How Clea DuVall Helped Me Find Queer Joy

But I’m a Cheerleader gave me something to hold onto: for the first time, I had seen queer love and community.

A few years back, Clea DuVall did a Q and A and screening of The Intervention with her co-star, Natasha Lyonne, in New York City. As soon as I saw the event blurb in my inbox, twenty years compressed, and I was the obsessed preteen I’d been all over again.

“Of course we’re going,” my wife Audrie said when I sent her the email.

We showed up early. Clea and Natasha played the queer couple in a group of friends as if Graham and Megan from But I’m a Cheerleader had grown up. The young person inside me, who rented movies like Committed, She’s All That, and Girl just to see Clea for a few scenes, felt gratified. I ached for a movie like this one back then.

Clea and Natasha walked out for the Q and A. There she was: Clea DuVall, just a few rows ahead of me. I had to squeeze Audrie’s hand to calm down. I could barely listen, buzzing just to be in the same room.

They stuck around for photos after, and Audrie nudged me hard to approach Clea. I shook my head.

“This is Mel,” Audrie said when she turned to us. “He’s been a big fan of yours for a long time.”

“Hi!” Clea said and extended her hand.

“Hi.” I shook her hand dumbly. “When I was a kid, I made a GeoCities website for you.”

“What’s GeoCities?” she asked.

“Oh, it was an early internet website builder,” I stammered. “I just wanted you to have a fan page.”

“Thank you so much for doing that!” She seemed like she meant it.

Audrie snapped a picture of the two of us, our interaction over in a blink. I wasn’t sure I’d said what I wanted to say. For so long, Clea had been as close to a proxy as I could find for who I might become.

*

In the year 2000, I was twelve years old when I told my parents and one friend that I liked girls. The realization that I liked girls wasn’t a singular, rousing moment. It was a quiet Wednesday after school when my cousin sang “All I Have to Give” by Backstreet Boys as “But if you were my boy, I’d make it so we’d never be apart.” I kept the original lyrics “my girl” because I wanted to sing to one. It was bubbly feelings about Red Fraggle, Sinéad O’Connor, my first-grade teacher, and Meryl Streep. It was a thousand tiny bubbles in a boiling pot of water, a slow accumulation, and then a burst. Gay was an identity label that didn’t fit quite right, but I knew I liked girls before figuring out my gender identity. When I came out to my parents, they worried my life would be difficult, full of harassment and discrimination, but they also trusted me to know myself.

My brother had just left for college, punching a hole in our family unit. I felt like the lonely kid sibling left behind, but I didn’t know how to process his absence. It was easier to brood about the impossibility of my desire; I was the only L, G, B, T, or Q person I really knew. I felt desperate for queer kin. Clea DuVall was the first person I found who even came close: sarcastic and a bit androgynous. I needed community, but I found Clea instead.

My first introduction to Clea was as Stokely in The Faculty. She wore thick black eyeliner, and her hair was somewhere between a bob and shoulder-length. She scowled but had an easy smile and a quirky front tooth. I had an immediate case of what my friend Ash refers to as the “do be do be do’s”—the extraordinary, confusing phenomenon of not being sure if you want to do someone or be them.

I approached Clea the way I still approach the things that matter to me: I researched and read everything I could get my hands on. Searching for Clea was how I found IMDb, the Internet Movie Database. Clea’s roles were often unnamed parts like “Convenience Store Clerk” or “Nurse” with one or two lines. IMDb told me I’d seen her once before, on my favorite TV show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. In the one-episode arc, Clea played Marcie Ross, a girl so neglected she disappeared and started haunting people. Of course, my young, queer self loved the forgotten-turned-invisible girl.

My desires were impossible to act on. I wrote pages about the girl in front of me in chorus, who had “hair like wet beach sand in the sun” and “eyes the yellow-green of ripening sweet peppers.” Sometimes, she would turn to hand me a sheet of music, flash her crooked teeth, and I would unravel. Years of vigilant observation, scrutinizing every response to mild flirtation, had taught me my desires were not shared. This girl would never see me the way I wanted. I was convinced I was destined for loneliness, but at least I had Clea.

