Help I am in a coming of age narrative but I am also close to the grave
Somebody Somewhere taught me that we never stop coming of age, we just die
I’ve often wondered why adults keep coming back to coming of age narratives, about plucky teens finding themselves through a series of genre-specific trials, such as a homecoming dance or the murder of an evil wizard or a big sports match. I figured that perhaps it was a potent mix of nostalgia and regret, mixed with the marketing zeitgeist of beautiful 20-somethings playing teens. Look at these tiny fools who don’t know who they are yet, or where they fit into the world! What glamorous idiots. I’m so excited to watch them solve crimes/ fight demons.
A coming-of-age narrative is a story of a character growing up and going through a series of important life-defining changes – it’s traditionally set in the area between childhood and becoming an adult, because everything is new! Every experience is literally your first! It’s your first kiss! Your first time! Your first mushroom ragu! (most coming of age narratives are about eating mushrooms).
Heartstopper on Netflix is a beautiful example of a young gay coming of age narrative - the fact that queer culture has codified coming of age traditions, such as coming out of the closet, means that it’s immediately identifiable as part of this genre. Coming out, first loves, first kisses — all very sweet and new.
But as I’ve gotten older, year after year (it keeps happening! disgusting!) as I morph from twink to whatever an old twink who doesn’t have enough body hair to be called a daddy is (uncle? liche? skeleton king?) I’ve realised that the coming of age narrative is so popular because it never actually stops.
One of the best shows of 2022 was Somebody Somewhere, an HBO comedy-drama about community, family, friendship, and grief. It’s a beautiful little show, that welcomes you into what feels like a private little world of experience, and rewards you with some of the best laughs I’ve had in a while. The comedy is infectious, a POV that lets you see the world through a certain lens and laugh along, and laugh through the trials and the grief that comes with being alive. Season 2 has just come out too, and it’s gorgeous and hilarious. No spoilers in this article!
It’s about a woman named Sam, played by comedian Bridget Everett, and is loosely based on her real life. Sam moves back to the small town of Manhattan, Kansas, to be with her sister as she dies, and afterwards finds herself, in her forties, back in small town life, back involved in the messiness of her family, feeling lost and adrift and restless. She works a shitty essay marking job that she doesn’t care about, lives alone and mostly drinks in her underpants, and is naturally cynical about the “faith n’ family” values of the people around her.
But in the first episode - I am not spoiling anything! - she makes friends with a nice gay named Joel, who introduces her to a queer performance night secretly held in a local church, called “Choir Practice” and Sam begins to discover her place in this town. She’s not queer herself, but the entire story is deeply queer coded.
It’s a narrative achingly familiar to many queer people - much has been written on the life-saving salve of queer community, of the transformative power of chosen family, on the freedom to find yourself when you find the right spaces and the right people. For many queer people these have been queer events, clubs and dance parties, parades and protests. There are many reasons for this, including the traditional and continued marginalisation of the LGBTIQ community, forcing manifestations of the community into these out-of-the-way places, outside the harsh scrutiny of mainstream society.
Somebody Somewhere is one of the most beautiful and real depictions of chosen family, or queer friendship that I’ve ever seen – but I would also argue that as a consequence of that, it’s also a perfection example of a queer coming of age narrative, and the fact it’s about people in their forties only makes it queerer. Queerness blurs boundaries as a deliberate function, which is part of it - but also many people in the LGBTIQ community understand the concept of finding yourself at any age.
Call me by your dungeons and dragons name
I came out slowly, geriatrically, inching out of the closet like a turtle escaping Narnia. While I engaged with my sexuality to some extent for my entire life, I wouldn’t classify myself as being properly “out” and rambunctiously bisexual until my thirties. This wasn’t just dating other queer people, it was throwing myself into community, into the culture.
It was, in every sense of the term, a coming of age narrative. It had all the tropes - I’d had sex with men before, but there were still first times, new things to do (all the sex moves - top, bottom, sleepy, angry cowgirl, etc). There was the new experience of purely queer dating and romance. But beyond the specifics, the interchangeable experiences, it was about finding authenticity in myself.
I have so many treasured memories from this era - it’s so weird to feel that kind of teenaged trepidation as an adult, to feel that sparkly sweet newness like I’m one of the little Heartstopper boys, to find yourself making out under a street lamp at 4am with a tall hot stranger and thinking - this is right but also scary. But it’s the community, the friendships which were the most affirming. I remember starting at youth media company Junkee and in my first week, a bunch of the queers I worked with took me to see Call Me By Your Name, and it was this feeling of permission to be exactly who I wanted to be with these people, in my workplace. I adored my friends for doing that, and adore them all to this day.
It’s a trite example, but I remember thinking that I could wear whatever clothes I wanted. My outfits became about 300% more flamboyant overnight. Likewise, my friend Sally invited me to a semi-regular queer gathering at the pub on Sundays around the same time, which taught me so much about who I wanted to be, and how I wanted to live my life. And also just about the glory of getting to spend time with good people.
