Better ridiculous than a «señor»: against seriousness as destiny

There are two lines at the end of «Marica chill» that, if I had to embroider any on a cushion, would be these:

«Si soy ridículo, pues mejor / I'd rather that than be un señor». "If I'm ridiculous, all the better / I'd rather that than be a señor".

The song's page paints the summer postcard: glitter on the face, coffee without drama, heels on the beach, the neighbour on her balcony, the fruit seller with the mango, the tourist and the hunky German. I won't repeat that postcard. Here I want to stay with those two lines, because they hide something more serious than it looks. A choice between two destinies. And the one being turned down, becoming a señor, is the one nearly all of us men have had laid out for us since childhood.

What *señor* means

Señor is a word with many layers in Spanish. It's the respectful form of address, the gentleman serving you at the counter. It's age, when a lad starts to look older and people say está hecho un señor, "he's quite the grown man now". And it's a way of being in the world: serious, prudent, reliable, never shrill.

Becoming a señor is the destiny promised to men. As if male life were a path that starts with the naughty boy, passes through the wild young man and ends, inevitably, at the señor. With his jacket, his car, his firm opinions on politics and football, his restrained laugh. A señor doesn't wear glitter. A señor doesn't go down to the beach in heels. A señor doesn't blow kisses to the neighbour who criticises him.

In recent years, internet Spanish has also coined a variant, señoro, for the man who talks down to people, explains what nobody asked and thinks he's entitled to an opinion on everything. Roughly a mansplainer with a paunch. It's a mocking word, and the song doesn't use it, but it's close by. The señor the narrator doesn't want to be looks a lot like the señoro.

The night before

The song begins in the morning, with leftovers from the night: glitter on the face. And straight away it makes clear that the night was mad, but there's no need to tell the whole saga.

That strikes me as very much against señor culture. The señor tells war stories. He loves recounting his exploits, what he did, what he said, what he pulled off. He needs his life to have a narrative, a story to tell at dinner to look good.

The narrator of «Marica chill» spares us the saga. The night was what it was, and what's left of it is a bit of glitter on the cheek. He doesn't need to turn it into an anecdote, or show off, or justify himself. Time for coffee, no milk and no drama, and on to the next thing.

There's something very freeing about not having to tell. About letting the night stay in the night. Life needn't be a story you have to defend in front of others.

The ridiculous alternative

Against that destiny, the song offers an alternative: being ridiculous. And it says so with a disarming joy: if I'm ridiculous, all the better.

Ridículo, in Spanish, is a word used to shame. Estás haciendo el ridículo, you're making a fool of yourself. No hagas el ridículo, don't embarrass yourself. It's what people say when you step outside the norm, when you dance too much, laugh too loud, wear something you shouldn't. The threat of looking ridiculous is one of the most effective tools for keeping people in their place.

And the song defuses it by accepting it. Yes, I'm ridiculous. All the better. No defence, no explanation, no "well, I have my own style". Just enthusiastic acceptance. It's the same move I make with other words in other songs: taking what's thrown at you as an insult and keeping it as a banner. It happens with «puta» in «Sí, soy una puta» ("Yes, I'm a whore"), it happens with «cateto», country bumpkin, and it happens with «loca» in this very song.

Let them call me *loca*

Because there's another line, in the chorus, that does exactly the same:

«Que me llamen loca, that's my brand». "Let them call me a loca, that's my brand".

Loca, literally "madwoman", is one of the oldest words thrown at camp gay men in Spain, something like "queen" or "screamer". The loca was the effeminate one, the one who didn't hide it, who talked with his hands. It was the word that separated the gay man who showed from the one who didn't. And within the gay community itself, for a long time, it was also used to keep a distance: some men boasted of not being a loca, of being a serious gay, discreet, the kind you can't tell.

The song doesn't just accept the word. It turns it into a brand. That's my brand. And it says so in English, the language of marketing, like someone registering a logo.

It feels like a very modern answer. We live surrounded by personal brands, by people selling themselves on social media with an image groomed to the millimetre. The narrator of «Marica chill» builds his personal brand too, but out of what others consider a flaw. His product is being a loca. And he sells it with pride.

The pressure to be a serious gay

I want to pause here, because for me this is the heart of the song.

Over the past few decades, we gays have won an enormous amount. Rights, visibility, marriage, anti-discrimination laws. Spain passed equal marriage in 2005, among the first countries in the world to do so. And with those rights came a new, subtler pressure: to be respectable.

Being a respectable gay, in practice and in many circles, means looking as much like a señor as possible. A steady partner, a nice house, a serious job, discreet clothes. Getting married, getting a dog, maybe children. Not drawing attention. Not making a scene. So the neighbours can say "they're two lovely lads, you'd never know".

