This Modern Writer: Travelogue: The Etymology of "Faggot" by D. Gilson

At the cottage of Anne Hathaway, which is in the town of Stratford-upon-Avon, which is in Warwickshire County, which is in the West Midlands, which is in England, which is in the United Kingdom, which is not the United States of America, a portly tour guide points to a fireplace in the kitchen: this is where they burned the faggots.

She continues with the tour. Here is the bed, his second best, which William Shakespeare gave his dear wife Anne. Notice how it is short. In those times, they slept not flat on their backs, but somewhere between upright and reclining. This was out of an old fear: if Lucifer saw one lying flat, he would think one was dead and sweep in during the night to capture their soul. I notice the intricate embroidery, yellow and mint green, on a tapestry down the hall and think to myself, “Jesus, Duane, you’re such a faggot.”

***

The Oxford English Dictionary lists 26 words with fag- as their root, from the late eighteenth century colloquial verb fag—that which causes weariness; hard work, toil, drudgery, fatigue—to the 1724 Germanic use of fagotto, a musical term that implies with bassoon.

***

At the Pittsburgh International Airport, our flight to London via Newark is cancelled. We are shuttled to a nearby Comfort Inn and eat dinner at a dive bar next door. The place smells familiar and a friend turns to me: “it smells like a backwater queer bar in here!” Yes! Exactly. Like the first gay bar I went to: Martha’s Vineyard on Olive Street in Springfield, Missouri. When I was a heterosexual, I went there one night with co-workers, drank too much, blacked out atop a table, and woke up a homosexual. The next night, I returned newly queer, and met a prince—this is when I believed in fairy tales. What is that smell? Cigarettes, spilled vodka, and lube? Maybe. But this isn’t a gay bar.

I walk to the bathroom where beside the urinal, someone has drawn a cock on the wall. Above this, someone has sprawled the word faggott, which I take to mean an overzealous faggot.

***

In his Annotations, John Keene says “Missouri, being an amalgam of nearly every American region, presents the poet with a particularly useful analogue.” I try to understand this, but cannot. From London, I email to ask my mother, deep in the Missouri of both geography and metaphor. She, too, is baffled. One afternoon, as I stroll the cobble-stoned, adult-video-store-lined alleys of Soho, the sentiment is all I can think of, though its meaning is still unclear.

***

Three movies terrified me as a child. First, Return to Oz. This was 1989 and I was five years old. My sister, age seventeen, brought the VHS home from Aurora Video Source, where she worked on the weekends. In the movie Dorothy, somehow both younger and British, which is why I remember this now, visits an insane asylum. For a year, I could not sleep alone. When I am eight, Uncle Dennis is brought to us, dying with AIDS. The same sister, twenty now, tries to explain and shows me And the Band Played On. Among other things, I think the movie is unfair to the Reagan administration and that two men kissing results in death. Which is why, as I watch Legends of the Fall in the basement during high school, I am scared for my life when Brad Pitt, shirtless, wades into a rushing creek. I kiss my girlfriend, but think of him.

***

My favorite fag- root in the dictionary is faggoteer, one who makes faggots. British faggoteers—David Bowie, David Beckham, The Spice Girls, Charles Darwin, Julie Andrews, Angela Lansbury, imperialism, Winnie the Pooh, rugby, and parliamentary procedure. Also—Oscar Wilde, Elton John, George Michael, and Harry Potter, though it is unclear whether or not one can be both queer and make further queerness. Oh!, and yes, Diana, Princess of Wales.

***

Also worth consideration, American faggoteers—Madonna; Walt Whitman; Calvin Klein; Michael Jordan; Bob Dylan, and more so, his son Jakob; Starbucks; Levi Strauss; Kurt Cobain; and Brad Pitt. Also, Patsy Cline, the cast of Friends, and Hillary Clinton.

***

In London, Prince William prepares to marry Kate Middleton. On the television in our hotel room, I watch oodles of gay men discuss every minutiae of the wedding. In this way, gay men are commodities. Yes, Alexander McQueen’s protégé could be designing Kate’s dress. No, the Queen will not upstage the bride. Prince Harry should keep his speech short. Hats are appropriate. White lilies and tulips would be nice. Stringed quartet, not jazz band. Undoubtedly, Princess Diana would not approve. Oscar Wilde, from the grave, “the highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography.” That sounds about right. Wayne says all this “proves that fashion ideas come from fags watching revivals and paying acute attention to fugue and fatigue;” his alliteration is quite lovely. I am a confused commodity, though I begin to understand British queens. And American queens. And that everyone must weigh in.

***

My least favorite fag-rooted word is fage, a verb, the action of coaxing or deceiving; a fiction or deceit.

In London we visit the Globe Theater, a complete fage. A modern recreation that opened in 1997, the new Globe is believed to be “very similar” to that of Shakespeare’s construction, though it is located 754.59 feet from the original. Our tour guide is an allegory, a tall drink of water on these banks of the Thames. He is married, presumably heterosexual, and at every joke he cracks, I laugh a little too loudly. In this way, I am a cliché, another gay man drawn to an unattainable straight man. It is all language, all syntax. In a hall with posters for Shakespeare’s plays, I ask the guide his favorite. He points to As You Like It, and says “all the world’s a stage, and I, just one of its players.”

