Cancun, July 2011
Buenas noches en el Parque de las Palapas. Same bench as me, with a dozen others empty nearby. Guapo enough. Within five years of being 20, in which direction I don't know. A cop, park policemen, security guard, maybe just a man in a uniform walking by, looks and sizes up the situation, smiles at me in a way that says, "how pathetic." It occurs to me there are a dozen ways this might end, and very few of them are good, and the only way to ensure one of the unfavorable ones doesn't happen is to leave the situation. It occurs to me that hiring a rent boy goes on the list with buying drugs and getting a tattoo as things I don't intend to do in a foreign country, at least one not named "Netherlands." I'm reminded of Terry Pluto's line that no story that begins "At three in the morning..." is likely to end well.
I stand, say "Buenas noches" again, and I'm on my way. He doesn't follow, doesn't leave. I didn't misread entirely, I'm sure of that; I'm not sure exactly what he was looking for, but it likely wasn't sitting on a park bench chatting with a tourist. Not after asking if I spoke Spanish.
An evening of -- what? What else was I going to do? In Playa del Carmen? Entonces es mejor to have an experience of some kind, and be hospitably disposed to it.
So now I'm in a stylish bar called Taboo with meseros guapos. Mine is no different in age, to look at him, from the kid in the park. Probably over 18 but not by much. An evening that demonstrates my exact thoughts about that idiotic song in that idiotic movie on the bus the other day: "It's the climb." It's not, as Wordsworth taught us, the climb, and not the summit, but what happens after we pass the summit, miss what we were looking for, and suddenly see, unvarnished by hope and expectation, reality.
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
Showing posts with label queer. Show all posts
01 January 2015
16 August 2014
christopher street
I started to tell this to Yeshwant when we were having dinner after attending the Pride march in Manhattan this year. I started to choke up when I told him, which surprised me. "You touched something," he said, kindly. I thought I should write some of it down before I forget.
Growing up in Ohio in the '70s and '80s, I was a late bloomer. I didn't come out until after I had moved to California after college, and so spent my high school and college years in frustration and self-loathing and fear, the way so many of us have and do. It's hard to believe what a different time it was, from the vantage point of just a few short decades later. There were some gay guys at my high school, of course, none out but some we suspected, and of course there were a few out men and women at Kenyon. But a remarkable few, it seems now, and inevitably they were the folks who didn't fit in as well to begin with and in a sense lost little by being out - or maybe they chose to be out and thus lost little by not fitting in in other ways.
And so I was threatened and so resolved not to be like them in ways I now regret. What can you do? It was a different time. All you can do is try to forgive yourself.
But I knew I was gay, deep down, and sometimes I even allowed myself to be aware of it. After I learned to drive - I think maybe while I was still in high school, but in any case certainly during the vacations when I was in college - I would drive myself to the main library in downtown Columbus. I would go there to do homework, to work on research papers, or just to have a refuge from my world and my life. Inevitably I would roam the periodicals; I would read the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the greater detail about the Indians and Browns, or read about roller coasters in a magazine about amusement parks, and just browse and see what else existed that they weren't telling us about at the boys' academy.
One day I found the magazine called Christopher Street. I can't say why I picked it up; surely some of it had to do with the title including my name. Maybe I looked at the cover and saw it was about gay stuff. In any case, that's what kept my interest. I'm pretty sure it was the only periodical about gay stuff in the entire library system. There were some books, but they were iffy; a lot of them were of either the "how not to be gay" genre or the "the gays are taking over" genre. Christopher Street was up to the minute (or the month, anyway), and it was catholic in the topics it covered, and it was unashamed.
So I would pick it up and read it, maybe in the stacks, maybe in a corner somewhere, glancing up every so often to make sure I wasn't being spied, by someone I knew, or by a disapproving librarian. I don't particularly remember what the articles I read were about. A lot of them were about AIDS. Some were probably about politics that I didn't especially understand. There was some artistic photography, I think - not nearly enough. And the ads were as interesting as the articles, of course. I remember at times getting aroused, and having to deal with that while I was trying to sneak it back to the shelves without being spied. It wasn't so much the content that made me hard, I think; it was just the idea of homosexuality being on display - and unashamed.
Does it seem sad, me hunched in a corner of the library poring over the pages of Christopher Street? It was; it added to my frustration. But it wasn't, too. It was the rare opportunity to feel hope and imagine liberation.
Eventually, the summer after I graduated from college, I visited New York. I stayed for a couple days with my college classmate Steve in his tiny apartment in Cobble Hill, around the corner from where I'm living now. During the day he would go off to work and I would go exploring; we would meet up for lunch maybe - I distinctly remember carrying out the ludicrous corned beef sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli and eating half of them by a fountain, and him carrying two half sandwiches home - two more lunches, which mattered on his publishing industry salary. I don't really know what else I saw during those few days; some of Central Park, maybe. The urban liveliness of the Upper West Side was something I had never seen until then, and I was naive enough not to care about its yuppiness. I think I went to MOMA.
And of course, one afternoon, I made my way to the West Village and found Christopher Street. It wonderfully did not disappoint. I fell in love with the whole Village, which was then and still is, even in its gentrified form today, more human-scaled and inviting than any neighborhood I've been to. And I walked up and down the street, mostly just being there, and feeling the glorious anonymity that New York can confer upon you, especially glorious if you're 22 and gay and not yet out and face-to-face for the first time in your life with the possibility of not living in permanent and unrelieved shame. Have I used that word too many times? Then it was the feeling of the liberation I had imagined suddenly, for a few hours, becoming real.
