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“Predatory Wasp” chronicles Sufjan’s romantic relationship with a male friend during a Methodist summer camp he attended in his youth.
In a 2017 interview with Salon, he described it as being “an awakening,” and explained that it happened when he was in high school, around the age of 16.
Stevens alludes to this same relationship more explicitly in “Venus” from "Planetarium".
Gay people often struggle with feeling “predatory” around their straight friends—a phenomenon that can be traced to both the sexualization of gay experience in American culture, and the strict gender division in the rest of heterosexual society (The same division that expects coworkers of different genders not to be alone together, according to a recent New York Times survey: It’s Not Just Mike Pence. Americans Are Wary of Being Alone With the Opposite Sex)
So if you’re a young boy at a Methodist summer camp, struggling with your new-found attraction to your best friend, part of the thing you also have to struggle with is the way society tell you that this attraction is a corruption of your friendship, and “predatory”. This is also a reflection of the way same-sex relationships are considered “adult” or not safe for kids, but straight crushes are seen as normal for a much younger age. Any discussion of the lived experience of gay people is seen as sexual or taboo—something that is patently absurd, especially when it’s about young kids with crushes. (This happens to an even greater extent with lesbian or bi women, and people of color in the gay community: As A Queer Middle-Schooler, I Have A Problem With Media Representation)
So, as it may be obvious, the “predatory” wasp of the Palisades is a continuation of the wasp’s use as an extended metaphor for the narrator’s feelings about his friend, and his struggles with them.
In the 2015 Pitchfork feature True Myth: A Conversation with Sufjan Stevens, Sufjan gave the following response when asked about Christianity:
"I had this childhood fantasy of becoming a priest or a preacher, so I would read and study the bible and then make my family listen to me read a passage from the New Testament before meals—and they very begrudgingly accommodated that for a while. I was just fascinated; some of my most profound spiritual and sexual experiences were at a Methodist summer camp."
Two years later, he was interviewed by Salon for the feature Sufjan Stevens, Bryce Dessner and Nico Muhly on making space music for a hard time on Earth which promoted their then-upcoming album "Planetarium".
Moving on, tell me about Methodist summer camp .
Stevens: Well, that’s when I had my first sexual experience.
Muhly: Is that actually true?
Stevens: Yes.
Muhly: That’s nasty.
How old?
Stevens: I’ve never been asked that!
Well, Methodist summer camp.
Stevens: I was old enough. I was in high school. I went to many different summer camps. And I remember going to Methodist summer camp, and it’s when I first learned that God is not male. So we would sing these classic hymns — “Our god is an awesome god, he brings…” – and this woman would always stop us and be like, “Actually, we shouldn’t use he or she pronouns. We should just use ‘God.’”
The Methodists were way ahead of their time.
Stevens: My mind was blown. And the phrase was, everything “rocks.” “God rocks.” And there was a lot of cigarette smoking.
Was it a romantic experience?
Stevens: Yeah, it was an awakening. I was probably 16.
(emphasis added)
He’s also relayed the story many times during concerts, such as at the Austin City Limits Music Festival in 2006, where introduced the some with the following account:
So, when I was a kid we used to go to summer camp every year. My parents would send me and my siblings away, and one time at summer camp I met this one kid and we became best friends and we started hanging out all the time.
We go swimming, we were swimming buddies, and we go sailing and we were sailing buddies, and we go canoeing and we were canoeing buddies. And then we went on a long camping trip where we had to stay in tents and hike for a few days and to climb up these cliffs and do all this adventuring outdoors.
And one time we got a little bit lost. We wandered off and we saw this huge thing in the sky. We couldn’t really tell what it was and it looked like maybe it was a spaceship or a UFO. So we’re really excited and it was coming closer and closer and it’s making this kinda whirling, buzzing noise.
And then when we saw that it was really close it actually had wings and it had claws and it looked like a giant hawk or a big eagle or a dragon or something. But then it also had a stinger and it was buzzing and its wings were kinda transparent. So we thought, “Well, it’s definitely a wasp,” but it was so big. It was the size of a Goodyear blimp. This is totally true.
And we were running and running and running way from it ‘cause it was chasing us and it was buzzing and flapping its wings and cawing like a bird (like a crow.) And then we just got away from it just in time before it swooped down and we hid out in a cave for several days eating Snickers bars and Charleston Chews that we had stashed away in our pockets.
Et cetera. And then we got away. We went back to the camp, oh no. And then everyone was like “Where were you guys?” We said “Nevermind.” We didn’t wanna tell anyone. And anyway the rest of the week at camp, everything we saw that was like flapping around in the sky whether it was a mosquito or a kite or a plastic bag or a helium balloon, we were afraid of it.
So, this is maybe one of our theme songs for this tour ‘cause that’s why we all have wings on. It’s sort of to overcome my fear of flying things. So this song sort of takes some of those memories from summer camp, puts it into a song about the predatory wasp that was out to get us.
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