I identified so strongly with Sam and Joel in Somebody Somewhere because when I moved to Melbourne a few years ago, the move brought with it another crisis of identity. I moved away from my friends and community, my routines, my entire queer support network, and found myself lonely and questioning what I wanted from my life, and who I was when all that gay scaffolding was taken away. What was important to me. And like Sam, it felt like being rescued when I was taken under the wing of a bunch of gorgeous new queer friends, and invited to play Dungeons and Dragons. It felt like waking up again, and my new friendship with these people is one of the shiniest and brightest parts of my life now.
I would say that coming of age is not necessarily about new things, but rather about discovering what’s important to you, what makes you the fullest and most authentic version of yourself - or rediscovering it. It’s why I don’t think it ends - I came to Melbourne feeling much more concrete in who I am than when I was thirty- but it didn’t stop me from learning more about myself, in questioning some of those aspects of my being. I’ll probably do it again at forty, probably at fifty… until I am mouldering in a shallow grave, learning how to be my most authentic rotting corpse-self.
Take me to church
Somebody Somewhere perfectly exemplifies the link between community and coming of age. I think that the concept of “queer community” gets bandied about so much that the concept has been watered down into a kind of vaguely feel-good stereotype, appropriated by brands looking for a slay new marketing campaign for gay fossil fuels. What this ignores is the function of queer community and queer community spaces - as a safe and affirming way for queer people to discover themselves, to go down the coming of age path that might be shut for them elsewhere.
Traditionally, queer people have not had the luxury of finding themselves - every part of themselves, including their sexuality and gender expression - safely in the mainstream. It’s not just about violence and bigotry and homo/trans-phobia. It’s also about scrutiny - one of the reasons I didn’t come out fully for so long is because I knew people were watching and waiting for me to do it (shockingly, I have always served queer code). Community becomes a necessary space for queer people to come of age. It serves a function, beyond simply being fun, beyond providing a dating pool, or shared queer interests (Lady Gaga discography, brunch, and destroying the moral fabric of society). I’ve recently seen quite a few people questioning what connects LGBTIQA+ people into one acronym, into one community - you could argue it’s just marginalisation, but I would also say it’s the NEED for a community, because of the above reasons. There is a functionality to queer community.
Kurt Vonnegut writes a lot about how the nuclear family was a fabricated American concept that tried to replace traditional ideas of social community, and how families were too small and flimsy to do so, and how people ended up lonely and resenting their wife or husband for not being able to provide everything they need in society. Even though he was an atheist, he talked about how something like the church served an important function - creating community and combatting loneliness, because it was a place people could go and essentially, have a reason to hang out.
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured,” he wrote in one of his letters.
The friendship between Sam and Joel in Somebody Somewhere is so lovely to watch. It’s so real in the sense that it’s built off humour - the scenes where they just giggle together over slightly off-colour humour and stupid bits is so reminiscent of all my favourite friendships. I still remember the first time I made TV’s Bec Shaw laugh, because I was so intimidated by how funny she was, and she usually just said “that’s funny” in a deadpan voice when people made a joke. At a pub, when we were still getting to know each other, I made a 9/11 joke and she actually laughed. A beautiful, if problematic moment for me. It’s a shame I must cancel her soon.
The humour in the show is so good and funny, and it’s depicted as part of the way these two people connect. The show is very clearly about the loneliness that can strike from nowhere, and the uncertainty and soul-searching that loneliness brings with it. There is a scene in the first episode where Sam sings, for the first time in a long time, for the first time since her sisters death, and its from the encouragement and friendship of Joel that she’s given that opportunity to rediscover herself. It’s a gorgeous scene.
Somebody Somewhere made me realise that we spend our entire lives coming of age, finding out about who we are and what we need, that at any point we could be cast adrift from what we consider the foundations of our identity are. This could be discovering your sexuality or gender, like in classic coming out narratives - or it could be the vagaries of existence, like Sam being cast adrift and lonely after a death and moving back to a small town. Something like loneliness or isolation is a symptom of this, of finding out or re-discovering who we are.
Having just gone through an era of feeling lonely, I’m so grateful that queer community is almost designed as a net to catch people going through this kind of thing, because it’s so common for LGBTIQ people to experience isolation and loneliness in one form or another, because queer people are expected to find themselves through different methods, at different times in our lives, to suffer discrimination due to our sinful lifestyle choices. Adversity and marginalisation created a blueprint for communities that understand the idea of coming of age at any time.
The way that Joel extends not just friendship to Sam, but through the queer gathering an avenue for her to find herself, to express herself and who she wants to be, to rediscover her power and confidence and joy, is something that queer people have done for me multiple times, and it’s saved my life, made me who I am today, and is the best part of the queer community.
Somebody Somewhere is on Binge in Australia, I say go watch it.
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Yes go rural queers @ family homes!
My wife and I cry every single damn episode. It's lovely to watch a queer show where the characters struggle with universal life issues rather than just representing stereotypical tropes.