Liquid Nonsense

I'm going to preface this with the fact I am neither a psychologist nor a sociologist. This is mostly an exercise to try to sort some thoughts out and see if anyone else has had similar notions.

The only time I directly think of myself as a gay man is when somebody else reminds me. Generally if I'm thinking to myself I don't inherently internally verbalize it as "I'm a gay man," as much as I simply say "I'm a man that happens to be emotionally/physically/mentally involved with another man." Though none of this should be taken in the sense that I don't identify as being gay, because I assure you I'm as gay as the day is long.

This sense of identity has been on my mind lately since I definitely enjoy doing certain things that are obviously gay, but since I am gay and I don't really care if people pick up on that, I feel strangely liberated doing them. For instance, I've been expanding my culinary horizons lately learning how to prepare various foreign foods that I have no idea how to make. I had to buy a bunch of small cute little spice containers, so that was a fun trip to Crate & Barrel. Naturally I don't own most of the crazy cooking tools I need like a specially textured suribachi , so that was a trip to Sur La Table. Various other things like shopping for hand made hair care products, making happy upbeat small talk with the woman cutting my hair, discussing the reasons why I prefer boot-cut pants for certain shoes, and the list goes on for a really long time.

What I'm getting at is it took me a long time to really become comfortable with most of these things. I used to identify myself as "straight-acting" because so few people would pick up on the fact I was queer. At the time I thought that was the term to use because it seemed to make so much sense. Today I loathe that expression. I'm not straight-acting because I'm not straight, nor do I think there is absolutely anything wrong with being gay. Today I use the term "masculine personality traits," because I value that part of myself and I don't want to give the impression otherwise. There was definitely a time in my life I felt threatened by the possibility that others would perceive me as being stereotypically homo. The idea of being able to cook well, having a respectable sense of colors and fashion, and possibly even being able to dance just weren't on my priority lists. Through the course of time I got over my usual "us and them" mentality and I can now do all of these things without feeling like I've encroached upon my sense of self.

The greatest of these hurdles though, at least I feel, is reconciling the need for male intimacy in all of this. To clarify that statement I am not claiming that I felt like intimacy was damaging or hostile to my sense of self, but rather I did not understand how it related to my sense of self. That is to say, I just didn't understand how it related to the rest of my personality. So many cultural norms are in place to prevent men from expressing themselves or showing weakness that we have very nearly accepted a man's silence as a sign of strength. Women can walk hand in hand and we don't necessarily call them lesbians, at least I don't; but, two men walking hand in hand though are clearly gay. It isn't even so much these visual perceptions that trouble me as much as how gay men have absorbed them from cultural inundation. The ubiquity of the message has simply become the context of our daily lives.

I was digging through links I used to have from way back when, and I came across one that I felt was particularly interesting. The article was related to work on psychotherapy specifically as it related to gay couples undergoing relationship therapy. To sum up the therapists point via a quotation:

For gay men, given our history of trauma, this often means introducing behavior that promotes emotional openness. Couples therapy is often gay men's first opportunity to have their relationship legitimized. It can be deeply moving to see a gay couple experience for the first time what it means to openly express needs for closeness and the desire both to nurture and be nurtured by another man. Therapy can help two men learn how to feel safe with each other, express for perhaps the first time desires to be close, and feel a profound sense of validation in the eyes of another. [1]

It is certainly one thing being domestic, but being able to express emotional vulnerability in the privacy of one's own home for another man... that's a little harder. By a little I mean one metric fuck-ton. The history of my relationships can be summed up rather easily: highly successful, but ultimately short lived. I'm on good terms (or if not "good," definitely not hostile terms) with all the men I've ever dated, and many of them I am still in contact with. My parents did a great job of teaching me emotional management early on, so I feel like I did not have the late teenage - early twenties section of life where I would have got to muddle through my emotions and end up breaking hearts etc. I managed myself a little too well I think. I had all the basics down pat, but I did a spectacularly lousy job of really opening myself up. Maybe it was a fear of rejection or a fear of getting hurt, I'm really not sure. Michael was probably the first person that really nailed me to the wall for my isolating tendencies, and I honestly don't think I ever thanked him for it. My tendencies to sanitize things verbally on accident and create artificial distance.

I wanted to write all of this down because I am fairly sure I've never committed it to writing, much less in a publicly accessibly place. Through the course of writing and recanting my stories I can create a baseline from which I can metric myself on. The quote from above really sums up my feelings rather well. Sitting here reflecting I suspect I've never expressed my need for intimacy to myself in a way that my personality fully absorbs.

The truth is that I want to find balance within the idea of "to nurture and be nurtured by another man." Within my head is a rose-colored-glasses-wearing-hippy idealist that believes in magic, the possibility of happiness for all, and that we are all entitled to our own sunsets on the beach with that special someone. I have an absolute confidence in my ability to kill with my bear hands, but what I want is a sense of supreme vulnerability in the arms of a man. I want the great nights out on the town partying with friends, but I also want nights letting a boy cathartically cry his eyes out in my arms when he's hurting. All at once I want someone to delicately handle my insecurities, quirks, and oddities while at the same time giving me the opportunity to do the same in return. That's really what love is, the mutual vulnerability of handing the power of emotional nuclear annihilation over to someone else and trusting that they won't use it against you.

Maybe it's just my own deeply rooted sense of protective nurturing that I wish I could dry every tear, soothe every pain, and wash away every emotional scar someone else has. It's possible this is why my personality archetype is called "The healer." Luckily though, our realities can be shaped and we can affect the outcomes of our days through transforming our thoughts to actions and never letting opportunities of sharing ourselves with those whom we love slip by unnoticed.

Perhaps I'm crazy. Perhaps I'm too much of an idealist. Perhaps I'm too much of many things and not enough of others, but giving life everything I've got counts for something...and even if it doesn't, I'm still going to do it. Life is great and I plan to make sure it only gets better.

[1] - Greenan, David E., PhD; "Do Open Relationships Work? Gay Couples and the Question of Monogamy"; Psychotherapy Networker, V. 27, No. 3; 2003.

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