I went to a newstand where they sold, alongside Time and Newsweek, and probably Christopher Street, a dizzying array of gay porn. I bought some, without thinking much about the question of where I was going to put it when I got back home. I'm not sure why that matters, other than completeness. Maybe it was the closest to expressing my sudden liberation that I could manage.
Anyway: sooner or later I went back to the rest of the world. New York never stopped calling me after that; Christopher Street never stopped calling me after that, even now that I'm here. On the way home from Jersey City, more often than not, I hop off the PATH train one stop early, walk up the stairs, and emerge into the light of the late afternoon. To my right, down the hill, is the pier; to my left the couple of bars and sex shops that are left among the salons and shirt boutiques. It's still a reasonably raffish mix - less than it used to be, of course, but you can still spot the carefree child underneath the grown-up demeanor the world keeps forcing on her.
Growing up in Ohio in the '70s and '80s, I was a late bloomer. I didn't come out until after I had moved to California after college, and so spent my high school and college years in frustration and self-loathing and fear, the way so many of us have and do. It's hard to believe what a different time it was, from the vantage point of just a few short decades later. There were some gay guys at my high school, of course, none out but some we suspected, and of course there were a few out men and women at Kenyon. But a remarkable few, it seems now, and inevitably they were the folks who didn't fit in as well to begin with and in a sense lost little by being out - or maybe they chose to be out and thus lost little by not fitting in in other ways.
And so I was threatened and so resolved not to be like them in ways I now regret. What can you do? It was a different time. All you can do is try to forgive yourself.
But I knew I was gay, deep down, and sometimes I even allowed myself to be aware of it. After I learned to drive - I think maybe while I was still in high school, but in any case certainly during the vacations when I was in college - I would drive myself to the main library in downtown Columbus. I would go there to do homework, to work on research papers, or just to have a refuge from my world and my life. Inevitably I would roam the periodicals; I would read the Cleveland Plain Dealer for the greater detail about the Indians and Browns, or read about roller coasters in a magazine about amusement parks, and just browse and see what else existed that they weren't telling us about at the boys' academy.
One day I found the magazine called Christopher Street. I can't say why I picked it up; surely some of it had to do with the title including my name. Maybe I looked at the cover and saw it was about gay stuff. In any case, that's what kept my interest. I'm pretty sure it was the only periodical about gay stuff in the entire library system. There were some books, but they were iffy; a lot of them were of either the "how not to be gay" genre or the "the gays are taking over" genre. Christopher Street was up to the minute (or the month, anyway), and it was catholic in the topics it covered, and it was unashamed.
So I would pick it up and read it, maybe in the stacks, maybe in a corner somewhere, glancing up every so often to make sure I wasn't being spied, by someone I knew, or by a disapproving librarian. I don't particularly remember what the articles I read were about. A lot of them were about AIDS. Some were probably about politics that I didn't especially understand. There was some artistic photography, I think - not nearly enough. And the ads were as interesting as the articles, of course. I remember at times getting aroused, and having to deal with that while I was trying to sneak it back to the shelves without being spied. It wasn't so much the content that made me hard, I think; it was just the idea of homosexuality being on display - and unashamed.
Does it seem sad, me hunched in a corner of the library poring over the pages of Christopher Street? It was; it added to my frustration. But it wasn't, too. It was the rare opportunity to feel hope and imagine liberation.
Eventually, the summer after I graduated from college, I visited New York. I stayed for a couple days with my college classmate Steve in his tiny apartment in Cobble Hill, around the corner from where I'm living now. During the day he would go off to work and I would go exploring; we would meet up for lunch maybe - I distinctly remember carrying out the ludicrous corned beef sandwiches from the Carnegie Deli and eating half of them by a fountain, and him carrying two half sandwiches home - two more lunches, which mattered on his publishing industry salary. I don't really know what else I saw during those few days; some of Central Park, maybe. The urban liveliness of the Upper West Side was something I had never seen until then, and I was naive enough not to care about its yuppiness. I think I went to MOMA.
And of course, one afternoon, I made my way to the West Village and found Christopher Street. It wonderfully did not disappoint. I fell in love with the whole Village, which was then and still is, even in its gentrified form today, more human-scaled and inviting than any neighborhood I've been to. And I walked up and down the street, mostly just being there, and feeling the glorious anonymity that New York can confer upon you, especially glorious if you're 22 and gay and not yet out and face-to-face for the first time in your life with the possibility of not living in permanent and unrelieved shame. Have I used that word too many times? Then it was the feeling of the liberation I had imagined suddenly, for a few hours, becoming real.
I went to a newstand where they sold, alongside Time and Newsweek, and probably Christopher Street, a dizzying array of gay porn. I bought some, without thinking much about the question of where I was going to put it when I got back home. I'm not sure why that matters, other than completeness. Maybe it was the closest to expressing my sudden liberation that I could manage.
