What's This Shit?

“The fact that until recently the word “shit” appeared in print as s— has nothing to do with moral considerations. You can’t claim that shit is immoral, after all! The objection to shit is a metaphysical one. The daily defecation session is daily proof of the unacceptability of Creation. … The aesthetic ideal of the categorical agreement with being is a world in which shit is denied and everyone acts as though it did not exist. This aesthetic ideal is called kitsch. … Kitsch is the absolute denial of shit, in both the literal and the figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence.”

--Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being

In his novel, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Milan Kundera claims that politics is about kitsch. People with similar aesthetic sensibilities coalesce to advance their collective kitsch. It’s not merely about advocating their own point of view but eliminating competing ideas and dissent as shit, something that stinks up the place, something that messes up the pretty picture, something that reminds us that our aesthetic does not reflect reality in total. The “shit” not only has to be gotten rid of, it has to be denied. The world has to be reordered so that the “shit” no longer exists.

In a complex society that has competing aesthetics in play without any aesthetic being dominate, it is possible to retain your individuality. But in a totalitarian state, kitsch becomes totalitarian, and there is always a drive toward totalitarianism. It is always a threat.

Kitsch comes in an infinite variety. There is heterosexual kitsch, for instance, and with that aesthetic, anything that isn’t hetero, anything that doesn’t fit the gender binary is thought of as shit that needs to be eliminated, erased, denied. Even among gay men, there is the masculine kitsch…the cop, the soldier, the fireman. For some it’s not enough that their masculine ideal remain personal. They want that ideal to be universal.

You can see kitsch operating all around us every day. I think it’s at the root of intolerance in all it’s forms. Human beings can be extremely chauvinistic. There is this tendency to want to destroy anything that is personally offensive, and the driving force behind that isn’t morality but aesthetics. Most of us want to “redecorate” the world as if it were our private homes and the lives of others and their aesthetic sensibilities are of no consequence.

I don't consider anyone who claims to be an authority on what any god "wants" or "thinks" to be an actual authority.  As far as I'm concerned, those who claim to be authorities are merely human beings who don't know any more than anyone else.  I don't know if they're intentionally fooling their followers or if they've actually drank their own Kool-Aid, but I'm not buying it.
 
I think life is a mystery, and my life comes down to me trying to figure it out and doing the best that I can.  I might listen to the thoughts, concerns and advice of others, but ultimately, I'm the one who has to decide for myself, and I know that I don't know what any god "thinks" or "wants".

For whatever reason, I am powerfully attracted to members of my own sex.  Even though I have extreme social phobia and PTSD and I've not had sex with anyone for years and I've never had a boyfriend, those feelings still give me a lot of joy.  They make me feel alive.  I'm not forsaking them.  I'm not going to try to forsake them.  And I've never heard any good reason as to why I should.
 
Those feelings are what I have, and trying to smother them or stamp them out would seem as mindless and stupid as mowing over a field of wildflowers because some idiot told me that denying myself their beauty would somehow make me a better person.       

It would bring me great joy if a reporter asked Leonardo DiCaprio for his thoughts concerning his former costar’s efforts in spreading Christianist dogma, and Leo sarcastically responded, “I think Kirk Cameron is a fairly decent cocksucker. Other than that, I have no opinion.”

Tim's Ankles

I sometimes notice guys' ankles. In fact I have an early erotic memory about noticing a boy's ankles. His name was Timothy Adkins, and at 14, he was tall and willowy. We had study hall together in 8th grade. Most of the kids clustered together in small groups and socialized rather than focus on school work, and since the librarian wasn't particularly strict, the students did this openly without fear of punishment. On one warm spring day, Tim was visiting his group of friends in study hall, and he leaned back in his chair and propped up his long legs on a nearby table. Of course he attracted my attention immediately, and fortunately I was positioned so that I could observe him discreetly. He had on Levis and Nikes, but he wasn't wearing any socks. For the next few years, wearing sneakers without socks become something of a fad for young men, but in the spring of 1980, just a few months before we started high school, it was something new, and I was mesmerized by the sight of Tim's unexpectedly nude ankles. For twenty minutes, I sat there and stared. By the time the period was over, I was ready to swoon, and the image of Tim with his long legs stretched out with his ankles exposed was seared into my brain and became iconic for me. Tim was an average student and he didn't excel in athletics, but he was attractive and he had a lot of charm. He was laidback, made friends easily, and he usually greeted just about everybody with a warm smile that was ever so slightly mischievous and lewd. Sadly, he died four years later in a car accident just a couple of months before graduation. Even now I often think of Tim when I notice a guy's ankles.

I studied religion and philosophy at WVU, and that helped me frame certain questions and think about life and religion in a rational and critical way. One of the people I studied in depth was Paul Tillich. One of my professors happened to have studied with Tillich when he attended graduate school at Harvard.

Tillich wasn’t interested so much in what he would call the historicity of the Christian Bible or of Jesus. The books of the Bible and the events and people described took place in the distant past, and the question of their literal truth is beyond our capacity to answer in a way that is satisfactory. The study of the language and the cultures involved may have academic significance for some, but it’s not really helpful for the average person dealing with ultimate questions of life. For Tillich, Christianity wasn’t about dogma and a set of finite beliefs one had to attest to. For him, the Bible and the Christian story was mythology, a way of expressing and exploring our fundamental reality.

Tillich thought that religion should address the specific concerns of peoples’ lives, and he believed in the modern world we had to confront, broadly speaking, our anxiety. He didn’t mean mental illness that should be treated by a doctor, but the questions of life that concern us all simply because we exist. Death, knowing that we will one day come to an end. Guilt, knowing that we are moral agents in an ambiguous world. Meaninglessness, what’s it all for and why are we here? These things plague the mind of people who are no longer struggling to survive on a day to day basis, the problems of people who have time to think. Tillich believed that the problem of anxiety stemmed from a sense of separation and that faith was about finding the courage to accept that we are acceptable as we are despite our flaws and our imperfect knowledge.

Tillich believed very much that religion should address the modern situation, and he did not see any problem with science. I’m sure if he were alive today, he would claim that Christians should accept that modern science has expanded our view of sexuality and gender and that the Christian church should fully and completely embrace LGBT people and their reality.

Most fundamentalists don’t accept him as Christian. He didn’t even like to speak of God so much because he believed we should train ourselves to stop thinking of God as a being alongside other beings. He thought of God as what he called the Ground of Being. For Tillich, God was remote and abstract, and he insisted that God or this Ground of Being was beyond our intellectual capacity to the point that our faith must always carry with it a high level of uncertainty.

I found him to be intensely interesting. And his views seemed much more valid than the insipid fundamentalism that I grew up with. But in the end, I didn’t feel I could call myself a Christian or claim I had faith even using Tillich’s broader terms. But he, along with a number of others, provided a kind of ladder for me to climb up out of the simplistic beliefs I was brought up with and provided a vocabulary that helped me better understand my own point of view.

I've got the memo.

I’m likely to post pictures of young men without a lot of muscle or body hair, or artistic renderings of such young men. I know that all such males should be infantilized, labeled as “delicate” and anyone who shows the slightest interest in such males should be viewed with suspicion. We all know that no matter how mature, insightful, intelligent, kind or desirous of love, sex and affection, a thin young man should be thought of as a silly child or a sexless fairy, and that any normal person would be attracted to “real men” like jocks and bears, no matter how immature, irresponsible or dumb they are. I’ve got the memo.  

