Hazing Parker Posey

I was recently thinking about the scene in Dazed and Confused where Parker Posey hazes all the freshman girls. There is something about the scene which makes it totally hot. Squirting condiments all over other younger teenage girls. I dunno, I always wanted to interact with the older hot teen girls when I was younger, but I had no idea how to do it. And there was this element of hazing. At my high school select girls were attacked with bingo dabbers all over their face. And it stayed for a really long time. I never got hazed. I didn’t want to either. I was going through my angry bleak and cynical year and was just about to realize I was a homo. I wore long hair to hide the growingly obvious fact that I was a butch dyke heading into four years of high school in Saskatchewan.

What mean grim times my friend! It was about a mile from my house to the school, and I walked there rain or shine or snow. Sometimes it was minus 60 with the windchill. I was steadily working my way through the Vampire Chronicles and being very dark and troubled about it all.

Realizing I was a queer was the weirdest experience, next to going to the bin. It’s moments like that when your life totally changes. I stopped being so bleak and dark, sort of. I started being less afraid of people. And more afraid, but for different reasons.

I have often wondered if there is a hazing procedure for the queer community. I think I know what it is.

Queer youth groups.

Now I have a soft spot for my youth group days. I did it for five years, in three different cities. And to be totally honest, I always went hoping to score. I had grand dreams for queer youth groups. I went imagining it would be lead by a Parker Posey look-alike who would demonstrate fisting to us, or something else worthwhile. Knitting, even. Instead it was circle check. Man, everybody telling us how their week was, or something. And terrible things would be happening to everyone. Like live coverage of the war stories of trying to find your way as a queer in the world. So sad. I think it made us all crazy.

And then we’d all go out after. Usually to that place with the really great fries.

The second part was where all the fun came in, because people would gossip and flirt. But somehow we had to endure the circle check. Even if someone was still talking after half an hour.

I still know a lot of ex-youth group people. So in a sense it did serve it’s purpose as a social bonding experience.