In the Surf Journalism Hall of Fame of my imagination there is a special room, gilt-trimmed and hallowed, for 

 magazine’s 2007 “King of Queens” feature on Matt Branson. Pedestals for everybody involved with this amazing piece of work: 

 editor Derek Rielly for chasing and massaging the story (no other media outlet at the time could have pulled it off with the style it deserved), journalist Fred Pawle (one of maybe three people in all of surf history worthy of title), photographer Steve Baccon (the portrait shots were as funny as they were poignant; Branson got the cover!), and of course Matt himself, in all his metal-loving gay-bear glory, tattooed and pierced and tank-topped, 50 pounds above fighting weight and not giving a shit, just totally owning his coming-out moment. “King of Queens” is audacious, professional, and uplifting. It is late-70s-

I have two very minor connections to Matt Branson. The first is that I edited a 1987 Billabong vid called 

, in which Branson—18, slender, raw, powerful; white hair and devastating grin—has a fine little segment. He was an Aussie Titles junior champ and was now about to set forth on a world tour career distinguished not by contest results (none to speak of) but by his dashing heavy-metal persona. “Branno was our rebel icon,” fellow Aussie pro Nathan Webster later said. “Always looked cool, hip as fuck, had all us kids listening to Sepultura and acting tough.” 

Branson knew he was gay at that point. He’d always known. (“I was born. I was gay,” as he told Pawle.) But he fought it every way imaginable, up to the point of bashing gay cruisers at the local public bathroom. At 23, unable to keep up the WCT straight-guy facade, Branson quit pro surfing; at 25 he came out to family and a few close friends and began to reorder his life. He set up house with his partner, surfed a bit, played drums in a punk band, and glassed boards for a living. Nobody in the surfing public heard a thing from Branson until the 

 article was published, at which point he stepped forth as the very picture of a self-actualized hell-and-back adult.

My second connection with Branson came when he threw a comment my way on Facebook last week; just a little “cheers” for something I’d posted, one ‘80s-loving surfer to another. This reminded me to troll his Facebook photos (Encyclopedia of Surfing is an image-sucking black hole), and while looking at dozens of Branson’s cheerfully mundane FB shots—camping trip, band practice, a Sunday football match with the oldies, dancing at a wedding—it occurred that the only thing to really stand out was the complete lack of gayness. Some of the pics were probably of Matt and his partner, but who knows: four or five beers in, Aussie males, gay or not, get physical.

Branson was conspicuously absent from last year’s 

 documentary on gay surfers, which strikes me now as being just as forward-thinking, in its own quiet way, as his splashy “King of Queens” coming-out party. Matt clearly doesn’t want to be a gay spokesman or leader or whatnot. He’s done his bit. “King of Queens” hit surfing’s once-indestructible wall of homophobia like a wrecking ball. It didn’t solve the problem. Of course it didn't. But the activism that followed, 

 included, has more or less continued the good work that Branson started.

To take it a step further, and maybe it’s giving more credit than what's deserved, I’d say Branson is advocating by not advocating. He’s post-gay. He’s a throw-ahead to a not-too-distant future where we might cruelly judge our neighbor not by sexual orientation, but by the number of beer cans spilling from his recycle bin, or the head-melting volume of the music issuing forth from his living room speakers. May we all someday live in Matt Branson's neighborhood.

THE LOUD, BEERY, POST-GAY WORLD OF MATT BRANSON

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