***

At the Bodleian Library, I pick up a reprint of a 1942 pamphlet from the United States War Department: “Instructions for American Servicemen in Britain.” Uncle Sam explains “YOU are going to Great Britain as part of an Allied offensive—to meet Hitler and beat him on his own ground. For the time being you will be Britain’s guest.” What follows is sage advice.

I imagine my Uncle William, my father’s oldest brother, fresh out of training. He was likely given this pamphlet. Probably carried it alongside letters from his young wife, my Aunt Marilyn. On page five, as he sailed from the deep of Missouri to New York and on still to London, he likely read “The British have phrases and colloquialisms of their own that may sound funny to you. You can make just as many boners in their eyes.” Did he laugh, as I do now? Or did he, a soldier in the war machine that became the Greatest Generation, take his boners more seriously?

***

In May of 1780, Madame D’Arblay, English playwright and laborious conversationalist, wrote in her diary, “I felt horribly fagged,” which means wearied out, excessively fatigued. In February of 1992, Marvin Willhite, Jr, methamphetamine dealer and my brother, also became fagged.

I will say this exactly one time. My father, our brother Randy, Marvin, and I had lunch at Boxcar Bar-b-que. This is at 1131 North Grant Avenue in Springfield, Missouri. I did not like bar-b-que, and told them as much, pouting through the entire meal. As we leave, Marvin grabs my arm, “don’t be such a little faggot.”

***

I don’t say that because it is sad. I say it because it’s confusing to me now. Which faggot did he mean? The 1700 use, meaning a person temporarily hired to supply a deficiency at the muster? To bind hand and foot? Any number of bundles—steel rods, wooden sticks, planks? The practice of burning heretics?

I lied. I will say it again. My brother called me faggot in the parking lot and two days later, killed himself—this was with a shotgun in his mouth in the back bedroom of his trailer.

***

My father came back from Vietnam and listened to three songs: “House of the Rising Sun,” by The Animals; “Wouldn’t it be Nice,” from the seminal Beach Boys album Pet Sounds; and Buffalo Springfield’s “For What It’s Worth.”

In Bristol, an industrial port city on southern England’s western shore, it is a Monday night. Sarah and I go to the Queenshilling, billed as the city’s oldest gay bar. For two hours, we wonder if a fellow patron is a man or a woman. Then I hear it coming from the jukebox in the corner: “stop, children, what’s that sound? Everybody look what’s going down.” My father is a ghost here, as is the bartender and the couple drinking gin, holding each other in a glittery black vinyl booth. I am ghost here.

***

We visit the ancient Roman Bathhouse. I’m not interested in the coins, or the curve of stone archways described as revolutionary. But I do want to understand. What did they wear here? Were the sex acts enacted in the open, or in dark corners? How did bathhouse evolve? My questions go unanswered. In the hot pool below the ten o’clock sun, I dip my hand into the water. A tour guide yells from across the hall, “stop!” Too much is forbidden, and the rules go unexplained.

Later, in London, I go below the street to use the public restroom. There are five urinals, four of which are full. I pull into the empty parking space. Next to me four men masturbate, tugging their erect, uncircumcised cocks towards the metal pool of toilet. This is like when Wayne says, “I am confused about what’s contemporary and what’s outdated. I am confused about the spirit of the age.” The men glare at me, annoyed that I do not join in? And this is progress—less is forbidden, but the rules still go unexplained.

***

I should be interested in countryside. At the home of William Wordsworth, I should walk through the gardens and consider the foliage, the abundant daffodils and sizeable wisteria bushes that grow along Victorian-era stone fences. But for the last few days, since we’ve arrived in England, all I can think about is urinals. I take pictures of them at London Heathrow Airport, Shakespeare’s birthplace, the Jane Austen Center, sundry pubs and town squares, McDonald’s, and now, the visitor center of William Wordsworth’s expansive estate, home of the quintessential Romantic poet. Am I romanticizing piss? The places we piss? Is this a fetish? Is this how obsession feels?

***

I have a professor who teaches me to write poems. One day I give him one. He says, “I like this, but make it a little more faggy.” I try, but do not know what this means. Later, I will try to add a urinal in the third line of the second stanza to no avail.

***

The underground bathroom we talked about earlier is not a bathhouse; the comparison was not apt, and I need to rectify this.

So in London, I want to visit a bathhouse for the first time. I go to Starbucks and on my iPhone, research establishments (later, I decide that coffeehouses are the new bathhouses for the young and culturally elite, but there’s little time to talk about that here except in passing). I decide on the SaunaBar, near the Covent Garden Tube station at 29 Endell Street. Like the underground bathroom, SaunaBar is subterranean, down a flight of stairs below a yogurt shop. I set rules for myself: do not judge. Do not have sex. Blend in. Face this fear of knowledge.

The fear comes from the aforementioned movie: And the Band Played On, where bathhouses are painted as a breeding ground for AIDS. I still become nervous in the locker room. But then I remember Anjelica Huston was in that film, though this was before I knew her as a goddess.

