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.

176. aleatory

So after my friends’ wedding in Stillwater this past weekend, several wonderful chats with friends, and being around more gay couples, I’ve been thinking more about what it is that I want in a future partner.

This has been something on my mind ever since I came out gay in August of 2008, and since I accepted the notion that a romantic relationship with a man was indeed possible – and that I could have one. Back then my list of must-haves was probably a mile long, as was my list of things to avoid. Somewhere on that list was faith in God, and we can safely say that’s not on the list anymore. (If anything, it’s something for me to avoid!)

My recently expired relationship with Jason also taught me a lot of things about what it is that I want in a partner, and things that I want to be for a partner.

At the top of that list is being active – socially and otherwise. Jason had the disadvantage of suffering from fibromyalgia, so being physically active wasn’t as easy for him. But it did make me realize how much I missed being with people, and just doing things – going to plays, concerts, fundraising events, and so on. And I like doing those things with a person who means a lot to me. Currently I’m leaning on close friends to fill that role, but that’s not quite a substitute for being at a concert and your boyfriend holding you while you listen to a band you both love. I was at a Cloud Cult concert on Sunday night, and a boy standing next to me was holding his girlfriend for most of it. And as much as I balk at public displays of affection, I’m secretly jealous because I’m a closeted über-romantic who really loves that shit.

I’ve also been volunteering a lot more as of late. Last Thursday I participated in an event called Dining Out for Life in which various restaurants donated a certain percentage of their proceeds towards helping people living with HIV/AIDS. My friend Adam and I were on site for lunch and dinner and two local participating restaurants, going from table to table handing out donation envelopes and telling people about the event. It felt amazing to be part of, and to be doing good, and I want to do more of that. And I want to do more of that with a special guy who also enjoys doing good, so that we can do good together.

I also want to be with a fellow gay atheist. This is one area that I’ve waffled on a little over the past two years, but the more I think about it and the more dates I’ve been on with gay guys who believe in God, the less likely it seems that we’d be able to sustain a meaningful, long-term relationship with that as a difference. Because how you view the world as an atheist is vastly different from how you view it as a theist. I should know – I used to be one.

A couple years ago my sister went into the hospital with some serious health problems. My mom called to tell me about it, and she asked if I’d pray. I said, “Mom, you know that I don’t believe in prayer.” And I don’t. I don’t believe that anyone is looking out for us, that things will necessarily work out for the best, or that there’s some grand purpose for life on this planet. She seemed flummoxed that I wouldn’t pray, so I explained that I believed my sister was in good hands with doctors who have years of medical training, and that they’d figure out what was wrong. And they did. And, of course, my parents gave all the credit to God.

I don’t want to have that argument with my husband when one of our parents gets sick or dies – or when one of us gets sick or hurt. Because it inevitably will.

I also want to be with someone who’s as big of a geek, and as deeply curious about the world as I am. Last night I got to hang out with two guys who’ve been married for eighteen years. Our conversation ranged from classic Doctor Who episodes, to music history, to politics, to confusion over pop culture references. They balanced each other in many ways, but there’s a mutual passion and love for learning in both of them that I realized I desperately want in a husband – someone whose initial reaction to something new isn’t “That’s weird” but rather, “Oooh!” I committed myself a long time ago to living my life with my eyes wide open, and I want to be with someone who has the same love for knowledge – a fellow philomath.

Another thing I’ve learned about myself is that I’m not monogamous. I’m all for getting married and committing myself to a guy I’m madly in love with, but the idea of sexual exclusivity for both of us is one that I think is unnecessary. There are many gay couples who want to be monogamous, and good for them; but I personally enjoy sexual freedom and being able to get to know other guys intellectually as well as physically.

Maybe it’s just that men view sex differently than women, but if anything I’ve found that many of my friendships have been enhanced for having a sexual element, probably because it’s not some unspoken, forbidden thing between us. Because there’s a major difference in having sex with someone you care deeply for, and sex with someone you enjoy being with.

As Dan Savage has said on his show, cheating is only cheating if you’re sneaking around on your partner. The couples I know who aren’t monogamous communicate more, are more attuned to being safe and staying healthy, and have deeply committed relationships.

And more than anything, that’s what I want.

175. hellion

Going into Monday after a hectic weekend is never a great way to start the week.

This Saturday I was the best man in my friends Beckie and Mike’s wedding. Overall, it was one of the more low-key affairs I’ve attended and been a part of. It was maybe ten minutes long. The bride wore blue (almost TARDIS blue!), her brother officiated, and the wedding processionals were both songs by Christina Aguilera that I arranged for two violins.

