But where are the queers, we ask?
If Tracy is, like Chicago itself, a primordial mulch out of which grows America, in all its micro- / macro-cosmic splendour and perfect fuckedness:
Where. Are. The. Queers.
There's queer-ing, certainly! Crossdressing happens with regularity in these comix. Mostly among the dishonorable classes-- qua old Bill Burroughs,* ever notice how lingo circulates from criminals to fags and straight back around, passed like a midnight joint? --so there's always some underling or would-be big figure hipping themselves up in "women's clothes", kvetching loudly about it, as if they donned the complete, inconvenient set and didn't skimp on the garters. 'Mumbles' was among the more successful at drag, somehow, to spite his homely, sleepy expression. Though what he bought with his little routine was a bag of gold that would lead to his strangled suffocation...
* "Ever notice how many expressions carry over from queers to con-men?"
There are a plethora of two-bit dastards of relatively indeterminate gender, such as Larceny Lu, who any average reader in the mid-30s must've suspected of being Other. A figure out of Jack Black's 'You Can't Win', loathsome Lu was so strong & capable she essentially re-built Steve the Tramp like a stockcar, even giving him an accidental facelift when she sews him up, after extracting seven bullets from his head & neck. Larceny Lu terrified Steve and every other man she meets, and even gives Tracy the shakes.
Why? Everyone just knew... there was something Wrong, about Lu. The foggy subtext behind her fleeing darling London town was prostitution, possibly aiding in abortion, certainly she had been a fence for stolen goods. Lu was too queer to be good, with her sagging eye and dockworker's jaw and strangler's hands.
Yeah. Maybe. But Lu saved Steve the Tramp, lousy confidence man, idiot kidnapper, and utter thug, three times running-- the first of Steve's criminal associates to NOT abandon his deadweight to the law, or leave him bleeding out from a gut wound on the side of the road.
There's something queer about that. Because we know what a heel Steve is. We've seen it. And surely Lu had, too?
There is Truth, here: criminals & queerfolk, we share the same air. We are part of the same great american underclass of dispossessed and discarded, poor, fuckers. We share an illegal taste for pleasure; we share the same essential disdain for staid, narrow-ass puritan pricks.
We think it's good fun to give a cop a thrill by blowing him a kiss. We think 'Cruising' is an all-american classic and 'The Boys In The Band' is a grim tragedy.
We think: wherefore we are.
In my early teens, 15 or thereabouts, I encountered a psychology textbook in my aunt Edwina's basement. Edwina used to teach, and she had lots of remaindered schoolbooks. The one I found defined homosexuality as criminal affliction, treatable by electroshock "therapy".** Ergo from my earliest awareness of sexuality was the knowledge that some schoolteacher, cop or judge might feel compelled to designate me a nonce-- nevermind that the textbook was from the 60s, it was still in use in the early 80s, in good old Dogwater, Alabama.
** Shades of Lou Reed. Electroshock is what drove Lou to self-loathing, self-destructive alcoholism. 'Kill Yours Sons' indeed, Lou's own mother had him committed. Which is the complement to my lesson about queerness being equated with criminality-- anyone might fink a body out for being a fag, even one's own family.
But back to Tracy: where are those queers? Vitamin Flintheart's a queer character, and not just for being a pillhead. He's a thespian, given to histrionics and bitchy rejoinders and a great admirer of feminine Talent in song & dance. And what of Pat Patton, who as near as I can tell, from all my research, is a confirmed bachelor in addition to being the butt of all the big jokes in the strip. There was the flapper & writer Jean Pennfield, who tried-and-failed, repeatedly, to turn Tracy's head from the magnetic north of Tess Trueheart's normativity. There's not much to suggest Jean having a lesbian streak, yet it's hard for me to read her obsession with upstaging Tess as anything other than queer.
But maybe that's the Tijuana bible talking.
These are not Drawn Conclusions, "properly" speaking. I've got another thirty-odd years of Tracy to wade through. This assessment is nowhere near complete. So take us away, Sam, sling us in stir, that we may rest unmolested and Think... about Dick.
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