I've nothing against anyone who lives that way because they want to. Everyone builds their life as they please, and I've written songs about couples that work out myself, as I explain in we need gay love songs that end well. But pressure is something else. Pressure is when you feel that, to be accepted, you have to give up the camp, the madness, the glitter. When the right to marry comes with the unspoken duty to behave like a señor.

«Marica chill» is a song against that pressure. Its hero doesn't need a partner to feel good. He has no plan. He has no nice house, as far as we know. He's wearing a market-stall dress. And he's having a whale of a time.

No sorrow, no stress, no guilt

The chorus lists what the narrator leaves out: no sorrow, no stress, no guilt, no plan. Four absences. And of the four, the heaviest, for me, is guilt.

Gay men of many generations grew up with guilt. The kind that came from religion, the kind that came from family, the kind that came from playground jokes. Guilt at being who we were, at wanting what we wanted, at not being the son that was expected. And that guilt doesn't vanish the day a law is passed. It stays in the body, in the gestures you learn to rein in, in the habit of glancing around before holding hands in the street. It's unlearnt slowly, through mornings like the one in the song, when someone goes down to the beach exactly as he pleases and nothing happens. Many people have spent years, decades, shaking that guilt off, sometimes with therapy, sometimes with friends, sometimes with songs.

So the narrator walking without guilt is no small detail. It's the result of work. The chill in the title isn't laziness, or indifference, or apathy. It's the calm of someone who has put down a weight he'd been carrying for a long time. That's why he can stroll down to the beach in heels without looking left or right.

And the señor, curiously, carries guilt in another way. The guilt of not measuring up, of not being man enough, serious enough, successful enough. The señor lives keeping watch on himself. The marica chill has stopped.

My dogs are enough

There's a very tender line in the middle of all this:

«Me bastan mis perros y mi eyeliner green». "My dogs and my green eyeliner are all I need".

It's a declaration of self-sufficiency, but not of sad loneliness. The narrator isn't alone because nobody loves him. He's alone because what he has is enough. His dogs, who are unconditional company. And his green eyeliner, which is how he presents himself to the world.

I love the combination. One thing that gives love and another that gives style. As though a happy life could be boiled down to those two needs: someone who loves you as you are, even on four legs, and something that makes you feel like yourself when you look in the mirror.

In señor culture, a single man of a certain age is a slightly sad figure. The confirmed bachelor, the one who never managed to start a family. In the song, being single isn't a failure. It's a form of freedom. No partner, no plan, no date and no apps, and still a full life.

No date, no apps

That last bit deserves a note. In the song, the narrator ends up dancing with a hunky German without planning it. No date, no apps. The song's page reads it as the spontaneity we miss now that everything goes through a screen.

I'd add something else. Dating apps have made gay encounters very efficient and, in a sense, very serious. Profiles with measurements, preferences, filters. A marketplace. And in that marketplace, camp often trades low. Anyone who's used those apps knows the profiles asking for "masc" or "discreet", or simply "no fems".

Off the apps, on a beach, with a fan and see-through shorts, the narrator finds what the marketplace would deny him. A tourist who asks to kiss his hand. A dance. Not because he ticked the boxes, but because he was there, being himself.

Only if you dance flamenco

The tourist scene has a wit that goes beyond the anecdote. A tourist asks to kiss his hand. And the reply, in beach English, is: only if he dances flamenco.

Think about what's happening there. For decades Spain has been sold to tourists with flamenco as the lure. Posters, souvenirs, shows for foreigners. The tourist comes looking for the typical. And the narrator flips it: it isn't him who has to dance flamenco for the tourist, it's the tourist who has to dance it for him.

It's a small, funny reversal of roles. The local stops being the exotic backdrop and becomes the one setting the terms. The visitor, who came to look, has to make a fool of himself. And if he does, if he dares to dance flamenco without knowing how, he's in the game. For a moment he's a little ridiculous too. He's stopped being a señor.

I like to think the flamenco condition is a test. Not of skill, but of willingness. Anyone prepared to play the fool with you on a beach is someone worth dancing with.

The neighbour on the balcony

The song has a figure I've talked about before: the neighbour who criticises. In this lyric she remarks, in English, that this boy is too much. And then she criticises from her balcony.

The nosy neighbour is a recurring character in my catalogue; she even has her own song, «La vecina cotilla» ("The nosy neighbour"), and a piece about her. But what interests me here is the narrator's response. He doesn't argue. He doesn't hide. He doesn't ask for respect. He blows her kisses and puts on reggaeton.

It's the reply of someone who no longer needs the balcony's approval. And it's a very funny reply too. If the neighbour wanted a scandal, she gets one, just not the one she expected. She expected a showdown, or a retreat. She gets kisses. Nothing is more baffling to a critic than someone who answers with over-the-top affection.

Spanglish as camp

The song is written in Spanglish, mixing Spanish and English in the same line, sometimes in the same sentence. That isn't by chance, and it's not only about summer and tourists.

