251. convive

Last week I received an invitation to the annual Twin Cities Gay Men’s Chorus holiday concert. This year’s title/theme is “Under the mistletoe: a holiday romance.” As much of an institution as TCGMC certainly is for Minneapolis, for me, their programs have always been far too campy and saccharine.

It’s a personal preference thing, and there are plenty in the community who enjoy what they do. But it’s also emblematic of my feelings about the gay community here in the Twin Cities, and in the Midwest in general.

What struck me about the photo above is that I’ve long perceived (but couldn’t put my finger on for a while) that many gay men seem stuck in a state of prolonged teenage boyhood.

This makes sense from a psychological standpoint. The teenage years for many gay men were lost to the closet, and many spend the rest of their lives trying to get that back, or to somehow relive those years.

But it does mean that the silly, flirty, happy-go-lucky attitudes of many gay men, of gay culture, and groups like gay men’s choruses grate on my increasingly Scottish-like nerves, like fingernails on a chalkboard.

(Brief aside on that last bit: Over the past few weeks I’ve caught myself, as Clara Oswald might say of the Twelfth Doctor, “going Scottish.” It’s not quite cantankerous or curmudgeonly, but it is a whole lot of not censoring myself quite as often as usual.)

Because rather than spend my adult life trying to get those teenage years back, my response to that loss was to go in the opposite direction and distance myself entirely from that mode.

Some of it may be that as a child I couldn’t stand childlike or childish things. I couldn’t wait to be an adult. The world seemed such a grim and serious place, and I couldn’t understand how other people couldn’t see that.

Maybe that’s why I stopped smiling around age seven or eight.

Maybe depression was manifesting itself that early.

… regardless, I’ve never been a very playful or flirty guy. Even my sillier moments are colored by a serious approach. I’m not without humor, but there’s always a darker edge to what I do.

On Monday I discussed some of this with my therapist, and one of the things to come out of that session was the fact that I was also conditioned growing up to be suspicious of any fun pursuit or worldly pleasurable—even though, according to the Bible, “every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights.”

In short, anything enjoyable might be one of several things. It might be:

demonic temptation from Satan;
something good that will distract us from taking pleasure in Jesus;
a test from God to see whether we’re willing to forgo momentary pleasure for the sake of the Jesus.

Because the evangelical Christianity I grew up in taught us to set our minds “on things that are above, not on things that are on earth,” warning us not to “love the world or the things in the world.”

If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride in possessions—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

In short, nothing really mattered unless it was going to count in heaven. My mom would often say something to this effect if she thought we were making too big a deal about something that wasn’t spiritual enough.

(I feel the need here to point out that my mom really is a warm and friendly person. She’s also deeply inculcated with fundamentalist Christianity.)

The consequence of this is that at age 32, I still mistrust anything good that comes along, or feel the compulsion to find the negative in it. It’s a coping mechanism to guard against hurt and disappointment that came with being cut off from the ability to truly enjoy anything, and to guard against the disappointment that I inevitably expect is just around the corner.

This is no way to live, of course. I’m constantly aware of how relatively little time I actually have on this little planet and how stupid it is to not be taking advantage of every moment to celebrate being alive and experiencing everything possible.

However…

There are, frankly, a lot of things that I’m just not interested in or into.

Like silly, gay flirtiness. Hookup culture. Most of the things gay men around here talk about.

Not into it.

Not into camp. Not into queer. Not into theatrics. Not into fetish. Not into Peter Pan antics.

Honestly, it’s too tiring, and I don’t have enough energy these days to handle any of it, what with the barely sleeping and forgetting to eat because my head feels as if it’s been sellotaped to the back of a speeding bus being driven by a terrified monkey.

Hopefully life will slow down once I’m done with grad school.

A friend asked a few days ago what I am into given that I seem to know so specifically what I’m not into. “Curiosity,” was the eventual reply, “Intellectual, emotional, social. A Douglas Adams-esque knack of being able to laugh at all of it while still taking it somewhat seriously…

“A sturdy sense of self that comes from not giving fucks about what anyone else thinks, rather than from getting that from the surrounding culture. Kindness. Rationality. A sense of self-directed purpose. Someone who doesn’t need me but still wants me there…

“Is that specific enough?”

Of course, that’s what I would’ve said with a few days to ponder and then respond, which always seems to be the case.

And I don’t know if anyone like that even exists.

… not real hopeful on that point.

233. happenstance

Quick disclaimer: this post will deal with my sex life in unsexy and entirely untitillating language. Because my relationship with sex these days is… well, complicated.

I haven’t had many relationships that could be described as healthy. Beginning with my family (our first relationship lab, as it were), through my tumultuous teenage years, up to present-day, my life has been a decades-long exercise in keeping people closest to me at a safe and comfortable distance.

Clearing my orbital neighborhood, so to speak.

There was also the culture of shame endemic in the evangelical Christian community. Religious fundamentalists in general are adept at wearing masks to hide their true faces from each other for fear of judgment, shaming, and reprisal. In my community, it was often done with a smile. under the guise of “prayerful” good intentions; and in my family, Bible verses were often used as reminders of how we weren’t living up to the Bible’s standard for Christian living.

Not only did our parents disapprove of us—God also disapproved.

Consequently, as I wrote about in a recent blog entry, virtually all of my relationships up until now have been based on fear. I learned to fear everyone, regardless of whether there was something there to actually be afraid of.

At the same time, I desperately longed for acceptance, for belonging, and safety. The cognitive dissonance was, and still is, deafening.

This has played itself out in my sexual relationships in a number of highly toxic ways.