The reception was also low-key and started about an hour after the wedding, with an open bar and beautiful weather for sitting outside while we waited. Per tradition, I delivered the opening toast, which ended up being a two-and-a-half page essay that included mentions of the United Nations, evolutionary biology, and an excerpt from The Little Prince (which I’ve quoted on this blog once before). Surprisingly, it was relatively well-received, and the bride has even titled her Facebook photo album from the wedding “The United Nations of Mike and Beckie’s Wedding”!

It was also an emotionally difficult weekend for me to get through, partly because it came barely a month after Jason and I broke up (the bachelor party happened the week of the breakup), and almost everyone was there with their spouses or significant others. Aside from me and the maid of honor, everyone there in the wedding party was coupled. Even the one bridesman was there with his boyfriend Roy, who took all of the wedding photos. So I was constantly being reminded there of how single I am, and of how incompatible I am with most gay men my age, so I came away feeling less confident that I’ll ever find a guy to marry.

Eager to get away to get some emotional room (and so that the middle-aged women wouldn’t keep trying to make me dance with single girls—apparently they didn’t understand what “gay” means), I left the reception early to visit a friend of mine. He’d texted me earlier that evening that only eight people had come to his birthday party, and his husband was out of town, and I needed some cheering up too so it was rather perfectly timed for both of us. I ended up feeling much better for the visit, and we had a great conversation that got me thinking about the qualities I want in a future husband, which I’ll write more about later.

Another element that made the wedding weekend difficult was running into the last person I was expecting or wanting to see—Seth, the guy who broke my heart on my birthday in 2011. Last Wednesday I was attending an LGBT networking event at a local restaurant where Seth is apparently a bartender there—a fact that nobody thought to mention to me. I arrived at the place, and was saying my hellos and ordering a drink when I heard someone say my name. I turned around, and there he was, looking sheepish and slightly surprised himself. I’m not sure what the hell possessed him to speak to me when I’ve made it clear that I want nothing to do with him. Probably the same thoughtlessness that allowed him to intentionally ignore the fact that he knew I was in love with him so that he could keep having sex with me. (Very convenient for him. Not so much for me.)

It was an inevitable moment that I’d been dreading. For its size, the Twin Cities is a relatively small place; and for the gay community, it’s an even smaller world. So that he and I would run into each other, or even possibly date some of the same people, was bound to happen.

My reaction to seeing Seth there was to respond with a curt, “Ah,” quickly turn away, and pretend I’d barely noticed him. It was the same tone I’d used when seeing him a few weeks after my birthday in 2011, when I’d snarled “What the fuck are you doing here?” at him.

I spent the evening ignoring him, which was difficult as he was behind the bar for most of it, often chatting with some of the cuter guys at the event. I found myself wondering how many of their numbers he’d managed to get, and how many of them he’d be fucking soon. Part of me found my jealousy after over two years ridiculous and hilarious, but his presence there made it difficult to concentrate or even think.

When the event started to wind up, I closed my tab and left as quickly as possible. I was about halfway home and at Starbucks when I realized that in my haste I’d left my card. Fortunately, I had my tablet with my Wallet app on it, so I was able to pay for my beverage; but it did mean I’d have to go back. When I got there Seth was on the phone. I walked past him to find someone to ask about my card and was waiting for about a minute to talk to another bartender when Seth walked up with my card and handed it back to me, saying quietly, “Here you go, David.” I had the twin impulses to say something snide and cruel in response, but also to get as far away from him as possible. So I hissed a “thank you,” and virtually ran back to my car.

So that was the Wednesday before the wedding, when I was already feeling lonely and undesirable, and there was Seth, looking handsome and charming as ever.

The theme of my romantic life is that I can never fall in love with anyone who is able to love me in return, and vice versa. And seeing him last week when I was feeling single, miserable and pathetic was another cruel irony of coincidence.

All that loving must’ve been lacking something
if I got bored trying to figure you out.
You let me down. I don’t even like you anymore at all.
– Fiona Apple

 

174. flashforward

So it’s been a rather eventful last couple of weeks for me personally since last I wrote regularly.

My creative nonfiction class is over, and my writing project is slowly starting to emerge from the star nursery of invention. I’m gradually starting to put bits and pieces of my history together as more memories emerge from my childhood and young adult years that I forgot about. So it’s been a useful process.

Many of those memories I buried because they were too unpleasant and turbulent to think about, but it’s good to revisit them now as an adult, with a broader and more knowing perspective. The ultimate goal is to develop about fourteen essays on the themes of survival, acceptance, all around the dual journeys of coming out gay and atheist. From various reactions so far it sounds like a marketable story, but who knows.