The clerk at SaunaBar takes my wallet and cell phone. He hands me a towel and locker key, saying, “have fun, lil’ guy.” The rest is mostly uninteresting. There is one attractive man—mid 30s, blonde, slim but muscled physique. Let’s call him, for clarity, Evan. Evan probably swims a lot. Evan probably has a corporate job in the nearby financial district. How else can this be said? From four feet away, I watch Evan fuck a man. Evan smiles at me, looks for me to cheer him on. I watch. Evan finishes, and interested in the public life vs. the private, I follow him to the changing area, where we both dress. From a distance, I follow Evan above ground, onto the street, around the corner, into the arms of his wife and child. I do not know how else to say this.

I duck into a nearby record store and thumb a rare Cyndi Lauper vinyl. Alongside Anjelica Huston, I believe she is a goddess.

***

Whereas I call them goddess, my therapist calls the women in my life like Cyndi Lauper and Anjelica Huston escape artists. This man used to be my therapist. I call him a prick.

***

This etymology is a maze. Consider the 1853 faggery, or system of fagging at public schools. Then fagging, the action of the verb fag, which probably means “to beat.” Another interesting definition, however, is “to cut corn with a sickle and a hooked stick.” Jimmy fagged corn, and I don’t care because Jimmy is an Aquarius and too blond for my tastes.

***

In a tongue-in-cheek sex book I picked up in the bathroom at the Queenschilling in Bristol, we are told “fags often suffer from obsessions with men they have never met.” Yes; that’s the Jimmy we just talked about. Who is he? Maybe Jimmy Carter or James Dean. Not James Franco, who is not too anything except too perfect.

***

Since we are nearing the end, I want to give you another interesting word: faggotless, obviously, devoid of faggots. Honestly though, I am more interested in the antonym, faggotfull, which isn’t a word according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

But there are places, colloquially called gayborhoods, which might fit this. Some that I have noted:

1. Capitol Hill, Seattle—the first place I danced with a drag queen. The name of the bar escapes me, but she had a lovely, teased blonde wig, orange lipstick, and purple eye shadow. She wore white patent leather boots and we danced to, oh lord!, ‘Time After Time.’
2. Dupont Circle, Washington DC—the boys wear dark suits and work in offices tightly guarded. But at night, we sip Tom Collins on a patio by the Russian Embassy.
3. The Castro, San Francisco—I’ve never been, but through the neurons of cyberspace, I love a man who lives at XXX Castro Street. I call him Captain. He calls me Scrappy.
4. Soho, London—Starbucks, porn shop, department store, Starbucks, drag queen, twink, otter, bear, Starbucks, Virgin Records Megastore, statue of Aphrodite (outside Abercrombie & Fitch).

***

Somewhere on the internet someone says that faggot, when translated from French to English, can mean meatball. This claim, however, cannot be substantiated. Le sigh.

***

In 1862, Mrs. H. Wood exclaimed in a letter to Mrs. Hallib, “Mine is a fagging profession!” Her profession, sadly, is unknown. This was in Romantic England. Was she the butcher, the baker, or the candlestick maker? Or was she of noble birth: a duchess, a countess, or a baroness? So much is lost in bad record keeping.

I think of fagging professions today: barista, psychoanalyst, and gym teacher. Maybe this is wishful thinking. In the west of England, we spend a day in Bath. I visit Colonna & Smalls Espresso Room at 12a Princes Street, a small alleyway behind the Royal National Hospital For Rheumatic Diseases. For an hour and a half, I speak with Maxwell, the fourth best barista in the United Kingdom (according to the World Barista Championship, a subsidiary of the Specialty Coffee Associations of Europe and America). In an hour, I’ve thought of all the ways I could move here, date Maxwell, live happily (which is to say, hold Maxwell’s hand and write him poems). In the next half hour, I’ve thought of how ridiculous this is, that Max is not even gay, that this obsession has gone far enough.

It is difficult being human sometimes; this living is fagging, in this sense, the action of wearing oneself.

***

Along Brick Lane near the Spitalfield Markets, I watch a Bengali woman brush her daughter’s hair. They are street vendors—flowers and spices—and I stop to ask about their daffodils. The daughter, I suspect, has grown up here in London, far away from the Bay her mother calls home; far from the fields of flowers more fragrant than these could ever be; far from the dinner of fish caught that afternoon, skinned on the beach, and carried home proudly, yet humbly. The teenager’s English is impeccable and she is obviously more comfortable talking to me than her mother, who makes eye contact every so often before turning her head, smiling shyly and blushing.

I walk to a nearby café, though good coffee in the United Kingdom is rare. Penance for this: it is acceptable to drink a beer on the patio at two in the afternoon any day of the week. I reread an interview in Out magazine with underground New York icon Penny Arcade; “Being gay is not special — we need to cut that shit out,” she says. Yes. Maybe? I’m not sure.

***

This is the fag-end, the last part or remnant of anything, after the best has been used; the extreme end, e.g. of a portion of space or time, a collection of persons, or a written composition.