestureI luvlo) I sh.III'1 haw lied, It's evidentthe art oj' losing's not too hard to masterthough it may look like (Write it!) like disaster,"

'TIle parenthetical remarks within the poem are most interesting for mypurposes. I suggest that these remarks are graphically differentiatedthrough grammatical devices so that they might connote a different reg-ister than the majority of the poem. The parenthetical remarks commu-nicate a queer trace, an ephemeral evidence. I read these remarks, wordsthat evoke the idea of gesture, as gestures. Interest in these specific linesshould not derail interest in the poem in its entirety. "One Art" offers theattentive reader a theory of the materiality of performance and ephemera.It has become somewhat axiomatic within the field of performance stud-ies that the act exists only during its actual duration. I have been makinga case for a hermeneutics of residue that looks to understand the wakeof performance. What is left? What remains? Ephemera remain. They areabsent and they are present, disrupting a predictable metaphysics of pres-ence. The actual act is only a stage in the game; it is a moment, pure andsimple. There is a deductive element to performance that has everythingto do with its conditions of possibility, and there is much that follows.

In "One Al"t," the poet, Elizabeth Bishop, asks the forgetful person notto become upset about the loss of certain objects because they seem filledwith the intent to be lost-their loss is no disaster," She asks us to acceptthe fluster of loss and understand that it is not a disaster. Something isembedded within those acts, traces that have an indelible materiality. Thepoet is inviting us to do more than simply accept this loss but to embraceit and perhaps even to understand it not as loss but as something else. Sheis, within a parenthetical phrase in the poem's last line, asking us to "Writeit!" The word "write" is not only in parentheses but italicized, more thandoubling its emphasis. This command to write is a command. to save theephemeral thing by committing it to memory, to word, to language. Thepoet instructs us to retain the last thing through a documentation of ourloss, a retelling of our relationship to it. Thus, her mother's watch now ex-ists, or perhaps has found an afterlife, in its transformation and currentstatus as residue, as ephemera, It partially (re)lives in its documentation.

And although we cannot simply conserve a person or a performancethrough documentation, we can perhaps begin to summon up, through

One ArtThe art of losing isn't hard to master;so many things seem filled with the intentto be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the flusteroflost door keys, the hour badly spent.The art oflosing isn't hard to master

Then practice farther, losing faster:places, and names, and where it was you meantto travel. None of this will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, ornext-to-last, of three loved houses went.The art oflosing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent,I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

72 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling 73

the auspices of memory, the acts and gestures that meant so much to us.'Ihe poem clearly has an addressee, who is a "you:' NoW; we ask, who isthat "you"? If we were to lean on biography-something I always cautionmy students against-it would be Lota de Macedo Soares, Bishop's eS-'ranged Brazilian lover who committed suicide. Much would suggest thatidentification ("the jolting voice, a gesture I love"). The parenthetical re-(Hark contains queer content, queer memory, a certain residue of lesbianlove.

One temptation is to say that Bishop was in the closet and, further-more, that she gives frightened and furtive little signs of her lesbian desire.l\ut that is a mistake and not what I mean by traces of queer desire. As theNorth American poetry scholar Katie Kent has suggested to me in a corre-spondence, calling Bishop's work closeted is a mistake: I am wary of call-ing her work more or less closeted. I think doing so reinforces this trajec-lory to her life that only right before she died did she claim her sexuality inher poetry and in any other way, whereas if you read her poems expectingl\1 read about queerness, it is there throughout. A lot of the biographersand critics impose the closet on her as a way, I think, of not having to talkabout the role of queer identity and queer sex play throughout her work.

Kent's suggestion, that we read with queerness as an expectation, chal-1('llgl's the reader to approach the poet with a different optic, one that is;1I11I1\cdto the ways in which, through small gestures, particular intona-IlilliS, alld other ephemeral traces, queer energies and lives are laid bare.'111\' pnrcnthetical remark in Bishop's "One Art" is a queer gesture, oneIiLll ,II \ 'l'SSCS the force of queer ephemera. It is utterly legible to an op-III "i' ';'cling, a queer optic that permits us to take in the queerness that\" "Iillwddecl in gesture. The poem's narrative instructs us as to the tran-'.11'111" "f' Ihillgs filled with the intent to be lost, and as it does so, it re-I.lill', .t (I\ll'l'r trace that lingers, tragically and lovingly, within the hold of",II "I IIlH's('s, This poetic gesture in Bishop's masterful text is not unlikeII", liI"Vl'~;that a queer artist can conjure on a dance floor or a stage. Thej',''',llii'I' :;111\11110115the resources of queer experience and collective iden-Iil)l Ih,iI have been lost to us because of the demand for official evidence.uu] ('ads.