Anyway: sooner or later I went back to the rest of the world. New York never stopped calling me after that; Christopher Street never stopped calling me after that, even now that I'm here. On the way home from Jersey City, more often than not, I hop off the PATH train one stop early, walk up the stairs, and emerge into the light of the late afternoon. To my right, down the hill, is the pier; to my left the couple of bars and sex shops that are left among the salons and shirt boutiques. It's still a reasonably raffish mix - less than it used to be, of course, but you can still spot the carefree child underneath the grown-up demeanor the world keeps forcing on her.
And there are the kids, of course. The other day, I walked out of the wind tunnel of the PATH station's stairway, and there were four or five beautiful young people standing there, studying, or at any rate holding, a "wanted" flyer handed out by the police. All of them black and gay or queer or trans*, standing, in the way William Whyte described, at the busiest spot in the block. A guy in the same sort of business-casual crap that I was wearing brushed past them with a snarl as he headed in to catch his train. I couldn't hear what he muttered exactly, and that kept me in my place, but I wanted to chase after him, yell at him "Leave those kids alone! Don't you know where you are? Don't you know this is sacred space?"
It is that. Not for me, exactly; every time I walk up the street or linger, less often, on the pier, I feel like an interloper, a tourist, maybe an anthropologist, maybe a middle-aged man seeing the old crush who because of time and chance never quite became his lover. But for those kids: so unlike any version of me that ever was, and yet such kin, occupying that same place that isn't school, isn't home, where the possibility of becoming the fullest possible expressions of themselves exists. It's a relief and a joy, every time, to know that that Christopher Street still exists.
03 March 2014
cigarettes and chocolate milk
So, the thing with G blew apart in the last week, and we got some closure today. And I'm grieving, and I don't know what to do with that, except maybe keep grieving. I've been living in this so much the last week it feels ridiculous to write about it. And yet: I'll forget. And maybe writing and reflecting will lead to insight.
There is, at this point, so much I want to say to him, to tell him. I keep thinking of things. And I keep resisting the urge. Right now I want to text him:
"Thanks. The silence/space was helpful, but hard. Just an observation.
"You once said you swore I was the most thoughtful guy on scruff. I'm willing to accept number 2, maybe, but you obviously left someone out of your assessment.
"Hasta la proxima."
And I think I will just let it go, because while I want to say those things, there are a million things I want to say, and right now I just don't get to say them. And it occurs to me that he might be dealing with his own grieving process and not really want any more messages out of the ether.
I think that occurs to me because I read back over our chats. I screen-capped them all, and maybe some day I'll transcribe them. Or maybe some day I'll have grieved enough and delete them. But I was surprised to see, after the pain and silence of the last couple weeks (and the whole period when I had texted him and he wasn't responding and I couldn't figure out what was going on) - after all that silence, I was surprised to see how easy everything had been, and how much we seemed to like each other (and particularly how much he seemed to like me). There were so many times when he complimented me for being charming, or sexy, or whatever. I lost sight of that. I lose sight of that. I get into things and only see wonderfulness and ease and beauty on the other side of the table, and look at it from inside my swirl of confusion and self-doubt and anxiety.
But anyway - reading over the chats again I realize why this is hitting me so hard.
Two songs framing things. "Nice and Slow" by Max Frost, which I must have heard sometime around the first weekend we met. (Check of facebook - I had posted it the day I heard it. January 11. Which I think was probably two days after we first met at the Rocking Horse.) And "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," which I was listening to while working on grant applications, and probably while or just before chatting with him, and which keeps getting stuck in my head - and which I posted on facebook today, and which so perfectly describes the way I'm feeling.
G had said, after I shared "Nice and Slow" with him, that he loved finding new music. Hurting that I never shared this one with him.
The last two nights, Reg was out (hosting karaoke Friday, directing Terry's play Saturday), and I couldn't stand to be alone. It was clear where things were going. Thursday I had talked with Candice about it, over beers and barbecue; she was encouraging and it gave me hope that maybe things weren't just going to blow apart. But Friday came and went without news, even after I texted G asking if he could let me know when he had a few minutes to chat. And Friday night I poured bourbon down my throat, and although it didn't take the pain away, exactly, it did make it a little more tolerable, a little more distant maybe. And Saturday came and went without news, and by Saturday night I was pretty unable to be with myself again - and poured beer down my throat, and talked with Richard/Kay, and Candice again, and stumbled home at 3 am reassured by the certainty that sleep would come quickly.
As I walked to the diner on Saturday night, I knew it was a troubling pattern that was forming. I was in too much pain to think about doing otherwise. But I told myself it needed to be the last night drinking for a while. So today, I've been making my way through it. When John suggested coffee at around 1:00, I jumped at it, and though I wasn't sure I was going to tell him the whole story, that's what ended up happening.
What I mostly wanted to tell him about was the realization I had Friday night. I had texted G during the day, and there was no response; I spent the whole train ride to Passaic thinking "he'll text me when he's done with work," and that never happened. Walking from the station to the dealership, to pick up the car, I did a walking meditation. Along the way I observed how sad I was, and I stopped to think about how that fit into the five hindrances - since sadness isn't numbered among them, but it sure seemed to be clouding my vision.
And I realized how much of my sadness was anger, at myself, at the world - anger that I wasn't the person I wanted to be - in part, maybe, that I wasn't and am not queer - anger that I didn't get to date as a teenager, that I never had the nerve to wear little animal hats and get stoned and pierced and tattooed and make out with boys, that I've made so many practical and wrong choices that have me, at 48 - and this was the big revelation - I'm finding myself attracted to men who embody all of those things and might in some way enable me to recapture the life I didn't lead. Anger and self-doubt, the fear/knowledge/delusion that I will never be able to be any of those things, and that the version of me that I have been and am is inferior.