When I was growing up, I didn’t feel particularly wanted or appreciated. My family, the community and my peers seemed to be uninterested in me. I felt detached from them. My mother was also seriously mentally ill, and I felt I needed to withhold information from her because her reactions could be extreme and unpredictable. When I went through puberty and realized I was gay, I had this huge secret that I had to keep from all these people because I felt unsafe. I realized I liked boys when I was 11, but I never told another soul about that until I went away to college seven years later. Seven years is an eternity to a young person. But I guarded my secret, and I wasn’t particularly forthcoming about anything else. I held a lot in.

I was so withdrawn and shutdown that I even lost touch with my own feelings. I feared I wasn’t a real person or a whole person. The people around me talked freely about all kinds of things, but I had a hard time articulating, even to myself, what I liked and what I hoped for. I was simply surviving, trying to get through life day by day without being harmed. I was like a zombie.

When I went to college, I took advantage of the free counseling service and started seeing a therapist. It took her a long time before she broke through my shell. I would go in, and she would ask me questions about my life, and then she’d ask me what I felt or thought about what had happened. I would usually say, “I don’t know.” I was telling the truth. I really didn’t know. I was so unused to anyone asking or truly caring. And I was unused to situations where I could open up and feel safe. But I kept going back to the therapist, and she kept asking the questions.

At one point, I think she became frustrated with me and said that if she had experienced what I had experienced, she would be angry. She also told me that I had a right to be angry. That somehow touched a nerve. I felt I finally had permission to say what I was really feeling.

When zombie, autopilot Gary faded away and my true feelings rose to the surface, it was, for a very long time, a bloodbath. I was angry, depressed, suicidal, and I experienced mood swings and a lot of anxiety. I acknowledged my fear. I was deeply afraid. The world seemed like a very hostile place to me. I accepted that I was more than simply shy. I was terrified, and I mean I was on the brink of panic most of the time. Little, simple things were extremely stressful for me. Going to the mailbox meant I might run into a neighbor which seemed like facing a firing squad. Going to the Laundromat meant I would be stuck there while I washed and dried my clothes, and strangers could come in and harass me. I feared going to the grocery store because I didn’t know what the cashier might say to me. Going out into the world was like going into a war zone.

We began exploring why I was experiencing the world in such a way. Why did I think the world was so treacherous and dangerous? Who put those thoughts in my head. I had to acknowledge that my home life had been unstable and unpredictable. I had to acknowledge that my family tuned me out in a way. They didn’t know what to do with a boy like me, so they looked the other way. I began picking up on corrosive, extremely hostile homophobic messages everywhere I went. People were always talking about the queers, the cocksuckers and the faggots. I felt the overwhelming hate, but there was no one I could turn to for support. I had to endure it and live through it on my own. I lived in fear that all of that hate would one day be directed right at me and the people around me would tear me apart.

I was angry at my family, at my community, at the kids at school and my society. And after I understood my own feelings--acknowledged them, accepted them, traced them back to their roots--I was able to understand others. My mother couldn’t help being mentally ill. My father was an uneducated country boy who felt overwhelmed by his circumstances. The people in my life were raised to believe and expect boys to be a certain way. And there was this ingrained mythology about sexuality and gender that ran deep throughout society, and all of those who failed to live up to expectations were seen as a threat or a joke. It was okay to abuse such people because they were challenging the status quo in a way that was believed to be unreasonable and unnecessary.

I didn’t exactly forgive all of that, but I understood it better, and that has made it at least a little easier.

I think all religions represent the cultures from which they arose. There may or may not be a spiritual dimension to life, and various religions might reflect that spiritual dimension in some way, but I don’t thank religion is the same thing as the spiritual dimension.

I think it’s a mistake to equate a tradition and dogma and our conceptualizations with something that is mysterious and beyond our comprehension if it is real at all. And I think if we have any connection to a spiritual dimension, it would be a mistake to discount our own intuition and our basic desires. I think it’s more likely that our own gut feelings are more in tuned with transcendent reality--if there is such a reality--than our thoughts, words, rituals and laws.

If there is a god, I think that god is speaking to each and every one of us directly in some way, and it’s okay if we don’t all hear the same thing. Maybe our different opinions represent our limited capacity to understand. Maybe we each of us get a message tailor-made for our specific needs. Maybe we each hear a little bit of the truth, but not the whole truth and not the same truth. Maybe the message gets mixed up with our own confusion.

Toxic Messages and Messengers

The Christian Bible is massive. It was written by many people over a period of hundreds of years. I don't think there is any singular and correct way to interpret it or understand it or approach it. But I think it's good if more can be persuaded to reexamine their “Bible based” hostility toward LGBT people. It’s good for LGBT people in general, and for LGBT youth in particular whose families belong to Christianist churches. But I think the emphasis should be on the safety and well being of LGBT people and LGBT youth in particular, and not in reforming these Christianist churches just enough so that LGBT members will stay.

The message that LGBT people have heard at these Christianist churches is toxic. And the messengers are toxic, too. What the preachers and many of the parents have done to LGBT people in their midst is nothing short of vile. To drive their own children and neighbors into the shadows and to push some over the edge is a crime on par with murder in my view. And the perpetrators need to do more than merely reexamine their beliefs. I believe, in many instances, those delivering the toxic messages are full on psychopaths with an immense empathy deficit, despite the fact many claim to be holy representatives of their god. And I believe in many instances the LGBT people who have fallen under their sway should get the hell away from them as soon as possible and learn to think for themselves.

Private Trail

I would like my own private wooded loop trail about a half mile long, and I would like a series of life-sized bronze statues of two young men placed along the trail. The first one would show them holding hands as they walk along. The second one shows them turning slightly toward one another and giving each other a sweet kiss. The third, a more passionate kiss. Fourth, one boy is on his knees in front of the other. Fifth, we catch them in flagrante. Sixth, they cuddle. I’ll bet I’d walk around that loop ten times a day. LOL

I would tell my 12-year-old self...

I would tell my 12-year-old self that those who put you down and make you feel unworthy are wrong. I would tell him that he is smart and funny and kind and capable of many things. I would tell him that he has to make a special effort to take care of himself because his parents are too messed up to look after him the way he should be looked after. I would tell him to make good friends, nice friends. I would tell him to eat better and to get some sort of exercise even though he doesn't like competitive sports, which is perfectly okay. Go for a jog on that country road behind your house. I would tell him to do well in school because that will be his ticket out of the environment he's in now. And I would tell him that when it's possible, he should go someplace that's more hospitable toward boys like him, and he should look for love. I would tell him to dream of romance and affection and tenderness and that he doesn't have to settle for furtive physical encounters with strangers. I would tell him he can have it all. A good job, a nice place to live, friends, special friends, boyfriends. I would tell him to not let those around him try to limit him or hold him back.

McDonald's

In the summer of 1983, I went to work for McDonald’s. By the end of summer, management considered letting me go. They said I wasn’t working well with the team and that I seemed uncomfortable. Basically I was scared and terribly shy. They told me that I had a week to come out of my shell or they’d give me the boot. The truth is, I didn’t really like being there, but I didn’t want to face the humiliation of telling people I got fired, so I tried harder. I found out later that only one of the assistant managers thought I had tried hard enough, but they gave into him and let me keep my job.

Coincidentally, he is the same man who used to come up to me in the kitchen and in a hushed tone give me instructions on how to please a girl using my fingers and tongue. I was a seventeen-year-old, pathologically shy gay schoolboy, and he was a man in his forties pressuring me to have sex with girls, and he regularly forced me to listen to graphic descriptions of hetero sex at work in front of other people. It was deeply humiliating to say the least.