Hell, who knows if I’m even good enough of a writer to tackle it…

The other big piece of news is that, as of a month ago today, I’m a single man again. This last relationship lasted for just about eight months. I’m feeling good about the split overall. It was the right decision and call to make, but it was still hard, and I’ve still felt like shit over it.

There were a couple of challenges to the relationship to begin with. One, he lives about an hour north of the Twin Cities, and for most of our relationship he didn’t have a car so every weekend I drove up to see him. He did get a car a few months before we broke up, but there was something wrong with the brakes or something and he didn’t feel safe driving it.

Another challenge was fibromyalgia. In case you’re not familiar, fibromyalgia is widespread chronic pain that’s usually accompanied by fatigue, trouble sleeping, and joint stiffness. During the summer when he was able to spend time outside he was mostly fine, but when any kind of weather shift happened he’d be knocked out flat. So once winter came along he was in a rough state.

As Esther Perel says in the TED Talk below, “There is no caretaking in desire. Caretaking is . . . a powerful anti-aphrodisiac. I have yet to see somebody who is so turned on by somebody who needs them. Wanting them is one thing. Needing them is a shutdown.”

I enjoy how she summarized responses she got from people talking about their lovers: “I am most drawn to my partner when I see him in the studio; when she is onstage; when he is in his element; when she’s doing something she’s passionate about; when I see him at a party and other people are really drawn to him; when I see her hold court. Basically, when I look at my partner radiant and confident, [it’s] probably the biggest turn-on across the board.”

With Jay, I so rarely got to see him in his element, or see him passionate about anything. When he was passionate, it was about sustainability or something that had to do with the outdoors or systems thinking. Which is great, but not something that got me excited.

Once we started getting serious, he started talking about marriage and moving in together. (Mind you, this is after about four months. Big red flag.) I was on the fence about whether or not I was ready to commit, but given my attachment issues, I wanted to give our relationship a chance and see if the feelings followed. (They didn’t.) My mistake was not being more honest about that.

When we talked about where we wanted to live, the primary factor he was considering was staying out of the urban circle of the Cities – as close to rural as possible. Since he was the one with fibromyalgia, his needs apparently outweighed mine. His argument was that since I plan to be a writer, I could work from anywhere.

A couple months later he was talking about moving to a dryer, warmer climate. I said that I wasn’t too keen on moving to the middle of nowhere, as it’s in the middle of nowhere and far from culture and resources. He dismissed that, saying that I need to be less reliant on stores and start growing my own food, and that I don’t need culture as much as I think I do.

Aheh.

So I was initially attracted to Jay because of his passion for the environment and the fact that he’s an unabashed nerd and a Whovian, like I am. And he’s an attractive guy. But the more our relationship progressed, the less we really seemed to have in common. There was also the fact that he never really wanted to do anything with my friends, or meet the people in my life who are important to me, even though I’d met most of his friends and family.

My biggest regret is letting it go on for as long as it did, and not listening to myself that it wasn’t the right relationship for either of us. Truth be told, I was afraid of being single again, because this time I’d be single, gay, and thirty. And I didn’t want to be alone.

What it comes down to for me is less about age, and more about the fact that I don’t feel desirable. I feel awkward, crippled by my fundamentalist Christian upbringing, mangled by my inability to flirt with guys I like, and hugely undermined by my brain, which usually makes me feel old and weird around the guys I’ve dated. In reality, they’re probably just not very interesting and consequently not right for me.

I also feel like a failure for still being single at my age. Most of my friends are paired off, and have been with their partners for years. So I wonder what’s wrong with me that I haven’t found someone.

Truth is, I’m just not good with uncertainty. Or being alone with myself.

169. intemerate

It’s strange being (nearly) 30 years old and contemplating going back to school. Or at least class.

Tonight was my first time back as a student in a classroom in just over eight years. (The last time was in early December of 2004, but most of that period was a blur as it was overshadowed by the gargantuan annual Christmas concert.)

Around Thanksgiving (actually, it may have been on Thanksgiving Day) I decided to quit dancing around the issue and actually register for a creative writing course. This was shortly after attending the intro session at Hamline University for the Creative Writing master’s program, and I was afraid of losing momentum, so with my boyfriend’s encouragement and support I signed up for a creative nonfiction course.

It’s so funny that after all this time I’ve landed in nonfiction and essay. As a kid and then as a teen I was a voracious reader and writer of fiction. Then music took over my life in college. Four years later and I was well surfeited of music to the point where I couldn’t even listen to it for almost two years. This was when I discovered audiobooks and public radio, and rediscovered my love of words and language.

All last week I tried not to think about the course very much, aside from the logistics of getting there and being prepared in terms of bringing materials. I didn’t want to have any expectations going in for fear of being disappointed once there. The course itself is geared towards writers working on book-length projects that center around personal experience. The minute I read the description it seemed perfect for me!

