Gay Men Are Obsessed With Witches

 

This week on The Sewers of Paris (a podcast about the entertainment that changed the lives of gay men) my guest is Michael Price, a former Mormon who was convinced that his homosexuality made him wicked — until the Broadway show Wicked showed him that wickedness is a relative term.

Just like the witch Elphaba, he realized that being born into circumstances beyond his control didn’t make him a bad person.

And he’s not the only gay man to obsess over witches. They’re powerful women who step outside their gender roles and wield incredible power. Ordinary people don’t understand them — fear them — and when they’re found out, they’re thrown out of town, sent into exile and if they’re unlucky, burned on a pile of faggots.

No wonder gay men love witches — they’re everything we could ever want to be, and they know our pain.

Like us, witches must often must pass as mundane humans. They slip into disguise, painfully cloaking their true forms in dreary camouflage, like Anjelica Houston in The Witches, or the time I had to wear khakis to a job interview.

Witches might be invisible to mortals, but they recognize each other when they pass on the street. And under cover of night, in the company of their coven, they cast off the boring cloak of the day to dance and drink complicated frothing potions like eye of newt and champagne mimosas.

Some witches are seductive, like Elvira, or Maleficent or Bayonetta. They’re as sexually uninhibited as a twink on Grindr, free of puritan constraints about what’s proper and polite. They know what they want, they know how to get it and they can manipulate anyone with a promise of pleasure.

Others can can be hags, like Madame Mim, or Rita Repulsa or The Wicked Witch of the West, or the nearest leather daddy with restraints and a flogger. They revel in their monstrousness, the fear they instill. The greatest complement you can give them is a scream.

And sometimes, they’re both — sexy and hideous, beautiful and monstrous. Like Ursula the Sea Witch, who consorts with eels but reminds you not to underestimate the importance of body language, ha.

Witches are the eternal outsiders, and so they must learn to be fearless and brave. Rejection by society teaches them strength, and they become self-made, self-reliant, self-confident. They’re like Beyonce but with a broom.

I guess my point is, witches, if you’re listening, it’s time for us to team up. If we gay men joined forces with you witches, we can conquer the puny humans once and for all, taking over the world and ushering in a new era of amazing hats.

Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/matt-baume/why-gay-men-are-obsessed-_b_7854646.html