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

 

017. agh

The biggest conundrum has come up as of about 11:10pm last night. I’ve been invited to a friends’ wedding on July 31st, and I invited my southern boy to go since he’ll be here. He’s game, but says he doesn’t have anything to wear, so I suggested that he wear some of mine. I think we’re about the same size so we could easily trade clothes—a fact which could come in handy later. But that was not the conundrum.

The conundrum comes when I find out from my friends who are getting married that they have invited my parents, who have deemed to be in attendance. So therefore, being at a wedding with my parents and my boyfriend presents the uncomfortable liklihood of the four of us running into each other and my parents asking all sorts of uncomfortable questions like, “So who is this?” and “How do you know each other?” and “Where are you from?” and “So what brings you to Minnesota by way of Mississippi?” and “So when were you going to tell us that not only have you betrayed your family and your faith by choosing to be a homosexual, but you also have a boyfriend?” And so on.

On the one hand, I want them to know. I want everyone to know that I’ve found an amazing guy who wants to be with me despite my insanity; whose weirdness seems to be so compatible with my own. Most of the world seems to not care anymore that I prefer people of my own sex. It’s “my people,” the Christian Right, that come out as an angry mob complete with torches and pitchforks to lynch me. So I’m equally apprehensive about them knowing, and of him going home on August 5th a few days before my sister’s 25th birthday and being alone with all of them, and inevitably facing the onslaught of helpful if not misguided attempts to gently nudge me into going straight via an ex-gay ministry. The usual things: dropping pamphlets, slyly suggesting that I take so-and-so out on a date (“she’s such a nice girl, she’d be perfect for you”), or not-so-subtly hinting how they’d like grandchildren bearing the family surname.

I don’t think they’ll shun me entirely but after I make it clear that I’ve no intention of “going straight” there may be unforeseen consequences, such as being pressured to leave my church or face exposure since the official statement concerning homosexuality is that while they won’t lynch the first guy who traipses through their door, they don’t approve or condone it either. I may also be pressured to leave my job at the conservative Christian music academy where I teach piano. I highly doubt they’ll just let it go or tolerate me, and I’ll invariably become their “project.”

I’m probably blowing this way out of proportion, but I’ve been listening to Douglas Adams this morning so I’m feeling witty and self-deprecating at the same time. It’s a wonderful and rare feeling, not unlike being in love.

015. pov

This past weekend I played for the wedding of a friend of mine. It was pretty conventional, albeit a tad too casual for me. The bride, my friend, looked lovely. Brides usually do. The guys, on the other hand, looked like they just sort of rolled out of bed, threw on quasi-matching polo shirts, and showed up. The bridesmaids, of course, were lovely. Women usually manage to look smashing, regardless. There are some exceptions, of course (the Jerry Springer Show comes to mind), but girls typically look so put-together. Guys today instead generally come out looking like teenage boys who still need mom to take care of them.

The straight ones anyway.

But the twist came when the pastor commented on how the groom should really be the best man at his wedding, because Christ is the only perfect husband who will love perfectly, never fail, and gave himself sacrificially for both the bride and the Bride. She should grow to love Him more every day, just as the husband too should be loving Christ more, and that bringing them closer and together in their mutual love for each other and for G-d.

Of all the weddings I’ve done, that was a first. My sister’s wedding was fairly Christ-centred, and the wedding of another friend of mine blew me away theologically and emotionally.

It made me think though. Traditional marriages are supposed to point us to the relationship between Christ and the Church, and are even to be living parables of that divine marriage. They aren’t perfect, by any means, and that’s the point. G-d doesn’t expect perfection. He expects us to be open-handed with him, acknowledging our creaturely need for him, and to admit that don’t have it all together. Even the ladies who look like they do, and especially the guys who don’t.

But marriage, especially the Biblical model, is supposed to be an example of women displaying the submissiveness to their husbands that the Church is to show to Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33). Men fail miserably here, in not being the shining examples of masculinity that a woman would want to submit to. And amidst the resurgence of goddess worship our culture encourages women to assert their feminine dominance, usually over men, taking back the power that for so many centuries was denied them by the patriarchal status quo.

However, if we look at the Biblical model, that is not what is even marginally hinted at:

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish. In the same way husbands should love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. For no one ever hated his own flesh, but nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the church, because we are members of his body. (Ephesians 5:25-29, ESV)

Guys have it much harder in marriage if they are to follow this model. They are to follow Christ’s example of living sacrificially, even if that calling leads to death. This isn’t Fiddler on the Roof, where the man claps his hands and his wife falls into line. He is to look out for her needs first.

Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should submit in everything to their husbands. (Ephesians 5:22-24, ESV)

A woman then, in response to this sacrificial lifestyle that her husband is presumably displaying, acknowledges his leadership through submission. So what happens is hopefully this mutual submission, where each partner is putting the other first in the relationship and each is likewise submitting to the ultimate authority of Christ.

So.

How does that look in a homosexual relationship, where it’s two men or two women who are partnered and are equals (egalitarian versus gender-structured pairing)? Because this is not the same relationship that Paul was talking about in Ephesians; and regardless of what you may think of the Apostle (e.g., that he was a chauvinistic misogynist), he drew some marvellous paralells between earthly and divine marriage.

Men were not designed physically, psychologically or emotionally to submit in the same way to other men that a woman was designed for a man, and likewise women for other women. However, as Virginia Mollenkott said on Speaking of Faith in 2006, “Apparently the Creator likes diversity a lot more than we human beings do.” So I believe the relationship can still thrive and that it can teach us something about G-d and about faith.

So what can we learn from same-sex relationships from a Biblical or theological perspective?

The floor is open.

Shalom to you.

014. fear

Tomorrow I watch another of my friends get married. Walk down the aisle, join her life to the man she wants to spend the rest of it with.

And I guess I’m genuinely happy for her!

For so long I considered marriage a sham, not because I’d seen so many failures but because I couldn’t imagine the possibility of me ever finding that kind of love or the dream of commitment. That was selfish, to assume that the happiness of millions of others depended on my own.

Well, no more. I think I’ve found that now, and am quite content.

Found out today that another friend of mine has known about me for some time. I feel kind of bad that I didn’t trust her with the knowledge, but you never know. She is of the Christian fundamentalist persuasion, but still, you never know.

Basically, I’m afraid of losing the friendships I’ve worked at building the last couple of years over this.

I’m afraid of my Christian friends turning their backs on me.

Hell, I’m afraid of my family turning their backs on me (except for my youngest sister; she knows).

My friends have become my family, and I’d hate to lose any of them. I don’t expect them all to necessarily approve. They have their own beliefs and I wouldn’t want to impose anything on them. This is a lot of change to handle, so I’d understand. Doesn’t mean I’d like it, but I’d have to respect the decisions of anyone who couldn’t deal with my being a homosexual.

I really hope it doesn’t come to that. Everything has changed now that I found him.