I told John some version of that. He reached across the table, and when I didn't take his hand right away, he reached farther. I don't know what made him do that. I was really a surprise. And it was a lovely gesture. And he told me he thought I was experiencing what it was to grow older. That seems right.
Right now, I'm experiencing what it's like to be sober. The hangover of the last two days is still with me, but it's more that I'm living with and experiencing and observing this pain and grief in a way I hadn't the last two days. I have, oddly, no regrets about the way the weekend went. I have no regrets about getting drunk, about the way I reached out, about having sat on my apology for a week while I sorted things out, about the exact text I sent to G. I wouldn't change a word.
I hope he and I get to meet again. I hope we get to be some version of friends. I think we might; or I think that's delusional; or I think that's the stage of grief called denial; or I think it just reflects a tiny bit of optimism about myself and the person I can be and the life I can live. It seems like it might be unhelpful to dwell on it too much.
There is, at this point, so much I want to say to him, to tell him. I keep thinking of things. And I keep resisting the urge. Right now I want to text him:
"Thanks. The silence/space was helpful, but hard. Just an observation.
"You once said you swore I was the most thoughtful guy on scruff. I'm willing to accept number 2, maybe, but you obviously left someone out of your assessment.
"Hasta la proxima."
And I think I will just let it go, because while I want to say those things, there are a million things I want to say, and right now I just don't get to say them. And it occurs to me that he might be dealing with his own grieving process and not really want any more messages out of the ether.
I think that occurs to me because I read back over our chats. I screen-capped them all, and maybe some day I'll transcribe them. Or maybe some day I'll have grieved enough and delete them. But I was surprised to see, after the pain and silence of the last couple weeks (and the whole period when I had texted him and he wasn't responding and I couldn't figure out what was going on) - after all that silence, I was surprised to see how easy everything had been, and how much we seemed to like each other (and particularly how much he seemed to like me). There were so many times when he complimented me for being charming, or sexy, or whatever. I lost sight of that. I lose sight of that. I get into things and only see wonderfulness and ease and beauty on the other side of the table, and look at it from inside my swirl of confusion and self-doubt and anxiety.
But anyway - reading over the chats again I realize why this is hitting me so hard.
Two songs framing things. "Nice and Slow" by Max Frost, which I must have heard sometime around the first weekend we met. (Check of facebook - I had posted it the day I heard it. January 11. Which I think was probably two days after we first met at the Rocking Horse.) And "Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk," which I was listening to while working on grant applications, and probably while or just before chatting with him, and which keeps getting stuck in my head - and which I posted on facebook today, and which so perfectly describes the way I'm feeling.
G had said, after I shared "Nice and Slow" with him, that he loved finding new music. Hurting that I never shared this one with him.
The last two nights, Reg was out (hosting karaoke Friday, directing Terry's play Saturday), and I couldn't stand to be alone. It was clear where things were going. Thursday I had talked with Candice about it, over beers and barbecue; she was encouraging and it gave me hope that maybe things weren't just going to blow apart. But Friday came and went without news, even after I texted G asking if he could let me know when he had a few minutes to chat. And Friday night I poured bourbon down my throat, and although it didn't take the pain away, exactly, it did make it a little more tolerable, a little more distant maybe. And Saturday came and went without news, and by Saturday night I was pretty unable to be with myself again - and poured beer down my throat, and talked with Richard/Kay, and Candice again, and stumbled home at 3 am reassured by the certainty that sleep would come quickly.
As I walked to the diner on Saturday night, I knew it was a troubling pattern that was forming. I was in too much pain to think about doing otherwise. But I told myself it needed to be the last night drinking for a while. So today, I've been making my way through it. When John suggested coffee at around 1:00, I jumped at it, and though I wasn't sure I was going to tell him the whole story, that's what ended up happening.
What I mostly wanted to tell him about was the realization I had Friday night. I had texted G during the day, and there was no response; I spent the whole train ride to Passaic thinking "he'll text me when he's done with work," and that never happened. Walking from the station to the dealership, to pick up the car, I did a walking meditation. Along the way I observed how sad I was, and I stopped to think about how that fit into the five hindrances - since sadness isn't numbered among them, but it sure seemed to be clouding my vision.
And I realized how much of my sadness was anger, at myself, at the world - anger that I wasn't the person I wanted to be - in part, maybe, that I wasn't and am not queer - anger that I didn't get to date as a teenager, that I never had the nerve to wear little animal hats and get stoned and pierced and tattooed and make out with boys, that I've made so many practical and wrong choices that have me, at 48 - and this was the big revelation - I'm finding myself attracted to men who embody all of those things and might in some way enable me to recapture the life I didn't lead. Anger and self-doubt, the fear/knowledge/delusion that I will never be able to be any of those things, and that the version of me that I have been and am is inferior.
I told John some version of that. He reached across the table, and when I didn't take his hand right away, he reached farther. I don't know what made him do that. I was really a surprise. And it was a lovely gesture. And he told me he thought I was experiencing what it was to grow older. That seems right.