“Hmm. Do I have a compelling experience?” I rhetorically asked Jason.

He thought it sounded like something I should definitely go for.

I tried not to think too much about my future classmates, or the instructor, who they might be, how much more experience they might have than me, and how inadequate I might feel in comparison. After all, I have limited academic writing experience, and no training in literary theory or criticism. I’m mostly self-trained, with the majority of my learning coming from having honest friends read and edit my work (that is, friends who are readers and not interested in stroking my ego).

And then there’s my competitive streak, which is a mile wide, and armed with sharp teeth, claws and a degree of selfish ambition. I often describe this part of me as almost pure Id, my primal lizard self largely dominated by fear, and concerned chiefly with beating other lizards (or at least driving them off) and getting what it wants. It’s this part of me that set out to crush my younger sisters’ desires to pursue music, or at least to play the piano. That was my purview. Claws off, thank you very much.

It comes down to my own anxiety over feeling insignificant, and my sense of self-worth being tied into what I produce and do. It’s why I settled on composition in college. I was good at it, there were many other competent pianists there to show me up for the mediocre keyboardist I was, and it was an area I could easily establish myself in and defend against challengers. It’s sad to think how much time and energy I’ve wasted and how many relationships I’ve cheated myself of worrying about that.

The class itself was delightful. Writing courses are so different from other classroom courses. It’s less about listening to a lecture as doing and sharing actual writing. Our instructor did most of the talking tonight, as is often the case with the first day of any class, but aside from going over course expectations, we talked about writing, developing and describing our book/story project proposals, and working on the writing exercises our instructor gave us.

The challenge in writing personal nonfiction, she said, was moving from personal experience to finding meaning within that. It’s one thing to tell your story. It’s another to find the deep threads in it that will resonate with and inspire your readership. Why does this story matter to me? she asked. What’s at stake in it for me?

The first exercise we did was a sensory one, asking What have I seen that no one else in this room has seen? Ditto for hearing, smell, taste, touch, then to what no one else has done, been, knows, and are. What’s the exotic landscape or object that a reader can connect with? Basically, what’s the personal connection that will tap into the passion and love that will inspire people to keep reading? It’s not enough to know your story. Why is it worth writing about?

I was fascinated and excited to discover that the guy sitting next to me was also working on a story about losing his faith. The lady next to him is working on a memoir about going back to school as a radiology technician after the last of her kids left home, and she had to figure out who she was all over again while learning to work in a largely male-dominated field. Another woman has a first draft of a manuscript about her year recovering from cancer, but is struggling to find the inner story and the meaning within the experience.

As each of went around at the end of the evening, introducing ourselves and describing the subject we’re planning to write about, it was remarkable to notice some of the common links and themes between each story. Of course, the challenge for each of us will be finding what’s compelling about each of our stories, but it reminds me yet again how interesting people really are, how vital it is to tell each other our stories, and how much experience is lost to the act of getting through the day.

I have no illusions that this will be easy. But for the first time in a while I feel like I’m heading in the right direction.

168. shattered

Apologies for the delay, all five of you who actually read this. I’ve been working a lot and writing for other sites lately, but really haven’t much felt like talking about myself.

I’ve meant to write about the holidays and the experience of getting through Thanksgiving and Christmas with a boyfriend and his family for the first time. Because while it’s certainly been an experience, it wasn’t as crazy or stressful as I expected it would be. Perhaps it was other people’s descriptions of their family holidays that put me off to the whole thing, or had my hackles raised, but there were no big meltdowns, no plate throwing, no huge blowups or fights, or anything else that ends up in movies about the holidays.

Basically, it wasn’t National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Or Home Alone. No neighbors were harmed during the month of December.

It was curious though to see how both Jay and I dealt with holiday stress. He tends to externalize more and withdraw, like most guys. If things get to be too much, he retreats to a quiet place to read or hide out. When he was forced to sit through gift opening on Christmas Eve, he sat in the corner with a book, mostly reading while people opened presents.

I sometimes deal with stress the same way, especially if I’m going through a bout of depression or am tired. But mostly I deal with stress by simply becoming someone else — or rather, I become a version of myself that can deal with that particular stressor. It’s an automatic defense mechanism, like being a personality chameleon.

This is something I’ve been exploring some in therapy the past few months. For a long time I’ve known that there are multiple versions of “me,” personas that I employ to cope with different social situations and people. My mom was one of the first people to point this out when I was a teenager, and she accused me of essentially being a hypocrite; of showing different faces to people instead of just “being myself.”

