Dear Wesleyan,

So if you hadn’t heard, National Coming Out Day is on Monday. That’s when all us queers get to stand up and make some noise to celebrate who we are and how often we’ve come. We didn’t leave the closet just to stay in the bedroom, and we didn’t come here to be whitewashed away by an administration that wants us invisible.

But with chalking banned and gender-neutral housing more confused than we are, it’s time to come out even harder than we have before. Queers marched in Washington on October 11, 1987, and National Coming Out Day was started the next year to commemorate that march.

But queers marched in Washington before that, and in San Francisco, Philadelphia, New York, Denver, Austin, Laramie, Stonewall, everywhere a queer is walking down the street, getting laughed at, stared at, leered at, jeered at, spit on, tripped, hit, punched, or otherwise assaulted. And we are remembering, commemorating, commiserating, and COMING OUT!

To remember the struggles of queers of the past, present, and future, we’ll take Wesleyan by storm on October 11, 2004. We have the party at Eclectic on Saturday night, but that’s not enough.

We can’t chalk, but we were queer before Crayola came along. We can grope, squeeze, pull, lick, suck, fuck, strap on, rip off, tie up, tear down, reject, revolt, talk, write, sing, scream, re-appropriate, play, pull, push, and turn heteronormativity on its head.

But if we’re in public, let’s just stick to kissing. Kiss-in to come out: Sunday night, 11:30 p.m. at the Campus Center; Sunday night/Monday morning, 12:01 a.m. in the lobby of Olin Library; Monday 12:30 p.m. at MoCon, 4 p.m. at Freeman Athletic Center, and 4:45 p.m. in the lobby of North College!

I know I’m excited; will you be?

(BYO squalor)