January 2010 Archives

I'm a fan of movies that deal with a gay guy who is struggling to come to terms with his sexuality.  There's just something touching and nostalgic about watching the main character discover his feelings for another man and begin to sort through the emotional obstacle course made up of love, desire, fear, doubt, and guilt.

One such movie that stands out in my mind is Shelter, the 2007 movie about a young man, Zach, living in California.  Where Shelter differs from other great coming out movies, like Latter Days and Rock Haven, is that Zach's major conflict isn't so much about his religion, but his family.

Zach lives with his older sister, her live-in boyfriend (at least I don't get the impression their married) and his five year old nephew.  Zach works at odd jobs to help support his sister and little Cody, who sees his uncle as a major father figure.  Zach's life begins to change when is best friend's older brother, Shaun, comes to town for an extended stay.  Zach and Shaun fall in love, and quickly finds his desire to be with Shaun quickly coming into conflict with his family obligations.  His sister, Jeanne, is concerned about her son being around all that "gay stuff" and doesn't think it's healthy environment.  (Strangely, Jeanne isn't all that concerned that her live-in boyfriend is asking her to go to Oregon for six months and leave Cody behind.) Despite Shaun's undying adoration of Cody and his willingness to make Cody a part of any plans he and Zach might have, the family conflict leads to problems in the couple's budding relationship.

In addition to the conflict between love and obligations to a family that doesn't approve of gay relationships, this film weaves in the extra dimensions of different family backgrounds.  While Zach and his sister have lived a difficult life with plenty of hard luck and few breaks, Shaun comes from a well-to-do family.  This difference leads to differences in perspective and different approaches to their problems, adding to the conflict.

All of these elements are handled well, or at least as well as they can be in a 97 minute movie.  It makes for a touching and heartfelt story, and one that I could personally identify with on many levels.

Misty Irons reposted the "gay lifestyle" of the (In)Famous SMT.  After reading both her post and his original, I decided I wanted to make a similar post and offer some commentary on the underlying topic.

So an average weekday looks like this for me:

7:00am:  The first alarm goes off.  I hit the off button.
7:30am:  The second alarm goes off.  I hit the off button.
8:00am:  The third alarm goes off.  I hit the snooze button.  I keep hitting it each time it goes off.
8:30am:  The third alarm won't let me hit the snooze button any more.  I turn it off and get up.
8:35am:  I wash up and get dressed.
8:45am:  I check email, visit my social networking sites, and read my favorite blogs.
9:20am:  I hop in the car and head to work, stopping at the 7-Eleven to grab something to eat and something for lunch.
10:00am:  I arrive at work.  I spend the next eight hours attending meetings, writing code, answering emails, and fielding the occasional technical question for the sales team.
6:30pm:  I leave work.  If it's open, I run to Psychic's Thyme and hang out with friends for a bit.
7:00pm:  Dinner time.
8:00pm:  If I'm curently dating someone, I ask my boyfriend if he's free.  If so, we get together, watch a movie, talk, make love, and cuddle.  If I'm very lucky, we spend the night sleeping in each others arms.
8:00pm:  If I'm single or my boyfriend is busy, I check email, respond to any outstanding ones, read blogs, do some blogging of my own, and/or or work on my writing.

In my life, there's no such thing as a typical weekend.  I may go see my parents for the weekend.  Or I might head up to Toronto for a dance class and a show with Marina for Saturday.  Or I might go back to Psychic's Thyme to hang out with friends.  I may go to dinner with friends.  I may go dancing Saturday night.  If I'm dating someone, I may spend time with my boyfriend (going to a movie, staying home and cuddling, making love, talking, going to a party together, whatever).  Trying to fit that into a single "daily schedule" would be impossible.  There's just too many possibilities.

What inspired me to write this, however, is that I've notice something about many "gay lifestyle" posts:  most of them say absolutely nothing about sex.  In many cases, that's perfectly understandable.  There are a lot of gay people out there who are not sexually active for one reason or another.  They may simply be too busy right now for a sexual relationship.  Or they may be waiting for that one special someone they want to spend their lives with.  I totally get that and respect that.

What I don't get or respect, however, is the underlying message (or so it seems to me) that the only way to prove that all gay men spend their weekends at the bathhouse or bring home a different guy every night is to show that we're not having sex at all, or at least hiding the fact that we're having it.  I'm sorry, but "total celibacy" and "having 100 sex partners every year" are not the only two possibilities.