Of course, what she didn’t know then was that I was already in deep cover as a gay man; that I was desperately trying to hide who I really was from everyone for fear of being found out and things going very bad for me. In case you haven’t heard, gay teens don’t fare very well in fundamentalist Christian circles.

So during the time when most people are forming their adult identities and selves, and figuring out who they are as individuals, I was developing different masks to hide who I really was.

In one of his stories, David Sedaris recounts how his sister Amy had a penchant from an early age for adopting different characters and imitating the adults around her. She would come in for breakfast and her mother would ask, “And who are we today?” To which Amy would respond: “Who don’t you want me to be?”

Sharing that story with my therapist was rather a light bulb moment for both of us, as it brought to light the reality that this is how most of my relationships have operated for most of my life. I figure out who not to be for someone, and then become that person. The majority of my teen and adult life has been spent playing different characters, different versions of myself, for others. Like the sci-fi show Sliders, they’re slight variations of “me,” with different tastes, likes, dislikes, ways of speaking, acting, extroversion and introversion, and so forth.

So the reality is that I’ve never really developed a personality of my own. I’ve invested so much time and energy into developing characters that are socially acceptable, but haven’t put any of that into personal development. Consequently, it’s difficult to share genuine pieces of myself with others. There is a lot here on this blog that I divulge — stuff from my past, painful memories, frustrations. But doing that in writing, on the page, removed from other people is much easier. I don’t have to risk personal rejection necessarily in writing things down.

Everything really fell apart two years ago when I lost Seth and finally owned up to my total lack of belief in God, two huge things that formed the gravitational mass of the comfortable illusion that everything was okay. I’d come out gay two and a half months earlier, and was still adjusting to the notion of being out to my very conservative family. But God, my Christian faith and the church was still grounding me to the identity I’d been carefully cultivating and maintaining over the years. And I’d been painfully and pathetically pining for Seth for over a year, which provided another neat distraction from the fact that the air was quickly escaping from my spiritual life.

I didn’t realize then how deeply my world shattered the night of my birthday. I’d been running a carefully organized circus for 20 years, and all of a sudden the neat solar system I’d built to manage everything quite literally imploded. To cope with the pain I divvied up all the feelings into the different shards of my personality — parts of me that were already managing those different areas of thought and emotion. It was as though I truly became a different person after that night.

Apparently this is common amongst people who grew up in highly stressful and repressive environments as children. In order to survive we break apart to manage the stress and “pass” for acceptable to authority figures. For our child selves, it was life or death. We don’t have a choice.

So now I’m left as an almost-30-year-old with the personality equivalent of a broken mirror. I still revert to my chameleon state when things get stressful. And I still feel removed from various feelings and emotions. Memories are there, but the feelings are strangely absent. It’s an interesting place to be, going into my third decade.

More to come.

 

166. glissade

Happy Boxing Day, everyone!

Well, we made it through another Christmas without being swept away by some long-foretold doomsday disaster. And I made it through my first family Christmas with a significant other, which is noteworthy. This is the first year I’ve been with a guy for a major holiday like Christmas. Last year I spent it depressed, mostly holed up in my room, alone and drunk, so this was a nice change of pace and scenery.

It’s also been a full year since I told my parents that I didn’t want any further contact with them, so long as they believe what they do about homosexuality. Since being outed to them by my first ex-boyfriend in November 2010, they’ve had plenty of opportunity to reconsider their conviction that homosexuality is unnatural. They budged a little on the notion that it’s “uncurable,” which for them means that I should be living a lonely and celibate life. So there’s no real change from 2010.

Last fall they said that they would never acknowledge any romantic relationship of mine with another man, or come to any wedding or commitment ceremony of mine. This was a particular slap in the face, considering how big of a deal my younger sister’s wedding was, and knowing that I’ll never experience that kind of celebration. She has three kids now with her husband, and my family would never dream of pretending that they’re just friends or roommates. Yet that’s the life they deem appropriate and reasonable for me, all because I fancy men instead of women.

The last exchange between my dad and me took place on Christmas Day of last year. I’d stopped by to write him a check for the last of the money I owed him for car repairs, after which I told my parents that I wanted nothing more to do with them because of their beliefs about my sexuality. He made a comment about how he didn’t think my “lifestyle” was making me very happy, how Jesus could’ve helped me “be straight” if I’d let him, and how I’d “never really given Jesus a chance.” I responded that my unhappiness had to do with the fact that my entire world had been recently tipped upside-down, and on top of that my family thinks I should be content being a second-class citizen, both in society and in their company. I asked if he knew the difference between sadness and clinical depression, and he remarked that “Jesus is bigger than depression.”

To which I replied, before slamming the door behind me: “I spit on your Jesus.”

That was last Christmas.