I felt like an outsider, and I was afraid of getting hurt, so it was hard for me to blend in with the crew. I almost got canned as a result. How ironic that the person who saved my job was one of the people who made the environment so threatening to me.

　

Family

This is me in high school making a funny face at my sister. I never thought of myself as straight, and I never tried to be straight, but I was terrified of anyone finding out that I liked boys. I avoided the topic of sex. If the people around me started discussing sex, I would clam up. If asked about sex, I would give vague, noncommittal answers. I’m sure a lot of people suspected, and I was bullied and some were rude to me--I never really fit in--but I didn’t come out in high school. In the early ’80s, that was very rare, especially in West Virginia. When I was growing up, I never met a single person who was out. Not one.

Things changed when I went to WVU in Morgantown. I was away from home and WVU was a large school--over 20,000 students. When I was living in Oak Hill, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone who knew who I was. I felt observed in Oak Hill. But in Morgantown, I was anonymous. That gave me the freedom to start looking for a community within a couple of weeks after I arrived.

I went to a service at a local MCC. I attended GLM meetings, Gay and Lesbian Mountaineers. I joined a support group for gay students at the counseling center. I went to the gay bar. I met gay people and became friends with a number of them.

But even though Morgantown was the most liberal place in West Virginia, most were still not out in a general sense. We were out to each other at WVU, but we usually didn’t reveal ourselves to straight people. It was like belonging to a secret society. We referred to each other as “family.” Knowing someone was “family” meant you could be open. “Is she family?” “Don’t worry, he’s family.”

Keeping Secrets

I knew I was different from other boys at an early age. When I was a toddler, I wished I had been born a girl because people, especially my father, seemed to want me to be like other boys, but I wasn’t.

I stole a kiss from a boy in second grade. I came into the classroom from lunch, and he was sitting on the first row. We were the only two people in the room, and as I walked past, I bent down and kissed him on the forehead. I thought he was so cute and sweet, so I wanted to kiss him.

When I was eleven, all the boys around me started talking about sex, and that fired up my libido. I tried to imagine having sex with girls because that’s what the other boys talked about. In my fantasies, I was surrounded by a group of boys and one girl. After a while--a few weeks, a couple of months--I realized that I was really interested in the boys and the girl in my fantasies was just a token. She was there because I thought she had to be there. After that, the girl disappeared, and it was just me and the boys.

That’s when I knew I was gay. I can recall sitting out on our back porch and thinking it over. I wasn’t interested in girls in that way. I wanted to have sex with boys. Boys who want to have sex with other boys are gay. I was gay.

I accepted it immediately, and I relished my attraction to boys. I liked being attracted to boys. I liked that feeling. I liked the sexual fantasies. I liked looking at their bodies and imagining what they looked like naked. But I didn’t dare tell anyone.

By then I was already a fairly private, secretive person because my mother was seriously mentally ill and my father did his best to ignore me. My mother was unpredictable, so telling her anything, anything important, seemed scary. And my father would have a fit if I asked for help with anything more complicated than a hangnail. My father had already made it perfectly clear that he was hugely disappointed in me for not being the kind of boy he expected, and I imagined he would never even want to be in the same room with me if he knew I was gay.

So I kept my mouth shut, and I already knew how to keep my mouth shut. I realized I was gay when I was 11, and I didn’t tell another living soul until I went away to college at 18. Seven years is a long time to keep a secret like that, especially when you’re young. Seven years is an eternity when you’re young. All during that time, I was terrified of anyone finding out my secret. I was even afraid of falling asleep if my parents or my sister was in the room because I thought I might say something about a boy in my sleep. I was afraid of falling into a coma or getting a fever because I thought I might reveal who I really was. I was always on guard, so tense and stressed out.

Living like that for so long did something to me, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure it can be fixed. Most people instinctually want and need friends and family around them. But I’m kind of like a stray dog. I keep my distance. I shake and quiver with the desire to be touched and loved, but my fear of abuse is greater than my need to be loved.

Why are you like that?

Most of us have heard the questions. "Why are you like that?" "What made you gay?" It's as if we're being put on trial.  However, our feelings don't need to be explained or justified, and the questions usually don't represent intellectual curiosity but an assertion that the questioner has a right to determine if we are permitted to feel what you feel. The questions come from a sense of entitlement.

"Decent" People

They do try to make you think they are the "normal" ones and the "decent" ones. And they would have you believe that you need to explain yourself to them to their satisfaction.

A couple of years ago, someone I had known sense 7th grade wrote me a private message telling me about her trip to Key West. She complained about the way the gay people there acted, not bothering to hide who they are. She complained about the gay bars with go-go boys dancing on the tables. And she said gay people have an "image problem" and that they present themselves in a way that "decent" people (meaning people like her) don't like.

It really pissed me off because she thought she had a right to talk to me in this way. I thought I was one of her oldest friends, someone she admired and respected, but apparently she thought that because I'm gay, I need to meet with her approval.

She had to go all the way to Key West, Florida, to find a gay bar with go-go boys, but back home in WV, there is a straight strip club fifteen minutes from her house. And I know some other things I won’t mention here. Let’s just say she is hardly a saint, but she would have me believe that she is one of the "decent" people that those like me need to answer to.

We are no longer friends.

My High School Boyfriend by Gary Cottle ...hopefully it will be finished and published in the not too distant future.

When I was in high school, I wanted to write a story about two boys who fall in love and then run away together after they graduate. I started several times, but I could never make it go anywhere. Of course I was young, so my writing abilities weren’t well developed, but the main reason I couldn’t do it was because I had nothing to draw from except for my nascent desire to have a boyfriend. I didn’t know any boys who dated boys. There weren’t any gay couples in the books that I read, and there were very few in the movies I saw. I wanted to tell a sweet, romantic story about two boys, but I couldn’t imagine how it would work. I had the ambition for several years, but then I got older and I didn’t want to think about high school so much anymore. However, the basic concept has always stayed with me.

Not long ago, I decided that now was the time for me to write this story. I just finished the first draft of chapter 4. The story starts in 1983, and it takes place in Fayette County, West Virginia, which is where I grew up. The boys go to school at my old high school.

One of the reasons I couldn’t get the story off the ground thirty years ago is because I couldn’t imagine a romance between two boys being allowed to flourish. The boys would have been hounded, mercilessly attacked, and their parents would have stopped them from seeing each other. So I knew that these boys needed privacy, a lot of privacy.

Shannon’s parents have recently divorced, and Shannon ends up living in a house left to his mother by her grandparents. It’s been abandoned, more or less, for twenty years. Shannon lives there most of the time alone because his mother travels quite a lot.

The house is large, rambling and isolated. I imagine it to be something like the house in this picture, except with a wraparound porch. Glen and his parents just happen to live nearby. The two boys become friends, and over the course of the summer between their junior and senior years, they fall in love in this big house cut off from the rest of the world. 

 

Cleverer-than-thou

I think there’s a significant difference between clever and cleverer-than-thou. I’m talking about clever as in witty, informative, ingenious or thought-provoking. I suppose one could say that a bank robber who escapes punishment is clever, but I mean the kind of clever that is helpful, entertaining or charming. When you say or do something that makes someone smile, something that requires intelligence, talent, thought and insight, that’s clever.

I think many of us try very hard to be clever, but we often fall into the trap of being cleverer-than-thou…the kind of clever that’s mean, that’s meant to put others in their place, the kind of clever that aims to prove we’re better. I suppose you could say it’s the difference between being smart and being a smartass.

