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I was so withdrawn and shutdown that I even lost touch with my own feelings.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.