In many ways, I'm reminded of the first American Pie movie.  I loved that movie because it was a great commentary on the pressure (heterosexual) guys feel about having sex in their teen years and how it can become an obsession.  The other thing I like about that movie is that the way the "quest to lose their virginity" ends differently for the various main characters.  Two of them end up having what basically amount to random hookups (though the one ends up falling in love with his partner and marrying her in future movies).  One ends up having sex with his long-term girlfriend (who breaks up with him in the next movie).  And the fourth ends up in a relationship and he and his new girlfriend decide to put off having sex for a while longer.  The movie ends up demonstrating a diversity of responses to human sexuality.

I think we need more of that in the gay community and how we present ourselves to the outside world.  We need to get rid of the "celibacy/promiscuity" dichotomy altogether.  There's a far more complex range of choices when it comes to human sexuality and human sexual behavior, and I think we need to start demanding that our detractors acknowledge that in our own communities.

I won't pretend I'm a sexual prude in order to get acceptance.  But that doesn't mean I'm totally devoid of a sexual ethic or standards, either.

I love you and I miss you. But I'm also hurt.

I understand you're in a difficult position. I understand that it's frightening for you. And I understand why you've made the choices you did. My heart breaks for you that you were ever in a position that you had to face such choices.

But you were in that position, and you made those choices. What's more, you made many choices that helped to leave us in the situation we now find ourselves in. And I feel like you chose to ignore that fact, and instead place responsibility entirely on those around you -- including me -- instead of accepting your fair share of that responsibility.

Please understand, I'm not saying it's all your fault, either. We both made choices, and not all of mine were the wisest or best choices I could have made. And others have contributed as well. There's plenty of "blame" to go around. But it hurts that you seem to want me to shoulder your responsibility -- or at least part of it -- in addition to my own.

In some ways, I wonder if I made a mistake in trying to make things easier for you. I sometimes steered clear of bringing up the consequences of your choices or the painful decisions that you might have had. I find myself wondering if in doing so, I merely encouraged you to continue denying your own responsibility. If so, then I suspect I did both of us a great disservice.

So I'm hurt right now. But I still love you, and I still miss you. I think that makes the pain all the more acute.

I miss you.

I miss our talks. I miss your requests, even though they were often more like demands than actual requests. I miss the way you'd get excited about something and become completely consumed with a thought or idea that struck your fancy.

I miss how you could be tender and loving so much of the time. I miss how you yearned for both physical and emotional intimacy, and I cringe at the thought that we may never share that intimacy again.

Some people want to think it was just about sex. I know the reasons they think that, but they're wrong. It was never about the sex. Yes, the sex was nice and I'll miss that too, but sex alone does not make a relationship.

Besides, let me be honest. If I was just interested in sex, there are far easier avenues I could pursue to get it. I could get a room at the spa if I just wanted sex. I could hang out at the Home Depot if I just wanted sex. I could have answered ads on craigslist if I just wanted sex.

Accepting the complications, limitations, and risks of our relationship would have been way too much foolish effort if I had merely been in it for the sex. I'm amazed at anyone who can't see the truth of that statement.

It's the memories of moments spent lying next together and talking that are most powerful. It's the memories of hopping into the shower and lovingly washing each other's bodies that make me ache for more such tenderness. It's the memories of your smile as you tell me about every little detail of your life that fill me with wistfulness. The thought that I may never have any more of these experiences with you is what tears at my heart so much.

I hope I'm wrong. I hope that some day we might beat the odds so that we can be together gain. I hoe that some day we might again share such moments of tender joy together.

But for now, I miss you.

I've spent the past several days playing around with Writing.com (WDC).  It's been good for me, as it's helped get me motivated again to actually write.  And I've enjoyed the feedback I've gotten from some truly skilled writers over there.  Tonight, I decided to further participate in the site by joining my first writing contest.  I chose to submit an entry to the Character Creation Contest. I figure I'm pretty good at character creation, so it's a good place to get my feet wet. I'll move on to more challenging contests -- one that force me to work on my weak points -- as time goes by. So I put together a character profile for Hargath, a dark priest.

Hargath is actually a recreated and edited version of a character I played in an online freeform roleplaying campaign. The way I came up with him always amused me.

When the group on the BBS decided to set up the room for the campaign, I hadn't decided if I was going to participate yet. So I sat back as people started making posts introducing their characters. I noticed that everyone was creating noticeably good -- as in morally upright -- characters. As I watched the party form up, I realized that this was looking like it would be a campaign where the players worked together perfectly well.