Right now, I'm experiencing what it's like to be sober. The hangover of the last two days is still with me, but it's more that I'm living with and experiencing and observing this pain and grief in a way I hadn't the last two days. I have, oddly, no regrets about the way the weekend went. I have no regrets about getting drunk, about the way I reached out, about having sat on my apology for a week while I sorted things out, about the exact text I sent to G. I wouldn't change a word.
I hope he and I get to meet again. I hope we get to be some version of friends. I think we might; or I think that's delusional; or I think that's the stage of grief called denial; or I think it just reflects a tiny bit of optimism about myself and the person I can be and the life I can live. It seems like it might be unhelpful to dwell on it too much.
28 January 2014
the limits of imagination
I'm sitting having drinks with G. The Rocking Horse Cafe. We're chatting about everything and nothing, the way you do on one of these Internet meetings. Not the weather, thank god, but jobs and movies and how we got to find ourselves in New York, in Chelsea, at the Rocking Horse on this first meeting.
At one point, well in, maybe after we've each gotten past the initial inclination not to share anything important, he's talking about growing up where he did, a suburban town, spending lunch money to take the bus to the city where he would hang out with a couple other fiends playing hooky. They asked where the gay part of town was and went there. Found a community center that was hospitable to gay kids. And then took the big step of crossing the threshold.
We all did that, right? We all found ourselves on one side of a door, and asked ourselves if we were really going to pass through it. Wondered what was on the other side, and knew that there was really no turning around after that, even if we immediately turned around. The question had been asked, and it had been asked out loud. For G it was a community center, for me it was a phone call to Stasha, for you - whatever it was for you.
G says, "It was a big step." And it was, of course. I picture him, standing there between two friends - for whatever reason, I'm picturing two white guys, but whatever - and weighing, and then somebody decides to step forward, and the others follow. I can see the scene as clear as if I were standing on the other side of the door looking at them. I know just what that felt like.
And so we talk a little more about that, and then other things.dogs and cars and driving through the west. Everything and nothing. And I'm listening, and suddenly it strikes me that when G was standing there, he was a teenage girl.
The picture changes. That's easy. G is now a pretty fifteen year old with processed hair, maybe dyed pink. I don't know why, and the reality is, that's probably totally wrong; G was more likely a butch girl with cropped hair and a canvas army jacket. It's perfectly easy to remake the picture any number of times.
But I suddenly have no idea what it felt like to be standing outside that door.
I can find correlatives in my own life to almost anything; I've been an outsider, lived in strange cities, traveled to places where I didn't know the language. I've been out of work and broke, and so can understand that part of the feeling of being poor; I've been hopeless, if not about money, and so maybe can understand that part of being poor, too. I'm gay, and sometimes can use that to try to understand what it feels like to be a woman, or to be some other kind of minority. Here, I got nothing. i literally can't imagine what it might feel like to think, feel, know your body is the wrong gender - let alone the number of steps along the way to that (metaphorical) door. It's not that I don't believe it, not that I think (I think) there's something wrong with being a trans person. It's just that I have reached the limits of my imagination.
That feels wrong. It feels like a lack of empathy. I hope it's not, and I hope it goes away. For now it's troubling and fascinating.
When I was in school, they would talk about a finite universe. I would try to picture what that meant. What happens when you reach the end of the universe? Do you run into a wall? Isn't that wall something, and isn't that something part of the universe? And what's on the other side of the wall? Or is there just nothing? And isn't that nothing part of the universe? What is not something and not nothing?
This conundrum would keep me up at night. It's keeping me up at night again.
When you don't have answers, one of the things you do is turn to poetry. So, Robert Hass, "Heroic Simile."
That's all I got for now.
25 January 2014
the year of being queer
On January 5 I posted on Facebook:
In truth, resolutions 1 and 3 were there to justify the second one. Or to frame it, or to obscure it a little bit so it wasn't hanging out there by itself attracting all the attention. I'm not sure I would choose that again. The fact is, almost nobody commented on resolution 2. Maybe they didn't know what to do with it. But I wanted people to ask what it meant.
And my answer is, I don't know.
This started out of a period of loneliness and horniness, when Reg was in Detroit and I was back in Brooklyn, and I was probably feeling entitled to do what the hell I wanted as a result of the house thing and as a result of the Manhunt thing. So I'd downloaded a couple of phone apps, Grindr and Scruff, and on this particular evening, the fourth of January, I was preferring Scruff and I was browsing the profiles and maybe occasionally giving or getting a woof, I don't know. And then I came across a profile with a possibly hot but slightly goofy picture, with lots of things that matched to me and lots of things that didn't. I could quote it here and maybe at some point I will. But for now it's enough to say that it was a profile that was rare in its openness, and in its - I'm not sure how to say this - quiet and thoughtful tone. Somebody had put some effort into this profile. (More than I had in mine.)
Anyway, there were two items that my attention snagged on. One was that it said "I hope you: don't mind that I'm a lil' on the shy side & you're cool with me being trans (FTM)". Other than it being atypical, I don't know why that snagged my attention, and by "snagged" I mean "made me consider whether to contact this guy." In a different profile, maybe it wouldn't. Then again it might be the first ftm profile I'd ever seen. (I've seen a few MTF profiles here and there. They've never especially interested me.)
But this seemed like a guy who might have a certain amount of patience with someone who didn't know the first thing about transgender people.