WI' Vlln understand queerness itself as being filled with the intention to1)(' IllS!. (.LUl'l'I'I1CSS is illegible and therefore lost in relation to the straightIltiIHL~' mapping of space. Queerness is lost in space Of lost in relation toIII,' Sl',ll'l' or hctcronormativity, Bishop's pO~'ll1 i;11I11I1dhl' rt'ad as a primer1;11 (1'Il"'1' sl,lr c-n.ut uu-n! or queer b~','()n\itl}'" '1'1' .I' \ "I,l l\l~;s is 1'0 <1('(.:(,1"

the way in which one's queerness will always render one lost to a worldof heterosexual imperatives, codes, and laws, To accept loss is to acceptqueerness-or more accurately, to accept the loss of heteronormativ-ity, authorization, and entitlement. To be lost is not to hide in a closetor to perform a simple (ontological) disappearing act: it is to veer awayfrom heterosexuality's path, Freedmen escaping slavery got lost too, andthis is a salient reverberation between queerness and racialization. At thishistorical moment, one that can be described as being characterized byencroaching assimilationist ideology in the mainstream gay and lesbianmovement, some gays and lesbians want to be found on a normative mapof the world. Being lost, in this particular queer sense, is to relinquishone's role (and subsequent privilege) in the heteronormative order, Thedispossessed are appropriately adept at critiquing possession as illogical.To accept the way in which one is lost is to be also found and not found ina particularly queer fashion.

A Body: Approaching Aviance

This section's subtitle is meant to connote a few things. I invoke the phrase"approaching Aviance" because I want to cast a picture from life, the sceneof Aviance's being approached. To travel through the gay world of NewYork City with Kevin Aviance is certainly to call attention to oneself Avi-ance is six foot two, bald, black, and effeminate, In or out of his uniquedrag he is immediately recognizable to anyone who has seen his show, Towalk the cityscape with him is to watch as strangers approach him andremark on one of his performances. They often gush enthusiastically andconvey how much a particular performance or his body of performancesmeans to them. One will hear such things as 'Tll always remember thatone show you did before they shut the Palladium down" or "You turnedit out at Roxy last week:' Kevin will be gracious and give back the love hehas just received.

His work, his singing and his movement, is not the high art of Bill T.Jones or Mark Morris, but Iwould venture to say that more queer peoplesee Aviance move than have witnessed Jones's masterful productions, I donot mean to undermine the value of Jones's work. I only want to properlyframe the way in which Aviancc's nightlife performances matter. The ges-turcs !J\' pnil)J'llIS IlHllln wlIrldi> III the children who compose his audi-l'1I(('S, I\vi;lIll'(' ISSPIII!'IIIiIl)',III ;1 Iw,n'lll) lha" displays and channels worlds

74 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling 75

of queer pain and pleasure. In his moves we see the suffering of being agender outlaw, one who lives outside the dictates of heteronormativity.Furthermore, another story about being black in a predominantly white-supremacist gay world ruminates beneath his gestures. Some of his othergestures transmit and amplify the pleasures of queerness, the joys of gen-der dissidence, of willfully malting one's own way against the stream of acrushing heteronormative tide.

The strong influence of vogueing practice in his moves affirms the ra-cialized ontology of the pier queen, a personage who is degraded in NewYork City's aboveground gay culture. Often, one gesture will contain bothpositive and negative polarities simultaneously, because the pleasure andpain of queerness are not a strict binary. The conversations that ensueafter his performances, the friends and strangers that approach him onthe street, the ads in bar rags, the reviews in local papers, the occasionalhome-video documentation, and the hazy and often drug-tinged memo-ries that remain after the actual live performances are the queer ephemera,that transmutation of the performance energy, that also function as a bea-con for queer possibility and survival.

To understand the lure of Aviance's performance it is useful to describea performance from Montreal's Red and Blue party. The Red and Blue ispart of the circuit-party system. The circuit is just that, a loosely alignedsocial circuit of dance parties that happen throughout the year in majorcities throughout North America. Aviance was invited to perform at Mon-treal. Another drag performer, a black queen in traditional illusionist drag,appears on stage and introduces the fierce and legendary Kevin Aviance.Aviance emerges from behind an ornate red curtain with gold trim. He iswearing a fantastical suit that features puffy, exaggerated purple shouldersthat rise to the length of his ears.

