Independence Day

I thought I'd get ahead on what I expect to be a full on assault from my fellow queers, jeerers, reformists, and bull-horned progressors on the ridiculous hypocrisy of Independence Day celebration and the annual 1812 overture cannon blows that sound throughout Boston and the televised world. There are millions of topics we can explore regarding this one day, its history, our (alternative) histories, globalization, faggotry, the dead made into fireworks (really!) notions of independence and interdependence, mass media, nationalism, transnationalism, etc. Where will my wailings lie? Let's talk the family BBQ.

Every year my brother is host to a 4th of July backyard BBQ with all the traditional fixins. Paper plates, american flag cakes with blueberries and strawberries used as the stars and stripes, meats cooked in beer, and a firework finale that costs thousands of dollars.

So: every year I find myself in the sticky situation of taking part in a kind of day long ritual I avidly rip to shreds in appropriate settings and compromising my political self with my loyalties to my family. Said brother is fucking amazing. His smile can be infectiously kind and its a true sign of his utterly unpretentious and childishly unjudging character. His goal is to offer a day of gathering; a celebration not steeped in bogart nationalism but rather built on the corporal pleasures of food, summer lawns, drink and socializing. I enjoy the gathered company of family (and some friends) but also hate the ways it makes me feel like my integrity is put on the back burner. Manning the so-called Veggie Hut or Tofu Tent doesn't exactly allow me the kind of relief I desire from mainstream american 4th of July celebration dogma. Still, should there be an alternative celebration hosted by people looking to dismantle the hypocritical trash celebration of Freedom For All! and create an alternative foreigner/immigrant/tranny/queer/manwomanchild/animal/everythingeverythingeverything friendly environment, I'd still have to choose my family on this day. Where my political and philosophical ambitions/beliefs disrupt my commitment to my family I am terribly compromising. Because from them I have received endless love and hardly any judgement. They would kill and die for me and it transcends political context. So on the 4th (I avoided discussing our lack of Independence from corporate America and people who have to work on this day, I might have to) I will be cooking my tofu Pups on the grill and encouraging thoughtful conversation about Americanism when appropriate (I am in the process of trying to re-embody America and American because I am exhausted by the idea of giving up. A firm critic of nationalism I still have spent my life in this system and fuckall if I'm going to join the Move To Canada airplane. This is a country not entirely gone to waste and I want to claim these words and emblaze them in the context of my faggoty little self, more soon!). I won't enjoy everything, I will be grossly frustrated, I will feel somewhat compromised, but there it is, the family.