The second thing that caught my attention was that under "What I'm looking for", it said:
Three resolutions for the new year:So this is an attempt toward resolution 3, by reflecting on resolution 2. And maybe it will be a series.
1) Practice meditation and try to learn more about Buddhism.
2) Earn the label "queer."
3) Write regularly in a forum that encourages investigation and reflection.
In truth, resolutions 1 and 3 were there to justify the second one. Or to frame it, or to obscure it a little bit so it wasn't hanging out there by itself attracting all the attention. I'm not sure I would choose that again. The fact is, almost nobody commented on resolution 2. Maybe they didn't know what to do with it. But I wanted people to ask what it meant.
And my answer is, I don't know.
This started out of a period of loneliness and horniness, when Reg was in Detroit and I was back in Brooklyn, and I was probably feeling entitled to do what the hell I wanted as a result of the house thing and as a result of the Manhunt thing. So I'd downloaded a couple of phone apps, Grindr and Scruff, and on this particular evening, the fourth of January, I was preferring Scruff and I was browsing the profiles and maybe occasionally giving or getting a woof, I don't know. And then I came across a profile with a possibly hot but slightly goofy picture, with lots of things that matched to me and lots of things that didn't. I could quote it here and maybe at some point I will. But for now it's enough to say that it was a profile that was rare in its openness, and in its - I'm not sure how to say this - quiet and thoughtful tone. Somebody had put some effort into this profile. (More than I had in mine.)
But this seemed like a guy who might have a certain amount of patience with someone who didn't know the first thing about transgender people.
The second thing that caught my attention was that under "What I'm looking for", it said:
queers (!)
In my fairly limited experience, there aren't too many guys in personal ads who describe themselves as "queer," nor indicate that they're looking for queers. Maybe I'm just looking in the wrong places; maybe the pictures that attract my attention are attached to guys who tend not to think in those terms. I don't know. That's not the point. The point is, to my surprise, I was attracted to a guy who was attracted to guys who are queer.
And I have never thought of myself as queer.
And suddenly that's curious to me. And problematic. Suddenly I want to be able to call myself queer.
I'm not sure where that came from. Probably a lot of things; probably working somewhat unhappily in the Jersey City, Alabama office, where there was mocking of gay people at the holiday party. Probably a desire to be in the streets instead of the cubicles. But in any case, I didn't - don't - feel entitled to the term, to the label. There's something I'm not doing, or maybe something in my conception of myself that I haven't opened up to, that prevents me from calling myself queer. I think I want that to stop.
I was talking with Yeshwant about this today, and among other things he and I noted, more or less simultaneously, that there are plenty of people in the world who are perfectly content to call me queer. There's no special qualification for it, I suppose, other than a willingness to live outside of gender norms. Taking it up the ass probably qualifies as a willingness to live outside of gender norms. And yet: I wouldn't claim "queer" for myself.
So I think this year of being queer, of earning the label, is really about finding out what it takes for me to feel that I've earned it. It's about figuring out what queer means.
And I'm trying to document that here, although this post (or the full version of it, anyway), might remain private for a while.
Red Hook, Jan 25.
And I have never thought of myself as queer.
And suddenly that's curious to me. And problematic. Suddenly I want to be able to call myself queer.
I'm not sure where that came from. Probably a lot of things; probably working somewhat unhappily in the Jersey City, Alabama office, where there was mocking of gay people at the holiday party. Probably a desire to be in the streets instead of the cubicles. But in any case, I didn't - don't - feel entitled to the term, to the label. There's something I'm not doing, or maybe something in my conception of myself that I haven't opened up to, that prevents me from calling myself queer. I think I want that to stop.
I was talking with Yeshwant about this today, and among other things he and I noted, more or less simultaneously, that there are plenty of people in the world who are perfectly content to call me queer. There's no special qualification for it, I suppose, other than a willingness to live outside of gender norms. Taking it up the ass probably qualifies as a willingness to live outside of gender norms. And yet: I wouldn't claim "queer" for myself.
So I think this year of being queer, of earning the label, is really about finding out what it takes for me to feel that I've earned it. It's about figuring out what queer means.
And I'm trying to document that here, although this post (or the full version of it, anyway), might remain private for a while.
Red Hook, Jan 25.
Labels:
queer
13 August 2011
the bus to south haven
In the bus terminal in Chicago, on my way to South Haven and the lake. My failure to communicate has brought me here, my sister Kathy not having picked me up because I never told her I was coming until she'd made other plans. So I took the early flight I would not otherwise have taken, rising at four to get to the airport by five to get on a plane at six that got me to O'Hare at eight. Then an hour on the CTA blue line to Clinton Ave, a desolate spot on the west side, not even adjacent to the bus station but instead two blocks' walk along empty streets that were charmless in broad daylight in August and I'm sure are miserable and windswept on a January night.
I was in the Chicago bus terminal once before, more than twenty years ago, when I was a senior in high school on my way to visit colleges in the upper Midwest. That terminal was in the Loop, a forbidding multi-story place arrived at through the basement streets of Chicago's second, underground grid. I was there at night, and I don't remember much about it except that at 18 and from sheltered Kilbourne, Ohio, I was glad not to be fated to spend much time there. Its population was the same as every bus station I can remember: the homeless, the itinerant, the poor people with shabby luggage, stone-eyed cleaning staff, a few backpackers.
