Jack Guinness - The Queer Bible: Essays

by Jack Guinness

The book you hold in your hands is a love letter to the queer community. Each essay is by a personal hero of mine, in which they write about a queer figure who has inspired them, illustrated by a queer or ally artist. All our lives are richer because of the works of queer people: everyone is indebted to LGBTQIA people, whether they know it or not, and reading this book will shine a light on the impact of these queer figures on shaping the world around us.

I cant quite believe weve got all these amazing people in one book. Our contributors are activists, artists, sports people, models, musicians, hosts, comedians, writers, and curators. Theyve made me laugh my arse off, educated me about gender and sexuality, comforted me during breakups, made music Ive cried and danced to, expanded my mind, and, hopefully, won me a gold medal at the Olympics (Im looking at you, Gus Kenworthy!). Our subjects were chosen by our contributors because they made a deeply personal impact on their lives; their enthusiasm and insights will hopefully inspire you to go off and do your own research and learn about each of their lives and works.

The moment young people realize that theyre LGBTQIA they can instantly feel cut off from those around them. They feel separated from the very people they should feel closest totheir friends and families. Isolation and rejection led me down a path of self-destruction. This is the book I wish Id read when I was growing up. To know where youre going, you need to know where youve come from. So often LGBTQIA histories have been hidden, in order to protect peoples safety, or forcibly erased in acts of cultural vandalism and oppression. Lets bring those stories into the light. Lets connect with our past and be filled with the power of those who went before us. I am handing you your sacred history. A physical holy text that shows you not only are you seen and loved and are enough, but that anything is possible, not in spite of who you are, but because of it. Your wonderful uniqueness is beautiful. I want queer people to not just survive, but to thrive, knowing that they walk in the footsteps of the bravest, fiercest, most inspiring people to walk the face of the planet. We stand on the shoulders of giants. Its time to learn their names.

The person I am today has been shaped and influenced by so many queer heroes. The soundtrack to my life has been queer culture: laughter with my first gay best friend, Kele; solace in the writings of James Baldwin; Walt Whitmans magic words made me fly; Bronski Beat released my tears; Audre Lorde gave me strength; I sang karaoke to George Michaels Freedom, I worshipped the stars of Paris Is Burning, I drank with drag queens till sunlight when I ran off to New York aged 18. You have been my family, my inspiration, and my joy. This book is for all of you. Thank you.

In these politically unstable times, with LGBTQIA rights under threat the world over, this book couldnt be more necessaryconnecting us through our shared history and allowing people to tell their own stories, in their own voices. From the outset, I saw The Queer Bible as a platform to elevate, celebrate, and amplify the voices of our community. As a white cis man I benefit from so much unearned privilege. Im very happy that this collection shines a light on members of our community who so often arent given the attention or accolades they deserve. I hope that the range of voices, the varied stories, and the memories shared speak to the richness and diversity of our global queer community. Putting this book together was harder than it needed to be. The importance of this work was never plainer to me than when one of our contributors was violently assaulted in a homophobic hate crime. Our Trans contributors had to deal with horrific daily attacks online and in the press. Homophobic and transphobic people want to silence us. They want to question our very existence, fill our heads with their negativity, and to stop us from being who we are. So our greatest victory, in the face of hatred and intolerance, is to live our best lives. Dont let them stop you doing the work.

Be completely you. Be happy. Be fabulous.

01
Words to Dance to

When I was a teenager, I went traveling. My sister made me a series of cassettes (Im showing my age here). Each one had an abstract title scrawled onto that little label carefully placed along the center of the cassettenames like Music to Fly Kites To and Music to Mend a Broken Heart. I didnt realize their significance until months later, when I found myself sitting at the summit of a mountain in Vietnam, exhausted, lonely, and exhilarated. I pushed the Walkmans play button, and after a whirl, my sisters cassette played. I immediately understood that she had curated a soundtrack for every possible one of my moods. Im not as amazing as my beautiful, kind sister, but Ive tried to collect these essays into sections that will make your soul dance, lift your spirits, spur action, and raise you up when youre feeling down.

Words to Dance To isnt only about performers. These essays are about the originators, the innovative rebels who challenged the status quo, moved culture forward, and got us on our feet! Theyll position people you thought you knew in a fresh light and introduce you to changemakers youll fall in love with. I hope these words connect you with the joyous rhythm of life and inspire you to create yourself.

Illustration by James Davison

It is early 1985 and I am sat, bored, at the back of a South Manchester classroom. Im guessing its raining outside. When I think of that school nowits grubby windowpanes, misfiring adventures in teenage deodorant, and hours of detentionI see mostly the teachers, staring out at a gray sea of hopelessness, trying their hardest to encourage some method of escape for us all. Everybody needs good teachers.

We were taught by a cascading rota of staff during English lessons. For a spell, there was a witty young Black woman called Miss Black, a literalism no fiction would dare invent for the depressed northern comprehensives of the time. And someone with thinning hair whose name Ive long forgotten was soon shipped in from a stint teaching adult literacy classes at Strangeways prison. She told us during her first lesson that we were considerably more charmless than her inmates. Then there was my favorite: a ruddy-faced, thickset Scotsman with a moustache who would get misty-eyed when reading aloud, especially sensitive stanzas of wartime poetry.

I cannot begin to tell you how much I loved their company. They opened up other worlds beyond the drizzle of our immediate sightline on the simple act of turning a page. I am 13. Todays lesson is for 30 schoolboys to rein in our collective ADD and sit in the humming, itchy quiet of bored pubescence, reading the opening passages from Franz Kafkas Metamorphosis. For homework, the Scotsman wants to encourage our writing valves, our imaginative capacity. We are instructed to go home and write our own metamorphosis, a transcendental change in which we are no longer who we are, transposing our lives into those of others. Nothing appeals more.

(Do I know Im gay by this point? Certainly, the initial inklings are present enough to get a brief, spinal twitch at this early intimation of complete personal reinvention, which may or may not be connected to the new urges Ive developed concerning Lewis Collins every time a repeat of