When I catch myself trying to be cleverer-than-thou, I don’t like it. I think it’s ugly. Most of us need to be built up, not torn down.

Way Too Narrow

When I was young, I used to think life would have been so much simpler if I had been born a girl. I wouldn't be expected to do all those "guy things", and I wouldn't catch heat for "acting like a girl." When I was older, I also wished I was a girl so that I would be attractive to hetero boys. Now I realize that what I was being taught about what a boy "should be" was simply way too narrow.

Kindred Spirit

In the 1990s, I lived in a little third floor apartment on High Street in Morgantown, West Virginia, home of WVU. I lived a solitary existence during those years. I was no longer in school, I had already been declared disabled, and it would be years before I was on the internet. I was in my late twenties, but I felt old. When I walked around, I would recall things that happened to me in that town when I was younger and still full of hope. I was 27 and full of nostalgia, longing for times gone by, as if I was 87.

My apartment wasn’t exactly the lap of luxury, but it had huge, high windows and a great view. Across the street was the old Warner Theater, The Hotel Morgan, and the old post office. I could watch parades from my apartment, and I often watched people walking up and down the sidewalk. One day, I noticed a young man with a pack full of books on his back coming from the downtown campus and heading toward a residential neighborhood across the bridge below my apartment. I was immediately drawn to him because I intuitively recognized that we were kindred spirits. He was even shorter than me, and I could tell from his appearance and the way he moved that he was gay. There was something else, too. He walked with a kind of determination to get home as quickly as possible. He kept his gaze down, and he never turned his head to the left or right even for a second. This little blond man was terrified, and he made his way down High Street as if he expected to be attacked if he so much as looked at anyone crossways. I could sense his pain and loneliness.

I noticed him again not long after that, and soon I realized that he was showing up at about the same time every day, so I began to watch for him. As he passed my apartment, I’d wonder about him. I imagined that he, too, probably lived someplace alone and that he hardly ever talked to anyone. I longed for us to become friends. I imagined waiting for him down on the steps in front of the old post office and calling to him as he marched past. But I knew I would never do that. One day he stopped coming, and I never saw him again.

The Lady Doth Protest Too Much

I worked for Wal-Mart for a while when I was in my mid 20s, and I can recall being in the break room with a few co-workers one particular day. Someone mentioned something about visiting California, and this one guy who was maybe a little younger than me said he would never go anywhere near California. I asked him why, and he actually stood up, rubbed his behind--it was a rather nice little behind, too--and said, “I don’t want anyone going in back there.”

I found the comment, and the accompanying gesture, so ridiculous that I almost laughed at him. I didn’t bother explaining to him that gay men, as a rule, are not rapists and that most men in California are straight just like everywhere else.

I got the sense that what he was afraid of was that being around openly gay men would be tempting to him and that he might actually have to admit he was, on some level, interested in the idea of being with a man.

Sometimes, not always, but sometimes there is something to that Shakespeare quote "the lady doth protest too much.”

Alone Again

I imagined that I lived in a quaint little cottage in the woods, and a beautiful young man came to visit. He showed up at the door wearing old-fashioned clothes and asked if he could take a bath. He was not at all shy about letting me watch him, and I wasn’t shy about looking. I found him to be beautiful, and admiring him seemed natural, at least in this alternate reality. Then I was distracted. Maybe another thought interred my consciousness or maybe I heard a sound from outside, and in an instant, the young man was gone and I was once again alone in my drab apartment.

Not much has changed.

To varying degrees, I’m attracted to all sorts of people, but I realized I am primarily, almost exclusively, attracted to men when I was eleven, and, by and large, attracted to a specific type of man--youthful, slim as apposed to muscular, not very hairy, more pretty than handsome, sweet and softhearted as apposed to what we think of as traditionally masculine. Soon it will be forty years since I noticed this about myself. I’ve experienced no fluidity. Time has gone by. I have matured. My body has aged. But I’m still basically the same person I was when I was young.

If I was a vampire and lived hundreds of years, I might notice some fluidity, but in the next twenty or thirty years, I don’t expect to see much.

This month’s Bel Ami calendar picture...

This month’s Bel Ami calendar picture features models Jack Harrer and Andre Boleyn. They are nude, but they’re not doing anything sexual. The picture depicts intimate friendship. They are in front of a piano in a well appointed room. Andre is seated at the bench with his hands on the keys, and Jack is leaning down behind Andre with one arm around his chest and one hand on the keys. Andre is smiling, and both of them seem relaxed and at ease. I think I would have passed out if I had seen this gentle, sweet homoerotic image when I was 16.

Just because they go to church and sing about Jesus doesn't mean they're not trash.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no debate about LGBT rights. We are here. We are human beings who deserve equality. We deserve to be loved and treated fairly by our families. We deserve to be raised in supportive homes. We deserve to be nurtured for who we are while growing up. We should not be taught that our natural feelings are sinful when we’re young and vulnerable.

I don’t care what the parents believe, teaching children that being LGBT is sinful instills self-hatred in LGBT kids, and it creates a hostile environment. This is inexcusable. Some may truly be confused by the issue, and I think it’s good to help those people understand. A lot of us have a hard time understanding something that’s not part of our experience. I know that I do sometimes.

But those who dig in their heels and refuse to hear us and use their Bibles as an excuse… I have contempt for those people, and I don’t think their “religious objection” is in any way legitimate.

LGBT people were persecuted for so long that we didn’t even know ourselves for centuries, but for the last 150 years or so, there has been a growing awareness that LGBT people exist, that we are not diseased, and we don’t chose to be who we are just so we can offend anyone’s god.

If there ever was a time to debate this issue, it is now long over. In my view, those who refuse to accept this are craven, wicked, despicable human beings who would rather cling to their silly, infantile dogma than face reality, even if that means their own LGBT children will die as a result.

I lived among people like that most of my life. They’ve taken from me all their going to get. I have no sympathy for people who can’t stop pulling Bible quotes and vicious, bigoted lies out of their asses long enough to come to terms with the fact that LGBT people live among them and deserve fairness and respect. These bigots have been informed, but they don’t want to hear it. Just because they go to church and sing about Jesus doesn’t mean they’re not trash. I want to stay as far away from them as possible.

Every day I celebrate the male human form and sensuality here on my wall. A long time ago, in my head, I rejected the prudery and the shame I was taught when I was young. But somehow it doesn't translate into how I live my life. I'm still embarrassed by own body and its needs. If I could, I would choose to be invisible, and it has been many years since I've sought the company of another man for the purpose of sharing intimate pleasures, and it is difficult for me to find the will to take care of my body.

If I ever had a kid, I’m sure I’d share what I think about a great many things, but I hope I would have the humility to make it clear over and over again that I’m sharing my opinions and not facts. I wouldn’t want to fill the kid’s head with a lot of junk, put a bow on it, and claim the things I’ve said are sacred because what the hell do I know?

There’s a million philosophies out there. People have been trying to figure out life for a very long time. Many have come up with some interesting ideas, but nobody has made a cohesive and comprehensive statement about life that everyone can agree on or readily accept.

That makes me wonder about something, if there is a spiritual truth to be had, can it really be contained and conveyed using language?  I suspect that if anything like a god is real, it is billions of times larger than any religion or anyone’s personal beliefs or experiences.

I wonder if we really need to talk about it so much. I wonder if we need to put labels on everything and try to define everything, especially things that are beyond our comprehension, and what sort of god wouldn’t be beyond our comprehension?

