The Big Gay Tent

Once upon a time, there was a little boy named Butch; no mother, no father, no house. But luck was on Butch’s side. His grandfather, a monument of a man to all far and wide, had a tent, and Butch was welcome to stay.

Season upon season the Preacher would have Butch build a house, only to take it back apart. Straightening bent six-penny nails, scraping mortar from every brick and cinderblock. Butch didn’t mind for the most part; he liked being by himself. Besides, he was starting to become a man, and he liked the way the hammer made his muscles glisten in the summer sweat.

Before too long, like many an orphan, Butch had to face that despite the love of his grandparents, he didn’t belong in the Preacher’s tent anymore. He was too different, too odd. Too confused, the boy was… clouded, his thoughts became.

One day, while wandering through the forest of lumbering oaks, peeling sassafras, and pale dogwoods, he came across a tent made of rainbow colors belonging to The Gays. Fairies danced naked, tossing buckets of glitter in the air as he sashayed down the yellow brick road to the beat of EDM, feeling like RuPaul herself.

“I’m not in West Virginia anymore,” he exclaimed when he saw naked men with chastity devices locked around their cocks, wearing dog masks. “What is that?” he said to himself, staring at the dog tail swishing from a plug anchored in some man’s ass as he was led around by chains.

“No, no, no!” screamed the bull dykes on their bikes. “He’s too masculine, he scares me,” they wailed.

“Yes, he’s too manly, he’s too straight, don’t let him in,” the Berkeley feminists chimed in unison.

Butch, who had been a fat little piggy growing up, was now a lean, tall, muscular, hairy-chested man with rugged good looks. In his early twenties, he had a radio-ready baritone voice—think James Earl Jones in Star Wars: “Luke, I am your gay father.”

Unlike the “Ls” in the alphabet soup, the gay men loved him. “How much do you charge, honey?” they asked. “Ooh baby, you’re a fine piece of trade, let mama give you a blowjob,” said a black, toothless transvestite. “Take me home and rip off my purple panties, I’ll supply the party favors,” said another.

Butch no longer cared about social acceptance; he was getting laid nearly every day, sometimes two or three men at a time. They loved his body, and he loved the fantasies they played out on him.

He was hooked on cock. One was too many, and a thousand was never enough. But time is cruel: his waist thickened, his beauty faded, and suddenly he was no longer the idol of their fantasies—nor welcome among the L’s, Q’s, T’s, I’s, and A’s.

Butch cried, “FOUL!” They started ushering him out of the ever-expanding LGBTQIAZVMNPCX+ tent.

“But I have AIDS!” he wailed.

The crowd gathered outside, screaming, “Liar, liar, pants on fire!” It felt like a kick in the balls. Butch had given everything to the Big Gay Tent. He flew far from his family, never to return. Like a chameleon, he softened his voice and his thoughts to belong to the alphabet soup. But he had had it.

Butch threw his cigarette to the ground, and the crowd booed again. He stepped closer to the little twunk leading the charge, grabbed the guy’s crotch, cupped it, and said, “Honey, what you do with that thing—play baseball with it?” Still cupping his junk, Butch sneered: “Yawls some shady nasty bitches. I had HIV before you were born, you fake-ass kunt!” He screamed it as loud as Tarzan flying through the jungle canopy, claiming his territory, his space.

He snapped his finger, twirled around, showing the crowd his back as he sashayed out of the rainbow tent, back into the forest. But gone were the sassafras trees—now he was among ancient redwoods so wide you could build an apartment building inside them.

The forest whispered: “Stick with the Democrats, they’ll accept you.”

So off to the Democrats he went.

The Very Very Big Democrats’ Tent

In a clearing of the redwoods, just before the cliffs of the Pacific north of San Francisco, he saw the Big Blue Tent—so big it had eight poles raising it high, each flying a pride flag. No state or country banners, only Gilbert Baker’s rainbow. Above the flap, a banner read: “Welcome ALL.”

As Butch entered, he heard a man preaching with the same fire and brimstone he’d once heard from his grandfather’s Sunday sermons—meant to last all week, and they did.

“They don’t care about you. You are disposable!” the man snarled, chest heaving. “THEY want you and me dead, D-E-A-D dead!”

He paced across the stage, roaring on: “They say we’re the party of grooming. I say THEY are the party of hypocrisy—taking education and vaccines from our children, stealing your babies’ food and giving it to billionaires!”

The rhythm of it reminded Butch too much of his grandfather, so he headed toward the long table of coffee urns and homemade pastries.

He picked up a plate of fried dough and reached for a cup when he noticed an abnormally tall, painfully thin woman—skinny as Karen Carpenter before she died, he thought. The only thing missing was a daisy tucked in her ash-blonde hair to make her the poster child of Haight-Ashbury, circa 1970.

“Do you believe every woman has a right to abortion?” she asked, stepping in close.

“Pardon me? I’m not looking to get you pregnant,” Butch said, backing up.

“Do you believe every woman is entitled to have an abortion if she chooses?” she repeated, louder.

“It’s none of your business,” Butch retorted, taking a chug of coffee as he turned away.

“DO YOU BELIEVE I HAVE A RIGHT TO AN ABORTION?” she screamed. The tent hushed. All eyes turned.

Butch stopped, turned, and faced her. “Bitch, please. No—I don’t believe in your right to abortion.” Gasps rippled through the tent. He raised his voice: “I believe in your right to privacy. I believe the government doesn’t have the—”

The boos drowned him out. “You’re one of THEM! You don’t belong here!” they chanted, pushing him out of the Big Blue Tent.

“Yawls some dogmatic, short-sighted bitches,” Butch muttered, slipping back into the forest.