 Clea DuVall was the first person I found who even came close: sarcastic and a bit androgynous.

IMDb offered some information, but I couldn’t find out what I wanted to know: if Clea was queer too. I found an address for her, care of some talent agency. I dashed off a letter full of leading questions and colored the back of the envelope with an ombre crayon rainbow. As I waited for a response that never arrived, I amassed information and photos of her on a small stack of floppy disks and started my very own GeoCities fan page. It was a sweet way to spend lonely nights. My brother’s departure had changed the air in the house, and my parents were starting to drift apart. My obsession let me fill the quiet hours without focusing on the sources of my solitude. Clea kept me company.

Clea escapism also gave me a window into what could be before I had any queer joy of my own making. It would be a few years before I met a queer adult, so I did not have anyone to model a future for me. What I knew of life as an out person was bleak: Matthew Shepard had been brutally murdered. Ellen had been shunned. Clea was barely an adult, just twenty-three in the year 2000, but her self-assuredness in every role made her seem more grown-up than anyone I knew. She became my stand-in for a life beyond the walls of my bedroom, beyond my computer screen. Imagining queer Clea let me begin to imagine a whole queer life for myself.

*

I refreshed Clea’s IMDb page daily; that’s how I found But I’m a Cheerleader with the one-line description that read: “A naive teenager is sent to rehab camp when her straitlaced parents and friends suspect her of being a lesbian.” Clea had second billing on the cast list, which meant a significant role. Would her character be queer? If so, it might allow for the possibility that she, too, was queer. It was before I had anyone to hold on to. My crumbs of representation were few and far between. I needed to see it as soon as possible.

While I waited for the movie to be released, I started to dip my toes into what it meant to be gay in the world. I didn’t know anything about gay culture or historical referents, but I approached being out beyond my parents and one friend as a problem to solve with research.

It would be a year before I met another gay person my age, two years before my first girlfriend, four before I’d dance in a crowded room with my community. I used my mind to fill in for what my body could not yet know.

And so, I searched the internet for the queer connection. In AOL chat rooms I felt overwhelmed, not yet confident enough to join the flow of disjointed conversations. PlanetOut.com was a revelation. It had listings of “GLBT friendly” establishments, troves of comics like Dykes to Watch Out For, and personal ads. Everything I could understand gave a limited view of queer life: urban, adult, flamboyant—or closeted. What hope was there for a young, introverted nerd like me?

*

I scanned movie times in the newspaper all spring, one of the few beacons of consistency at home. After literal months, I opened the paper one day to see, in tiny letters next to Albany’s best and only independent movie theater: But I’m a Cheerleader (R) Daily at 4:15, 7:10, 9:15; Fri–Sun also at 1:30 PM. My waiting had paid off.

On the drive to school that morning, my mother asked if I wanted to go to a movie. I was floored. She hadn’t had much energy since my brother left.

“There’s this indie movie I heard was pretty good. It’s called But I’m a Cheerleader. Her parents send her to a rehab camp for being gay. But it’s a comedy!”

When Friday rolled around, I dressed as cool as I could, JNCO jeans and a ringer tee from Hot Topic. I caught a glimpse of myself in my bedroom mirror: short auburn hair and wireframe glasses. When I’d cut my hair short in sixth grade, I hadn’t considered the implications. Now, I hoped I looked gay. Driving to the theater, my mother and I discussed our days, and I scrutinized every detail of my outfit. Was this what cool looked like? If I saw gay people, I wanted them to recognize me. At the theater, we bought tickets and vegan cookies. The lights dimmed, and my heart pounded. I squeezed my mother’s hand in anticipation, and she chuckled.

The movie opened up with a scene of cheerleaders practicing their routines. I was sure my mother was rolling her eyes, but I was transfixed. I wanted her to love it, but I couldn’t worry about her enjoyment. I only had space for my own thrill. The film was simply plotted: Megan, a cheerleader, believes she’s straight but her parents and friends suspect devious desires. Her parents send her to a rehabilitation camp, where she meets Clea’s character, Graham: “I’m Graham, and I like girls. A lot.” Clea, as Graham, and I had at least one thing in common.