I also think it’s best if we let kids learn and experience the world and come to their own conclusions.

Gore for President

Clinton was the first president I voted for. I was eligible to vote in 1984, but I was young and even though I followed the news and was probably more informed than the average teenager, I didn’t have great confidence in my opinions. Then... in 1988, I was much too sick to focus on politics much. So in 1992, I was finally ready to vote and I voted for Clinton. By 2000, I was suffering from Clinton fatigue. I felt burned by DADT and DOMA especially. I’m afraid that this effected my feelings for Gore, and I thought Gore was a rather odd man, too, emotionally distant and robotic. So I wasn’t all that enthusiastic about Gore, but I voted for him anyway. Now I wish I had devoted every waking moment following the primaries to campaigning for him. That probably wouldn’t have made a dime’s worth of difference, but golly, the next eight years amounted to a presidential train wreck.

There's nothing to celebrate.

It disturbs me that some are actually celebrating the acquittal of George Zimmerman. I didn’t follow the trial closely, so I can’t say whether or not the prosecution failed to prove its case, and I know that proving someone is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt is a high standard. But I also know that Trayvon Martin went out that night to get Skittles and George Zimmerman went out with a gun looking for supposed bad guys, and Martin is the one who is dead. I’m not a lawyer, and, as I said, I didn’t follow the trial, so I don’t know if Zimmerman should have been found guilty, but Zimmerman did set into motion a chain of events that led to an innocent young man’s death. Trayvon Martin is dead. Dead and gone. His life is over. And he would not have died when he did if Zimmerman hadn’t reacted to his presence in such an irrational way.

Many of those who are celebrating are saying that Zimmerman had a right to pursue and confront Trayvon Martin, and they seem to think that his actions were excusable if not entirely reasonable, but from what I know, Zimmerman based his suspicion of Trayvon Martin primarily on three things: his age, his sex and his skin color. Trayvon was a young black male. But so what? We know that he was staying in the neighborhood at the time, so he had a legitimate reason to be there, and he went out for a snack. I don’t think he was peeking in anyone’s windows. I don’t think he was poking around anyone’s car. I don’t think he was harassing anyone, or turning over garbage cans, or engaging in vandalism. So why would it be reasonable or excusable to find him suspicious?

I think it’s ironic that Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer because the night Zimmerman stalked and killed Trayvon Martin, Martin was a member of the community, at least that night he was, and it was Zimmerman’s job to look after his welfare. Zimmerman killed someone he was supposed to be protecting.

But those who are celebrating Zimmerman’s acquittal say Zimmerman had his rights, and it was excusable if not reasonable for him to have found Martin suspicious. And many go on to claim that Martin should have responded differently, and that it was up to him to defuse the situation either by getting away from Zimmerman or calmly reasoning with him. But what about Martin’s rights? Why wasn’t it excusable if not reasonable for him to have found Zimmerman suspicious? Why was he obligated not to pursue and confront Zimmerman? What many seem to conveniently forget is that for Trayvon Martin, it was Zimmerman who was the weirdo in the neighborhood acting suspiciously. If I had been in his shoes, if I had been walking home alone at night from the store and Zimmerman started following me, I would have been scared to death.

This was a tragedy. I don’t think there’s anything to celebrate here. I know that bad things happen to people all the time--that’s just the kind of world we live in--but even if we can’t prevent every senseless death and every injustice, I think we can do a better job at maintaining a civil society in which a teenager, no matter his or her skin color, can feel reasonably if not absolutely safe while walking to and from the corner store for candy.

Condemned by Gary Cottle

When I was young, I didn’t feel like I fit in. This was especially true when I was among groups of boys. These all-male situations where any hint of femininity was forbidden terrified me. I feared I would be exposed. I feared the other boys would realize I wasn’t a “real boy” and turn on me. My muscles would become tense. I would get massive headaches. My palms would sweat. And I could think of nothing else except my intense and overpowering desire for the experience to be over. And I feared that I’d one day be thrust into an all-male environment from which I could not escape.

When I was a teenager, it was required by law that I register for the draft. The draft had been abandoned by then, but the government wanted to keep track of all the teenage boys in the country in case the draft was reinstated. Filling out that card and handing it in at the post office almost caused me to pass out. Every war movie I had ever seen was harsh and ugly, and the men were hard and mean. The young men I met who were in the military seemed rough and ready for a fight. Being in a war in and of itself is scary enough, but I was sure I wouldn’t even be able to survive living in close quarters with the guys who supposedly would be on my side.

I also feared going to prison for the very same reasons. I had no plans on breaking the law, but I knew that throughout history people had been incarcerated for merely being perceived as a threat…to the government, the established order, whatever. And considering every where I turned I ran into extreme homophobia, I figured I could easily be thrown into prison for some trumped up reason and no one would care. I knew that at one time being gay was an actual crime. I think there was a part of me that was convinced I would one day end up in prison, and I dreaded that day. I lived like a boy who was condemned.

10 Reasons It’s Good That I Don’t Belong To A “Bible-Believing” Fundamentalist Church

1. I can sleep in on Sunday mornings.
2. I can watch porn with abandon and not feel guilty. Hey, it’s like the nature channel with people…and costumes…and frightening politically incorrect scenarios…and spectacularly bad acting.

3. If I had money, I could use it to actually help the poor rather than give it to my church.

4. If I visit a foreign country, I don’t have to worry about telling anyone about Jesus.

5. I can laugh at the idea of people riding dinosaurs like ponies in the olden days.

6. If a liberal Christian friend asks me why I wasn’t in church, I can say I was busy masturbating, and I’m likely to get a thumbs up.

7. I don’t have to marry a woman so she can cook and clean for me.

8. If I meet a nice guy on Grindr, I don’t have to throw him back and repent. I can even ask him to marry me.

9. If someone says to me, “According to the Bible…”, I can say, “But not according to George Takei.”

10. I don’t have to worry about anyone going to hell because I don’t believe in hell.

Queer Country Boy

What I am is a queer country boy from West Virginia, and I know a prudish, snooty, condescending, self-important poser who wants everyone to believe he’s from uptown when I see one.

--Gary Cottle, to all those superlative gay boys who think they’re too good for the femmes, drag queens, sluts, leather daddies…

Something I posted on Facebook.

I share a lot of pictures that I find on the internet. I’m sure many of you have noticed this. A significant percentage of these photos are celebrations of male beauty. I’m not sure that everyone realizes this, but not every picture I post represents my own tastes. I’ll post a picture of a guy if it’s a good picture, and if I think someone, anyone on my friends list might appreciate it. I do this because it makes me feel good when I pick one that brings a lot of positive feedback. I enjoy the camaraderie of appreciating male beauty with others openly and without shame.

Most of my life this joy has been denied me. I grew up terrified that someone would find out my secret, my dirty, shameful little secret. I’m very shy, so even after going away to college, I didn’t have a huge circle of friends. Then when I became emotionally unstable, I was even more socially isolated. By my late 20s, I didn’t really have any friends left. I spent most of my time alone in my apartment. Then after my head surgeries, I ended up moving back in with my parents in the small town of Fayetteville, WV.

After my parents died, I moved to California thinking it would be easier out here, but I landed in one of the straightest towns in the state. I was here four years before I met a fellow gay person who lives in the area.

For the record, I’m not especially keen on bears. I’m not crazy about an abundance of body hair, or large muscles. I’m also not crazy about exaggerated displays of traditional masculinity. Scowls and cigar smoking just doesn’t do much for me. I’m not saying that bears and muscle guys or he-man types are bad people. I’m not saying that I could never care for someone like that. They just don’t usually draw my eye.

