The question at hand is: Is there such a thing as homosexual language and can it be considered a non-native language of its own? Speaking homosexual is an acquired behavior in any language, but it raises specific issues for people living in multiple cultures. Anybody who has seen episodes of Will and Grace or Queer Eye for the Straight Guy will recognize the representation of gay men as sharp-tongued, witty and—dare I say—bitchy men consumed by a seemingly overwhelming linguistic desire to comment on everything from weight gain to hair loss to fashion choices (particularly the bad choices made by others) to world politics, all while downing endless bottles of Merlot. Hvem taler dette sprog? What is this language of one-liners and vulnerable cynicism and where on Earth did these handsome representations of a lived identity learn that language? (Notice how I, in one broad sweep, managed to detach myself here. How delusional can a writer be?) What genuinely American school for queens did these stereotyped men attend?

When I announced to a group of friends over cocktails one night in the late spring of 2007 that I was to become a Writing Fellow at Queens College, the acid-tongued group amused themselves endlessly on my behalf. How appropriate that I of all people should be working at a college named Queens. The jokes seemed as endless as the gin and tonics. Admittedly, I think it’s funny as well.

Der er så mange forskellige måder at benævne sig selv? To put a linguistic label on oneself means so much more than that particular word. Am I a queen? Am I queer? Am I a gay boy rapidly approaching my mid-thirties at which time in American culture a gay male, maybe, can start thinking of himself as a man removed from the frantically youth-obsessed physical and linguistic culture of gaydom? Hvordan kan min krop genkende sig selv i et sprog der ikke for alvor er mit? How can my body recognize itself in a language that is not really mine? En hel verden af betydning eksisterer i rummet mellem ordet og eksistensen, mellem ordets betydning for mig and its larger contextual meaning. The queer words might mean something unknowable to me rolling off the tongues of others.

I don’t hang out with my friends. I hang out with “the boys”—also, at times, affectionately known as “the ladies.” This use of the female form to describe gay men is part of a historical strategy of reclaiming words that were used to oppress us for a long time. Queer, and its contemporary use as a badge of honor, as a rejection of straight society’s demands that we be, so to speak, normal, is an American creation that has spread all over the world. These days, queer, an old derogatory word, is used for self-identification in remote parts of the world. Does it still have the same connotations in foreign cultures? And, what happens when these words do not mean much to the gay foreign language student entering the American educational system and who has learned “straight” English and now must learn to also speak homosexual in a foreign language?

Da jeg først flyttede til New York med mit allerbedste skoleengelsk—komplet med dansk accent—kendte jeg ikke alle disse slangudtryk for homoseksuelle mænd. Jeg kendte naturligvis de danske og kendte, nærmest fysisk, deres betydning. Jeg vidste at jeg ikke var en svans eller en fisselette. Kunne aldrig betegne mig selv som sådan, men vidste også at de havde betydet meget for Bøssernes Befrielsesfront. At overtage ondskabens og hadets betegnelse for en selv er en grundlæggende frisættende handling. Paa amerikansk kan jeg være alle de ting jeg ikke kunne på dansk. På amerikansk kender min krop ikke betydningen af fordømmelsens ord.

We are called and call each other (and here the question of who has the right to call whom what is absolutely essential) so many different things: flaming queen, rice queen, drama queen, opera queen, theatre queen, size queen, snow queen, drag queen and so on. Among all these different kinds of queens I definitely embody some and yet remain, in my own definition of my identity, a gay man. I have been called a queen (often in combination with drama), men jeg remain i bund og grund en homoseksuel mand. I have been called a faggot, a fag, and I have called my friends the same with love, trying to undo the hateful actions hidden in the looming shadows of those words. I have been attacked with the same word and wounded by it as a linguistic weapon. I have picked fights because of it! What did you call me? Disse ord er handlinger i sig selv.

Jeg er bøsse! I know exactly what I am in Danish, but it has taken me a long time and years of studies of identity theory to figure out which American label might describe my identity correctly. In Danish my body knows (because the body remembers the language of hate, remembers the feeling of physical danger when in high school a gay boy is bullied) the meaning of derogatory words that it doesn’t know in English. My body has no memory of childhood in the English language. This lack of bodily meaning sets my mouth free to identify the body that carries it around as the body of a multilingual queen. My body speaks Danish but whispers in English.

And through my whole linguistic life as a gay man runs Adrienne Rich’s observation from her poem “The Burning of Books instead of Children” that “this is the oppressor’s language / yet I need it to talk to you.”