This Christmas was spent with my boyfriend Jay and his family. I had some anxiety in the weeks leading up to it, not so much about large numbers of people but rather about gift-giving. In my family, or at least among my siblings once we were older, gift-giving always felt like an exercise in posturing. The gift had to be nice enough to show that you spent a decent amount of money on someone, but not so expensive that it looked like you were showing off. It was the thought that counted, so long as the thought was interpreted in the right way.

Add to that the fact that for me it’s so hard picking out gifts. Something has to jump out at me as being just the thing for a person. For example, Jay’s uncle has some pretty right-wing political views, and a few months ago I was at Barnes & Noble looking for another book and saw a book by David Horowitz, The Shadow Party: How George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and sixties radicals seized control of the Democratic Party. I thought, “That’s perfect!”

As for the rest of his family, it’s hard to get a read sometimes. I was worried about them seeing me as rude or that I didn’t really try, and that therefore I’m a bad boyfriend and not really a part of the family. A few weeks ago a friend of Jay’s sister came over and played a game with us, and I felt like everyone liked him way more than me. My rational mind was saying that they have more of a history with him, and that’s what’s going on. My lizard brain was saying that everyone was wondering what I was even doing there.

Family is tricky for me, for many reasons. As I’m learning in therapy, I was never able to connect with my family growing up (at least during my teen years) because I was so preoccupied with trying to hide from them and everyone else the enormous fact that I was gay. And, as I feared, they are unable to accept their gay son for who he is, which means that we can’t have a relationship.

In the summer of 2011, while I was staying with my parents while finding a new place to live, my dad and I had an argument. This isn’t out of the ordinary since we’ve fought most of my life. We were on the topic of sexual orientation, and he growled, “You’ve made your whole identity now about being gay! You’re so focused on it!”

I said: “Yes. Because I am gay. Contrary to what you think, it’s not some separate thing apart from myself. It defines who I am, just like your being married to mom defines you. And someday there’s going to be a man in my life who forms the other part of that central relationship for me. And you refuse to acknowledge that part of me. So yeah, I’m kinda focused on that right now.”

I’ll never know what it’s like to have my own parents love my spouse in the way they love my sister’s husband. I’ll never know what it’s like to introduce the man I love to the people who, for better or worse, I spent most of my life with and who raised me. That’s not an easy pill to swallow.

163. alexipharmic

My dislike of horror films goes back to an aversion to lack of control. I can still recall having the bejeezus scared out of me in that scene in The Princess Bride where Fezzik throws a rock at Westley’s head. The Fire Swamp and the ROUS were no problem, but for the first couple dozen times, though I knew what was coming and when, I’d still look away or leave the room until it was over.

Even today I watch scary movies by focusing on the lower left-hand corner. I found this advice a long time ago, that nothing ever happens there. It’s the combination of the visuals and the sound that cause my primitive lizard-primate amygdala to kick into high gear.

Friends of mine who love horror films, and even commentaries I’ve read on this, all talk about how the allure of the genre is that it makes you feel alive. In witnessing the (albeit simulated) gruesome ends of other human beings that, with the adrenaline rush and flood of other hormones, the viewer appreciates the fact that they’re not being devoured by zombies or vivisected by a crazy man with a chainsaw. It’s the relief of knowing the other monkey got eaten by the tiger and that you’ve lived to peel another banana. And, on some level, it speaks to the Marquis de Sade lurking in all of us.

It’s not that I’m squeamish. One of my favorite shows is Showtime’s Dexter, where a serial killer conscientiously (and creatively) dispatches other killers who slip through the cracks in the criminal justice system. It’s a show that has brought “kill room” into the cultural lexicon. It’s more that horror films have a way of haunting and lingering in my already overactive imagination.

This past weekend I discovered a new way of staying clear of horror movie dread. My boyfriend and his family enjoy scary movies, and the other day we were watching a 2007 German film called Butterfly: A Grimm Love Story, a 2003 movie inspired by the Armin Meiwes cannibal murder. If you can’t recall this story, it’s the one in which a German man (Meiwes) wrote an advert seeking a male volunteer who wanted to be killed and eaten. His lamb (or pig, I suppose, since human flesh allegedly tastes like pork) came in the person of Bernd Jürgen Brandes. In the film the names are changed, but the events mirror reality, as summarized by the Wikipedia page on Meiwes:

As is known from a videotape the two made when they met on 9 March 2001 in Meiwes’s home in the small town of Rotenburg, Meiwes amputated Brandes’ penis and the two men attempted to eat the penis together before Brandes was killed. Brandes had insisted that Meiwes attempt to bite his penis off. This did not work and ultimately, Meiwes used a knife to remove Brandes’ penis. Brandes apparently tried to eat some of his own penis raw, but could not because it was too tough and, as he put it, “chewy”. Meiwes then fried the penis in a pan with salt, pepper, wine and garlic; he then fried it with some of Brandes’ fat but by then it was too burned to be consumed. He then chopped it up into chunks and fed it to his dog.

