Queer as Portland

The submission guidelines were simple, Ariel Gore
explains in her introduction to the anthology Portland Queer: Tales
of the Rose City. “First-person narratives by queer writers about
queer characters in Portland, Oregon.” The guidelines are so simple, in
fact, that they function as a sort of creative litmus test.

Some writers take the obvious route: There are the predictable
I-was-such-a-freak-in-high-school coming-of age stories, and the
the-word-queer-is-so-empowering coming-out stories. In some of the best
stories in the book, though, the narrator’s sexual identity is part of
the story’s background, rather than its focus. Local musician sts, for
example, writes of her friendship with a neighbor boy, a troubled,
parentless kid who’s living unhappily with his sick aunt. It’s a fine
piece of writing, conveying subtle volumes in its scant seven
pages.

Another standout comes from Michael Sage Ricci, whose “The Strange
and Highly Selective Mating Patterns of the Human Male Animal” has the
best premise in the collection: A videogame addicted gay man adopts a
female avatar when playing online role-playing games. Pretending to be
a woman, he develops a flirtation with another gamer, a straight man,
letting the man believe he’s a woman. When the two arrange to meet in
real life, a curious revenge fantasy unfolds.

One story that does effectively foreground queer issues is Christa
Orth’s “Not Following the Rules.” Orth’s story begins with an account
of her efforts to convince the University of Oregon to extend
non-discrimination protections to transgendered workers. The difficulty
in persuading the university that there was a need for such protections
inspired her to begin investigating the history of queers in the
workplace. She provides two local case studies, of a lesbian working at
Tektronix in the mid-’90s advocating for benefits for same-sex
partners, and an openly gay switchboard operator in the 1970s. It’s
fascinating stuff. Orth could get a book of her own out of material
like this, and I hope that she does.

Gore’s editing here deserves a nod: The characters in Portland
Queer are fittingly varied, ranging from angsty young lesbians to
middle-aged evangelical gays; from kids still figuring out what pronoun
they want to use to HIV-positive men remembering long-dead lovers. It’s
a collection as diverse as the community it represents.