I like boyishly cute guys. I like young men who are more pretty than handsome. I like guys who give the impression of being sweet and gentle. Maybe that’s because I’ve longed to have a special friend like that in my life ever since I was a teenager, and it never happened. I like short guys. Maybe because I am short myself, and I like to imagine holding a guy and looking directly into his eyes. I like thin guys. Maybe because I’ve always been a little chunky even when I was younger, but I longed to be thin. I like especially tall, thin guys with long legs, too. I don’t know why I like young men like this, I just do.

I don’t think it’s at all likely at this point that I’ll have a serious relationship with one of these young men. I don’t think it’s at all likely that I’ll have an ephemeral relationship with one of these young men. I’m nearly 50, penniless, significantly over weight, disabled, extremely shy and I have Bell’s palsy. I can’t even smile without looking insane. But I hoped that here I could at long last feel safe enough to admit to and own my feelings.

However, I don’t often feel very safe here. I can post pictures of hairy men with big muscles all day long and nearly ever single comment will be glowing. But if I post a picture of someone that I especially like, I usually get at least one negative comment, and sometimes it’s one negative comment right after another. Sometimes they might be mild, but sometimes they’re pretty harsh. Sometimes the comments have actually made me cry.

Perhaps I’m being overly sensitive, but I think I’ve earned a right to be sensitive. And I think I deserve to be able to express myself openly and freely without shame, at least here.

I have talked about this on more than one occasion, but it seems to just go over the heads of some. I don’t understand why people feel the need to post negative comments about the pictures they don’t care for. It almost never happens when I post pictures of art, or nature or puppies, kittens or architecture. But if I post a picture of a guy who doesn’t have a lot of hair or muscle, or if he doesn’t appear to be manly, the fangs will come out.

I appreciate my Facebook friends. You all keep me company. You inspire me. You teach me. And in many ways, you support me. So it’s unlikely I’ll go anywhere any time soon. But if I feel the need to hide a part of myself even here, and self-sensor something as benign as finding someone like Dylan O'Brien cute, then I wonder what exactly am I doing here.

Just so you know, I’m very vulnerable. I’m easily spooked and scared away. And after all the attacks, put downs, threats and hostile comments that began when I was a toddler, I’m especially touchy about anything relating to sexuality or expectations of gender conformity. 

I really hate to be told that I *should* feel a certain way or believe something that can't be proven and doesn't seem right to me.

All of my life I have had people around me, including family members who were supposed to love and support me, who indicated to me that what I think and feel doesn't matter, and that I should either agree with them or shut up.

It caused me to feel isolated and alone. I didn't feel like I could trust anyone. I didn't feel loved or appreciated. It made me feel like I was basically nothing, and that if there was anything of me of any significance, it was somehow invisible, even to me.

I sometimes wondered why I couldn't talk freely about what I thought and felt like other people do. When I was young, I actually worried that maybe I wasn't a whole person, that maybe part of me was missing and that I was just blank.

Later I realized that I had repressed and hidden everything because I was so afraid, and this caused my personal development to be stunted. I became a stranger even to myself. I didn't know who I was, what I liked, what I believed. I had only a few interests, and I couldn't talk about them in depth with anyone.

They're Coming Back

There was an old logging road at the edge of the housing development. They were forbidden to ride their bikes up there, but they kept hearing stories about people seeing strange lights in the sky while driving on that road, so one night they devised a scheme to slip away from their families and investigate. Only one came back. Search parties were unable to locate the other three. It seems they had vanished without a trace. The lone survivor was unable to give any explanations. He lost the ability to speak, and he’s spent the last three decades in a quasi catatonic state. But on the thirtieth anniversary of the terrible event, he started to show signs of becoming more alert, and that evening, he said something: “They’re coming back."

 

Photographer unknown

Subjects unknown

Short fictional story by Gary Cottle

Sex can be shallow. It can be fun. A fetish might be involved. It can be deep and meaningful. It might be spiritual. It might be messed up. What the participants do might be weird to some, creepy, scary. But as long as it’s consensual, I don’t care. Sure there are certain things that put me off, but I don’t have to do those things myself, and I don’t have to dwell on those things. People have to find their own way, and I try to remember that I’m certainly no expert in finding the right path…for myself or anyone else. Sometimes I forget and get a bit preachy about things that really aren’t any of my business. When that happens, just ping my head with a peanut and tell me to pipe down. LOL

I’ve forgotten his name, but he was in my class in second grade. Even back then I was drawn to boys who were noticeably softer and gentler, a bit femme. He just seemed like a little sweetheart, and I adored him. One day when I was coming back from lunch, he was sitting at his desk which was on the first row. I had to pass by him to get to my desk. He was alone, and he was looking down at something, a book maybe. I spontaneously decided I wanted to kiss him, so I bent down and gave him a peck on his forehead. He was stunned and said, “You kissed me.” I went on to my desk. Others started filing into the room, and he said, “He kissed me.” He was flabbergasted, and I grinned like the cat who swallowed the canary.

If life were perfect, sweet and kind, if the universe catered to my specific needs and desires, I would remember a warm summer evening right after I graduated from high school when a beautiful and tender young man came to visit me at my childhood home in West Virginia bearing a gift, a bouquet of wildflowers. He had been looking for crawdads with his daddy in a nearby creek which is why he is barefoot, and when he saw the flowers along the bank, he picked them for me. We sat outside on the porch in the swing holding hands until well after dark. Before he left, he invited me to go fishing with him, his daddy and his sister the next morning. He assured me that I didn’t have to touch the crawdads…or the fish if I were to catch any. Both of our families knew about us, and it was no more of an issue than the barking of tree frogs in the night.

 

I don’t like it when people approach me and pretend to be interested in a friendly chat, only to reveal that they’re looking for an opportunity to tell me about their religious beliefs. It makes me feel used, like their not even seeing me as a real person. Some Christians act like their fellow human beings are like fish to be caught and dragged back to their church. I think it’s akin to what some men do who go through life looking for sexual conquests. They’re not really interested in the people they put the moves on. They just want to have sex with them and move on to the next one.

Some Christians are caught up in the prideful idea that they already know everything and they’re okay, and you’re not going to be okay until you believe what they believe. They don’t appreciate people as individuals with experiences, insights and beliefs of their own. They just go about trying to collect them. Apparently whoever has the biggest collection wins a special prize.

I don’t think it’s just LGBT people who have a problem with Christians who do that. I think being treated and reduced to a potential catch turns a lot of people off. I think if you care about someone and if you’re really interested in them, you don’t initiate contact with them with the intention of changing them or with the condescending attitude that you know everything and they don’t know anything unless they agree with you.

A Summer With Rose by Gary Cottle

Kayla offered to look after her grandmother Rose the summer after her junior year. Rose had been diagnosed with cancer early in January, and everyone knew that more than likely she would need someone to be there with her full time by June. Kayla’s parents agreed to pay her the same amount of money she would have earned working the counter down at Pete’s Drycleaners. Kayla was to cook, do the shopping, clean the house, take care of the yard and do the laundry.

Rose lived in a small, rural community. The place was pretty isolated, and Kayla didn’t know anybody there except her grandmother, and she was much too busy to make friends. When the home healthcare people were in the house, or when Rose took a nap in the afternoon, Kayla would go swimming in a nearby pond by herself or take a solitary walk along the railroad tracks.