In a post-Saw and –Hostel movie market, it’s perversely refreshing to find a film based on actual events instead of merely the sick and twisted things that people dream up. Hostel, according to the filmmakers, is supposedly based on “actual events” – in this case, rumors of $10,000 Thai “murder vacations.” This is not entirely far-fetched, for as writer David Sedaris writes in his book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames:

Tell someone the police picked you up in Bangkok, and they reasonably assume that, after having sex with the eight-year-old, you turned her inside out and roasted her over hot coals, this last part, the cooking without a permit, being illegal under Thai law.

Jason and I were watching Butterfly in his bedroom one evening a few hours before bed – you know, to unwind. He recently inherited an armchair from his grandmother, and it now rests adjacent to the television. It’s positioned so that it’s possible to lean comfortably (and safely) over to see what’s happening on screen. So while he was on the bed watching the movie, I was in the armchair with my trusty 760-page Jon Meacham biography of Thomas Jefferson (which is an absolute marvel of nonfiction and highly recommended, in my opinion).

Occasionally something would happen or Jason would make a comment about the movie, and I’d look up from my biography to peer over. My take on the movie is that it tries to put a desperate sympathetic spin on some very sick and twisted people. In the film, Meiwes becomes Oliver Hartwin, a gay man whose crazy, possessive mother drowned, leaving him riddled with guilt over her death. Brandes becomes Simon Grombeck. Keri Russell plays a criminal psychology student who’s obsessed with the case.

Throughout the movie I kept waiting for the Sassy Gay Friend to swoosh in to scold everyone, yelling, “What are you doing? What, what, what are you doing?” It’s a story of people making extremely poor life decisions; of looking a gift lion in the mouth and doing a triple salchow into its gaping maw.

No, that’s not a half-digested gazelle carcass in the lion’s stomach. It’s your own butchered and mangled corpse sizzling in a frying pan!

It wouldn’t have been so horrific had this not been a true story: that a grown man let another man try to bite his penis off. Most people watch this and wonder what could happen to bring two people to the edge of that cliff: a cannibal writes an ad, an equally crazy victim answers it, and then both of them jump off into the unthinkable.

I watch it knowing how close we probably are to becoming our own horror stories.

160. pidgeonhole

A few days ago in the New York Times there was a 5,700-word piece about Ashlyn Blocker, a.k.a. “the girl who feels no pain.” She was born with a rare condition called congenital analgesia, better known as “congenital insensitivity to pain.” It never occurred to me how important pain really is to social animals like ourselves, who are in almost constant danger from even the moment we are conceived.

These kids walk barefoot over broken glass, touch hot stoves, break bones, chew off parts of their tongues, all without feeling pain. When Ashlyn was very young, her parents brought her to bed with them, with her mother holding her hands “so [Ashlyn] wouldn’t chew on her skin or rub her eyes during the night.” The article begins with a story of her reaching into boiling water to retrieve a spoon. These children can lose limbs but only experience the fear of seeing that part of their body gone — but not feel a thing.

Last night I had a heated argument with my boyfriend, Jason. As most fights go, it was over something relatively minor. While cleaning his room he’d found a necklace that his grandmother had given him. This necklace has a cross dangling from it. When I saw that he had hung it up in his bedroom, I asked him if he had to have it there. He said that he did, as it carries importance to him as an artifact of his grandmother’s, who is still alive and very close to him. He’s had close calls with death, having survived a brain tumor and related medical complications, so I understand its significance to him.

However, I objected to the cross since for me it’s a symbol of oppression and torture, both in the historical and personal sense. Virtually since it was adopted by the Church as its emblem about 600 years after Jesus was supposedly nailed to it, it has gone before Crusader armies and presided over Inquisitions, both Catholic and Protestant. Ignoring the fact that the common form of the crux romanus was in the shape of a letter T, with a cross-piece attached to a stake, countless saviors have been crucified in myths throughout history: Krishna, Wittoba, the Celtic god Hesus, the Mexican god Quetzalcoatl, and the Persian god Mithras — to name a few.

Moreover, it’s a hideous torture and execution device. For those who say that it represents the love of God (John 3:16), it’s curious to me that it was so necessary for God to have himself murdered by the imperfect people he created as a sacrifice to himself to make up for how imperfect the people he made were — and are. Why not just forgive sins instead of literally making a martyr of yourself?