This new station on the west side is brighter, cheerlessly modern, but populated by the same folks. At 45, I'm not threatened, just depressed - and yet comforted, even filled with a slightly nostalgic sense of adventure that's been bled out of airports in the twenty-first century. Something might happen on this trip.
When I woke at four this morning I was sporting a rock-hard erection that had forced its way out through the fly of my shorts and didn't want to quit. I might have been dreaming; don't remember. I spent the next hour too tired to do anything about it and too horny to let it rest, caressing it in the bathroom, squeezing it in my jeans, pulling one or twice while lying on the sofa waiting for the car. I suppose there's action to be had at 4:30 in the morning on a Saturday, if you aren't worried about making a flight; guys geting home from bars drunk and with their loins on fire, looking for now and promising nothing more than a mouth or an ass to unload in or a number of inches to offer one who craves them. But I was waiting for the flight, and the the call came telling me the car was outside, and I was on my way to LaGuardia and beyond.
So me and my boner, now fading, now roaring back to life, but never quite going and definitely never coming, stuck with each other through the security line where a hot guy with glasses was showing pecs and guns in a weathered A&F t-shirt. Through the boarding line with a guy who briefly seemed to make eyes at me; turned out to be sitting in my row but if he was interested he was clueless about how to show it. On the train from O'Hare to the bus terminal, a thick black kid with a moustache who sat two rows behind me making flirting impossible. And into the bus terminal, into the bathroom, filthy as you might expect: the stink spoils my mood and I wipe off the seat and sit down.
My mood but not everyone's it seems. Two stalls to my right, in the handicapped stall, a guy closes the door and sits. I hadn't noticed him. It wasn't the tattooed white guy getting dressed and bathing at the sink, the way people who ride buses all night do, tucking everything back into his jeans as I walked in the door. The guy two stalls to the right sits down and breathes out a loud "oh yeah" like he's taking August's best dump. Well, in truth, it doesn't sound anything like that. What it sounds like is a man letting his aching cock out of his jeans and feeling a mouth close around it and pull. But I definitely didn't hear two people come in behind me. Just to be sure, I duck a look under the partition - but I can't see anything other than a duffel bag. Dude over there keeps breathing heavy, keeps going "oh oh oh" every few seconds. Nobody takes a shit like that. He's rubbing one out.
Or am I just remembering Indianapolis?
On that bus trip to visit colleges, when I was eighteen, I had four or five hours to kill in the Indianapolis bus station. We went from Columbus to Indianapolis in the morning, sat there all afternoon, then took a different bus to Chicago that got there at ten o'clock at night. There was a Burger King, the way there was at every bus station in those days, and a bunch of TVs bolted to chairs like they were school desks, all in a row. You had to drop in a quarter every fifteen minutes or half an hour to keep watching. I spent most of the time there watching an Ohio State football game.
And there was a bathroom, of course, that I had to use once or twice. At some point in the afternoon I went in to take a shit - I mean, I'd been on the road since seven or eight in the morning. It was filthy, too. But I managed to find a stall in the middle of the row that was clean enough to sit down in.
And while I'm sitting there a man, much older than me - in my memory anyway - walks by the stall and looks at me through the crack between the partition and the door. We must have made eye contact. I wasn't out then, and I wasn't even admitting to myself that I was interested in guys, and I sure as hell didn't know how to cruise a public restroom, or more to the point how not to cruise. So we probably made eye contact. I kept doing my thing, minding my business - I was eighteen, not really in control of boners happening without warning, so who know if I got one then, but in any case he passed by again, and this time he stopped, and through the crack between the partition and the door I saw a big ugly black man stroking the biggest, blackest cock I'd ever seen in my life.
In fairness, I hadn't seen very many black dicks to that point in my life, mostly on boys in the showers at school, and not usually erect. So blackest might not be saying much. But it was huge, and he stood there in the middle of the bathroom, calmly stroking that thing and making it bigger and bigger and staring me right in the eye the whole time.
And Jesus fuck did I get hard.
I suppose it was traumatic; it was unquestionably predatory and in half a dozen ways illegal. But the trauma wasn't exactly from this dude exposing himself, and it wasn't from me getting turned on by it - it was from this big ugly black dude with a scary big cock knowing how turned on my innocent 18-year-old-self had suddenly got.
I was terrified, boner and all. I was too terrified to do anything about my boner and all. I finished up and wiped and went back out into the waiting room, sat back and stared as intently as I could at the little black and white pay TV. But every now and then out of the corner of my eye I'd see an ugly black dude in a white t-shirt, and when he caught my eye he'd stare right into my soul.
I'm still terrified by it, and it still gives me a boner.
On the bus now, heading through northern Indiana. I'm in the last row. In the seat in front of me is a beautiful black guy, about 25 maybe, his hair in cornrows, too thugged out but with the most beautiful face. His seat is tilted back so that every now and then, when he turns toward the window, our eyes meet. I'm still not good at this, still not sure if anything's going on, or what I'd do if I found out it actually was.
Still horny as hell. Going to stay that way all the way to South Haven, it looks like.
August 13, 2011
I was in the Chicago bus terminal once before, more than twenty years ago, when I was a senior in high school on my way to visit colleges in the upper Midwest. That terminal was in the Loop, a forbidding multi-story place arrived at through the basement streets of Chicago's second, underground grid. I was there at night, and I don't remember much about it except that at 18 and from sheltered Kilbourne, Ohio, I was glad not to be fated to spend much time there. Its population was the same as every bus station I can remember: the homeless, the itinerant, the poor people with shabby luggage, stone-eyed cleaning staff, a few backpackers.