As he sings his first club hit, his microphone emerges from his lapel,permitting his hands total freedom to move in gestures that are familiar toIhose conversant with vogueing and break-dancing styles. In the middleor the song his entire body becomes involved as he feigns cold roboticmotions. The monster walks. He then sings his club hit "Cunty"!" He!;illgs, "Feeling like a lily / Feeling like a rose;' and as he stands in place,his body quivers with extravagant emotion. He stands center stage, and ashe screams, he quivers with an emotional force that connotes the stigma\If gender ostracism. His gender freakishness speaks to the audiences thatsurround him. His is ;\1\ amplified and extreme queer body, a body in uio-Iion that rapidly dq .I(I)'t; II,,· sigH';, the gestlln:~IiJ of qlJC,CI' l'(JlllilllII\i~\tI iun,

survival, and self-making. Spectators connect his trembling with the waysin which he flips his wrist and regains composure by applying imaginarypancake makeup.

By this juncture in the performance, the jacket is removed and the sillypants are removed. He is revealed in a body-embracing prismatic bodystocking. He begins to bounce around the stage, offering the audience aparticular version of runway-the vogueing practice of walking as thoughone were a supermodel. One particular Aviance gesture worth noting isthe way in which his ankles fold or crack as he walks, or rather stomps, therunway. This gesture permits him to be quicker and more determined inhis steps than most high-heeled walkers. This gesture connotes a traditionof queenly identification with the sadism of female beauty rituals. Themove=-walking with heels in such an unorthodox fashion-constitutes adisidentification with these traditions of gay male performances of femaleembodiment.'! Aviance's refusal to wear wigs is a further example of thisdisidentificatory dynamic. The determined walking is replaced by a partic-ular sway-back walk in which his buttocks and chest are both outstretched,exaggerating the features of a racialized body. To do so, I want to argue, isnot to play the Venus Hottentot for a predominantly white Canadian audi-ence; it is, instead, to insist on the fact of blackness in this overwhelminglywhite space. Aviance then throws himself into the audience and is heldaloft by it. He is lost in a sea of white hands; this being lost can be under-stood as a particularly queer mode of performing the self. That is how theperformance ends. This amazing counterfetish is absorbed by the desiringmasses. He has opened in them a desire or a mode of desiring that is un-easy and utterly important if he is to surpass the new gender symmetry ofthe gay world.

Aviance's biography is, in and of itself, a testament to queer survival.He grew up as Eric Snead in a large family in Richmond, Virginia. His firstexperience in drag was in the seventh grade. As a youth he escaped thenarrow confines of the small town and moved to the nearest gay metrop-olis, Washington, D.C., where he worked as a hairdresser, did drag as anamateur, and developed a disabling drug habit. He eventually overcamecrack with the help of the House of Aviance. The House of Aviance is notexactly like the vogueing houses of Jennie Livingston's film Paris Is Burn-ing, since it does not compete. The House of Aviance is something of a(JllCer kinship network in which members serve as extended, pretended,and'S(II11I'W<tldd .llgllI' improved family that supports and enables itsnu-mln-rs. (pvinl\vitill'\- Wd,': Ihl' 11:'\1111' he tonk after initiation.

76 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling 77

Aviance eventually landed in New York City, where he first made aname for himself at the now legendary Sound Factory, a queer club thatbegan as a predominantly Latino and black space. He distinguished him-self on the dance floor, grabbing the attention of major DJs and nightlifepromoters, and soon became a professional performer. Today he is one ofa handful of New York drag performers who can distinguish himself as liv-ing solely off his performance. He forsook traditional drag and the worldof wigs early in his career. His look is reminiscent of the legendary groupof black soul divas called LaBelle, the group that wrote the almost perfectdisco hit "Lady Marmalade,":" I think of Aviance's look when I study thealbum cover for Labelle's phenomenal 1974 album Nightbirds. All threewomen, dressed in metallic outfits, are portrayed as swirls of space-ageAfro-glamour. Labelle's Afro-futurism was a strategic move to make thegroup look freakish and alien, to make blackness something otherworldlyand uncanny.

