Comedian extraordinaire Michelle Wolf has a bit: the difference between the straight beach and the gay beach is the difference between a dog park and a dog show.
That’s the reason behind gays moving to the suburbs. Once gay men trade the bodega for a yard, it’s all about the backyard pool.
The numbers back it up — gay men and lesbians own homes at the highest rate in the LGBTQ+ community, and they’re consistently the heaviest buyers of pool floats and outdoor leisure gear each summer. Not because they need a pool. Because they know exactly what to do with one.
This is The Gay Domestic and The Gay Gaze, under The Subdivision — the backyard as resort, the outdoor kitchen and hot tub cranked to full volume. In these collages, nobody’s cooling off. The tattooed figure poses at the edge. A man freezes mid-dive at the showiest possible instant. Another flexes waist-deep like he’s in the ring.
Fifty years earlier, Hockney painted the same scene in quiet blue restraint — one clothed man watching one submerged swimmer, held apart by distance. This collage crashes that restraint into a loud gaze having a party. Everyone here is both watching and being watched, in the same water, at the same time.
Maybe that’s the real discomfort. Plenty of people made peace with the gaze so long as it stayed at Hockney’s distance. This gaze isn’t asking permission anymore.
— Behan