This new station on the west side is brighter, cheerlessly modern, but populated by the same folks. At 45, I'm not threatened, just depressed - and yet comforted, even filled with a slightly nostalgic sense of adventure that's been bled out of airports in the twenty-first century. Something might happen on this trip.
When I woke at four this morning I was sporting a rock-hard erection that had forced its way out through the fly of my shorts and didn't want to quit. I might have been dreaming; don't remember. I spent the next hour too tired to do anything about it and too horny to let it rest, caressing it in the bathroom, squeezing it in my jeans, pulling one or twice while lying on the sofa waiting for the car. I suppose there's action to be had at 4:30 in the morning on a Saturday, if you aren't worried about making a flight; guys geting home from bars drunk and with their loins on fire, looking for now and promising nothing more than a mouth or an ass to unload in or a number of inches to offer one who craves them. But I was waiting for the flight, and the the call came telling me the car was outside, and I was on my way to LaGuardia and beyond.
So me and my boner, now fading, now roaring back to life, but never quite going and definitely never coming, stuck with each other through the security line where a hot guy with glasses was showing pecs and guns in a weathered A&F t-shirt. Through the boarding line with a guy who briefly seemed to make eyes at me; turned out to be sitting in my row but if he was interested he was clueless about how to show it. On the train from O'Hare to the bus terminal, a thick black kid with a moustache who sat two rows behind me making flirting impossible. And into the bus terminal, into the bathroom, filthy as you might expect: the stink spoils my mood and I wipe off the seat and sit down.
My mood but not everyone's it seems. Two stalls to my right, in the handicapped stall, a guy closes the door and sits. I hadn't noticed him. It wasn't the tattooed white guy getting dressed and bathing at the sink, the way people who ride buses all night do, tucking everything back into his jeans as I walked in the door. The guy two stalls to the right sits down and breathes out a loud "oh yeah" like he's taking August's best dump. Well, in truth, it doesn't sound anything like that. What it sounds like is a man letting his aching cock out of his jeans and feeling a mouth close around it and pull. But I definitely didn't hear two people come in behind me. Just to be sure, I duck a look under the partition - but I can't see anything other than a duffel bag. Dude over there keeps breathing heavy, keeps going "oh oh oh" every few seconds. Nobody takes a shit like that. He's rubbing one out.
Or am I just remembering Indianapolis?
On that bus trip to visit colleges, when I was eighteen, I had four or five hours to kill in the Indianapolis bus station. We went from Columbus to Indianapolis in the morning, sat there all afternoon, then took a different bus to Chicago that got there at ten o'clock at night. There was a Burger King, the way there was at every bus station in those days, and a bunch of TVs bolted to chairs like they were school desks, all in a row. You had to drop in a quarter every fifteen minutes or half an hour to keep watching. I spent most of the time there watching an Ohio State football game.
And there was a bathroom, of course, that I had to use once or twice. At some point in the afternoon I went in to take a shit - I mean, I'd been on the road since seven or eight in the morning. It was filthy, too. But I managed to find a stall in the middle of the row that was clean enough to sit down in.
And while I'm sitting there a man, much older than me - in my memory anyway - walks by the stall and looks at me through the crack between the partition and the door. We must have made eye contact. I wasn't out then, and I wasn't even admitting to myself that I was interested in guys, and I sure as hell didn't know how to cruise a public restroom, or more to the point how not to cruise. So we probably made eye contact. I kept doing my thing, minding my business - I was eighteen, not really in control of boners happening without warning, so who know if I got one then, but in any case he passed by again, and this time he stopped, and through the crack between the partition and the door I saw a big ugly black man stroking the biggest, blackest cock I'd ever seen in my life.
In fairness, I hadn't seen very many black dicks to that point in my life, mostly on boys in the showers at school, and not usually erect. So blackest might not be saying much. But it was huge, and he stood there in the middle of the bathroom, calmly stroking that thing and making it bigger and bigger and staring me right in the eye the whole time.
And Jesus fuck did I get hard.
I suppose it was traumatic; it was unquestionably predatory and in half a dozen ways illegal. But the trauma wasn't exactly from this dude exposing himself, and it wasn't from me getting turned on by it - it was from this big ugly black dude with a scary big cock knowing how turned on my innocent 18-year-old-self had suddenly got.
I was terrified, boner and all. I was too terrified to do anything about my boner and all. I finished up and wiped and went back out into the waiting room, sat back and stared as intently as I could at the little black and white pay TV. But every now and then out of the corner of my eye I'd see an ugly black dude in a white t-shirt, and when he caught my eye he'd stare right into my soul.
I'm still terrified by it, and it still gives me a boner.
On the bus now, heading through northern Indiana. I'm in the last row. In the seat in front of me is a beautiful black guy, about 25 maybe, his hair in cornrows, too thugged out but with the most beautiful face. His seat is tilted back so that every now and then, when he turns toward the window, our eyes meet. I'm still not good at this, still not sure if anything's going on, or what I'd do if I found out it actually was.
Still horny as hell. Going to stay that way all the way to South Haven, it looks like.
August 13, 2011
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