Now, perhaps it's because one of my favorite roleplaying games (though I never got to actually play it) was Paranoia, but that state of affairs didn't sit well with me. I felt that like good storytelling, good role-playing (I'm also of the opinion that the difference between the two is almost negligible) required some conflict between characters. It wasn't enough to just have to overcome the obstacles of the NPC's. There needed to be some obstacles to teamwork that needed to be overcome as well.

So I decided to introduce a dark priest. I forget what his name was, and I don't think I described him quite as well as I've described Hargath. But he was definitely the dark cloud looming over the party. And his presence did make for some interesting role-playing.

Shortly before the campaign fell apart (those of us involve simply found ourselves with not enough time to continue it), I remember an exchange between my priest and the mage that my friend, Ben played. At one point, the party came up against a particularly nasty captain we had to get rid of. The party agreed that assassination was the best course of action, and my priest volunteered to do the dirty work. The mage decided that my priest needed a disguise in order to get close enough. The mage happily helped out in that department obliged, by transforming my priest into a woman!

Of course, my priest got his revenge. His new disguise allowed him to get the captain in private and dispatch the captain in a formal ritual sacrifice to the dark goddess. And the mage's spell further enabled my priest to psychically link said mage to the victim. The end result, the mage experienced everything done to the captain as if it was happening to him. Ben thought the whole idea was a hoot. In fact, he wrote the entire scene for me because I didn't have time.

Of course, my choice of characters did create problems between me and at least one other player. Another friend, Jared, played a Druid. Jared was interested in Druidism himself at the time. And my priest character did a couple things (like steal the soul of a horse so that it would bend to his will) that freaked Jared out. Note that I said it freaked Jared out rather than his character. Jared was mad at me for days. That much was unfortunate. But as I explained to him, part of role-playing and fiction is allowing some characters to do things we wouldn't dream of doing in real life. After all, if all characters were the goody-two-shoes most of us try to be, our games and stories wouldn't be nearly as interesting.

And I admit that playing an evil character helped me write such characters much better.

The following is from the first chapter of a new story I'm working on:

Josh awoke with a start. He let out a strangled gasp before his mind began to process his surroundings. He looked round, finding himself in his own bedroom. His sheets were pushed off to one side, probably due to him moving around in his sleep. He took a few deep breaths to calm himself. He willed his heart to return to a slower rhythm. "It was only a dream. Only a dream," he whispered. "It doesn't mean anything. Guys dream about all kinds of things."

He knew that was true enough. He had done a bit of research online, and found that a lot of young guys dreamed about having sex with other guys and still grew up to be heterosexual. He'd even read that some experiment with male friends before going on to get married. So he tried to reassure himself that this one dream didn't mean he was one of those terrible homosexuals.

However, his mind kept nagging at him. This wasn't just one dream, after all. He had been having a few dreams like this since he turned fourteen nine months ago. He wondered if there was a point where it quit being something any normal teenager might experience and starting being the sign of something more serious.

"And it's not just the dreams," he whispered to himself as he lay there, confused and frightened. "After all, I've been getting those feelings when I'm awake too." He thought back to that afternoon he and Tim went skinny-dipping. While it had been innocent fun when they had actually gone swimming at age eleven, it morphed into something more sinister-seeming whenever he thought of it now. Tim had even suggested they go skinny dipping again this past summer. But the thoughts and feelings it stirred in Josh kept him coming up with excuses to put off such an excursion.

Josh lay there, feeling more miserable the more he thought about everything. He wondered how his parents, who raised him to be a good little Baptist boy, would react if he told them he was attracted to other guys. He wondered if they would send him to counseling or even disown him. He was too afraid to find out.

And yet, he yearned to tell someone, anyone. He hated having to keep this secret. It felt like a terrible burden - a burden he didn't want - to carry alone. And yet, he didn't know anyone he could tell. He was pretty sure everyone he knew would react badly.

"No, you're on your own on this one. Just try to make the best of it," he told himself. Then he added in a quick prayer, "God, please help me. And forgive me. I don't want to be gay. I want to do what you want me to." He rolled over and waited for sleep to claim him again, to give him a break from all his worries and doubts.

If you like it, please read the rest of the chapter and follow the story using the links above.  I hope to write more soon.  And of course, feel free to check out the rest of my portfolio on Writing.Com.  Though I'll warn you that some of the other stories are sexually explicit.