Aviance, like LaBelle, reconstructs blackness as a mysterious Lost-in-Space aesthetic. Other comparisons can be drawn between the punk per-formance style of Klaus Nomi, the deranged disco divinity of Grace Jones,the insane and beautiful drag of Leigh Bowery, and the spaced-out el-egan,ce of the hip-hop artist Missy Misdemeanor Elliot. But Aviance's lookis definitely his own. I have seen him in many outfits, including fantasticgold lame jumpsuits, sheer polka-dot minidresses, and leopard-skin bodystockings. Although he does not wear wigs, he sometimes adorns his baldhead with a hat.

Both his appearance and his performances are in no way attemptingto imitate a woman. He is instead interested in approximating a notion offemininity. Queer theory has made one lesson explicitly clear: the set ofbehaviors and codes of conduct that we refer to as feminine or masculineare not slaves to the biological." Women, straight and gay, perform andlive masculinity in the same way as many a biological man inhabits ferni-uinity. Sometimes technology aligns people's gender identity and theirbiological self Others relish the antinormative disjuncture between theirbiological gender and their performed or lived gender. Aviance's mascu-linity, partially informed by his biological maleness, is never hidden-hewears no wig, and he does not tuck (conceal or hide the male genital bulgewhile in drag). Indeed, in his performance we see a unique cohabitation(If' traditional female and male traits.

'lo perform such a hyhrid gender is not only to be qUl't~rhili III dcl'ytroubling gl'ndl'l" Ingk,'; wirhin g:l)' spaces. HnJlen',,; ('11.11'11," "" '1"\'('1'

performativity and the dance floor catalogs different dancing styles-suchas girly poofter (Australian slang for campy and feminine male dancing)and the standard macho style of dancing that dominates many gay dancevenues. Bollen notes but does not delve into the femmephobia apparenton many queer dance floors, where those who break the gay-clone edict toact like a man are de-eroticized and demoted to second-class citizenship.

I observe that tension when I find myself at the Roxy, the sceniest placeto be for a certain stratum of New York gay men. I am overwhelmed bythe throngs of shirtless dancers with gym-crafted bodies. Their dance styleis aggressive yet rigid; the moves they make are meant to show off therewards of hours of gym workouts. They do not spread out but insteaddance closely together, almost in packs. They are often awash in the effectsof club drugs, such as Ecstasy and Special K, and huddle together as theydance. For the most part, they do not let themselves flow and keep closeto one another, enjoying the ways in which their gym-sculpted musclesrub up against those of the next clonish dance-floor compatriot.

1hrough the mist of the smoke machine I watch Aviance elevate him-self above the crowd. He is dancing on a small platform that is about fivefeet high, the land of ministage usually occupied by a gym-built go-goboy. Go-go boys mostly just bump and grind. There is not much room forsteps, and Aviance does not need them. This particular dance is about hishands. His hands move in jerky, mechanical spasms. They frame his faceand his outfit. He dances to the house music that the DJ is playing espe-cially for him. He is elevated from the dance floor but also surrounded bydancers who are now dancing with him. He is both onstage and one of thethrong, one with the music. It makes sense that he is elevated. He is therenot because he is simply a better dancer than the other clubgoers aroundhim (he is) but because he is the bridge between quotidian nightlife danc-ing and theatrical performance." He defies the codes of masculinity thatsaturate the dance floor. His gestures are unapologetically femme. Hisfingers swiftly minister to his face, as though applying invisible makeup.His movements are coded as masculine (strong abrupt motions), femi-nine (smooth flowing moves), and, above all, robotic (precise mechanicalmovements).

What does it mean that in this space, where codes of masculinity domi-nate, Aviance is a local deity? What work does his performance do in thisvenue? Furthermore, what about his blackness in this space that is over-run hy sweaty and shirtless white torsos? One response would be that heis uIctish ill (hb; ";I'~ln',it Ilwgi,' juju rhat lets white and effeminate gay men

"

78 Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling Gesture, Ephemera, and Queer Feeling 79

be fabulous while not being progressive around gender) race) and sexual-ity. Such a reading would miss the point. Aviance is extremely aware ofthe audience) and when the time comes to play the race man/woman) hewill certainly do so. I have seen it occur onstage on many occasions. At LaNueva Esculeita, a Latino queer space in midtown) I have seen him con-vert the dance club's stage to a pulpit between musical numbers and havewitnessed him denouncing the fascist regime of the city's mayor and hisracist police force. Aviance speaks out regularly at venues both white andracialized. He has also read the racism of New York's privileged gay com-munity. Aviance is conscious about the ways in which he can be made intoa fetish) but he disidentifies with such a role in very particular ways.