Of course, that presumes a major assumption that there are any sins to forgive. The so-called “original sin” committed by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden never took place because the Garden of Eden is fictional, just as Adam and Eve are mythical. According to Christian teachings, that first sin was imputed to the entire human race, therefore precipitating the need for Jesus’ supposed sacrifice. However, if there was no original sin to forgive, what was the need, exactly?

The real reason I find the cross so offensive though is that it represents for me 25 years of agonizing over my sexuality, and 28 years of desperately trying to believe what I believed the Bible, my church and my family told me I needed to believe. There were so many nights I was kept awake by the anguish I felt over my doubts and my perceived lack of belief, and as I got older the abhorrent sexual feelings for other men that were stirring within me. For Jason that cross represents his loved ones and his connection to his family. For me, it represents everything I’ve lost, and all of the time that I wasted trying to be a good Christian — time I’ll never get back.

I had a long talk last night at home with my friend Emily about the fight, and what it was really over. She asked a question that both Jason and my therapist Sarah have asked: do you blame yourself for not leaving sooner? Yes, I do blame myself for lacking the courage to come out earlier. But this is how Richard Dawkins opens The God Delusion, with a story about his wife:

As a child, my wife hated her school and wished she could leave. Years later, when she was in her twenties, she disclosed this unhappy fact to her parents, and her mother was aghast: ‘But darling, why didn’t you come to us and tell us?’ Lalla’s reply is my text for today: ‘But I didn’t know I could.’

Here’s the crux: I didn’t know that I could have left Christianity, or come out as a gay man. Yes, I had doubts and there were numerous red flags raised over the years that I learned to think my way around or ignore; but it was either follow the Bible, or go to Hell. More than eternal damnation, I was terrified of my parents’ rejection and the reprisal of my church community. It wasn’t until I’d drifted away from those relationships and the fear of losing them and God had faded sufficiently that I was able to speak my mind and admit that I didn’t believe in God.

Yes, religion is a tool that can be used for good or evil. Trouble is, there’s no one to be angry at. My parents were brainwashed, just as were the other adults in my life growing up were. Their only concern is for my soul, not my feelings.

Just as Ashlyn Blocker has no idea what pain feels like, those who haven’t suffered abuse at the hands of religious people can’t understand what the cross looks like to those who have. It’s beautiful to them, but a putrid symbol of hatred to me.

155. tardigrade

I am tired.

It’s been over a month since my last update here, and not for a lack of anything to write about or say. On the contrary. There’s almost too much to say. So many thoughts charging about like metaphorical bulls in the proverbial china shoppe, but so little time and energy to actually sit down and give them air.

This marriage amendment campaign is exhausting me. I’m so tired of this fight, of viewing every interaction as a potential battle with some fundamentalist Christian who is either trying to save my soul or convince me that I’m a disgusting faggot. The divisiveness is killing me emotionally, and the fact that it’s put me at odds with basically my entire old social network is wearing on me psychologically. There are so many old friends who don’t talk to me anymore, either because I’m gay or an atheist. There aren’t even really words to express how sad I am over this reality, and angry that many of the people I once counted close (or as close as I let anyone in college get) don’t think that I’m deserving of equal recognition, either legally or socially.

Then there’s the social apocalypse still resulting from the fallout from my birthday almost two years ago. There was the social network from my youth group at church that fell apart when I went to college, and the social network at my church that fell apart when I left that church in 2007 after basically growing up there. There was the close social network that formed in college that lasted for a few years after graduation, and that continued and grew during my time working in the theater department there. There was the little commune that was the apartment and then townhouse I shared with some of my best friends, but they’ve all moved on, marriages and life and such.

There was the community that grew up amongst some friends over several years that seemed like it might blossom into something, later coupled with the hope of a romantic attachment that went devastatingly wrong. For me, that community fell apart when the chasm between he and I drove me into self-imposed exile. I hear through various channels that people miss me, but it’s too painful to go back and try to navigate that labyrinth. So old friendships have splintered and dissolved as necessary boundaries were forged and lines drawn in the sand. In my absence they’ve all only grown closer. In the process I lost one of my best friends earlier this year, but there’s nothing to be done about that or any of the other relationships that have become casualties of this hurricane of change. So now I find myself in the midst of the ashes of a massive forest fire, having lost basically my entire community and feeling incredibly alone.

I have a terrific, caring and supportive boyfriend, and his family has more or less adopted me. But it doesn’t quite make up for the loss of my home, of my family, of close friends. I am finally seeing a therapist to deal with the past, and understanding that this is all part of the grief process—a process I’ve been avoiding for some time.

So I’m just exhausted. And there are many miles to go before I sleep.