For one, I’m ashamed to say that once I became sexually active, I began using sex to try to achieve intimacy. It’s not the sex part that shames me in hindsight as how embarrassingly stereotypical that was. And it never worked. After I broke things off with my first boyfriend (i.e., “Aaron 1.0”), I had quite a few hookups on the way to my second boyfriend (“Aaron 2.0”) as a way of “catching up” to where I figured most gay men my age were—that is, age 26.

Even in those hookups, I was still hoping against hope to find a partner, someone with whom to find mutual belonging. I must have been looking so intently that, even if I had found someone compatible at that point, my expectations for the relationship would’ve doomed it to fail from the start.

Of course, after Seth I went on a sex binge, trying to literally fuck him out of my system. That didn’t work either, and each time the disappointment and the dissatisfaction deepened.

It was a cycle of self-perpetuating and self-propagating shame.

It frustrated me how friends of mine could have so much sex with seemingly no emotional consequences. There’s that line from the chorus of a recent Daft Punk song:

We’re up all night for good fun
We’re up all night to get lucky

“Good fun” was something I was not having.

After I broke up with my most recent boyfriend in March of 2013, every sexual encounter started to leave me more and more depressed. I was thirty years old, and the rest of my life looked to be a series of endless, unsatisfying hookups.

Plus, as I wrote recently, I had defined success for myself as finding a boyfriend and partner, because that was one thing I grew up believing I could never have. So with every disappointing hookup, my parents’ voices in my mind saying that gay men lead sad, lonely lives grew more terrifying.

So I probably put myself in situations where that prophesy was mostly likely to come true.

A foursome I had last fall (which ended with me being a third wheel after one guy went to bed and the other two guys were into each other but not me) left me feeling undesirable and even more out of phase with other gay men than ever.

Meeting the bisexual tree scientist this summer (who I was actually, finally into—until he told me that he’s still in love with his ex-boyfriend and that they were trying to get back together) left me feeling as if there’s a game of musical chairs going on, and everyone else is faster than me.

Needless to say, there’s a lot of impossible expectations and a ton of emotional trauma (yes, some of it self-inflicted) wrapped up in sex besides just getting off with another person.

So much that I can’t enjoy it properly anymore.

For example, a couple weeks ago, a friend introduced me to a guy at a gayming party, texting me before I arrived that he’d found my “future husband.” I shouldn’t have taken it seriously, but before I could stop myself, I started surreptitiously studying this guy, imagining our future together, in Technicolor. We did hook up later that evening, and while he clearly had fun, he also made it clear that he’d just got out of a five-year relationship and wasn’t interested in anything serious.

Just like all of the others, I thought.

So I’m taking a break from sex for now. It’s just too confusing and unhealthy. I’ve been saying that sex is like advanced graduate studies in relationships, and I’m still trying to just finish high school. Frankly, I need to get to the root of this need to base my self worth on external factors, like looks and performance, first.

The tough thing about that is that it’s hard not to resent everyone who is in a relationship, or who is able to enjoy sex without the resulting existential tsunami. Of course, we can’t know what’s really going on in other people’s relationships or in their minds. Maybe everyone else really is just as afraid and insecure, but can simply cope better. However, when your emotional vocabulary is based on fear, it’s difficult not to invent reasons why a relationship is already doomed, or turn an otherwise fun, pleasurable experience into an emotional minefield.

Fear fuels self-belief that I’m broken and damaged became a reason to preemptively sabotage potentially fruitful relationships.

This is why I’m in therapy, folks.

229. baleful

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control-freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

− Richard Dawkins, “The God Delusion”

This past April, I was delighted to reconnect with a friend from college, Noelle, who is currently documenting the rebuilding her life after leaving fundamentalist Christianity:

https://noellemarieblog.wordpress.com

She writes with such elegant frankness and vivid detail of her early experiences as a young Evangelical. In one of her recent blog entries, she recounts when her father sat her down to explain the facts of life: that is, that we are disgusting, perverted sinners who deserve an eternity in Hell for the heinous crime of being born (because Adam and Eve, y’all); whose only worth is the fact that Jesus loves us in spite of our hideous, evil selves.

Noelle’s Jesus is not the Jesus of recent evangelical Christianity, the deity that Richard Dawkins pointedly describes in his controversial 2006 book. She believes in a loving God that bears no resemblance to the hateful, spiteful, malevolent deity we were taught to believe in, love, and fear as children. Though we aren’t geographically close, it’s been an honor to renew our friendship and to be able to encourage her in whatever way I can in her journey towards rebuilding a life based on truth and authenticity.

It’s an interesting time to reconnect as I’m essentially doing the same work of rebuilding my own life after living adrift for so long. It’s daunting work, especially the further down the rabbit hole I get into therapy, as I realize how many unhealthy fundamentalist Christian scripts there are still rattling around in my mind.

In talking with other ex-Evangelicals, one experience we’ve all had in common is how ingrained mask-wearing was to our upbringing and daily lives as Christians. It’s a curious phenomenon, especially in a culture that supposedly holds honesty as a virtue. From an early age, we were inadvertently taught that there are certain faces you wear to church, our in public, at home, and with different social groups.

There’s a lot of pressure to appear spiritual, godly, and pure. Shame is employed as a means of policing behavior in the church under various guises, usually as concern for someone’s spiritual well-being. Prayers would be offered, sometimes publicly, for people who were known to be “struggling” with certain sins. “Helpful” advice would be proffered, with corresponding Bible verses to justify behavior that would otherwise be considered intrusive and even offensive.