Marxism tells us the story of the commodity fetish) the object thatalienates us from the conditions of possibility that brought whatever com-modity into being. IS The fetish) in its Marxian dimensions) is about oc-clusion) displacement) concealment) and illusion. Some drag artists preferthe gender title of illusionist. Aviance does not. work in illusion, he be-comes many things at once. His performance labors to index a fantasticFemale glamour) but his masculinity is never eclipsed. If the fetish is aboutillusion) Aviance disidentifies with the standard notion of the fetish andmakes it about a certain demystification.

When he is on that stage) he performs gestures that few others canperform. His gestures are not allowed in the strict codes of masculinityIollowed by the habitues of most commercial queer dance spaces. PaulIlrnnldin's chapter on Charlie Chaplin's gestures speaks to the fear of ef-I'vlllinacy that has haunted the history of the male dancer in the West.'lho same arguments are lucidly conveyed in Ramsay Burt's writing onII \l~ Male Dancer." This antieffeminate bias has) ironically, resurfaced in111anY' gay male dance spaces. As an icon) a beacon above the dance floor)Avinncc uses gestures that permit the dancers to see and experience ther,·,·lil1~s they do not permit themselves to let in. He and the gestures heI'ITrorllls are beacons for all the emotions that the throng is not allowed10r,'t'l.

'l hcsc pumped-up gym queens started out) in most cases) as pudgy ort:ldllllY sissy boys who attempted to hide their gestures. Many of them)like Ihv I from my earlier autobiographical account) attempted to walk like1111'1) and hide the telltale queer gesture. This culture needs to be critiquedIIII' Iill' normative gender paradigms to which it subscribes as well as forII,I' rxrluxionary logics it applies to people who do not tl):ll,,· jls uornuuivc

(often white and decidedly masculine) cut. Nonetheless) though this sym-bolic violence is not justifiable) one can certainly understand this desireto be masculine. These men did not stop at straightening out the swish oftheir walk, they worked on their bodies and approximated a hypermascu-line ideal.

I do not want to extend energy in moralizing against this route tosurvival in a heteronormative world. It makes sense) especially when weconsider that these men came into masculinity as they were surroundedby the specter of the AIDS pandemic. The AIDS catastrophe provides alot of reasons to build up the body. But imagine how hard it must be totry to look and act so butch all the time. Indeed) these men become theirown fetish of masculinity in that they hide the conditions of possibilitythat lead to their becoming butch. Aviance reveals these conditions. Thatis the function of the counterfetish. He performs the powerful interfacebetween femininity and masculinity that is active in any gender) especiallyqueer ones. In this fashion he is once again a counterfetish, elucidating thereal material conditions of our gender and desire.

Imagine the relief these gym queens feel as Aviance lets himself be bothmasculine and feminine) as his fabulous and strange gestures connote theworlds of queer suffering that these huddled men attempt to block out butcannot escape) and the pleasures of being swish and queeny that they can-not admit to in their quotidian lives. Furthermore) imagine that his perfor-mance is something that is instructive) that recodifies signs of abjection inmainstream queer spaces-blackness) femininity/effeminacy-and makesthem not only desirable but something to be desired. Imagine how someof those men on the dance floor might come around to accepting and em-bracing the queer gesture through Aviance's exemplary performance. Moreimportant) imagine what his performance means to those on the marginsof the crowd) those who have not devoted their lives to daily gym visitsand this hypermasculine ideal) those whose race or appearance does notconform to rigid schematics of what might be hot. Those on the marginscan get extreme pleasure in seeing Aviance rise from the muscled masses)elevated and luminous.

For the racialized cognoscenti) his gestures function like the sorrowsongs ofW. E. B. Du Bois's The Souls of Black Folle. In that paradigm-shift-ing text Du Bois meditates on the power of Negro music and the embed-ded and syncretic meaning found in these testaments to the culture ofslaver),.

