Queer Theorists saw a great opportunity here and started a letter-writing campaign to the media urging them to refer to the swans as "queers" rather than gay. The media was only too happy to comply. As graffiti artists began to scribble "The Swans are Fags" on surfaces all over the city, the Queer Theorists countered by crossing out the word "fags" and replacing it with "queers." They were going to turn the attacks on the swans into a defining moment for Queer Theory.
Some lesbian feminists were of course a little annoyed with all the attention the male swans were getting. This was another example of white gay male media supremacy.
The AIDS activists immediately saw their own opportunity. They began incorporating the swans in their posters which said "Get tested, if you want to fly right." They were desperate to figure out how to get the swans to wear red ribbons and condoms in flight. They encouraged pharmaceutical companies to use swans in all of their ads that urged gay men to take toxic medications to bolster their immune systems.
Even in Washington the revelation about the swans’ sexual orientation did not go unnoticed. One congressman was immediately attacked when he referred to the New York swans as "homos" on a right-wing radio talk show. Another congressman called the swans "flying three-dollar bills." One legislator noted on the floor of the house that the swans might not be covered by the Defense of Marriage Act, and new legislation might be called for. Nearly every conservative in Congress found some euphemistic way to deride the gay swan lifestyle.
As many in the city began to turn against the swans, Brian and Lance watched on in horror. They wished that the swans would just fly away for their own safety. They had a premonition of what was coming.
Whatever else New York City is, it is a paradise for guns and hollow bullets. Within a few evenings of the announcement that the swans were gay, snipers were taking all kinds of pot shots at the swans. The mayor quickly warned that it was against the law to shoot any bird in the city, even a pigeon, but that didn’t matter. There was something inside a number of people that had to be expressed no matter what the laws.
Soon the papers were reporting on the fact that gun shots were disturbing the sleep of many New Yorkers every night. It had become an unofficial competition: Who could kill the swans first? One militia group out west even offered a reward to anyone who could kill the gay swans. This alarmed the city’s public health department because they wanted to test the swans for AIDS before anyone laid a hand on them.
It had seemed to Brian and Lance that with the gay world awash in AIDS activism and Queer Theory, that things could not get any darker. And yet somehow the swans were making the situation for gays even worse. They dreaded the morning that they would wake up and read in the papers that the swans had been successfully assassinated by some deranged sharpshooter.
But the amazing development was that no one could kill the swans. The bullets seemed literally to deliquesce instantly in the air when they got close to the swans. There was something totally protective about the light that surrounded them. In many cases, the gunmen felt something akin to a spiritual conversion when they saw their bullets vaporize in mid-air. As the bullets were swallowed by a strange protective light around the swans, the gunmen suddenly realized that they were violating some basic law of the universe. They were trying to destroy something that was operating at another level of being. The guilt that many of the would-be assassins felt caused them to reform their lives instantly. Some turned themselves into the police. They all got rid of their guns. A few decided to volunteer to help out in the city’s literacy program.
Outside the city, the hate for the swans was growing like a malignant cancer. All over the country dead swans were found floating in ponds with their beautiful necks broken by fear and loathing. Every kind of swan was getting it in the neck; not just gay swans, but bisexual swans, straight swans, monogamous swans, and celibate swans. Even grandmother swans. It was a terrible time to be a swan. Crazed people who couldn’t find swans turned to ducks. All across America, just having wings became a mortal liability.
The hate for the swans knew no borders. Overseas where clerical fascism was already growing at a rapid clip, the swans became a symbol of America’s decadence. Some religious leaders of foreign countries demanded public executions of swans as a way of saying "Death To America!" All of this escalated the swans into a national security threat to the United States. There were some in the most secret enclaves of the national security operation in Washington who thought that, given the increase of the tensions about terrorism all over the world, it would not be a bad thing for the gay swans to just, shall we say, disappear.
An elite group of defense experts was sent to New York City to see what could be done to remove the gay swan threat to the nation. They knew that New Yorkers would never support an overt military invasion of New York City, especially since so many New Yorkers were enthralled by the swans. Something covert needed to be tried that would not get all the noisy liberals in the city up in arms. This was the perfect opportunity to try out the Defense Department’s microstealth bombers, aircraft that were so small that two hundred of them could fit on the head of a pin. Needless to say, at a billion dollars apiece, this was not a weapon to fool around with.
A microstealth bomber was programmed by operators at Fort Benning, Georgia, and late one night, the nearly invisible dust-particle-sized bomber headed for Manhattan. It might as well have been heading into a black hole in space, for when it got within inches of the swans, it disappeared from the military’s top secret stealth microradar and, like the bullets, seemed to vanish into nothingness. An emergency meeting of the Joint Chiefs of Staff determined that America’s super-secret, black box, mythological anti-personnel weaponry division be called in. This was a relatively new division of America’s secret defense operation. It had been formed in the wake of the men’s mythopoetic movement, at a time when people like Joseph Campbell and Robert Bly were being recognized as potential threats to the national mythology. Unfortunately, the mythological weapons under development were nowhere ready for deployment. It would be another decade before the advanced laser technology that could instantly burn homoerotic archetypes out of the human psyche would even be ready for testing on gay prisoners.