“Brethren, even if anyone is caught in any trespass, you who are spiritual, restore such a one in a spirit of gentleness; each one looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted. Bear one another’s burdens, and thereby fulfill the law of Christ. For if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.” (Galatians 6:1-3)

As I grew up, I developed personas (even different personalities) for various situations and people. I knew which face to wear at church, at Bible study, at choir practice, at youth group, at church band rehearsal, and out at the bar with friends. When I came out gay, I was one person when out with friends and another just a few hours later when I’d go to church. I even went to service one day after having had phone sex with my first boyfriend the previous night.

It was schizophrenic.

And none of this would be were it not for the culture of externalized self worth and affirmation that’s central to the fundamentalist Christian worldview. Every desire and action for the evangelical Christian is subject to the approval of God via the Bible — that is, the approval of those “qualified” to interpret the Bible based on their personal beliefs and prejudices.

The result is that for many years, even after coming out gay and then atheist, was that I was constantly and unconsciously looking for the approval and affirmation of others who I looked up to and considered authority figures.

“We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ.” (2 Corinthians 10:5)

I didn’t trust myself or my own desires. After all: “The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9). It took almost an entire decade to accept that my same-sex desires weren’t pathological, or evidence of my rebellion against God’s will.

To an extent, I still don’t trust myself. I struggle with the worry that I spent too many years ultimately pursuing the wrong career and educational path for me, having allowed other people’s ideas about what I should want for a career trump my own desires; that I lack the practical experience to make informed opinions about everything from dating to job searching; that, after everything, I’m just a poor imitation of a real human being.

“Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.” (Philippians 2:3-4, ESV)

An insidious effect of these early formational lessons was coming to believe that what I wanted didn’t matter. To have personal desires was to be selfish. “Dying to self” was the chief ambition of the Christian. “If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me.”

I’ve often said that fundamentalist Christianity relies heavily on Stockholm syndrome—of teaching people to be their own jailers and tormentors. And the system only works so long as you believe in it. The moment that you stop, it all falls apart, emotionally and psychologically.

Until a few months ago, my personal desires were virtually indistinguishable from the desires of people around me. Understandably, this had profound effects on friendships and romantic relationships.

225. osculate

Funny how I first learned the word “osculate.”

It was in men’s chorus at Northwestern, the conservative Christian college that I attended and graduated from.

And no, not how you think.

Unfortunately.

If the group was particularly well-behaved and productive in rehearsal (which, given a bunch of college-aged adolescent males, wasn’t very often), the director would promise to read from something referred to as (curiously) the “red book.” Essentially, it was a book of advice from the 1940s to young men on various topics… such as, how to woo girls.

As you might imagine, it was about as bad as advice from the same time period written to young brides. There was a chapter in this book on how to “go in” for the first kiss, and how to overcome any objections the young lady might have.

Because, you know, women are virginal and virtuous, and men are coarse animals who can’t help themselves.

There are two things I can recall about this book, the first being the stilted, unwittingly hilarious, horrific language the author used in basically recommending young men force themselves on women. It went something like: “If she backs away, don’t worry—women are naturally hesitant in these areas… If she tries to push you away, don’t worry… if she starts to claw at your face, start to worry.”

I’m paraphrasing, obviously. But not very much.

The second thing I’ll never forget about those days in men’s chorus, at Northwestern, and of all my growing up years was the intense attractions that I felt towards guys—and the equally intense anxiety of being found out and caught.

There’s enough anxiety around one’s affection being discovered and the fear of being exposed and scorned.

However, it’s a real brain teaser for a young gay man (or woman) to know that one’s romantic affection could get one expelled from school and from an entire community.

So, all this to say, I had a breakthrough a little while ago, thanks again to Hank Green’s Crash Course: Psychology.

“Say someone almost drowned as a kid and is now afraid of water. A family picnic at the river may cause that anxiety to bubble up, and to cope they may stay sequestered in the car, less anxious but probably still unhappy while the rest of the family is having fun.”

Earlier today, I went grocery shopping with my friend Matt. On the way in, I stopped to pick up some course-ground coffee for my French press for an upcoming trip (as I’m not a fan of drinking coffee that I can also chew).

One of the baristas was a young man who I’ve seen there before, and who I’m 99.99% sure bats for my team. (Not so sure, however, which position he plays.) I’m never sure if baristas (who I’m reasonably sure are homos) are actually flirting with me, if they’re being polite, or if they’re trying to get a bigger tip. But this guy was definitely laying on the charm in asking me if I’d done anything fun that day.

When guys flirt with me, especially seemingly out of the blue, it launches an internal monologue that goes like this:

Shit, someone is talking to me!
Wait, is he flirting with me?
Is this guy even gay, or is he just one of those overly friendly straight guys? Because I can’t tell anymore!
Quick, what can I deduce about his cultural and educational background? His hair is styled in one of those dumb faux-hawks. Is he a “club” gay? Will he even understand half of the words I use? Should I switch to one-syllable words? Wait, that’s so incredibly elitist and arrogant, making grand assumptions about someone based on their hair style…
And wait, why would he be flirting with me? Guys don’t flirt with me. Yet, he seems to be flirting with me. Oh god, what do I do? Am I supposed to flirt back? What if he’s not flirting with me after all? Will that make me look desperate? Pathetic?
Shit, he’s talking to me… oh, no, he’s still just waiting for me to respond to the thing he said two seconds ago.

Later, I recounted this experience to my friend Matt and he pointed out that there have been plenty of occasions where I’ve spontaneously come up with something witty or clever to say. So why is it so damned difficult for me to respond to flirts?

In other words, why am I basically Liz Lemon?

Enter Hank Green.

“Anxiety disorders are characterized not only by distressing, persistent anxiety but also often by the dysfunctional behaviors that reduce that anxiety.”

