Lindsay gave me a couple lists of possible interview questions; and although, we have yet had the chance to sit down for a one-on-one interview, I have taken it upon myself to write exposé in a creative, expressive style to respond to these questions. Below is my response to here first question. Installments of other written interview responses can be expected periodically as blog entries throughout the coming month. There's many questions! I'll have a lot to write! It will be revealing, for sure!
I realize that this response rather skirts the main questions in an obtuse way, but the questions, I realized, served more as a catalyst for me to sound off on the troubles and neuroses of the Gay Community, instead of answering the questions directly. For a direct response, I will simply say: Being gay has never been easy! Especially when I was a child and an adolescent, when everyone (my peers, adults, my family) kept telling me I was gay, but I refused to admit it because I didn't want people telling me what I was before I had the chance to figure it out for myself. Children were ruthlessly venomous in their attacks. Their ridicule of me ruined my psyche! My adolescence was hence interrupted.WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A GAY MAN
AND TO BE A GAY MAN WITH HIV?
HOW HAS THIS AFFECTED YOUR ACCEPTANCE
INTO VARIOUS COMMUNITIES, EVEN IN SF?Through my experiences as a gay man, I have learned that most (but not all!) gay men suffer from serious social, psychological & spiritual handicaps, as they were all raised “in the Closet,” expected to conform to the mold society had contrived for & imposed on them. In turn, they respond in a reactionary manner, turning to self-destructive behaviors (patterns of neuroses) to alleviate the pressure of the prejudices & expectations of the Heterosexual Majority.
I am a gay man, like many gay man, who suffered as an adolescent, under the oppressive judgment and prejudice of a conservative community of peers, with staunchly Republican, anti-gay parents, and absolutely without any positive gay role models whom I could mimic & from whom I could learn.
I am a gay man, like many gay man, who suffered again as a young closeted homosexual student at a university whose gay community was weak, feeble, ashamed, self-destructive, and plagued by their own unhealthy, unbecoming, petty issues of intrusive control over and manipulation of the “Closet” of others. Also, during college just as during my adolescence, I suffered from innate social ineptitude and was always the unpopular, awkward outcast, like many gay men (but, of course, not all!).
I am a gay man, like some unfortunate gay men, who suffers still today, surviving under the influences of the false ideals and equally poor social & psychological behaviors of what are reputed to be the Elysian frolickers of the “Gay Mecca:” gay men in San Francisco, especially that ill-reputed, ill-at-ease, again self-destructive, socially & sexually perverse, underground community of eminently promiscuous, HIV-positive drug & sex addicts. This self-destructive majority just trolls & scavenges the Internet and sex clubs to find their next willing victim or “partner in crime” night after sleepless nights, only to quickly exhaust their sexual pairing options by being consumed by their obsessive/compulsive, neurotic, deviant sexual practices.
Today, I am a gay man, unlike many gay men, who is now grotesquely disfigured. I wear a mask. Literally. Figuratively? Who cares? And I am a gay man, part of the small minority (or perhaps of the vast majority) of gay men, who perceives himself to be a social outcast, monstrously lacking in the one key attribute that is sadly essential to the success of any gay male relationship: beauty & attraction.
I have a thought! This thought is not original. I have heard it from someone before or in previous reading, perhaps in the Journal of Homosexuality. The thought is that the oppressive gay male youth experience of “The Closet” and our resulting inability to fully explore our identity in a healthy, open way causes our adolescence to be “interrupted.” The natural experience of identity formation in youth is abruptly stopped in early adolescence, Youth, with all its ineptitudes & awkwardness, is rediscovered and finally fully explored only well after we have entered into our young adult lives. Gay young adult men are essentially still children in adult bodies (with adult hormones and adult expectations) who are forced to finally discover & realize their true identities late in the game and without the support of a sound, fit, healthy, nurturing community of family or peers. However, some gay youth are lucky, living in positive, nondiscriminatory, accepting families & communities, free to develop fully into healthy, sane, secure adults.
Sadly, neuroses, hang-ups, handicaps, bitterness, self-loathing, judgment, prejudice, confounded ill-adept spirituality & faith, drug abuse, sexual promiscuity, sexual addiction, sexual compulsion, failure, suffering, depression, trauma, drama and disappointment are all endemic to the Gay Male Community. And living with HIV/AIDS doesn’t provide much escape from or restitution for all that is already prevalent amongst gay men; it only compounds the negative. The tragedy of sero-conversion truly condemns the victim of disease (however responsible or not he might be for his suffering) to constant, complete, compulsory isolation from, rejection & victimization again by the perfectly legitimate survival tactics of the growing minority of gay men who could be seen as the representation of the ideal, the exemplar: the truly healthy, beautiful & well-adjusted HIV-negative “escapee.”
Hope for the ideal is lost. The ideal is then deranged into some unlikely perversion of itself, and human beings are lesser because of this. However, a semblance of hope can be found again within the self-destructive, unhealthy behaviors of the majority, because initiatives do exist to demand growth, development & maturity from these diseased, depressed, disruptive deviants: “adolescents interrupted.” Self-preservation & the struggle for safety, in turn, lead to “sero-sorting,” when the victims become cohorts together & culprits amongst themselves and find fulfillment finally in restricting their sexual encounters to within the HIV-positive community: a community born of negativity, suffering & incomplete identity formation—in order to prevent the spread of disease.
By sero-sorting, HIV-positive gay men distinguish themselves as nobly prevention-minded, which is essentially a positive thing; but they also ultimately commit to segregating themselves from the HIV-negative community. Therefore, they do not allow themselves to be influenced by the perhaps healthier, more stable values of the uninfected. Instead, they limit their sexual lifestyles to being permanently & pervasively deviant & destructive. This is not a positive thing, and we suffer for it, tragically!
Life since coming out has not been any easier. I was unfortunate not to have been introduced first to the healthy gay lifestyle and community, where real life, real love, romantic relationships and profound platonic relationships between gay men can and do thrive. Instead, I was immediately (and based on my own faults and bad choices) thrown into a den of lascivious "sluttery;" barebacking as if it were a child's game. Adolescence Interrupted! This is what let me to HIV and eventually to Crystal Meth. I wish I could have been saved sooner from my own impending downfall, but finding healthy, friendly gay men to have relationships with is so difficult. The gay community, positive or negative, is not an inviting, welcoming one. That's for sure! I HOPE LINSAY READS THIS! I hope you all do!