Keenly aware of what was going on in society, these were truly the darkest of times for Brian and Lance. But they were also the very best of times because they were together, and like the swans, they seemed to be surrounded by a light that protected them from everything. Little did they know what their love had launched into the skies above the City of New York each night as they fell into each other’s arms.
They spent less and less time in the gay bars because, more and more, the AIDS activists and the Queer Theorists seemed to be winning the war for the hearts and minds of the gay community. And it came as no big surprise to them that the gay swans had become a brass ring for terrorists all over the world. They wouldn’t have blinked if they had seen what was happening one night that autumn on the Lower East Side of Manhattan.
In an empty lot on Avenue A which was filled with all kinds of garbage, there was an old piece of luggage that was unremarkable except for the fact that it contained a small nuclear weapon set to go off in the middle of the night. The device had been left there by terrorists who supported these five traditional methods of dealing with gay creatures:
1) beheading with a sword;
2) chopping in two with a sword;
3) stoning to death;
4) burning at the stake;
5) throwing alive from a mountain top or a high building.
To those five ingenious methods of punishment was about to be added a brand new contemporary one:
6) blowing up the city they’re in with a nuclear bomb.
That night, when Brian and Lance retired, they held each other so tightly you would have thought it was the last time they were ever going to see each other.
Later that night, there were the usual number of curious tourists and fans of the swans awai
ting their nocturnal flight along the East River. As usual, there were also a couple of foolish assassins with high powered rifles fruitlessly trying to pull an Oswald as the swans passed overhead trailing more gold and silver sparks than ever. Below them on the bank of the East River stood a couple of protesters with hand painted signs that said "God Hates Fag Swans" and "Death to all Gay and Bisexual Swans."
There was a collective gasp among the onlookers up and down the river when, for the first time they saw the regal swans suddenly descend from the sky into downtown Manhattan. Had one of the vicious anti-gay assassins finally hit their target? An ominous chill swept through the crowds congregated along the East River. There was soon, however, a giant cheer of relief when the swans ascended from the East Side again. But instead of continuing their usual flight pattern around Manhattan, the swans headed east, straight out to sea. New York One had a camera in the area and they caught the swans as they turned into a single dot of light over the ocean in the east. A reporter for one of the tabloids had a powerful telescopic camera and he was able to catch one final clear image of their exodus. One of the swans had its bill firmly clamped around the handle of a suitcase. This image caused no small amount of mirth at the paper where they crafted the headline "DID THE SWANS PACK THEIR BAGS AND LEAVE IN A GAY HUFF?"
What may have looked like a "gay huff" to Manhattanites was registering as something a little more serious in the war room of the Pentagon. Any time there is a major release of radiation detected anywhere on the earth’s surface, even in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, it is taken as a very serious threat to the United States. That the mysterious radiation incident took place the same evening that the gay Manhattan swans were reported to have departed the city for Europe was not lost on some of the finer minds in our Defense Department.
When neither Brian nor Lance showed up for work the next day there was not a great deal of concern until the late afternoon, when fellow employees began calling their apartments and continually got their answering machines. Those who were gay in their respective businesses expected the worst, because violence against gays had been increasing dramatically in the city, especially in light of the swan flights.
That night, nearly a million people disobeyed the mayor’s request that they stay away from the East River. The police were worried about crowd control, but the people would not be stopped. They waited into the early morning hours, but there were no swans to be seen. Night after night people returned, but the crowds dwindled to a faithful few who were practically starting a new religion with swans as the messianic center.
The mayor of course was not unhappy to see the swans disappear from the city’s skies. He chalked it all up as another victory for his quality of life in New York, little knowing that the swans had saved something more important than the quality of life in New York, namely New York itself.
Pictures of Brian and Lance started showing up as missing. The usual battery of rumors started: They had both secretly died of AIDS. They had both headed south to become ex-gays. They had admitted they couldn’t make it in the Big Apple and had moved back home.
Needless to say, the Queer Theorists and the AIDS activists were not exactly in a state of mourning. They took special delight in seeing these words printed above Brian and Lance’s pictures: "Have you seen these missing Queers?"
Not a trace of Brian and Lance was ever found. That is, unless you count the one perfect white feather that washed up in the surf off of Fire Island. The young man who was lucky enough to pick it out of the ocean was suddenly surrounded by light when he touched the feather. It endowed him with the vision and bravery that enabled him to save the gay community during its darkest hour, but that is another story.
The Last Lovers on Earth: Stories from Dark Times Page 12