It doesn’t take a PsyD to recognize that my current anxiety about guys is directly caused by those closeted growing-up years. In every interaction with a cute guy, I feared that I might inadvertently say or do something to give away the fact that I was wildly attracted to him, i.e., gay.

If you’ve seen the video of the guy getting beaten up by his bigoted family after they learn he is gay, being outed in a predominantly religious community is a legitimate fear, whether of physical violence or being shunned.

For much of my teenage and adult life, I had to tell myself that acting on my attractions to other men, let alone having a boyfriend, was impossible. And though I’ve been out-gay for some time, there’s still that same unresolved anxiety running like a background app on my phone, draining the battery.

While it leaves me lonely, like the girl who survived drowning only to hide in the car when her family goes to the beach, I unconsciously shut down potential romantic or flirtatious interactions to reduce anxiety.

And, just as my depressed moods have a cause, it’s not that I can’t flirt. There’s just unresolved trauma. Phew!

What to do about it now?

That’s one reason why I’m back in therapy.

223. cacography

“My good opinion once lost is lost forever.”

This past weekend my friends Adam and Jesse got married. They’ve been together fourteen years, which is a number I can barely grasp as an amount of time spent with one person. Aside from my family, very few of my relationships have lasted even remotely that long.

As expected, the weeks and days leading up to the wedding were difficult, partly because I was putting together all of the music for it, as is often my job. I wrote (and performed) a song for the occasion, something I haven’t done since college, a setting of an excerpt from Walt Whitman’s Song of the Open Road—”Camerado! I give you my hand.”

It’s tough participating or working on weddings when it seems like it will never happen for me. It’s like someone who works for minimum wage making products that they’ll never be able to afford. Now that I’m past my half birthday and virtually thirty-two years old, it seems even more unlikely that I’ll ever find a boyfriend, let alone one who might someday become a husband…

Weddings are also difficult right now, seeing as one friend after another has been getting into relationships, engaged, or married of late. Relationship statuses change, and friends post pictures of themselves with their partners, seemingly happy, doing things together, participants together in life. Which leads me to wonder if I’m truly living, and what that even looks like. Because it still feels as if I’m picking up the pieces of the remains of my pre-atheist, pre-Seth existence.

A few weeks ago my friend Sarah returned to the States after several months abroad in Europe. Sarah is a fellow graduate of Northwestern College (now the bizarrely re-named “University of Northwestern,” which led a friend of mine to comment: “That’s awfully specific”), and a fellow apostate and ex-fundamentalist.

To make a long story short, at the end of her sojourn abroad, she inadvertently found herself in a relationship with an Austrian fellow who she’d met at the beginning of the year and had been building a friendship with over the course of her travels. I got the whole story at the beginning of the month, and my initial reaction was like this: “How is it that this is so easy for everyone else?” Because it truly feels like my universe is shrinking.

Part of her story was Sarah coming to the realization that her lack of interest in guys was not so much that she wasn’t into guys (or girls) but rather that she hadn’t met anyone on the same level, with whom there was a mutual respect. She likened her relationship to Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice.

This struck a note with me, as I’ve been feeling similarly adrift, dating-wise. And for a long time I’ve felt like the problem is me, that I’m the one who is broken. Now I’m starting to think that maybe I just shouldn’t be dating American men—at the very least, not Midwestern men.

For me, the “Darcy” comparison seems particularly accurate (aside from not being worth $14 million). If you’re familiar with the novel, our initial impression of him is one of aloofness, coldness, and haughty pride. It’s only later that we discover his depth of feeling, fierce loyalty to family and friends, and the deep insecurity that drives him to keep most everyone away.

Most of my character faults can be traced back to a fear of rejection and failure. At the wedding this weekend, I watched everyone else interacting with a seeming fluidity and natural ease. It always confounds me how most gay men seem to flirt with blithe nonchalance. Of course, that may just be my perception, and that I’m only seeing extroverts.

The reality is that I find it difficult to interact with most American gay men. The stereotypical enjoyment of popular culture and trivial conversation is mostly lost on me. As a friend of mine once observed, I don’t suffer fools. Does that come across as Darcy-like arrogance? Probably. But as an introvert who finds most human company exhausting, I don’t understand the need to fill every moment with noise. That seems to be a defining characteristic of American gay culture.

The sense of dissatisfaction in my dating life up until now seems to come from the lack of any potential romantic partners who I can respect as an equal. That probably doesn’t sound very flattering, which is where the Pride & Prejudice metaphor comes in handy.

Elizabeth is perfect for Darcy because she is a strong, independent-minded woman with her own opinions (contrasted with her sister Jane’s demure, more compliant personality). She stands up to and challenges the men in her life, even supposed authority figures. Like Darcy, she is fiercely loyal to those she loves, to the point of disregarding social proprieties when she walks to Netherfield Park after learning that Jane has fallen ill.

Towards the end of the novel, Elizabeth asks Darcy what attracted him to her when they started as rivals. She suggests: “The fact is, that you were sick of civility, of deference, of officious attention. You were disgusted with the women who were always speaking and looking, and thinking for your approbation alone. I roused and interested you, because I was so unlike them.”

And that’s what I’ve failed to find in dating American men—a man who distinguishes himself and challenges me. (There’s also the stunting influence of Puritanism and internalized homophobia, a rant for another time.) American gays seem caught up in the rush of culture, fashion, hookups, and fetishes, and I’m not into any of those things. Whatever happened to the likes of Gore Vidal, Oscar Wilde, Benjamin Britten, or Christopher Isherwood? (They were seemingly replaced by the likes of Perez Hilton and Ru Paul.) That era was no cakewalk and they were all flawed people, but that’s the ilk of man I’d want for a partner.

