The closest I’ve come to finding my own Rivendell was when my friend Luis started an abolitionist, queer-friendly community garden a few years ago on the same principles. More than plot, Tolkien gave vibes and a gentle, often ambiguous nature to many landscapes and characters, whether they lived in the pre-Industrial Revolution-inspired Shire or Rivendell, an elven refuge dedicated to food, reading, and resting, to paraphrase Tolkien. The result was a kind of Middle Earth fernweh and gender euphoria, a proto- goblincore state in which I just wanted to feel safe in my hobbit hole, kiss my friends on the forehead like the Fellowship members on-screen, and embody any number of the legendarium’s gender-bending beings, from its bearded Dwarven women to Sauron, the shapeshifter. I wanted to both be him and be a version of myself desired by him-I wanted to oscillate between the skin of a hairy little stinker and a towering she-elf with a star- and not a male-bound gaze. Today, his shag haircut is the preferred chop of many Bushwick gays. His eyes were the color of blue Gatorade when you let an ice cube melt in it from the cafeteria. He spooned his gardener-turned-life partner, Sam, and it wasn’t a big deal. Film-Frodo was closer to my height as a kid, but he was unlike any boy or girl I knew. But it was seeing Elijah Wood’s Frodo in theaters that really rearranged my atoms.
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