For my friend Charles...
I have noticed ‘the gay thing’ has been coming up a lot, lately.
When something comes up, I post about
it; and there has definitely been a pattern.
In fact, it has been rearing its ‘ugly head’ at least 2-3 times a week.
The most recent being the accusation I have a ‘gay head’.
In case you missed it…
"I was just told I had a 'gay head', & the person was 'sick of the sight of it.' Is that what passes for an insult these days? Why do I not mind the thought of having a 'gay head'? Is it because most of the gay men I know are tres hunkworthy, and it is actually more like a compliment? Reminds me of when my father used to roar at me for 'crying like a girl'. Forget how silly that is for a moment- why would doing anything 'like a girl' be so bad? Most of the women I know are great- & I would love to be like them. I'm a big fan of insults that seem more like compliments."
Why does this particular form of discrimination come out of the closet so often?
Why? No other ‘cultural minority’ comes up with such alarming frequency.
Or am I simply more inclined to notice it?
Then I had a long talk with my friend Charles.
He reminded me at one time, being gay was an offence.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=17u01_sWjRE&feature=share&fb_source=message
In a way…it still is.
Clearly…if having a ‘gay head’ is the worst insult a person can muster...
If having a 'gay head'- or indeed being gay flies in the face of all that is decent to civilised people- enough to use it as a curse upon my name & countenance...
Then it is clearly still a crime.
The way some people regard being a woman as a crime against humanity.
Like my father hatefully telling me as a child to ‘stop crying like a girl’.
I mean, why? Why would he consider doing something like a girl to be such a bad thing?
Especially given how much he loved women.
He loved them so much, he told me ‘you don’t have to have slept with every woman in the world…but you must have tried’. If that’s not love for women…then I don’t know what is.
Why else would he give Mum a black eye?
A mark of his love.
Or territoriality.
Or latent hatred for women.
Or himself.
What was going on it that weird broth in his head?
What on earth was he trying to repress?
What are any of us trying to repress…when we regard being gay with such animosity?
We will not even allow them to marry in so many countries?
Why does sexuality raise such ire in certain circles…to such a degree, we try to imprison it, kick the
shit out of it, legislate against it…even kill it?
Oscar Wilde; imprisoned for his homosexuality.
He died for it.
Or rather, they killed him for it.
What is it we are trying to hide...?
Even going so far as to murder it?
Are we deep down, scared of something?
Is there something inside us lurking, we do not want to admit?
Like David Bowie as Jack Celliers said in ‘Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence’, in response to the brutality against him by the conflicted Captain Yonoi masking some latent attraction,
‘if he’s got something on his mind…why doesn’t he just come out with it’??
Good question.
Later in the evening, after being told I had a gay head, I treated that head to a screening of the documentary the ‘Importance of Being Morrissey.’
Was this because homosexuality kept coming up?
Or am I somehow subconsciously attracted to the topic? And attracting comment- negative and positive?
Wait a second; Morrissey is neither openly gay, nor straight.
It is a mystery.
Just as he is confounded by speculation on the topic of his sexuality. Why is it such a big deal?
Is it the complexity of the issue?
Or do we- like just about everything else in human existence- simply make it complex??
What is the fascination?
Mine...& theirs??
In the doco, Will self said, “Young heterosexual men, & now older heterosexual men respond to that (the Morrissey persona) at a homoerotic level. I think it speaks to the homosexual component of a LOT of heterosexual men.”
Is our homo eroticism something we need to come to terms with?
Morrissey himself asked the question; ‘what does that even mean? There is no such thing as hetero-eroticism’.
And yet Will Self brings it up.
Is this because hetero-eroticism is meaningless without this portion of homoeroticism?
Perhaps there is no hetero and no homo…
Simply eroticism?
Or even better…simply being a person.
Human.
Is this cornucopia of feelings, inclinations, this glorious diversity of our persona merely something men need to come to terms with?
I remember reading about the Japanese
Samurai tradition, wherein a warrior could be quite comfortably
heterosexual, and yet a part of his warrior code allowed him to sleep
with a man occasionally, as well. They were two different things.
Two very important, mutually dependent inextricable inclinations.
And they were clearly nothing to be ashamed of. Had they been, so sensitive to shame were the Japanese Warrior breed - I’m certain they would have fallen on their swords, had it been any kind of real disgrace. They would cut their guts out at the drop of a Kabuto.
Leaving aside, perhaps the occasional suicide as a result of the inability to come to terms with the power, the intensity of love- very much a part of the Japanese cultural tradition of death being a natural stage in some very profound, intense expressions of love, as personified in the work of Nagisa Oshima, or Masahiro Shinoda's admittedly heterosexual, but no less powerful for it "Double Suicide"...
There was no shame being gay- or engaging in an homosexual relatiosnhip with another man for the Japanese Samurai.
Tell that to one of the 'warrior caste' today...& you will likely get a fat lip.
Bashed to death; rather than look inside, face any kind of hidden truths.
Is it possible we cannot be a whole person without coming fully to terms with our inherent ‘gayness’, as Will Self suggests?
Is our loathing for this part of our personality, literally killing us…
And others?
Having said all this…
If there is something we need to do…
something I need to do…?
What do I do about it?
Or am I doing all I need by simply asking the questions?
The hard questions many men would prefer to beat to death than confront and see through?
Or do I, finally, simply need to suck a dick and get it over with?
How, then do I deal with the issue of the lack of desire to suck dick?
Or is it something I need to learn to do??
Like eating my greens??
Christian Slater said in ‘True Romance’, if I had to fuck a guy…absolutely positively had to fuck a guy…I’d fuck Elvis.
Well…I’d fuck Morrissey.
Only Morrissey.
I have even said as much. I feel secure enough in my heterosexuality to be able to tell women this.
Is this gay part of me something that needs to come out?
Is it even 'gay'?
Or simply the natural allure of a very famous, very enigmatic, & therefore very powerful and attactive person?
Or is it the tip of a very large, very submerged iceberg that needs to be explored?
Is it something I developed as a result of my molestation?
Or was it always in there? Would it have been there anyway?
Is it normal and healthy?
Does it keep ‘coming out’ because a man needs to fully come to terms with it in order to move on?
If it’s in you…they say…it has to come out.
‘Come out’.
There it is again.
Questions.
I raise more questions than answers here. But at least I am doing the asking.
Rather than avoiding it, and putting it in the 'too hard' basket.
So these repressed sensations come out in some other, more violent, possibly homicidal way.
These are just questions.
Questions I am SURE my father never asked himself.
Maybe he should have.
He might have been a much nicer person.
NB: he also hated gays. He used to give me shit because I loved the movie "Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence".
You know the bit where Celliers is buried up to his neck in sand, & left to die?
Dad used to say...'I would love to kick that head.'
That GAY head??
What's that all about?
Hate?
Or repressed love????
Questions.
I fully expect one day, all these
questions will be answered for me.
And the answers will come on my death
bed…when it is too late to do anything about them.
Questions. On the way to the grave...