Conform or be buttfucked. – Josh Homme
Some things make being alive a whole lot more exciting, simply by the fact that you’re alive at the time they’re going on. At the risk of sounding lame, the gay struggle is just about the most fun I ever have watching the news. This is history in the making, one of the 4 or 5 things that our generation will be judged on how we handled it.
I got an interview with Ryan LeMay of SPECTRUM, the gay-bisexual-transgender-lesbian-curious experimentation in college-straight allies support and activism group, a few days before their “National Coming Out Day” rally on the campus mall, on October 11th. The whole transcribed dialogue is over 38 pages, it’s 8:54 a.m., we have to get the Flip Side to the printers, and I’ve been up on pizza, Mountain Dew, and cigarettes for 19 hours now. So I’ll just be rushing through this, giving you my own pre-formed opinion, while drawing choice quotes from Ryan just to reinforce my own points. Stick with me. See if you end up learning something anyways.
What can be said about the Gay’s and the bullshit they swallow that hasn’t already been said? Well, for one, I follow it like informational crack cocaine. It interests me to no end. It’s a watershed to so many things that stretch beyond something so simple as who goes to bed with which private organ between their legs. The gripe one always hears every year everywhere is that the world is losing its moral high ground. A planet adrift in the blackness, blown off the course of what it had once been sure of. Grey shades are coming, folks. They have been for a while. It’s going to get worse, and I’d warn you to keep an eye out for them if I thought it was a bad thing. The quirks and twists of personality people have to deal with on a daily basis are only going to get more imaginative, and I enjoy hearing about it. Not even on just a roller-coaster ride sense of excitement level.
To make a curt point, since I have to keep this all at around a 1,400 word size, nothing you find or are given is a guarantee anymore. Feel the malaise around? That’s you doubting whether your upcoming college degree is a guaranteed proof-positive for a life of opulent splendor. That crueler you’re about to eat might be shortening your life, maybe more than the starvation it’s avoiding would be worth fighting against. But enough depressing bullshit. Here’s the good news: life is losing its meaning, there’s no where to run, and the rules are a thing of the past.
What the hell does this have to do with gay people, Phil? Well, enter Vern. Vern is 16 years old, and lives in my noggin. He’s a hypothetical, folks. A cliché of the gay discussion. Vern’s a smart kid. He knows that coming out of the closet would invite non-stop abuse, from a fine cross-section of high-class Americana, for the rest of his life. He could keep it under wraps, of course. Everyone could. Every single one of the lovely members of that fine subculture that is presently illegalized from declaring their eternally bonding love in a courtroom could just suck it up and swallow, and live with it. Their lives would be easier. So why do they do it? They same reason anyone does anything that seems like a terrible idea: it’s gut. They have to. They feel like if they don’t, their stomach walls will burst. So we have a trade-off here, don’t we? The deeper workings of the body’s humors, soul and heart, actually have a bigger pull on people than one might want to admit.
But not for everyone, true? A large part of the fight for LGBTA groups is supposedly “recruitment”. Sounding the horn and getting the sweet note of acceptance to ring in on every closet case and half-assed fence sitter who says they aren’t sure. Let the true colors fly, as they might say. But my brain turns this all around on me. If the LGBTAers are working with the premise of self-confusion and self-denial, what’s stopping it from working the other way? “Gay man comes to his senses!” “Conversion for GEE-SUS!” Exaggerations, perhaps, but the point stands. I’d put money there’s at least one person who feels like the homosexual servings aren’t his idea of the best hot lunch in town. It doesn’t even matter if you couldn’t find him, or even if he didn’t exist. My mind’s already off.
I’m white. Find a black person around campus. They’re black. Got that? Good. Can you look in the mirror and tell you’re not gay? I can’t. For someone who works in doubt for his breakfast lunch and dinner 7 days a week, this is an interesting quandary. I’ll never be sure if I’m gay or not. And short of arm tattoos following a post-birth genetic scan for traces of The Gay, you’ll never be sure either. Quick head count, find the queers in the room around you. God they could be everywhere, couldn’t they? Anywhere. Check the signs. Anyone well dressed? Anyone talking politely with someone of the same sex in your vicinity? They might be flirting? Are there any violently loud acts of same-sex copulation in the cubicle near you? Well, sorry to tell you, but that’s about the only sure-fire sign you can trust. That shit about lisps, weak wrists, and fashion sense is a lot less surefire than you’d think. Just like everything else around you, huh? You feel the world crumbling around you, don’t you? Welcome to my kingdom. Take my hand, and I will guide you through the Land of Utter and Total Uncertainty. At this point, the only vestige of sexual security I have is that I still masturbate to women. That’s something I’m sure of.
Time for quotes! A bunch of them.
“No one has an easy life. Everyone has problems. So even if I was straight I’d still have problems. So why would you say, ‘Oh, I’d make myself straight. Then life would be fine and dandy.’ Well, no. Everyone has shit, so why should I pity myself? ‘I’m gay. Nobody understands.’ I understand. Myself at least. That’s all that really matters. For anything.
“A woman had just come to terms with being a lesbian, and she asked if there was a certain way she should behave now that she’s out. I made sure to go up there and say, ‘Don’t let anyone tell you that because you’re a lesbian you act this way, or do this, or you dress this way. You do what you’ve always done. You be who you are.’
“It’s ingrained in your being. Being gay doesn’t mean dressing a certain way. You have the attraction, the physical, emotional, spiritual, you have that. You still know. You can lie to everyone around you, but you can’t really lie to yourself. There’s the fear of acceptance, of course, but facing that is part of growing up.”
I couldn’t write anything better than what Ryan’s put into words here. This returns us Vern, and his seemingly masochistic choice he’s about to make. No one’s going to be there with the homo-pamphlet. There is no national registry. He doesn’t get classes in this. He’ll have support, of course. But the choice of how he lives with this decision is something he’ll be living with and remaking every day for the rest of his life. Every day he might find someone who hates him, or someone who backs him up. But lets be honest, more likely more of the former than the latter. That’s what happens. That’s how it is and has been. Might be for while, too. But he’s got The Gut. He can’t live any other way. If he’s lucky, before long he’ll find out that every shitty day after The Change is still better than the best day he had when he was still lying to himself.
And in a sweeping touch, I bring it all around to the point I made in the beginning. Those are your choices. Politeness and pain, or courage and pain. Get along with everyone, or take a chance and don’t. I’m not even going to tell you the same tired “adventure” bullshit I’ve always heard whenever this topic comes up. It doesn’t have to be exciting. Just know that whatever you do, somebody on the other side is going to try and give you shit for it. But they don’t have to live with your gut. You do.
The gay fight is nothing more than latest battle scene. It symbolizes everyone who’s ever wanted to be some way, simply because they felt like they had to be that way. The only thing left was for them was to keep kidding themselves, try to play the round peg in the square hole game, and fail just like everyone else ever had. The sooner you quit, the sooner you might start winning. The Gut makes the rules. All you can do is hope the chips fall someplace right.
No comments:
Post a Comment