What are llleSl' songs, and what do they Hll',III' I kllllW 111I1t- 111'11111-

sic and can say nothing in technical phrases, but I know something ofmen, Knowing them, I know that these songs are the articulate mes-sage of the slave to the world, They tell us that life was joyous to theblack slave, careless and happy, I can easily believe this of some, ofmany, The Old South cannot deny the heart-touching witness of thesesongs, They are the music of an unhappy people, of the children ofdisappointment; they tell of death and suffering and unvoiced longingtoward a truer world, of misty wanderings and hidden ways. I?

Iilih:/ 11.111\" III till' 1111111)11 III ,I 1'.1111,.,111111',1'111111: d,lIlt (' ('xlsls ,IS ;1 1l(.'J'j.W tun Iv')lIisltinf. 1'"1111111 1\1 IIII' illlllllI'lti (If' il~: l'l'(·.lli(11\ it is gone. All the yearsO"lt"linillg ill lilt' studio, all tlw ~'b()J'eogr;]pher's planning, the rehearsals,Lhe coordinutio» of deSigners, composers, and technicians, the raising ofmoney and the gathering together of an audience-all these are only apreparation for an event that disappears in the very act of materializing.No other art is so hard to catch, so impossible.

Siegel certainly knows that every vanishing point signals a return, thepromise of the next performance, of continuation. She argues that danc-ers and audiences must have been aware of this ephemerality and are usedit. I agree with the revered critic. Queer dance is hard to catch, and it ismeant to be hard to catch-it is supposed to slip through the fingers andcomprehension of those who would use knowledge against us. But it mat-ters and takes on a vast material weight for those of us who perform ordraw important sustenance from performance, Rather than dematerial-ize, dance rematerializes. Dance, like energy, never disappears; it is sim-ply transformed. Queer dance, after the live act, does not just expire. Theephemeral does not equal unmateriality. It is more nearly about anotherunderstanding of what matters. It matters to get lost in dance or to usedance to get lost: lost from the evidentiary logic of heterosexuality.

For queers, the gesture and its aftermath, the ephemeral trace, mattermore than many traditional modes of evidencing lives and politics. Thehermeneutics of residue on which I have called are calibrated to read Avi-ance's gestures and know these moves as vast storehouses of queer historyand futurity. We also must understand that after the gesture expires, itsmateriality has transformed into ephemera that are utterly necessary.

'" I ,.~., • ". , , I"" ••" ,~.t ••• ••• '.f'". ~ ~ , ' .... " .

I risk sounding a bit overdramatic by using this analogy. I nonetheless in-voke this classic text in African American letters for the express purposeof calling attention to the pathos that underlies some of these gestures.Vogueing, for instance} is too often considered a simplistic celebrationof black queer culture. It is seen as a simple appropriation of high fash-ion or other aspects of commodity culture. I am proposing that we mightsee something other than a celebration in these moves-the strong traceof black and queer racialized survival, the way in which children need toimagine becoming Other in the face of conspiring cultural logics of whitesupremacy and heteronormativity. The gesture contains an articulate mes-sage for all to read, in this case a message of fabulousness and fantasticalbecoming. It also contains another message, one less articulated and moreephemeral but equally relevant to any understanding of queer gestures,gestures that, as I have argued, are often double- or multivalenced. Sowhile the short-sighted viewer of Aviance's vogueing might see only theapproximation of high-fashion glamour as he moves and gestures on thestage, others see/hear another tune, one of racialized self-enactment inthe face of overarching opposition.

Conclusion: The Not-Vanishing Point

Even New York clubs eventually close for the night; most close the nextafternoon, but they do close. The performances come to an end. Club kidsstumble into taxis in broad daylight, and Aviance and other performerspack up their outfits and makeup and go home for a restorative nap. Is thisperformance's end? That moment when the venue closes? Has the vanish-ing point been reached? In Marcia Siegel's influential book of dance criti-cism, At the Vanishing Point: A Critic Looks at Dance, Siegel provocatively

Notes to Chapter 4

I. I nm grateful to Carol Martin and Jane Desmond for advice on this chapter.i\v 1", It" bs been helpful and generally divine, I appreciate Ari Gold's introducinghilll \" IIll'.

f, I:, II' I11ore on the trace, see Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology, trans. GayatriI '1",kr,lvorl y Spivak, corrected ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press,1')\)H), ,~·I65.