Now, to find him…

216. meta

NOTE: This post will contain a frank discussion of sex and sexuality. If you are bothered by such things, do not read. Oh, and NSFW, if you find yourself at such a place upon reading.

This week has felt aimless. Some of it has been the stress of moving and busyness at work, being around people, feeling overwhelmed by all of it, and consequently shutting down. Kind of like my computer shutting itself off when it overheats.

One of the areas I’ve been examining is sexuality—specifically, some of my own hangups about it. I’m always suspicious of latent fundamentalist Christian programming from my youth gumming up the works of my life and mental processes, so I’ve been trying to listen more to those voices and identify the negative ones. Mostly, this process is just frustrating rather than helpful, but I suspect that it will be helpful in the long term.

Lately, I found myself having a number of conversations about sex. Nothing explicit, exactly. More just thinking out loud with other people about it—why we feel the way we do about certain areas of sexuality, how we view ourselves, our bodies, what we look for, etc.

Because I haven’t been having much sex lately. Shortly after breaking up with Jason, I went through something of a slutty phase, trying to catch up on all the sex I hadn’t been having, though by that point I was becoming more aware that I’m really not interested in sex for its own sake. Rather, it’s more about the personal and emotional connection than getting off.

My “love style” is definitely more storge. (See the video below.)

However, I’ve been judging myself for feeling this way. Part of that, I suspect, is a reaction against my prudish, Puritanical roots; that I feel I ought not to care so much about emotional connection and throw myself into simply enjoying physical pleasure.

Another part of it is seeing other people do this and judging myself for not being more like them. For example, the other night, I had dinner with a friend of mine, and around 8:30pm I had to leave because he had to get ready for a “hookup date.” Frankly, I’m quite jealous of his prowess, of his ability to go after whomever he desires and be desired in return. Because I certainly don’t experience that myself. On the contrary, I more see myself as being invisible to most other gay guys—a TARDIS-like gay perception filter.

But if I’m being truly honest with myself (and you, dear reader), it’s more that I seem to be invisible to the guys I’m attracted to. I’m aware of being noticed (and, to a certain extent, desired), but it always seems to be by the men who I’m not interested in or attracted to. It never seems to be a mutual thing.

And I judge myself for this—yet another personal failing, something else that I hate about myself. And then I worry that this kind of self-hatred is partly to blame for this feeling of being invisible, that it’s holding me back from being truly free and uninhibited.

I’ve also discovered that yet another friend of mine is into bondage. A few weeks ago, I talked with a girl at a friend’s gathering about her involvement in the BDSM community, and her interest in being tied up, dominated, humiliated, etc. All things that truly perplex me. So it was curious when I learned that this recent acquaintance of mine is also into bondage, to an extent that even seeing watches on guys’ wrists is exciting to him.

This is also something that I don’t understand, and consequently judge myself for not understanding or being more open to—knowledge from experience, and so forth. As far as I know, I don’t have any fetishes. The thought of being tied up or dominated is truly disturbing to me, as is doing the tying or dominating someone else. I’ve no desire to do either.

The fact is, unless there’s an emotional connection with the guy I’m having sex with, it’s very difficult for me to stay present in the moment. It’s difficult to resist starting in on judging myself or thinking that my partner is having the same negative thoughts about me.

As you can imagine, this is a bit of a mood killer.

And the maddening thing is that I know the root of this is the toxic beliefs about sex (and homosexuality) that I got growing up. While I wasn’t consciously aware of the reality of my sexuality until around age 15, I knew prior to that I was attracted to guys.

I also knew it was something to hide and be ashamed of.

For we who grew up in predominately heteronormative environments, we become deeply self-conscious, ruthlessly critiquing our behaviors and mannerisms for anything that might out us to our communities as faggots.

Because, intentionally or not, that’s how we were taught to see ourselves: as dirty, sinful, depraved faggots.

When a kid grows up seeing only heterosexual marriages, hearing pastors quote passages like Leviticus 18:22 and Romans 1:26-27, and putting all that together when he then figures out that he’s gay—what other conclusion could there be?

So how could I not grow up to be self-judging, self-hating, self-critical? I never felt good enough to begin with. How could I believe that anyone else could think me good enough?

Basically, I’m still a thirty-one-year-old teenager when it comes to sex and relationships. I’ve only been out for five years, which means I’ll probably have gray hair when I actually find a guy to settle down with… if I find anyone.

This is why it’s said that many gay men go through a second adolescence, because at some point, we have to go back and do what everyone else does when they’re actually, physically teenagers.

Because we learn a different set of lessons about ourselves as teenagers, which we have to go back and unlearn as adults.

That’s all so unspeakably irritating.

215. mélange

Blërg. I hate moving. I hate the nuisance of packing up the contents of one’s life and transporting them to a new place. On the one hand, it’s a good exercise in taking stock of what one owns and how much one actually needs. On the other, it’s just annoying.

This past weekend was CONsole Room, the long-awaited (at least for some) return of a Doctor Who convention to Minneapolis. The last dedicated Doctor Who convention in Minnesota was over twenty years ago. There were over 500 attendees, which is a fantastic turnout for a first convention!

As an introvert, I struggle with large events like these. While I enjoy being around members of my Whovian tribe, it’s also exhausting. Three consecutive days of other human beings left me drained of energy. Last night, after a brief stop by my apartment to check mail and box up a few books, I headed home, crawled into bed, and promptly passed out.

Something I wasn’t expecting to deal with at the convention was the number of gay couples that I saw there. On Saturday night, a friend of mine pointed out the karaoke DJ, a cute guy in one of those checkered shirts often seen on gay boys and metrosexuals.

Naturally, he was there with his boyfriend.