Spanglish is, in a way, the camp of language. It's talking without respecting borders, mixing what shouldn't be mixed, playing with the words of two languages like someone pairing a necklace with a market-stall dress. Purists hate it. Teachers correct it. And whoever uses it with flair turns it into a style.

The lyric says so: he speaks Spanglish with anyone who'll listen, and if they don't understand it, well, they'll enjoy it anyway. It's the same attitude as with the neighbour. He doesn't ask permission. He doesn't adapt. If you don't understand him, enjoy it all the same.

A señor speaks a proper language, unmixed, as it should be. The narrator of «Marica chill» talks however he likes. On my site, Spanish and English live side by side for other, more practical reasons, which I explain in I write in Spanish: why my site is also in English. In the song, the mix is something else: it's a game.

Ridiculousness and age

There's a question I often ask myself when I think about this song: up to what age can you be a marica chill?

Because the pressure to become a señor grows with the years. At twenty, glitter and heels on the beach are forgiven as youthful madness. At forty, the looks start. At sixty, ridiculous turns into something harsher: pathetic, according to those watching. With age you're expected to settle down, drop the extravagances, and finally become the señor you were destined to be.

The song doesn't give the narrator's age, and I like that it doesn't. He could be twenty-five or sixty. And if he's sixty, the final line hits even harder: I'd rather be ridiculous than a señor, even now, even at my age. Especially at my age.

I think of the camp older gay men who've resisted the pull of the señor all their lives. The ones who still go out partying, dress as they please, laugh loudly. Many of them lived through times when camp could cost you your freedom or worse. That they're still ridiculous is a victory no statistic will ever show.

Body and market stall

The chorus describes the narrator walking like a diva in a market-stall dress. That image brings together two things supposed not to go together: a diva's bearing and the cheapest clothes imaginable.

For me, that's one of the central ideas of camp: glamour doesn't depend on budget. You don't need designer clothes to walk like a diva. You need attitude. And attitude isn't sold in any shop.

Something similar happens in another of my songs, «Que no pienso decir que mis trajes son de Zara» ("I'm not going to say my suits are from Zara"), though from the opposite angle, that of someone hiding where his clothes come from. In «Marica chill» nothing is hidden. The dress is from the market and it's said in the chorus. The diva doesn't have to lie about her wardrobe.

And the body wearing that dress doesn't apologise either. See-through shorts, heels in the sand, a fan. A body on show without asking whether it measures up. On that, on writing the body without shame, I have a piece of its own: writing about the body without apologising.

No moral, no punishment

There's another line I love: the narrator says he doesn't explain life to himself, it simply flows, with no moral and no punishment.

It's a way of rejecting something the señor always carries: the need to justify everything. The señor has an explanation for everything he does. He has principles, an ideology, a morality he applies to others. And he expects punishment for anyone who breaks the rules.

The marica chill has no explanations and wants none. He lives. If tomorrow he dances with a German, fine. If he stays on his towel with his dogs, also fine. There's no plan to fulfil, no morality to defend, no punishment to fear. That might look frivolous, but to me it's a form of wisdom. Plenty of people spend their lives explaining themselves before courts that don't exist.

Seriousness as a trap

To finish, a thought about seriousness.

Seriousness gets good press. We link being serious with being responsible, mature, trustworthy. And the opposite, being ridiculous, with the childish, the immature, the unreliable. But I think the link is false. There are very serious people who are very irresponsible, and very ridiculous people you can trust with your life.

Seriousness, very often, is just a way of protecting yourself. Whoever takes himself seriously never risks looking ridiculous, because he never does anything that might go wrong. He doesn't dance, doesn't dress up, doesn't try. He stays put, safe, watching everyone else from the balcony.

That's why the last line of «Marica chill» matters so much to me. I'd rather risk being ridiculous than have the safety of the señor. I'd rather dance badly than not dance. I'd rather put on green eyeliner and be stared at than stay home in a pressed shirt.

Señores, in the end, all look alike. Locas, on the other hand: no two are the same. Each has her eyeliner, her fan, her way of mixing languages and her way of answering the balcony. That variety is a wealth the señor destiny would take from us.

And if they call me a loca, the song has already said it: that's my brand.

Frequently asked questions

What is «Marica chill» about? A summer day on the coast for a gay man taking it easy, no partner and no plan, who'd rather be ridiculous than turn into a señor. The full lyric is at gayfolkplanet.com/letras.

Why is it written in Spanglish? Because mixing languages suits the character: someone who respects no borders and asks no permission, not even when he talks.

What does "that's my brand" mean? That the narrator turns the insult «loca» into his personal brand, with pride.

Who makes the song? Mike Sain't Louis writes the lyric, composes and produces. The music and vocals are made with artificial intelligence.