,\. janc c. Desmond, ed., Dancing Desires: Choreographing Sexualities on and"I/Ih •. Singe (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001). The contributions10, !iI:1!volume that I directly engage are Paul B. Franklin, "The TerpsichoreanTramp: Unmanyly Movement in the Early Films of Charlie Chaplin", Paul Siegel,'" Ihe Right to Boogie: The First Amendment on the Dance Floor", and JonathanI\ollen, "Queer Kinesthesia: Performativity on the Dance Floor:'

4. For more on the Giuliani cabaret-license laws in relation to queer perfor-mance, see Shane Vogel, "Where Are We Now? Queer World Making and Caba-rct Performance," GLQ; A Journal of Gay and Lesbian Studies 6, no. 1 (2000):),9·-60.

S. By "historically dense queer gesture;' I mean a gesture whose significanceund connotative queer force is dense with anti normative meanings.

6. See Elin Diamond, Unmaking Mimesis: Essays on Feminism and Theater(London: Routledge, 1997).

7. That Kiki would be in her late sixties seems a bit unlikely because, accordingto the oral biography that Kiki and Herb recite during their performances, theybegan performing during the Great Depression. When I asked Bond about Kikisage, she explained that her "official age" is sixty-six.

8. Elizabeth Bishop, "One Art," in The Complete Poems, 1927-1979 (NewYork: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1983).

9. In some ways this idea echoes Peggy Phelan, who has famously argued thatdisappearance is the very ontology of something that is performed. Peggy Phelan,Unmarked. The Politics of Performance (London: Routledge, 1993).

10. The word cunty is black gay slang that describes a certain performed modeof femininity. Although its misogynist implications cannot be underemphasized,

Notes to Chapter 5

1. Irnamu Amid Baraka, The Toilet (New York: Sterling Lord Agency, 1964)jhereafter cited in the text as T

2. Ernst Bloch, The Principle of Hope, trans. Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, andPaul Knight, 3 vols. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).

3. I am covering some territory that Moten has already tread quite expertly,and I am hoping to build on his formidable analysis. See Fred Moten, In theBreak: The Aesthetics of the Black Radical Tradition (Minneapolis: University ofMinnesota Press, 2003),

4. Sally Banes, Greenwich Village 1963: Avant-Garde Performance and the Eifer-vescentBody (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993).

5. Moten, In the Break, 169.6. Whatever currency the term alternative might have at this historical mo-

ment is certainly up for grabs. Minontized here is meant to connote racializationin relationship to a scene dominated by whiteness, but it is also relational to theterm minoritarian, which I often use to talk about sexual and racial minorities.

7. Gloria Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: AuntLute Books, 1999).

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LA M III )A (:,1)' ,lIld I '('.~hi,lJl AI1[/'Vi(lI"II'l" I'rll}"l'! wl'h~jk <IIhu p:1 Iwww.lollI I I" L..,"T.I!,,1 11V,I h.lu m.

XI, Sl'l' Ernst Bloch and Theodor W, Adorno, "Something's IVIi~sillg: II I lis-lll.';.';i"" h<'1ween l~rIl~t Hloch ~1I1c1Theodor Adorno on the Contmdictious ofllt(ll,i:", I,(lilgillg," ill The Utopian Function of Art and Literature: SdcclcrilisslIYsW"lIlbritige, MA: MIT Press, 1988),12.

\.

iI :;h(lldol I", IIlltil'rsl(I"d 111.11Ih<, I<'rIII Willy, unlike Will, is not meant to be de-I'llg:l!llI-y.A good queen sl rives 1"0 achieve a high level ofcuntiness"

I 1. 1:01' more on the process I describe at length as disidentification, see myIlook Disideniijicaiions: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (Minneapo-lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999).

12, The members of LaBelle were Patti LaBelle, Nona Hendrix, and SarahDash.

13, I take this opportunity to refer readers to Judith Halberstam's Female Mas-culinity (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1998).

14. I argue for the notion of resistance through dance/nightlife culture.inthe introduction that Celeste Fraser Delgado and I wrote for our edited volume,Everynigni Life: Culture and Dance in Latin/o America (Durham, NC: Duke Uni-versity Press, 1997).

15. Marx articulates the theory of the commodity fetish in Capital: Volume I,trans. Ben Fowkes (London: Penguin, 1990).

16. See Ramsay Burt, The Male Dancer: Bodies, Spectacle, Sexualities (NewYork: Routledge, 1995).

17. See WE. B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk (New York: Bantam, 1989),179-180.

18. Marcia Siegel, At the Vanishing Point: A Critic Looks at Dance (New York:Saturday Review Press, 1972).