Southern Comfort

[June 28th, 2006] I'm ready to move from Portland, Ore., to Little Rock, Ark.

Yeah, I said it. And why wouldn't I? Now this isn't due to some spectacular queer scene (more on that later), the scent (just like fried chicken) or the way the sun sets there (amber waves of wow). No, for me, it goes deeper: I want to move to Little Rock because it still has the thing I fear that gays on the front lines of Portland's queerest issues are beginning to lose: hope.

Just last week I traveled to Little Rock, population 183,000 (about one-third Portland's size), for a convention of alternative newsweeklies. I'd dreaded going to this Southern "red state" that, truthfully, I'd never given a rat's ass about. I knew next to nothing about Arkansas' state capital, except that Bill Clinton had built a museum there that looked like a double-wide trailer.

Now, there were ample examples of the Southern discomfort I expected to encounter: "Raise the Praise" tourists raiding the one and only gift shop; Juneteenth teens in hoochie tops and baggy drawers shutting down the streets; an amendment, like Oregon's, that bans gay marriage. But I was surprised by what else I found—gay people who actually like living in Little Rock.

Take Jeffrey. He is like a Portlander in many ways. He works in a bookstore next to a coffeeshop. He and his partner, an organist for one of the city's mega-churches, had moved here from Sedona, Ariz. Not the type to go out to bars, they still have plenty of queer friends. What makes him different from "us" is his sanguine attitude about the place he now calls home. "Little Rock runs at a different speed," said the crisply dressed gent, the antithesis of the protoypical radical Port-queer. "Things are a lot slower here. It's just the way things are."

Jeffrey's words touched me in a weird way. The same thing happened when I went to a gay bar near the Peabody Hotel (the host hotel with those "world-famous" ducks). No, nobody "touched" me, but I was moved in another way. It was by the laid-back integration of cultures: black-white, gay-straight, young-old, all together on a late Friday night. It was this weird alt. universe where everyone got along (and knew the steps to hip-hop line dances).

I now believe you haven't really lived until you've set foot in a queer bar in Arkansas.

It shouldn't have come as a surprise that my feelings were translated into words by the "man from Hope": The convention's keynote speaker, Clinton looked handsome, if worn out. Maybe it was from all the talking—the ex-president talked for over an hour from just two pages of notes. Most of what he talked about—Darfur, energy consumption—buzzed right over my head. But what did stick with me was when he talked about making friends with his enemies. "We need to find ways to unify this country," Clinton said. Another speaker at the convention, Laura Dell, echoed that idea when she said we all need to "integrate, not separate" the way we look at things. I saw prime examples of this style of respecting your fellow man, gay or not, all over Little Rock. I don't see that much in the pressure cooker that is Portland—especially in these queer-marriage-debate times.

In a sea of red, I found an island of blue that helped me realize I need to judge a city less by its accent and its differences, and more by the character of its people. Then I might actually find hope again. Rock on, Little Rock, and thanks for your hospitality.