Pride and Prejudice

"I miss you..."

There it was, 4 months after I threw him out of my life in a nasty and scurilous text message, the validation I so secretly desired. It came in the middle of the night, of my slumber. It took my eyes several moments to focus on the screen of my phone. When I finally processed the 301 US area code, I felt a horrible mixture of guilt, triumph, and yearning.

I'd been thinking of him the past few days. It was, as I remembered well, his birthday on Thursday.

But in the morning as I bit into my apple, I realised that the ball was where I always hated it to be in relationships - my court.

My pride spoke first. That message is too little, too late. Even if it was true, that's a can of worms I need to stay away from. The exorcism of JD from both my mind and heart has been a long and bumpy road. Was I to make a U-turn after so much progress?

My yearning spoke next. The truth is, I miss him too. Isn't the truth supposed to 'set you free'? Isn't pride something you set aside when one dwells in matters of the heart?

But when you come right down to it, he sent 3 words. One of my recurring frustrations with him has always been his inability to match my expression. In the world of verbal and written communications, he was a frumpy jersey from Lillywhites and I was a fitted Romeo Gigli. So where is the moral dilemma? How/if to respond?

I picked up my phone and sent: "Me too."

Just because I will never put myself back into that relationship doesn't mean I can't be honest with myself and him. Just because things went belly-up doesn't mean we can't be grown-ups and move past this healthily. I made sure I finally restored the balance of expression, I childishly sent two words to trump his three. Maybe one day, if he's willing to talk, I'll admit that the failure of this relationship was partly my fault. I was the one with the 'experience', he had only spent time with one other guy before me, and it wasn't a relationship. I was the wise sage who always preached against long-distance relationships and their hazards, yet I raced into this one without thinking twice.

Qind - Queer Blogazine

The new issue of Qind is out, you'll be thrilled to know that "the Affirmation" contributed to the "Organic Growth" section.

Actually, the 4 articles in this section are very interesting, celibacy and orgies juxtaposed with glorious art.

Peace

M

“Ladies and Gentlemen, this is a freak show”

As fate would have it, there I was, sitting in row X with the vista of the O2 Arena before me, crowds in a consistent howl-applause mixture, lights flaring from every direction. At centre-stage, the Big Apple Circus had begun its routines. Men floated around in rolling hoops, women flew in the air and landed on strings, clowns on giant stilts stared at the crowd, pointing and laughing, and a ballerina balanced a giant metal cube on his nose.

The lights dimmed and from the ceiling bodies emerged, spinning at unbelievable speeds, hanging on to nothing but rope. “Ladies and Gentlemen,” solemnly spoke the MC, “this is a freak show. This…..is a freak show.”

The lights screamed once more and Britney Spears descended from heaven in a diamond orb.

The next 1.5 hours were nothing short of orgasmic as the legendary Miss Spears got her groove on oh so many times. And though you can certainly pinpoint a certain blandness in her expression- after a turbulent year and being virtually on lock-down by her father whilst on tour- she did not fail to make the zillion people in the audience gyrate with her. It was her against the music.

And it was, after all, a freak show, a circus. The return to good old penny-in-the-hat entertainment. But as we all stood gaping, laughing, dancing and screaming all at once, I couldn’t help but feel a little sympathy for Miss Spears. And I have a feeling I wasn’t alone. We all probably related to her a little bit that night. Parental lock-down. Relationship melt-down. Perseverance and kicking ass nonetheless.

When the MC had said that this was a freak show, I didn’t think one could limit that to what was on stage. The best performances integrate the audience, usually in crafty irony. A lot of us know we are freaks of nature. And for those who feel they are not I can only feel pity, life must be insufferably predictable.

So in dancing and screaming her name, we all celebrated a little bit of ourselves that night. The luckiest of us are freaks and performers. You want a piece of me?

Gilgamesh

We shot ourselves in the foot, I realised one day as I flicked through the timeless Epic of Gilgamesh. As homosexuals, constantly wrenching ourselves away from the influence and conventions of heterosexuality, we've landed flat on our faces in the same dull traps they have fallen into since time began - only for us the shoe simply does not fit. Our moisturised heels are swimming in standard issue caterpillar boots.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu, the oldest written story of our human race was a love written in the stars, free and pure. I assure you they did not worry about Proposition 8. Nor did Gilgamesh's mother, in Tablet I, have an epilepsy and send him to therapy after realising the destiny of her royal son lies with another man.

True, such great journeys and epic adventures as seen through the eyes of Gilgamesh rarely materialise in our physical world today, but it is not too difficult to see (and some enthusiasts of the esoteric may even wish you to believe that) the monsters and the journeys in Gilgamesh's tale could also be demons and journeys you conquer within yourself.

But hey, who has time for profound connections and spiritual voyages with true love if we're too busy fighting for the hypotheses of gay marriage and test-tube babies? Why do we buy into simulating heterosexual relationships with all their ideosyncracies and force-transcribe them as our own? From the ring on your finger to the debate on monogamy, its tiresome and in most cases irrelevant.

I owe the freedom in my life to many an activist before me who has fought for what I deserve as a homosexual - equality of treatment. But often we lose sight of this, confuse equality with immitation.

In my tenacity to numerical explanations: if everyone aspires to be society's perfect 10 (accepted, respected, etc), heterosexuals usually achieve this through a simple 5+5. Yes, 5+5 gives you a perfect 10, but so does 2+8, or 6+4, and it is up to those of us who arrive at the perfect 10 from different variations to prove the obvious - that we are equally worthy. But instead, what we consistently pursue are the traditional "5+5" societal institutions, such as marriage and procreation, partly because the standards have been embedded in our brains and partly because we want the ligitimacy and respect that they entail.

Our mission, if one exists, should be to ensure we are equally acknowledged and respected regardless of how it is we conduct our lives so long as we follow our heart, and not to seek equality through immitation.