My Diva: 65 Gay Men on the Women Who Inspire Them

Introduction: Diva Complex

3 Introduction Diva Complex Michael Montlack As soon as I started telling people about this project, the response was almost always the same: “Why hasn’t this been done before?” The book just seemed to make sense on so many levels. Gay men and divas—like Gertrude and Alice, smoke and mirrors, Patsy and Edina. It was sure to be organic, not to mention fun, even campy, and undoubtedly glamorous. But the momentum was there from the beginning. When I approached writers for submissions, I could see I had tapped into something deeper than any campy stereotype; this was a book that had been waiting (and no longer patiently) to be written. The 4 guys seemed genuinely delighted to participate. Their excitement and pride sometimes felt tangible, as if they had been finally assigned the roles they had been preparing for all their lives: acting as representatives for the women they adored, revered, worshiped. They all had stories to tell. And I have been lucky enough to collect them for you here. In less than two weeks I had forty contributors on board, with submissions arriving daily. The idea had materialized into something concrete alarmingly fast. And not only was everyone saying yes, but they were offering the names of other accomplished writers who were sure to be interested. I was overwhelmed: Their gushing was sweet. Charming. Many were downright boyishly enthusiastic—yes, these award-winning, socially conscious professorial poets and writers, all showing up for the game, smiling, ready to play. Included are gay men of various ages (twenty-something to eighty-something), places (England to Ghana, New York to California) and backgrounds, but they all share something in common—this special kind of love or connection (or relationship , if you will) to women they have never (for the most part) even met, women who have shaped their lives, inspired them to come out, given them strength, acted as role models for them, or just plain made them laugh. This momentum, of course, was reinforcing. I just hadn’t expected it to be so consistently strong. I mean, after contacting fifty writers, nearly no one had said no—with the exception of a couple guys whose divas had already been reserved. Yes, that was one of the few guidelines: No duplicates. One man per diva. “I’m sorry. I just couldn’t imagine writing on anyone else,” someone e-mailed. “It’s her or no one, I’m afraid,” another said. “Tell me if the other guy drops out.” Such fidelity. Such jealousy. I loved it. But even more surprising was the diversity of divas. Introduction 5 To be honest, I had expected, and even feared, a barrage of Barbras, Madonnas, and Judys. What would I have done with that? Yet, as you will see, those names aren’t even on the final roster . How’d that happen? I don’t know. Sure, there are plenty of standards (Cher, Bette Midler, Miss Ross, Liz Taylor) but there are plenty more surprises (Björk, Princess Leia, Julia Child, Queen Elizabeth I), which is what I had been hoping for both as an editor and as a gay man. I wanted the book to explore this bond in the broadest way possible, to illustrate how although there are common threads among us, there are even more threads that make us each unique. After all, what was perceived as my own “individuality” is what put me on the path to this book in the first place. With events like Night of a Thousand Stevies, a large-scale drag club night held annually in New York City (and copycatted in cities around the country—for example, The Bella Donna Ball in San Francisco), it may not seem so strange to think of Ms. Nicks as a bona fide diva, but when I first came out fifteen years ago, the idea met with a lot of resistance, namely in the form of my first gay friend, Evan, who thought Stevie was, like my ponytail and sideburns, too rock and roll to be appreciated as a queer icon. We bickered playfully about it, but it was enough to make me reflect on questions that became the seeds for this anthology, questions that I myself posed to the contributors: Who is this woman to you? Why are you attracted to her? What about her speaks to your being gay? How has she influenced...