Soon the trees thinned out, replaced by thorny scrub. The night sky grew darker under the waning moon. Butch found himself on the northern banks of the Rio Grande, a place so dark under a new moon that the stars blazed like God’s own lanterns. Blinding—too bright for mortal eyes.

He felt isolated—alone in the world—and happier than he had been in a long time. Butch had spent his whole life trying to fit in, always to no avail. Too country for the city, too city for the country folk. Too straight to be gay, too gay to be straight. Too masculine to be a bottom, too bottom to be a top.

To some, he was too liberal; to others, far too conservative. The wealthy looked down their noses at him, while the coal miner in the next county would just as soon put a bullet in him for staring too long. He was too smart for his own family, too dumb for the rest of the world.

“There’s something off about Butch—I just can’t put my finger on it,” they said, far and wide.

Butch wondered while wandering what would become of him with no tent to belong to, no people to befriend. Under the crescent moon’s light across west Texas, he began seeing more people like himself out in the world without a tent. “It must be like when you buy a new car and suddenly notice it everywhere,” his inner monologue whispered.

He walked from El Paso to Alamogordo, past Durango, across Canyonlands, back to the Pacific shores. A woman in Beatty believed like him. A man in Tonopah too. In San Luis Obispo, the whole county seemed kin.

On a United flight back east, he found another.

There was a lady in seat 1F: ivory Chanel suit, striking white hair, sipping champagne from a plastic cup, eyes fixed on the window. She turned, catching Butch and the flight attendant staring.

“They’re all a bunch of crooks, snakes, and hypocrites,” she said without provocation. “The people, look at them—ants pushing grains of sand until they die.” Her voice trailed as she noticed Butch’s gape. She offered her hand with a grip like iron.

“Liz Cheney. Call me Liz.”

Her eyes flicked to the edge of a faded rainbow sticker on Butch’s laptop. She tilted her head, a half-smile between curiosity and recognition.

“That sticker doesn’t scream party loyalty,” she said, voice dry but not unkind.

Butch glanced down, then back at her. “No, ma’am. I gave up screaming a while ago.”

Liz nodded slowly. “Independent?”

He shrugged. “Used to be red, then blue. Now I just vote for sanity—when I can find it.”

She smiled faintly. “Welcome to the club no one wants to join.”

Butch leaned forward. “I’ve watched the system fray at the edges. Gerrymandering, dark money, leaders playing to cameras instead of the Constitution.”

Liz nodded. “One party abandoned norms. The other mistook virtue signaling for leadership. I’ve said before: In a special mix of incompetence and evil, Trump combined 1930s tariffs with Stalinist targeting of adversaries. The 2020 election wasn’t stolen. Speaking truth is only a crime in countries ruled by tyrants.”

He whistled. “That tweet went viral. Felt like someone finally shattered the echo chamber.”

“Sometimes you need a sledgehammer,” she said. “But sledgehammers don’t rebuild. You need strategy.”

Butch recalled his days with ACT UP. “We had nothing but sledgehammers. Our strategy was to live.”

Cheney nodded. “Exactly. Passion for the Republic.”

He shook his head. “Republic… I almost forgot what that word meant. Compromise, debate, checks and balances.”

She laughed. “I’m the last person you’d expect with pom-poms. But tyrants count on exhaustion. They win when the best among us step aside.”

Despite their history, Butch felt a pull. Maybe it was time to give the Big Beautiful Tent another try.

As he approached, men and women loitered with rifles and pistols strapped to their sides. Some laughed, drinking beers off their tailgates. Others asked strangers, “Are you an immigrant?”

Inside, a voice thundered over the loudspeaker: “Welcome to the biggest, best tent ever built—better than Ringling’s! People say it rivals Caesar’s tents!”

Butch saw a group of armed men block a well-dressed couple at the entrance.

“Hold up, fancy-dressed colored folk, where y’all been?” one of them sneered. The couple—two ebony women—pushed past and entered. The men, ignored, fumed.

“Are we gonna let those dykes treat us like that?” a red-capped man shouted. “Follow me, boys!” They surged in behind, storming the flap.

“Don’t like what you’re watching, fella?” drawled a granny with a Marlboro clinging to her lips, a Beretta in one hand and a Milwaukee’s Best in the other. Her breath reeked of hate.

Butch turned, puzzled. She squinted. “You seem fixated on those libtards trying to infiltrate our tent. You one too?”

“Nope,” Butch said. “But yawl some dangerous hypocrites.”

Butch wondered and wandered for forty days and forty nights—lying naked atop the red rocks of Cathedral Mountain, crossing the Rio Grande on foot, hiking the Appalachian Trail from Maine through West Virginia and down to Georgia. He spent his days wandering through the redwoods, San Pedro forests, and forests of his own making, wondering where to find his tent—the tent where he belonged.

On the fortieth night, lying naked under the Tennessee sky, he was visited by an approaching light dancing closer in the dark. Butch jumped up to put on pants just as the light fluttered above his head—giant butterfly wings, attached to Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo.

“OMG! OMG! Cynthia!!” Butch screamed. “Ariana, you’re an angel! Did you die? OMG did both of you die? Did I die?! Are we dead?!” His shriek hit and held a D7 so high Ariana smiled and chuckled. “Damn, girl,” was all she could say.

Cynthia began: “In Wicked: For Good, we learn that togetherness is our strength. To embrace those marginalized and left out, much like yourself, Butch. No tent to belong, no man to call home. Boo-hoo, you entitled white prick. Maybe next time you’ll treat people better.”

And with that, Elphaba turned her arm into a sword and chopped off Butch’s head.

As it rolled down the yellow brick road, everyone far and wide could hear Butch’s head cry: “On the forty-first night, he rose again… but only to find no tent at all.”

Glenda and Elphaba laughed as the head bounced away.

The End.