It's good being gay.

I was shamed. I was made to feel like an outcast, a weirdo, a freak, worthless and unwanted. I was made to feel afraid. But from the moment puberty hit and I realized I was attracted to members of my own sex at age 11, I knew in the depths of my being that my attraction was a good thing. My attraction made me feel alive. Being sexually excited was a thrill. Experiencing crushes was a thrill. Wanting to spend time with certain boys was a thrill. Adoring the Hardy Boys was a thrill. I was awake and connected to this world at last. It made everything burn brighter. I liked this world, and one of the reasons I liked it was because it had people in it I thought were beautiful, sexy, funny, alluring and sweet, and those people just happened to be members of my own sex. I have no patience with those who say it’s wrong or that I should resist this natural urge that has been such a positive force in my life because of dogma they learned at church. While growing up, I heard the things the preachers said about boys like me. They didn’t know what the hell they were talking about.

Homo Evangelist

I admit it, I am a homo evangelist. Not an evangelist in the Christian sense, or even in a broader religious sense. But I believe that homo desires, homo sex and homo relationships should be celebrated. I believe homo attraction should be honored in the world at large and in ourselves to the extent that it exists. I realize that not every attraction should be pursued. Maybe the person you want is straight or in a monogamous relationship. Maybe you’re simply too emotionally vulnerable to get into the game right now. There are many reasons to exercise restraint. But I don’t think it’s right to defame and ignore homosexual attraction simply because it’s homosexual in nature. And I don’t see how you can celebrate and embrace homosexuality without saying the condemnation of homosexuality is wrong.

Fever

I was very sick in my 20s. I saw my therapist at least once a week, sometimes twice. I kept her phone number with me at all times. I even had her home phone number and her permission to call her in the middle of the night if necessary. (I never did.) I saw my psychiatrist at least once a month, sometimes twice. I had blood tests done at least once a month because I was taking so many medications at such high levels, my doctor had to constantly make sure he wasn't poisoning me.

Every time I saw my doctor, he would ask me about my libido. And that's because, to be quite frank, a young man who isn't horny is probably in trouble. That is a warning sign.

I believe that the fever is life. It is the thrust and force of life. It is life sustaining energy. It's not simply sex, or the desire for sex, but hope, a need to connect with people, a need to connect with the world, a need to stay alive and be a part of the mystery of life. I think to deny it is to deny life and our own existence.

Love Songs

This is from the film Les chansons d'amour (Love Songs). Ismaël, the one with the dark hair, is a young widow. He fully expected to live the rest of his life with his wife, but one night when they were out on the town, she unexpectedly dropped dead from an undiagnosed heart condition. Ismaël is not only heartbroken but profoundly depressed because life no longer makes any sense, and he doesn’t know how to continue. He doesn’t know how to stop needing this young woman he expected to be by his side for decades to come. When he meets Erwann, a university student, he thinks he’s just a young, silly flirt who wants to play. Ismaël doesn’t take him seriously, and besides, he never considered having a relationship with a man before. But Erwann is persistent, and eventually Ismaël realizes that he might be interested after all. Ismaël gives in to Erwann, but he makes it clear that his grief has gutted him, and in this song, he is imploring the boy to make love to him in such a way that it rekindles his passion and desire for life. He demands that Erwann burn when he sinks into his bed of ice.

Desire for a man is what brings Ismaël back from the brink of oblivion. This is fiction, of course, but I think it reflects life. It’s beautiful and real. And it’s important. I think if we ignore these needs, if we attempt to deny them and to smother them we run the risk of destroying ourselves. And I strongly suspect that if there is any kind of spiritual dimension to life it is intertwined and closely connected to passion.

Some of my thoughts concerning Before Midnight

I can’t believe that it’s been almost twenty years ago since I first saw Before Sunrise. I loved the idea of traveling through Europe, connecting with a stranger in a foreign city and spending the evening walking the streets and engaging in one long, circuitous conversation. I could imagine bursting with creative energy and sharing all of my half baked ideas about life, existence and love and listening to this other person do the same. It all seemed so romantic and wonderful, and it gave me hope that something like that might happen to me.

I liked the second film in the series, too–Before Sunset. It was great seeing the characters again after nine years, and it was nice to know that their one night together still meant something to them. It wasn’t merely one of those youthful experiences where both parties are so in love with being in love, they do a lot of projecting and avoiding and find out later that they were fooling themselves. Jesse and Celine really did bond that summer evening when they were in their mid-twenties.

Now, after another nine years, there’s another installment–Before Midnight. Jesse and Celine are in their 40s, they’ve been together for a number of years, and they’re the parents of two little girls. It was good to see that they’re both still healthy, vibrant and full of energy. But I thought there was too much dialogue. I can’t believe that a couple in their 40s who have been together for so long would chatter so much. At times, it came across as a little forced to me, and the characters seemed a bit pretentious. Throughout the film, tensions grew, and finally they began to argue. The things they said to one another… So hurtful and cruel. It was painful to watch. And as someone who suffers from PTSD and extreme social phobia, it reinforced my worst fears about getting involved with people. Relationships are so much work. The more you open up, the greater the chance you’ll say something that will be misunderstood, the greater the chance that you’ll reveal something that will be unacceptable to your friend or partner. The closer you are, the greater the chance you’ll find out things about your friend or partner that you won’t understand. I fear hurting people, I fear getting hurt, and it’s hard for me to keep my emotions in check, so this movie, in a way, was more scary than a horror story. Goodness, if I had to regularly go through all of that, I’d throw myself off a bridge. I couldn’t take it.

I hope Jesse and Celine are still together nine years from now, but you can tell if their relationship survives, it’s going to be complicated.

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.