Richie Tozier is Gay Enough
I’ve spent the majority of my life with coulrophobia, fear of clowns. It’s all encompassing. There are rules and laws I know to be true, that I follow, and sometimes I fear for my friends because they don’t follow those rules. I’ve spent about a decade trying to be at least a little less scared of them. It works… sort of.
I can see one without passing out. And in 2017 after I survived accidentally touching a photo of a clown I got a real bug up my ass and thought, “I’m gonna see ‘It’ in the theater,” and texted a friend who had already seen it to see if he’d go with me. He said yes, he said he was leaving work early, we’d go in two hours. Oh no. I was really doing it.
Spoilers: I lived.
And I was strangely delighted that this thing that had been terrorizing me my entire life, in the media and in thought, was a metaphor for trauma, shame, and the special guilt of being less than ideal in a smalltown. It wasn’t an easy watch. I threw up before, I threw up after, from nerves. I was covered in tears and snot and shaking when we left. A few times I had to sink into my hoodie and scream.
See, I know a thing or two about trauma and shame. I have C-PTSD from a terrifying childhood. Stephen King’s “Lisey’s Story” offered me one of the biggest cathartic cries of my entire life with the lore of Boo’ya Moon, the boy who had survived becoming a man who would say SOWISA and call his wife “babyluv”. But my fear of clowns was so vast that it didn’t occur to me “It” might offer up some of that, too.
As a girl with a frightening father, Bev means the absolute world to me, but in maladaptive coping skills, walking defense mechanism, and ultimately flawed but braveheart, I found a version of myself I could validate and cheer for and want to protect in Richie Tozier.
There is no perfect representation in stories. There is no right or wrong answer in how we depict dangerous realities for oppressed people.
But for me, Richie Tozier’s story in chapter 2 is pretty damn perfect.
The romantic notion of leaving a small town and finding who you are is rarely true. When we leave our toxic patriarchal hometowns our trauma comes with us. Many authors and creators have done us a disservice in painting a picture of immediate relief and personhood, of a flash forward where all was well and the trauma was neatly handled off stage. We leave cozy, happy, no ugly feelings left to crawl into bed with us that night.
Richie Tozier doesn’t have that. He has repressed memories, severe trauma, a sudden disconnect from the friends he was closest to and any truth of himself he may have stumbled on. His self deprecation, light hearted and borderline vulgar jabs, and lazy misogyny aren’t viewed as a coping skill or layer of armor. They’re viewed as a profitable commodity.
Richie doesn’t write his own jokes, because he isn’t that version of a Trashmouth. It’s hard to exploit your trauma all on your own. The movie opens with a manager or stage hand checking on Richie “Trashmouth” Tozier as a product: can he go on? Can he perform? Does it need some water to work? Did we change the batteries?
We see Richie accept these circumstances, ask for bourbon, thinking if he washes down the rising fear in his gut the other Richie, the profitable Richie, the popular Richie, will take over and he won’t have to be there anymore.
But this time it doesn’t work.
The film opens with a look at present day Derry. And that Derry is still full of hicks and bullies who gladly wield violence to assert their definition of manhood. That definition doesn’t include perceived queerness and is so upset about confirmed, present, loving queerness that they commit an act so vile, Pennywise takes pleasure in finishing the job.
Even as Richie’s memories return to him, along with the love he felt for those friends but especially for Eddie (the goofy intimacy of a hammock spat with your same sex crush before you know that’s what’s up is an exact scenario I’ve been in), so does his fear. The Richie he has been drinking away, laughing away, and paying writers and producers to hide feels the terror all over again. Pennywise attacking him with Paul Bunyan is double the manifestation of insecurity- Paul Bunyan is a virile man, something Richie can’t live up to. Paul Bunyan is a beautiful man, something Richie is attracted to.
I am glad I went into “It: Chapter 2” with a warning about that opening scene. It allowed me to brace for impact and avoid anything on a scale of unable to leave bed for a few days to actual flashback.
But I can’t agree with those who say it was unnecessary. It’s certainly possible to tell this story without it but that wouldn’t be telling Richie’s story. That wouldn’t show that, just like Bev and Mike, Richie, a man, can be preyed upon by an evil clown more easily because of ingrained social hatred. Those bullies are as poor and as trapped as any one of the losers. But they’re male, white, and at least passable as straight, performative in their straightness.
People who survive violent things need violent representation. Horror means a lot of things to a lot of people: a dress rehearsal, a test of one’s limits, a playbook, a joke. For me, and I suspect for other survivors of various abuse, it’s almost worship. Church. Feeling every overwhelming feeling, asking the film before me to pray it away, speaking in tongues, being moved to tears, walking away feeling lighter, my demons exorcised.
Post traumatic stress disorder doesn’t go away. It will always be with me. Maybe I found a way to intimidate my own psychological antagonist, to make it small, to rip the heart out of it. But I still lost so much. It doesn’t have to be a bad thing, but for my whole life I’ll be mourning the childhood and even college experience I didn’t have. I didn’t leave my smalltown, have a magical night, stumble into a supportive group of LGBTQ friends who opened my eyes, and get over my trauma. I wasn’t out to even myself until after a string of relationships with other women. I’ve been to Pride once. I felt really out of place.
I’m a mess, I’d rather be funny than vulnerable, I’m at once true to myself and highly performative. And I’m pansexual. I never properly came out. I am still scared that past abusers might find me or find that out and react very badly.
No one should have to worry about being gay enough. A lot of us came from violent backgrounds or towns that will sit with us forever.
All we want is to be okay.
And Richie Tozier makes “okay” feel possible. Richie Tozier suffers a hell of a lot to take that first small step: recarving the truth he didn’t feel safe enough to acknowledge into the kissing bridge.
And it’s enough.
