Red X: A Novel

Sometimes being queer is about all those things; they are at the heart of our history and the root of our oppression. Sometimes being queer is about being cast out; sometimes it’s about casting ourselves out, walking or running away while we still can. Sometimes being queer is about being the monster, the one who corrupts, the one who devours. Some

And our intrinsic invisibility, our insidiousness--that we could be anyone, anywhere, hiding in plain sight. I have to admit, there is something delicious in that--that we would provoke so much unease, so much discomfort, so much irrational, unfounded terror just by existing.

Then we began to see a transition from the common theme of “destroying the abnormal to preserve family and society” to the implication that family and society were themselves the abnormal and would destroy you. This new wave of horror was the one I grew up with,

So much of it is about the aspects in queer culture that straight people fear, that straight society fears: strength and independence in women; vulnerability and intimacy in men; the upending of gender and family roles;

The genre we describe as horror today has its roots in the romance and Gothic genres of the eighteenth century, which in turn were influenced by the pre-Romantic movement known as the Graveyard Poets,

That was probably my number one reason for drinking—being stuck in a crowded room, with all the noise and the laughing, where everyone could see me.