She was a little lonely sometimes, but not nearly as lonely as she feared she would be. That’s because Rose turned out to be better company than Kayla expected. Kayla and Rose became friends that summer. They began to relate to one another as fellow women and fellow human beings.

When Rose was up to it, she and Kayla would sit outside on the porch and talk while sipping iced tea. Kayla felt comfortable telling her grandmother about certain incidents that she had, up until then, kept secret. She told Rose about how guilty she felt for breaking the heart of the boy she dated the year before. Kayla broke up with him even though he was a nice young man who had been good to her. She simply wasn’t in love with him, and she came to realize that she shouldn’t stay with him out of a sense of pity or loyalty.

Kayla also told her grandmother about getting lost while backpacking alone the summer after she graduated from high school. She wandered around for a day and a half before she finally stumbled on a trail that led her back to civilization. By that time, she was in a state of near panic. She feared she would die before anyone found her. Kayla was too ashamed to tell anyone about what had happened because she had made such an issue of how she was an adult and how she should be treated like one.

Rose revealed that she had gone to Woodstock and that she had gone topless there for several hours. She was nearing 30 and she just had Kayla’s mother a few months before. She felt her youth slipping away from her, so she left her baby with her sister for a few days, and she did something fun and crazy. She also told Kayla about an affair she had with a grocery store manager in 1977.

The young woman began to have a greater appreciation for the fact that Rose had a life aside from being a wife, mother and grandmother. Rose had been young once, and for her, it didn’t seem like it was all that long ago. She had dreams, hopes, aspirations, and unfulfilled longings, disappointments, and a few noteworthy triumphs. Rose had passed through all the stages of life, and now she was at the end.

Kayla cried for Rose. She knew she was scared, and she knew she loved her life and didn’t want to let go. The girl also cried for herself because she knew she was going to miss her grandmother. She knew that she wasn’t going to be young forever, and one day it would be her turn to die.

Kayla then laughed at some of the funny things Rose had said, and when she got to her feet and began walking back to her grandmother’s house, she was filled with gratitude. She had been given this chance to get to know Rose before it was too late.

Subject unknown
Photographer unknown
Fictional short story by Gary Cottle

30 years ago in the PBS series Cosmos, Carl Sagan used his pretend starship to help us conceptualize the vastness of space. He would get onboard and talk about how if you traveled at the speed of light, it would still take you thousands of years to get from one point to another. He condensed the history of the universe into a single cosmic calendar year to help us conceptualize the enormous amount of time that has passed since the Big Bang, which took place on day one. The earth did not form until September. And human beings have only been around for the last couple of minutes of the last day in December.

We are nothing but flyspecks that will exist for a nanosecond. I think the idea that there is a supreme being out there having conniption fits about what we do with our knobby bits is born of ego. In the larger scheme of things, what the hell difference could it possibly make? I guess some people look at the world around them and they’re struck by the wonder and mystery of it all, and some look at the world around them and say, “This is all about me.”

I figured out I was gay when I was 11, but before that, I was completely uninterested in sex. Boys would tell me things, and I simply didn’t get why they wanted to talk about that, or why they had naughty expressions on their faces when they talked about that. Then I got it. It all hit me like a ton of bricks. It was like a light had been turned on.

I never really believed it was wrong in any kind of deep moral sense. I knew most people despised it, and that had a profoundly negative effect on me. I felt rejected, unwanted, unworthy. But wrong in the sense that murder is wrong? Never that.

The only person in my family who had a true interest in my inner life--my thoughts, attitudes, ideas, feelings--was my mother, but because of her mental health, her reactions were wildly unpredictable. And since everyone else made it pretty clear that they didn’t care, or that they would use personal information to ridicule me, I was already quite used to being secretive by the time I realized I was gay. It came naturally to me. I was very guarded, and between the ages of 11 and 18, I locked up almost all of my private thoughts.

As a result, I was desperately lonely. Nobody really knew me. I didn’t let anyone get too close. And even though I pushed people away, a great part of me believed that nobody knew me because I wasn’t worth knowing. I didn’t even know myself, and I worried that I wasn’t a complete human being. I was so used to holding things back, sometimes it seemed blank on the inside. I was also terrified, filled with anxiety. I lived in fear of someone finding out I was gay. I feared my home life would become intolerable, or even more intolerable than it already was, if my family found out. At school, I feared for my physical safety.

The only time I ever wanted to join a church and become a Christian is when I’d watch Billy Graham on TV, but it wasn’t the faith or the theology that appealed to me. It was the sense of community and belonging that Graham seemed to be offering. I wanted that. I didn’t have anything like that, and I desperately needed it. So I’d sit there and I’d promise God that I’d stop thinking about boys. But I never kept the promise for more than a few hours. I didn’t even try. I didn’t really want to stop thinking about boys because merely thinking about them gave me tremendous joy. I could count on that joy, and I did. I relished it.

I don’t know how I managed the stress. I’m sure it would kill me now. I’m not exaggerating about that. I think that if I had to go through a week of that now I would die of a heart attack. But despite the stress, I never wanted to give up my feelings for boys. I instinctively knew that my feelings were real and meaningful, something essential, and I found the claims of fundamentalist Christianity to be suspect. 

When I was 19, I fell in love with a boy I worked with at the Dean of Student's Office at WVU. We became very close that year, but I never told him I was in love with him. I didn't want to risk losing his friendship which I valued greatly. He was older than me, and he graduated that spring, so we drifted apart. Last night I dreamed of him. I offered him a Coke, and he said he preferred Pepsi, so I went out to the store and got him a Pepsi. He didn't know I had to make a special trip, and I didn't tell him. Ah, the chance to pamper and baby him a little...if only in a dream. 

Erotic Dream

I had a very erotic dream last night. I was in bed with a cute and sweet young man. We were good friends, and we were simply resting. I didn’t expect anything of a sexual nature to take place. Then my friend told me he wanted to say something. Whatever it was obviously made him nervous because he was having a hard time spitting it out. I took hold of his hand and assured him that he could tell me anything. I wondered what had him so worked up. I feared he was about to tell me something awful. Finally he said, “I want to show you my pussy.” I wasn’t expecting that at all, and I didn’t know how to react, so I jokingly asked, “You have a cat?” My friend pouted and said I was making fun of him. I told him that I wasn’t and that I was flattered that he’d want me to see his pussy. He then asked me if he could actually show it to me. I agreed. He proceeded to get up on all fours in the middle of the bed and took down his shorts. I could now see the thing he wanted me to see, and it was beautiful. I wondered if he wanted things to end there. Did he just want me to see it, or did he want something more? I asked if it was okay if I touched him. He said yes, so I reached out and stroked one of his smooth cheeks. That’s when it ended, or I can’t remember anything beyond that. It was so tender and gentle and loving, and so spontaneous and unexpected.

I think in this case a dream really is a wish your heart makes.

I once read about a Christianist minister who, after having underwent bypass surgery, claimed, without any shame or sense of irony, that people with AIDS deserved the disease because of the behavior they had engaged in.

Some thoughts regarding One Nation Under God (1993)

I just watched One Nation Under God (1993) which is about “ex-gay therapy.” It’s available for instant play on Netlfix.