Needless to say, this activated all of my insecurities about being thirty-one and single, so I spent most of the evening feeling like a crazy person.

Lately, I’ve been working on analyzing my emotional responses when in the presence of couples. As anyone who has read this blog in the past couple months will know this is a frequent subject. Being around couples makes me more keenly aware of my own singleness, my past relationship failures, and all of the qualities about myself that I consider lacking or downright undesirable.

On Saturday, my housemates had another couple, Mark and Nick, over for dinner in celebration of their recent marriage (seeing as it’s now legal in Minnesota). Before I left for the convention that morning, I was asked to proofread the menu for the evening. As expected, it was perfect. But in reading it over, I had to swallow feelings of jealousy and overwhelming otherness that rose up. I wondered—would they ever have occasion to throw such a celebration for me, at what feels like my late stage in life (at least, late for a gay man)?

I got home around midnight, my emotional energy already drained after a day of being around people, and being surrounded by couples at karaoke—or at least, being hyper aware of the presence of couples in the room… the DJ and his boyfriend, Jason and Chaz, and others whose names I didn’t know. The house was dark, and Mark and Nick’s shiny car was in the driveway, where I usually park, clearly crashing at the house for the night. In my mind, that became a metaphor for how invisible and peripheral I often view myself as being. I still joke that when my now brother-in-law started dating my sister, my parents found the son they never had.

Mark and Nick have a fairly new car. Mark is a doctor. I’m not totally sure what Nick does, but he also does well for himself. Pulling up behind their car, in my own car, with a side mirror held on with duck tape and non-functioning wipers, it felt like another metaphor for how shabby and barely-held-together my own life seems to be. Every area of my life looked like an abject failure.

Earlier this month, there was an entry posted to a blog that I follow that started me thinking about the negative (and toxic) way that I view my own life, and relate to others. He wrote:

Having grown up in a very patriarchal environment, I internalized the notion that being gay meant being other. In turn, “other” was translated to mean being “less than.” Oddly enough the effects were two-fold. I set off on a quest to mentally justify my being less than by using every situation I encountered to validate and reinforce those beliefs. Conversely, and this was my saving grace, I took the compensatory route in an effort to correct the (my own) perceived imbalance of worth. In practice, this meant I had an overwhelming (not to say borderline psycho) urge to compete and succeed.

The combination of the two meant intense turmoil, an inclination to depression every time something didn’t go to plan and emotional loss no matter what the result was. If I succeeded I was incapable of internally accepting credit (no matter how much I outwardly announced my credit). If I failed to achieve the standard I was aiming for, that simply reinforced my negative outlook. Lose, lose, lose.

These paragraphs really resonated with me. For as long as I can remember, I’ve compared myself to others, rating my own self-worth against my perception of theirs. I almost always come up short. Even in success, someone else is always just ahead of me. Consequently, I’ve always viewed myself as in direct competition with virtually everyone. It probably goes without saying how exhausting this is.

My rational brain knows how irrational this is, how silly and wasteful. I know my perceptions of others are fairly warped, that my assumptions about their social status are probably overblown. Yet my lizard brain is wrapped up in anxiety over someone having advantages over me, that people are looking down on me, finding me wanting. Everyone else has more financial success, more emotional stability, more sex, more intimacy, more happiness.

I have nothing.

The horrible thing is that part of me hates everyone who I perceive as having the things that I don’t. I’m driven by jealousy of the people around me, obsessed with my inadequacies. And this keeps me isolated from other people, holds me back from connecting, from being accepted.

What bothers me most is that I’m aware of all this, but feel unable to do anything about it…

188. formidable

Author’s note: personal disclosures ahead that might make you feel slightly uncomfortable. You’ve been warned.

Boys are an odd bunch, especially once adolescence arrives and puberty starts wreaking havoc on their bodies. Comedian Eddie Izzard remarks in one of his shows, “… you think, God, I want to get off with some of these people, I’d better look my best. And then Mother Nature says, No, you will look the worst you’ve ever looked in your life!”

This is especially true for boys, many of whom are rather gangly to begin with. But then the violent chaotic upheaval starts to resolve itself. There’s a lot of idealization of the male body that goes on amongst young men (of any sexual orientation) as they attempt to wrap their minds around what’s going on physically, particularly around muscular development. This has been true throughout human history for the guys with more muscular physiques. Women (and gay men) want them; other men want to be them.

There’s also a bizarre kind of fetishization that’s been present with men concerning facial and body hair since, well, forever. Allan Peterkin’s book One Thousand Beards: a cultural history of facial hair explores the historical record of attitudes and trends in facial hair throughout history, all the way back to depictions in cave paintings of men shaving.

My own relationship to facial and body hair growing up was rocky. I didn’t like my body very much as a teenager, which I suppose isn’t uncommon, though it seems most guys come to own their physiques at some point. They seem to exhibit a lack of shame when it comes to showing off what nature has bequeathed them, shucking shirts and pants without a second thought, either not caring who looks or basking in the attention they receive.

I was not crazy about getting hairier once puberty hit. For years I was painfully, neurotically self-conscious about this, always wearing jeans and long pants, and certainly never appearing without a shirt. Some of it had to do with not wanting to look like my dad, who is fairly hirsute himself. (Thanks, dad.) Some of it likely had to do with the anxiety from not reconciling to the fact that I was madly attracted to the developing (and increasingly sexy) teenage bodies of my male peers. For some reason I found (and still find) guys’ leg hair incredibly sexy.

Throughout high school and college I kept both my face and chest clean-shaven, which meant that I spent a lot of time doing what I later learned was called manscaping. That probably had to do with the kind of porn I was watching at the time and finding smooth guys most attractive.

