I was listening to several gay men speak in a group setting recently about a variety of topics around personal growth and relationship building, and the struggle to find a support system for that in the gay community. One man said something that piqued my soul’s ears and resonated with me. After describing the various outlets he had put himself into such as a gay sports league, game nights, gay bars, and other social events, he still finds himself shutting down because the conversations don’t go much deeper than sexual innuendos and a kind of “girls just wanna have fun” type of conversation. While at first in coming out it seemed all good in fun, he ultimately knew he wanted real relationships and now it is no longer fun anymore. He doesn’t want to build relationships on something so shallow. I don’t blame him and can definitely relate. What about you? Are you longing for more out of your gay relationships? Do you want more out of the gay spaces and circles you frequent?
I’m wondering as I write this if there are more roadblocks out there than opportunity. Maybe not for all of us, but for a good deal of us, coming out is a momentous breakthrough and a never-ending process of stages through one’s life. When you leave the “old” for the “new”, you really want that embrace of people on the other side. A bridge. A mentor. What you are ushered into is a world of uninhibited freedom of expression and to be who you are without judgment (unless of course, you hold religious or moral values–did I just say that out loud? Then you can go to gay church if you have one and that’s where you are fall). There is great freedom in this and an embrace all its own. The excitement to explore sub-cultures, clubs in safe spaces, and semi-safe spaces (some want more risk). And there are people out there more than willing to help you navigate the waters for the most part.
I’m not sure this is all that entirely different when you are straight and become 21 and can start traversing the bars and clubs as well as you attempt to find yourself in your 20 somethings but it is just a little more intense, expressive, and like a buffet in gaydom. It’s Ru Paul and Drag Races, underwear contests, karaoke, drinking, wiffs of pot, the sound of people snorting coke, house parties, maybe a spell in a gay choir held at a church for practices where no one will really wants to know much more about you then your name, maybe a spell a gay sports league that involves a lot of alcohol both on and off the field and various other groups or clubs where you meet all sorts of personalities that are fun, entertaining and will care about you but from a distance. At a certain level. A shallow level.
There’s a podcast I was listening to called Lost Spaces. The host interviews people as they reminisce and lament the gay spaces that once existed where people found their space for freedom of expression, sex, and even friendship. I don’t discount that. Back in the time I grew up, when I was closeted, in the 70’s, 80’s, 90’s, and early 2000’s this was all they had. The point is though times change. What served us once doesn’t necessarily serve us any longer. We are a community that had become all about the freedom of expression and live how you want to live and honestly not much else. We needed more.
Today we still are struggling with that undertow. Why is that? It’s because we don’t have too many role models alive that resemble much of anything like maturity. Pete Buttigieg, Ellen Dejanares (unless you believe the rumors of her fall from grace), Elton John, Rosie O Donnell (?)–she’s pretty angry. I think she is starting to look like a red balloon these days. So, besides them, we really don’t have too much.
I remember reading a book about how straight males have these terrible signposts to show them they have entered mature manhood: when you can drink, get laid, get a job, sign up for the military, and drive. Really not much substance there for an inside deal like your identity. In gaydom, it seems your graduation to who you are is: you come out, get laid, determine your pronouns, go to Your first gay bar, define if you are a top or bottom and get on either Grinder, Scruff or Adam for Adam. That’s about it. Oh, and drag. The wonderful world of Ru Paul will either dazzle you or trigger all your inner homophobic hot spots. There is so much you may encounter around fetish, pronouns, drags, transgenders, leather and bears that you may just want to crawl back into the hole you came out of.
None of this as part of the community is bad. It just is. Free expression and our forefathers fought for it starting at Stonewall, but they also wanted more for us–dare we dream bigger? Come on, hell yes! Yet, we are still so stagnant. We remain in the shallows of coming out, freedom of expression and freedom of sexuality. We have to move beyond these concepts of gender swapping and all the people I fucked back in the day.
I was surprised in a virtual call today with a group of gay men when the group leader asked us “How many of you enjoy gay clubs and bars?” No one raised their hands. This is where we are at now. Gay men, I’m sure gay women this too, want more than this undertow of the underground community of the bar and club circuit when there is more for us. Such as, our freedom to marry and to adopt children. We had a taste and now that is constantly under attack. The pushback on drag performers has been winning. We had a taste and now that has BEEN attacked. Schools opting out of LGBT supportive clubs in their schools is now on the rise. We had a taste and that too is presently being attacked.
Without getting in the sordid details, I am 90% certain last summer I was set up and fired for being gay. Anyone I tell the story to agrees. It tore me asunder. It tore me a new A-hole in my soul that I never saw coming from a company I gave my heart and soul to. School districts offer LGBTQ sensitivity training but yet won’t let you open a GSA or GLAD club now when you ask them? Or like in another case, my old principal stopped answering my emails all together when I asked to do that very thing. Meanwhile, gays also attack each other over violations of pronouns and mistakes around gender usage. But you know….”girls, just wanna have fun!”
Coming out doesn’t preclude healing trauma or mental health. It isn’t the end all and be all. I long for the day when this community starts taking better care of itself. When it starts looking outside of itself to blame, to others to bicker with it, and their own to backstab. I long for the day when this community stops looking for a drink of alcohol to soothe the soul or as a conversation piece and starts “healing thy self” from the trauma that kept them in the closet all this time–the real crime that is still having them pay time. I long for the day when they heal from the fear and insecurity that makes them want to continue to use sex, and drugs as a diversion from real relationship building. I long for the day when gay people can be healed enough to stop hating people of faith in the gay community because of their own trauma around it. If something is sacred to someone, who are you to tear faith asunder in your violent mockery? As a person who can sit and commune with my higher power am perfectly okay partying though I don’t do drugs of any kind and I don’t binge drink. But I like to have fun as the next gay guy and if people are going a little wilder than me, I’m not judging it. I’ve been in pot smoke filled rooms. Not my ideal, I rather be able to see in front of me and it not smell like skunk but whatever. I’m not judging. And if I am okay with that and being with you and befriending you, why should the reverse be any different unless its your own form of discrimination from your own unhealed trauma? Isn’t it? Don’t insist I binge drink with you and I won’t insist you know Jesus (I wouldn’t anyway but there you go).
I ask and wonder how long can we go on like this and survive as community–staying where we have been? I came out when I was 39 and there’s not been much change since then. If anything, I enjoyed the community much more back then when I was first out than I do now. Now, everyone is offended by something. How long will we remain diverted while our rights to marry, adopt, support LGBTQ in schools and even getting into that precious area of freedom of expression are eroding away? I can’t spend time swimming in the shallows all my days. I got bigger and better dreams for my life, with or without my fellow gays. I hope it is with but if not, just like Dory, I’m going to keep swimming.
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