‘Tim and Pete’ and Queer Anger
I’m really fucking tired of sad queer shit. I’m tired of the boo hoo bullshit of Andre Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name, James Baldwin’s Giovanni’s Room or E.M. Forster’s Maurice. I guess they do have their time and place, but I really hate that people think that this is the extent of queer male literature. Are anger and rage not valid emotions?
And that’s the thing with James Robert Baker’s novel Tim and Pete. He was fucking pissed off at society for letting AIDS kill millions of us and leaving the rest of us living in fear. This was scorched-earth anger at republicans, at straight people, at the world, something I think we can use a little of right now.
Set on Labor Day weekend in 1993 in Southern California, we start out with Tim, a film archivist, going on a date-gone-wrong down to Laguna Beach before happening to run into his recent ex Pete, local rockstar, who just happened to have just moved to Laguna. Both approaching 40 soon, they have their own Odyssey through the Southland from beating an ultraconservative congressman to a bloody pulp, to hitchhiking through the burnt remains of South Central post-Riots, to hunting for one of Pete’s sponsorees Joey from Long Beach to Valencia where he has found himself with a gang of queer anarchist art fags who plan on terrorism to kill Reagan.
Okay, maybe this won’t make a nice Oscar-bait film making a star out of waif pedo-bait actor. And it doesn’t set up for a straight white hero to swoop in and help solve all of the helpless fags’ problems. This is a we-don’t-trust-you-fucking-breeders-and-we-want-to-send-a-fucking-message-you’ll-remember thing. As the art fag gang leader Glenn said, “This is payback. An object lesson. That not all queers are going to mince off to the hospice or be content to carry signs and blow whistles.” (p. 213)
It also calls out the gay community which I still think is pertinent today. “Most gay men are suck-ups,” Pete said. “They’re still into playing victim and martyr which is what people want to see. Be a good little faggot and mince on off to the hospice and pay the price for your sins.” (p. 143) While we’re not mincing off to hospices anymore, there’s still that collective desire to be acceptable and fit into straight culture, to be “what people want to see.” Maybe it’s a generational thing, but I’ve never had a desire to fit into anything. I’m a proud goth faggot atheist. I don’t want to be acceptable to anyone. I don’t want to be tied down in heteronormative structures like “marriage.” I am not like you. I am not like a straight person. The thought of normalcy is the biggest horror in my life.
But this is hardly a one-dimensional novel. It also deals with the issue of respectability vs. authenticity — when does the rage cross the line from a justified crime to unwarranted? How is Pete’s beating up a homophobic congressman after catching him fucking his mom in his office more justified than the art fag gang’s plan? As Pete said as they were driving through South Central ruminating about the Riots, “I wish they’d aimed their rage better though. Instead of burning themselves out, and burning down Koreatown, they should’ve gone after Daryl Gates. They should’ve gone out to Simi Valley and burned down the courthouse. And the Reagan Library. With the Reagans in it.” (p. 79)
I discovered this book in the early 2000s, years after Baker’s suicide in 1997. I had discovered his posthumously published novel Testosterone first (which was subsequently made into a really fucking awful film in 2003 starring Antonio Sabato Jr. and Christopher from Gilmore Girls.) While I loved all of Baker’s other novels, Tim and Pete is the only one that stuck with me, the only one that I’ve revisited multiple times. When I’m in a funk, Tim and Pete is my wasabi, my palate cleanser. I can now go on other things. I think the fact that Tim spends most of the novel in a Butthole Surfers tee helps keep me at least semi-erect while reading.
And who can object to a little hardon while reading?