I am continuing with my series in part two where I am just saying things as they are. Unfiltered. I’m tired of the BS in certain areas so this is one area where I can do that. I’m picking those things that are hot for me right now and going for it.
My second thing to talk about is I’ve pretty much abandoned gay culture and I don’t know when or in what form I will go back. Some of it may have to do with the area I live or not. It was good for me when I first came out to eventually learn that I didn’t have to take on everything out there in the gay community as my own identity or even be comfortable with it. It just is what is for someone else. For example, I am not someone you are going to find watching Ru Paul’s Drag Race. That is not for me. I know it is for many gays, but I don’t think I watched a single episode all the way through because I am totally uninterested in that area of gay culture. Good on those who are but it doesn’t appeal to me, especially the attitudes often portrayed on there. I don’t resonate with it.
Now, I would say for about good solid three to four years I was in circles around our local gay community center, gay affirming spiritual centers, gay choirs, and gay sport leagues. I wrote a book about spiritual struggles and coming out and made many connections, in gay couple’s homes, going to gay clubs, parties and all of it. I found that no matter how hard tried the people I friended eventually showed me lives of people who drank till the cows came home, pot filled rooms, friends going to club bathrooms and coming back out with coke dust under their nose. None of that was for me nor was I interested but I didn’t grudge anyone else what they were doing. However, on some level (especially when I no longer was so charming to them) I think I feared it wasn’t going to work out. Not because of me, I would not reject them. But, because I stood as someone who defied cultural norms.
Three things happened that made this a reality. Self-awareness of the quality of the relationships. Gay Drama. Covid-19. First, gay drama happened around some self-awareness at the same time. Me, who had never been apart of a clique, didn’t realize I stepped into several. I was niave and imagined truth would win out, love for me would win out. It didn’t. I was betrayed. People were jeolous of what I had too. Whether it was a working car, a certain friend, having an accepting family, my faith still in tact, you name it. They find something and gaslight you to bring you down unless you are playing the gay cultural games. Now, some may not like what I am about to say from the community because they feel it “hurts the cause” but what I say to that is “get your shit together then and grow up”. Be a part of changing this community here in South East Michigan and the world because I can guarentee you this 100%. I am not the only one saying this.
When I went through ex-gay ministry and reparative therapy, the gay community was portrayed as one riddled with wounded people taking out their wounds on each other, a prevalant social community that centers around substance abuse, and riddled with shallow relationships. I heard testimonies of men coming out of the gay community talking about these relationships they built that ended up being very hurtful in the end, getting off drugs and alcohol seemed to be tied in with their ex-gay journey. I wasn’t sure which was more toxic for them and I personally wasn’t comfortable with the tie-in of sexuality and substance abuse. Regardless, they aren’t really wrong. How do I know? In any gay group I go to these are the very same complaints I hear gay men themselves complain about. They are isolated and lonely because all they encounter are shallow relationships, a community centered around partying, alcohol and a strong hook-up culture. They are finding a world that is much like a circus with a lot of flare and flavorful air like cotton candy but not the substance they hoped for or needed. A lot of gay drama too.
I did step out of the norm by going to gay spiritual centers, gay choirs, and gay sport leagues as people suggested. It nearly broke me in the end over time. In reality, I was be-friended for other motives, bullied and betrayed to the point that by the time Covid-19 came around, I was glad to “shelter to in place”. All of it came crashing down on me and nearly crushed me to death. I’ve never really stepped back out from sheltering in place except in safe, well thought out and often therapeutic like settings. I focus on family and those I know I can trust. I now look back on all those times and see how desperately I wanted acceptance from this community that I never needed to give my power over to. It also didn’t have the ability, with it’s own wounds, to accept me as I am except in small pockets for brief moments of time. It is rather ironic. The gay community here can accept the wild, the queer, the criminal, the witch, the warlock, substance abuser, sexual assaulter trying to reform, but if you appear too boring because you don’t drink enough, sex it up enough or have morals about you, you will find yourself rather unwelcome.
Yet, even so, you want your gay family even if you have family of your own or don’t. It is sort of like ritual rite of a passage, or a baptism in a Church–you want to know you have gay family or your gay peeps. For a good while, I experienced that but I don’t know if any of it was real because of the betrayals and how easily gays dismiss one another. While there is this wonderful freedom to define relationships around sexuality there is also almost no guidance on relationships that young men especially bother to learn. This line in St. Elmo’s Fire says it all for me:
Kirby: “I thought we’d be friends forever”
Kevin: “Yeah, well forever just got a whole lot shorter of all sudden.”
Even in my ex-gay days, I valued the relationships I had with those ex-gay men who were on the journey with me in those camps. We went through so much together but I don’t hear a word. They could be dead. Once I came out, it was like those relationships never existed. Same with these gay ones with all the gay drama and shallowness. As much as some of us keep in tune via social media peeks here and there, it’s like the years never existed between us for many. I’m not going to put myself through that again. This time, even though some of it is long distance, I making concerted efforts to invest only in family and relationships that will be profitable. In whatever way I step back into communities here or if I relocate eventually (which sounds nice to me), it will be with a lot more wisdom.
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