an exploration of being male and being queer
A year ago I wanted to write a book about men. Well, not only a year ago, but many times. And this would have been a book where I got many men, most of them straight, to tell the truth about many questions. But men are liars and so this never really panned out. I thought, how will I tackle this subject? But then doesn’t it make more sense to address the subject of one man instead of all men and that man be me? Doesn’t it make more sense to answer my questions and tell my story? And maybe somewhere in this story I will tell something that in time people will think of as a man’s spirituality, or a book about men. I thought, I will assemble—and I will do this with the help of many of my queer brothers, a story, or a set of stories about men. I hesitated because I thought, well this will only be about queer men. But what if through queer men we began to tell a more honest story of all men? And what if through this one queer man—this me—we began to tell a more general truth?
I type so fast there is nothing but typos in this rough draft. Things go through my mind like the dismal failure many of my brothers have in trying to date each other, like my failed almost boyfriend who, when we might have become something, something real, he chose to betray me and go to bed with the first woman he saw. Like a book, called The Velvet Rage where a psychiatrist goes on and on about the problems of gay men and I think, no you are describing the problems of white men with money who happen to be gay. And no fool, the problems you are describing as gay are the problems of all men, and of all people. And how unsuitable this book was, how it began, with a heavy footed naiveté to solve the problems of certain men. And I am thinking of last night, at the party, when I began to fall in love with someone who began to fall in love with me and I thought, we could fumble toward something.
For fun and for nausea I flip through the gay personals . They are for the most part a study in insecurity. I love the ones where a man declares, “I am straight acting looking for someone straight acting.” Sometimes they add “No Femmes”. Sometimes they add a long list of demands. No one writes them. Sometimes I write them: “Stop hating yourself. Have a nice day.” Or: “Good luck, asshole.” And I have no idea what it means, “I am straight acting.” No one who wasn’t straight really fooled anyone for long except for people who didn’t’ care, or who simply wanted to be fooled. It must mean the same thing as me saying, “I am white acting, seeking another black person who is white acting.” It must mean I hate what I am and don’t wish to be reminded of it. Many a queer man hates being queer and so gets married, has children, moves on. Or seeks his pleasure in parks and bathroom stalls. Fills his life with self loathing. Even more pitiful is the gay man who calls himself straight acting, who resigns himself—and it is resignation rather than embracing—to being gay, but wants to be like a straight person, have a straight acting boyfriend who, I assume, would be like a buddy? I don’t know how that would work out. Actually, I’m not sure where the rationale goes in this or how it can turn out happily, but I connect it to my unsuccessful and, in the end, wearying relationship with someone who wished he was straight and couldn’t have been gayer if he wanted to be.
And he didn’t want to be.