October Third: Notes on Queer Canon
Access the audio recording of this piece here.
Tyler and I were configured unusually: they were lying face up on a hammock, and I was lying face down - above them, facing them - on a different kind of hammock. Or a net, really. Both hammock and net, woven from thin rope, hung from the living room ceiling of the residency center where we’d found ourselves in northern Michigan. The living room was low on couches and comfy chairs, but high on various hanging features - Tyler’s hammock, my net, and nearby one of those nylon swings that looks like a cross between an aerial silk and some kind of kink support. Everyone else on-site must have been finishing dinner or washing up after; we found ourselves getting to know each other across these strange webs.
I asked them if they danced for other folks besides Megan, the Philadelphia-based choreographer who had brought them and another collaborator to the residency that week. They said yes, and mentioned a few names I didn’t quite recognize.
Then they added that they also had an active drag career.
“What’s your drag name?” I asked.
“October Third,” they said, eyeing me closely. “With a K.” Oktober Third.
The slightest beat passed as my synapses fired, and then I exclaimed, “OH MY GODDDDD!!” and pressed my face into the squares of rope like some kind of pirate or enthusiastically caught fish. “That’s so good. That’s too good.”
Tyler was smiling appreciatively. “God, I just love that,” I continued to gush, and added (unnecessarily - they obviously knew all this), “because I mean, so many drag names are so punny. So that’s what we’re expecting. And then you say this name that’s not punny at all - but it’s something else we recognize. And that’s really satisfying.”
“So you know the reference?” Tyler asked, squinting a bit.
“Oh, of course!” I assured them.
They gave a smooth nod. “Iconic queer moment.”
“Oh, absolutely,” I replied.
They told me a little more about the Philly drag scene, and I asked their Instagram handle. Eventually we came down from our webs to eat some chocolate with everyone else.
The thing is, I don’t really know the reference in Tyler’s drag name. Or I do, just not the way you’re supposed to. But let me bring you in on the basics real quick so that we’re all on the same page:
There’s a moment in the movie Mean Girls (2004) where Lindsay Lohan’s character is talking about her crush on a guy in her class. She says, “On October Third, he asked me what day it was.” Cut to the crush turning around at his desk to ask her what day it is. Lindsay responds, “It’s October Third.” End scene. October 3rd, the date itself, is now known to some as Mean Girls Day.
Why does this movie or moment matter to queer people, enough that my new friend Oktober Third would not only riff on it for their name but smile warmly and intimately while saying the phrase “iconic queer moment”? More thoughts on that below, but in the meantime, this Medium piece sums up the backstory fairly well.
To be clear, I have in fact seen Mean Girls. Unlike much of 90s/00s cable, it’s not one of the cultural artifacts that my largely TV-less and otherwise somewhat restrictive upbringing kept from my awareness (though that upbringing is fully the reason for my lifelong habit of nodding agreeably when people refer to things I’ve never heard of and assuming that I’ll either get the gist eventually or look it up later, and that in the meantime, in addition to being embarrassing, my ignorance is no reason to interrupt their flow or, god forbid, lead them to feel alienated or misunderstood). But I don’t remember the movie particularly well, let alone have strong positive or negative feelings about it. I probably watched it over someone’s shoulder in a dorm room in college, and only once at that.
The reason why I know October Third is a thing is because of an ex. The person they dated long-term after me was someone they were already seeing (above board) before we broke up. My ex unsurprisingly adored New-And-Soon-To-Be-It-Bae and found them very funny, and talked about them as much as our own already-tenuous dynamic could accommodate. That fall - on, you guessed it, October 3rd - they showed me a Facebook post that New Bae had made. It was a memory post of the year before and contained within it memory posts from all the 5 or 6 years before that, like an infinity mirror reflection, of the GIF of Lindsay Lohan saying “It’s October Third,” and New Bae quoting some part of the scene as caption. (At least that’s how I remember the post, in my own infinity mirror of this memory and the act of retelling it.)
When my ex showed me this post delightedly, I nodded right along and agreed it was funny. In action, it was much like that with Tyler in the webs in 2023. In feeling, it was much more forced. I understood that the reference was something I was supposed to enjoy, relate to, and Get, so I did my best to approximate those responses. It turns out that in doing so, I set myself up for something genuine years later.
I suppose this is exactly the long-term arc that begins to shape itself when queer folks latch on to what would otherwise become the drifting flotsam and jetsam of our cultural ocean and turn it into something that holds meaning, or at least a beloved inside joke. Ephemera become queer canon not only because people have literally loved or paid attention to the same things, and not just because we are required to build our own worlds and languages outside the mainstream, but because references, information, lifelines, and lols get passed along amidst connections so cherished or so charged that what becomes important is the fact that it was shared with you at all, no matter the material of the thing itself. On this day in life, they asked me, what matters about this thing? And I said, it’s a thing because it matters to us.
Peep the thriving drag career of memory-maker Oktober Third.
Enormous gratitude to The Croft Residency, who supported Grace and me as artists for a week this summer. The moment remembered above was but one slice of an incredibly valuable time. The Croft provides the kind of generous space and support I wish for all artists.
Thanks as well to fellow maker Megan Mazarick along with her collaborators Tyler (noted above) and Alonzo, who shared space with us at The Croft.