It wasn’t until later in college that I began to accept my body hair, and that it might actually be an attractive feature. (Of course, I still wasn’t thinking in terms of other guys finding it sexy yet.) My first semester in college I learned about “no-shave November,” which provided an avenue of competition for the guys and a reason to complain for their girlfriends.

Several trumpet player friends of mine in college were obsessed with beards, facial hair, and in general all things manly. As far as I know, all of them were straight, but this helped move me more in favor of my own body hair. I even had a beard for most of college. There were frequent exclamations of: “Check out that guy’s beard!” or “Look at that his chops [sideburns]!”

Once I started having sex and discovered that guys found my being an otter both sexy and desirable, the more I liked how I looked that way. My first boyfriend enjoyed it when I didn’t shave my chest and encouraged me to let it grow. He was the one who introduced the term “otter” (gay slang for a skinnier, hairier guy) to me. My last boyfriend also liked that look on me, but frankly, longer that hair gets the itchier it becomes so I usually keep it neatly trimmed.

Again, boys are weird.

Yesterday afternoon I attended a Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra concert in Minneapolis. They were playing Bach’s Orchestral Suite No. 4, Mozart’s Serenade No. 7, and Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. All in all, it wasn’t a remarkable performance, which one reviewer described as “lacking in passion” and urgency. I’d agree with that assessment.

It’s sad to say that probably the most satisfying part of the concert for me was watching one particularly handsome violist who I noticed almost immediately, partly because he was sitting next to the harpsichord during the Bach piece. (I’ll always be a keyboard nerd, no matter where the rest of my musical life goes.) I’m not sure what his name is since he was an auxiliary player, and the program didn’t specify which auxiliary violists were playing that afternoon. But he was very pretty to look at.

I’m not exactly sure what qualities made him so attractive. (My friend who was attending the concert with me also pointed him out.) It was hard to tell, but he looked to be on the shorter side, of slim build, slightly swarthy, and square-jawed. It certainly looked like he had some stubble on his face, which on the right guy is very irresistibly, devil-may-care sexy.

It’s hard to say what is attractive in another person. Some people have a “type” that they go for, or a list of qualities that they either want or can’t stand. While there are characteristics that tend to make a guy stand out more (it’s an evolutionary strategy for sorting out potential mates), for me it has more to do with their overall physical and mental attractiveness. A guy could be smoking hot but isn’t intellectually curious or interested in the arts. Conversely, he could have a great personality but I’m just not physically attracted to him…

I guess all I’m saying is that this whole business of finding a boyfriend/partner is a mess.

185. dither

A few weeks ago I met up with my friend Sarah to go see a show at the Minnesota Fringe Festival. It was Four Humors Theater’s adaptation of Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 screenplay based on Vladimir Nabokov’s 1955 novel “Lolita” about a twelve-year-old girl’s sexual relationships with two adult men.

As performed by three adult men, the actor playing the title character looking absolutely nothing like a twelve-year-old girl. It was predictably awkward and hilarious, especially at the end when the actor playing Lolita reveals that he had no idea that the story is about a “sexually precocious girl,” at one point crying out in horror to the other guys: “My grandmother was going to be here tonight! Gran! I’m sorry!”

This was the company that did the brilliant adaptation of Voltaire’s Candide at Fringe last year.

Afterwards, Sarah and I grabbed dinner in lieu of not making it to the following show that she was hoping to see. During dinner, she told me about a book she’d been reading called Attachment by Amir Levine and Rachel Heller. In it, they discuss three different relationship “orientations”: anxious, stable, and avoidant.

Attachment theory has been around since the 1960s and 70s. According to the Wikipedia page, the styles break down in the following ways:

secure: “It is relatively easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfortable depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.”
anxious (preoccupied): “I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.”
dismissive (avoidant): “I am comfortable without close emotional relationships.”, “It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient”, and “I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.”
fearful (avoidant): “I am somewhat uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely, or to depend on them. I sometimes worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.”

Anyone who has followed my blog for some time will probably recognize the second category, anxious/preoccupied, as describing my relationship style spot on. I usually feel uneasy around the people in my life, and I worry almost constantly about whether or not they’ll reject me. If we have a disagreement or fight, or I do something to offend or that oversteps boundaries, I assume that the person hates me and wants nothing more to do with me. In reality, they have no idea that I feel that way and often assume that everything is perfectly find.

The fact is that I’m an affection junkie. I didn’t grow up with much praise at home, and in my early years affection was often conditional. I had to behave a certain way or meet some benchmark that my parents set before it was granted. The lesson I learned as a child was that I’m not worth loving unless I perform well enough or do enough to earn that love. I unconsciously do things for the people in my life, trying to earn my keep in their good graces, all the while a script is running in my mind: “If they really knew you and how much of a fuck up you are, they’d drop you faster than a half-way decent show on Fox.”

This causes me to see any of my accomplishments or personal victories as just a drop in the bucket that I need to fill just to begin washing away the stain of my failure as a human being. I’m constantly trying to prove to everyone that I am special, yet nothing is ever good enough to silence the critical voices in my mind that are leaping to tear me down before anyone else can get there first. The hope is that if I do a good enough job beating myself up, everyone else will leave me alone.

With lovers, I tend to bend over backwards to keep them and obsess over relationship status. Each rejection a black mark on my worthiness report, in the same way that missing a credit card payment goes on your record forever. It leads to me sticking around longer than I should, and putting up with behavior that would make anyone with an ounce of self-respect walk out at the first sign of trouble. These are things that friends will attempt to comment on out of concern, that I will dismiss like a stereotypical battered spouse, saying: “But you don’t really know him.”