Of course I’ve heard the religious condemnation all my life, and of course I was aware that the medical establishment thought of and treated homosexuality as a disease until the ‘70s, but it was horrifying to hear these seemingly rational, intelligent people try to give “ex-gay therapy” a scientific basis in 1993 by rehashing all this stuff about emotionally absent fathers, overbearing mothers, a need to connect with your innate masculinity, etc. Those theories were out of date twenty years earlier, and the people interviewed in the film were espousing them as if those theories were an undisputed fact. Even the psychologists and psychiatrists who were talking that way decades before should have followed their training as scientists and questioned their assumptions. To have these supposed professionals channel quackery from the 1950s as if no one had called into question the psychoanalytic model is inexcusable.

I think the pseudo intellectuals and fake scientists fool a lot of people. They hear all the five dollar words and the seemingly complex reasoning processes, and they assume the person talking is smarter and knows more than they do. But these “ex-gay therapists” don’t know anything. They’re offering theories about a fantasy world that only exists inside their heads. They are the ones who are crazy. They are out of touch with reality.

One of the things I learned from having a parent who suffered from schizophrenia is that just because a “theory” or a thought process has internal logic does not mean that it actually pertains to anything that exists in the real world.

To someone who doesn’t know any better, Esperanto may sound like just another language like French or Japanese, but it’s an artificial language. There is no Esperanto literature or poetry that reflects the culture of native speakers. There’s no Esperanto love songs that people listen to on the radio on the way home from work. It’s all fake, just like the homosexuality that the “ex-gay” theorists talk about. They assume their mumbo jumbo is correct, and they ignore anything that would dissuade them. That’s not intelligence or science at work there, no matter if they do manage to ape the language of science well enough to fool the average person.

And then to have Sy Rodgers come on as the president of Exodus, this person who was supposedly successful in transforming himself… It was just so bizarre and surreal listening to him preach about how you don’t have to be different, you can choose to conform to expectations. The organization he represented goes around telling people that their god made everyone straight, and you’re either male or female, no room for grey. Rodgers is about as grey and as ambiguous as you can get. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with that, but to preach against it when anyone with eyes in their head can clearly see that your rhetoric doesn’t match who you are is insane.

______________

   In the film, it was said that in the 1950s and 1960s, gay male patients were shown pictures of men like this and they were shocked if they looked at him too long.

　

　

Today the BSA lifted its ban on gay youth but chose to keep the ban on gay adult volunteers and employees. They saw this move as a compromise. It was an attempt to walk a find line between a more accepting public and their homophobic Christianist church sponsors who threatened a revolt against the BSA if they jettisoned their ban on gays altogether.

The message to gay youth is clear: We will tolerate you when you’re young, but you will never truly belong. You will never be accepted. There is no place for you among us, and once you grow up, we don’t want to see the likes of you around here any more because we think you are evil.

When you’re young, and you’re just getting a sense of who you are as an individual, and you have people telling you this, people who are supposed to love you, care for you and look out for you, the people who are supposed to be on your side--Mom, Dad, Grandma, Uncle Joe, your minister, your Scout leader--before you know how to respond to it and defend yourself against it, it can ruin you, and even if you manage to survive it, you may be scarred for life.

I’ve now gone six months without gaining any weight. Before that, I steadily gained weight for five years. It’s now time to start going in the opposite direction, and over the weekend, I actually dropped a few pounds. I’m also not retaining as much water, which is good, very good.

After my father died, and I lost my home in West Virginia, I moved to California to start over, but I guess I really didn’t have the will. I was tired, and a big part of me wanted to give up. I don’t mean to suggest that I’ve been horribly depressed every single day or that I’ve not had a happy moment. It’s not been horrible all the time, and there have been many happy moments. I guess I lost hope. I couldn’t imagine my life getting any better, and I wasn’t sure it was worth it, but lately I’ve been thinking maybe it is worth it.

We were reminded yesterday that we live in a universe that is actively trying to kill us, and it will eventually succeed. So why help it along? My life may not have turned out the way I wanted it to, or the way I expected it to, but, for now, I still have one. And there are things that I want to do before the time runs out, things that I think are still within my grasp…like getting my novels published, and visiting my friend Dagi in Germany. I want to spend more time in the green summer woods back east, too. Maybe I’m getting a little of my momentum back. I can almost say it and mean it through and through, or mostly, or mean it enough anyway: I want to live, baby.

My parents got me one of these when I was a kid.  I didn't like it.  I was a very passive boy and abhorred violence.  The idea that boys were expected to defend themselves when physically attacked really bothered me.  I knew I wasn't a fighter.  I felt shame and I lived in fear.  I didn't want to be hurt, but it seemed that being vulnerable meant you deserved abuse.  So what were my parents thinking when they bought me such a gift?  That's the trouble, they weren't thinking.  They simply went to the toy department and picked out something that was supposedly for small people with penises. 

I think there’s a wall that separates us from those who think it’s wrong for us to be who we are. I don’t mean those who are merely confused or misinformed, but the ones who still insist that it’s wrong no matter how much we try to explain it to them. I think this might be especially true of other LGBT people who think it’s wrong. It feels like a betrayal. I have no interest in “building bridges” with such people, and I don’t see the need for it. I can coexist with them without cozying up to them. I’m not the one trying to outlaw anyone’s life. I’m not the one saying anybody is hell-bound. If someone is like that, I don’t want to be around them until they stop being like that.

I think there will come a time, perhaps sooner than later, when Christian beliefs regarding sex and sexuality will be viewed as antiquated and as absurd as Christian beliefs regarding astronomy in the 15^th century. And those who refuse to accept the advances we’ve made in our understanding of sex and sexuality will be regarded as shamefully and willfully ignorant and cruel. If the Christian religion survives, I suspect the period we’re living in right now will be seen as a dark and embarrassing era which will serve as a reminder that some Christians can be profoundly stupid and hurtful. As time goes on, more and more people will come to realize that this game we’ve been playing at, this idea that there are strictly two sexes and everyone falls neatly into one or the other category, that the sexes need to be separated, that different roles need to be assigned to them and strictly enforced, that one sex needs to be the master of the other, and sexual pleasure needs to be confined to two married people of the opposite sex… I think all of that will one day be seen by nearly everyone on earth as silly and intellectually and morally bankrupt as believing we are at the center of the universe and everything we see in the sky is revolving around us.

After I graduated from high school, my sister and I went to Myrtle Beach for a few days. One evening we had to stand in line before being served at a restaurant. There was a group of about four college boys ahead of us, and I was tired and bored, so without realizing it, I began staring at them. After a while, I heard one whisper to another, “That boy and girl behind us are watching us.” He seemed a bit confused. Well, I was looking at them because I thought they were cute. I can’t speak for my sister. LOL

Since I am always in the process of becoming, I am not ex-Gary or post-Gary but pre-Gary. I strive to be me. Some, however, think I should be George.

When my parents died, I left my beloved West Virginia--verdant, green West Virginia--and moved to the desert town of Merced on the other side of the country in California in part to get away from people who interacted with me as if my point of view and my thoughts and feelings were of no consequence. If I dared say anything to certain people, what I got back was “praise Jesus” or “give it to Jesus” or a Bible verse or a sermon. The implication always being that I already did or I should completely accept their beliefs. My individuality had no value whatsoever to these people. They didn’t even see me as an individual. I was either already part of their hive or I needed to be converted. All those big fake smiles and the forced and pretend positivity was suffocating and exhausting.

About a year after my head surgeries, my father, out of the blue, told me that he didn’t think I had thanked God for allowing me to survive. It dawned on me that he had hoped that episode in my life would compel me to accept his religious beliefs. I could have easily turned the tables on him and told him that after nearly losing me, it seems he would finally be prepared to accept me for who I am. I could have, but I didn’t.