The Making of a New Gay Diva

I’ve always had a specific memory associated with this song, and now that I’m writing about it, I’m amazed that the memory is so vivid despite the fact that the chorus consists only of nonsense vowel sounds.  It’s typical for songs that I’ve seen performed live to have a stronger mnemonic connection for me, but this one’s different.  This was the first time I realized that Tori Amos was something of a gay diva; really, the first time I realized what that meant.

I had come out of the closet in high school, years before this particular concert.  My exposure to gay icons in the days before Will & Grace consisted mostly of references to Barbara Streisand, Judy Garland, or Liza Minelli, and it may have been because of the generational gap, but I didn’t like them at all.  It was confusing to be so sure of my sexual orientation at a young age yet still at-odds with some expectation for me to have posters of disco divas and showtunes stars hanging on my walls.  Tori was my favorite artist in high school, but by the time I went to college I still didn’t know many other fans.

In my freshman year of college, a few girl friends of mine and drove up to East Lansing for my very first Tori show.  I expected most of the audience to be younger women, like my friends, and usually hung out with mostly women anyways.  We got inside the stadium though, and I started seeing all of these really cute guys.  And I had horrible gaydar at the time, but I still knew that I had found some sort of weird enclave of gay people in Michigan.  

I remember the moment that Tori got to the bridge of “Iieee”, a bombastic, drum-riddled breakout beat, and I looked around and everyone was dancing and deeply lost in the music.  I had no idea why so many other gay people liked this music as much as I did, but I could tell everyone else had spent their high school years glued to her CDs.  I couldn’t have been happier, but I didn’t know exactly why.

After the concert, listening to “Iieee” and remembering that moment again and again, it eventually clicked – the reason why I never liked Streisand, the reason why I didn’t understand the whole “diva” phenomenon.  You can’t explain it to someone who doesn’t share in that coincidence.  It happens when you find so many people like yourself drawn to the same indescribable thing in the same musician.