The best scene, the sexiest scene, was the most difficult to watch with my mother. After the mounting tension of various “campers” getting kicked out for breaking the rules, Megan and Graham are finally alone together. The lighting fades in and out; their faces are both near and blurry. They kiss. They touch each other. The sheet moves. The song “Glass Vase Cello Case” by Tattle Tale is both sweet and prodding, with a cello and a guitar. The singer asks, “Are you still, still breathing?” I wasn’t. I had never seen a sex scene where I felt chemistry like this. It felt so real, like I could slide myself into the moment—a cipher that allowed me to imagine myself sexual, coupled, loved.

At the end of the film, Megan makes a daring rescue to save Graham from “graduation” into a closeted life with a goofy cheer. There’s a moment where Graham has a choice to stay and “graduate” or run off with Megan. Of course, she chooses Megan. The scene crystallized what I had, up until that moment, been wavering on: keep one foot in the closet or fully come out. Without community, friends, or mentors, I had no one to assure me life would be any better out of the closet. At any moment, I could back out of my queer life, say that it had all been a joke. I understood the campers who needed to pretend to be straight. It could feel like a sinkhole to be the only queer person you knew. At the precise moment I needed it, Clea said “yes,” and the movie offered me a future possibility. It was better on the other side of being out; someone could love you and you could love yourself.

I sat awestruck until the lights came up. I wanted to stay there and write down all of the things I’d just felt. I didn’t have the words yet, but I felt overwhelmed, turned on, and excited. Seeing Graham and Megan, I felt less alone.

 It was better on the other side of being out; someone could love you and you could love yourself. 

The oasis I’d created in my mind, imagining queer Clea, was my first stirring of knowledge that my queer identity could give me something that my family couldn’t. It wasn’t just that my family couldn’t understand what it meant to me to be queer, but that other queer people could give me something they weren’t able to. But I’m a Cheerleader gave me something to hold on to: for the first time, I had seen queer love and community.

*

The world has changed so much since But I’m a Cheerleader came out, the landscape of queer media radically transformed. Where I once had to comb through the section of Hollywood Video for titles labeled “Alternative Lifestyles,” Netflix and other streaming sites have whole sections dedicated to queer films. There are more queer magazines, more queer books, though still not enough. Most outlets still struggle to represent queer and trans voices, save for token issues. Movies and TV still tell the same tired stories: coming out, meeting the family, transition, or violence. Most of them are still only populated with pretty white cis people. What about the depth and diversity of queer and trans lives? What about all of our other joys?

Clea, too, occupies a different place in the world. There’s no doubt about her queerness now. She’s open about her personal life, has played queer characters again and again, and even wrote last year’s Happiest Season, giving voice to more queer experiences. I don’t need Clea in the way I once did because I don’t need to imagine queer or trans possibility. I’m living the life I once imagined for myself through her.

Most of what I have in my life that is good and my own came from being queer and trans and honest about those facts. I’ve been out as queer for twenty years, as trans for sixteen. I’ve found representations of myself—queerness and masculinity and all my other myriad identities—and am writing the stories I wish I’d had when I was twelve. I’ve spent my entire working life at LGBTQ nonprofits. In my home borough of Brooklyn, I’ve met the queer and trans community I longed for as a lonely teenager. Being out each day for another day, another year, slowly expanded my universe.

I’m still an introvert, happier reading books or writing them than at a party, but the parties have fueled me too. My last gathering before the pandemic was my birthday. I cooked brunch for my beloveds in my home. I spent the morning rushing around, making steaming trays of eggs, bacon, french toast, and scones. All morning and early afternoon, my friends streamed in and out of my home: trans buddies I met my first year in the city, writers from the queer memoir workshop that changed my life, writers from my MFA program, rad Jews from my synagogue, artists, dear ones I’d known from childhood and adolescence.

But there will always be a queer preteen Mel in a bedroom in Albany, New York, waiting for Clea DuVall’s IMDb page to refresh. It’s because of that kid, and Clea by extension, that I built a life that could hold me and my queer joy.