Other People's Lives

Two blogs of gay men in America - Jay and Brian.

Jay has been trying desperately to pull together enough confidence to come out - and yesterday gave up. He's deleted most of his blog, leaving just the farewell message that he's decided to retreat deep into the closet and give up all thoughts of being open.

Presumably he thinks he'll learn to be happy like that, even though it was the immense frustration of living in secrecy which made him want to come out in the first place. Not that coming out makes you happy on it's own, but it helps.

Openness and honesty won't automatically make other people happy with you - sometimes just the opposite - but it does seem to be a prerequisite for being happy with yourself.

And what gives you the confidence to be open with others? Obviously it's being in a community that doesn't react with horror when you try. Not everyone you meet, but at the least a small circle of friends.

And that's what Jay lacks, seemingly. He has family, but they're just as useless as most families in this department. He has acquaintances, but no one closer. He does have blog and email, and internet presence can give you a virtual support network, but online friends aren't really a substitute for the flesh-and-blood kind.

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I don't want to be too simplistic and deterministic about this. There's always mavericks who buck the trend. I'm one of those strange people who, in spite of a shame-filled protestant upbringing (or because of it?), have always had zero patience with the idiotic positions people take on sexual morality. Stuff like:

* "Wait for love to happen, get married, and fight to stay together". I see, so you can't force love, but you should force it after it's gone, but only if you're married.

* "If you're happily monogamous, you're repressed and in denial.". Or you might just be in love. It's possible to do the coventional thing for good reasons.

* "I don't mind gay people, as long as they don't act gay". I do mind you being a hypocrite. And don't expect me to be grateful for your benevolent tolerance of my supposed imperfection.

* "Being gay is cool". An inverted prejudice is still a prejudice.

* "Free love is liberating". It can be. Being pressured to have lots of sex to prove how liberated you are from pressure, isn't.

* "True love is spiritual, beyond sex". Yes yes, you can love someone without genital friction being involved - this is trivially true. What you mean is, the less lovers think about friction, the deeper and higher their love. But put like that without obfuscation, it's evidently untrue.

* "God made Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve". God's a fairytale, you fuckwit. Besides, what you really mean is:

* "Sex is for reproduction only, any other use is wrong". The first clause is patently false, and the second wouldn't follow anyway.

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Brian, who left a comment on my last post, is the opposite of Jay. Out and confident, he lives with partner L and their adopted baby son E - the kind of goofy adorable handful children are supposed to be. Oh, and an equally adorable big floppy rottweiler mix, name of Nemo.

Politically aware but not active, nonreligious but not militant about it, settled but not inactive.

It all sounds like the kind of life that was mapped out for me a decade ago - domestic future with monogamous partner and adopted baby plus dog. In my case it fortunately went wrong - I'd make a lousy father.

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Stuff in the post today:
* An oil lamp for father. He collects them, for reasons I've never understood. Last month mother went through a phase of collecting Rubik puzzles - we now have the complete set, arranged along the fireplace.
* My new switch/solo card. The card numbering system can't handle this being the 10th issue, so it's issue number zero. First purchase - a wallet to put it in.
* A bundle of clothes for me. You may remember I said something about white lycra shorts a few days ago, well....
* And a collar for Dino. They've sent the wrong one - it's too small and...it's got a bowtie. Yes, a dogcollar with a miniature red bowtie attatched. Very...sweet.

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Phone call from Craig and Roxanne last night, offering to buy me a drink. This is code for "need someone to talk something over with, and you're good at that sort of thing, so could you meet us in the One Eyed Dog please". And it's also an offer to buy me a drink.

So, over two bottles of extremely bad red house wine, we spoke of love and loss, self-esteem and self-emancipation, relationships and rotten luck. And then I got introduced to a drink called "Ouzo" - Turkish, aniseed, strong and in my humble opinion absolutely revolting.

On my gravestone will be the words: Here lies Kapitano. He sang at our parties, gave good advice and got drunk very easily.

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Oh yes - good news for those who use my skills as agony uncle and wise old dispenser of sage advice: I can't possibly afford to do teacher training at the moment. Not without getting into debt - I've been there once, and I'm determined not to go there again.

So, I'm stuck in bloody Portsmouth, for another year at least. But I am stuck with people who value me.