My fears about turning 30 were mostly about having another reason for guys to reject me, my terror at being alone with myself, and not knowing who I am without someone to validate my worthiness, even though I don’t really believe affirmations. At the back of my mind lurks that dark voice whispering: “If they ever saw behind the mask, they wouldn’t say nice things about you.”

And the pathetic thing is that I believe that inner voice. It’s easier than believing that someone could love a flawed and insecure person like me, or that I could ever learn to rest easy in some guy’s arms and not worry that he’s going to leave me at the minute things get unpleasant. The thought of ever being happy terrifies me because I’m always waiting for the next disaster.

The cute, sexy, nerdy, intriguing guy I’m talking to inevitably ends up being partnered, or isn’t interested in a relationship.

I’m not cute, interesting, muscular, or (curiously) vapid enough to catch anyone’s attention.

In short, I’m struggling to find evidence to support the claim that friends make that I really am a terrific catch, and that everyone else is stupid for turning down such a great guy like me…

183. bilge

Another Exodus International alum is on the mea culpa circuit: Randy Thomas, former Executive Vice President of Exodus, who issued a public apology today.

Why does anyone think this matters? Do they think this will lead to some sort of hippy-dippy Kumbaya moment where bygones are bygones, and we hold hands and sing around a campfire? Lest we forget that this is an organization that emotionally manipulated thousands of gay people into betraying themselves in the name of religious bigotry and homophobia…

The fact is, this apology doesn’t matter. Like his former boss, Alan Chambers, at no point in this “apology” does Thomas ever outright apologize for his actions. Instead, he blames others for his part the psychological terrorism of LGBT persons:

“My understanding of public policy at that time was limited to the talking points I was given to tailor my testimony around.”
“I participated in the hurtful echo chamber of condemnation.”
“I was, in a sense, attracted to this kind of power and allowed my conscience to be numbed so I could have a seat at their table. In the name of trying to positively affect Christian leaders, I willingly became one of their pawns. Again, I was selfish and prideful. Please forgive me.”

According to his biography on the Exodus website (now taken down), Randy Thomas grew up in an abusive home, which he attributes to having caused his feelings of same-sex attraction:

“Growing up I internalized the abuse and the pain grew. My need for love was desperate. I knew at a very young age that I preferred the company of males even though I wasn’t like them. When a male would smile my heart would leap. This became erotic at the age of ten.”

After being thrown out of his home by his religiously radicalized mother, he basically went on a sex, alcohol and drugs bender that eventually led to a “come to Jesus” moment and internalizing the lie that homosexuality is both a disorder and a sin. He “left his homosexual identity at the cross,” “learned to relate to men and women the way Father intended,” and “received love from men and women in the body of Christ that displaces homosexuality.”

Essentially, he became frightened of the abusive way he was treating his body, and was seduced by the alluring message of (conditional) love and acceptance of God and the Church. Not only that, but he joined an organization devoted to seducing others into exactly the same lifestyle (irony strongly intended).

Rather than see that he needed psychological help and counseling after an abusive childhood and then rejection and abandonment by his own mother, like so many of these ex-gay faggots (as Dan Savage likes to call them, because not a single one of those pathetic individuals are heterosexual), Randy Thomas made the fatal leap of seeing correlation where there was no causation. He associated the emptiness that he felt with homosexuality, not the emotionally empty sexual encounters he was having with other men.

I’ve felt that same emptiness too after a hookup that comes from the deep longing I have within me for a partner and kindred spirit, and not finding it in those encounters. We’re complex social primates, and that’s how millions of years of natural selection have groomed us for survival. For most of us, the desire for emotional companionship is embedded in our genes.

Instead of seeking real help, Randy cut himself off from his friends and support network, and joined up with bigots of the ex-gay movement who told him what he wanted to hear.

Nowhere in his public apology does Thomas take full responsibility for his part in the abuse of LGBT people, or that these beliefs were wrong and scientifically ungrounded to begin with. He apologizes for the hurt he caused, but he doesn’t actually say that the actions that caused that hurt were actually wrong. This is one of the first lessons I learned about making apologies: if you were in the wrong, you admit it. Instead we have this masquerading as an apology:

“I apologize to the gay community for idealizing and reinforcing the institutional groupthink of Exodus. I apologize for remaining publicly silent about the hurt caused by some of Exodus’ leaders and actions. I also apologize for my inexperienced participation in public policy, placing my personal ambition over truly serving the gay community as a Christian friend.”

This is virtually no different from saying: “I apologize for shooting you. But it was for your own good, and to keep you from going down an even worse path. I regret hurting you though! Friends?” That’s not an apology. That’s excuse making, designed to let the offender off the hook from feeling guilty about his/her past actions.

The fact is that Randy Thomas and everyone in the ex-gay movement knows that their ship is sinking, and fast. Their claim of evidence of change in sexual orientation evaporated into thin air, because it was never there to begin with. Every mainstream medical body in the world has affirmed that there is nothing aberrant or pathological about homosexuality. The much touted Mark Regnerus study that was supposed to prove that same-sex parents ultimately harm their children turned out to be fraudulent.

And they’re likely trying to make friends amongst enemies before the anti-ex-gay animus really heats up.

If Randy Thomas wants to “make amends,” he could start by inventing a time machine, going back and smacking some sense into his young adult self. Or spending his time volunteering in shelters for gay teens who have been disowned by their bigoted Christian parents, and helping them reject the lies that he helped perpetrate, come to accept themselves as the beautiful human beings they are, and find healthy and emotionally mature ways of expressing their sexuality.

Hell, just a decent sex ed course would be a start.

But this so-called apology is a joke. It’s self-pitying, self-congratulatory, and blame-shifting. Whatever his motivations here, an apology without action is worthless.