Can I be a gay man without desire? Without a lust for other men?
Today I will be given Lupron, a form of Androgen Deprivation Therapy (ADT) or “hormone treatment.” It will block my body’s production of the testosterone that fuels the prostate cancer lurking within me–and destroy my libido.
How will I be gay then? Continue reading
When queer was odd
and gay was happy
and no vocabulary contained the word
homosexual . . .
Before my parents read to me
of Susie’s babies
and I learned that grown up men and women
did the same repulsive things
that hamsters did . . .
In a time when every boy
married a girl,
but that felt okay because
marriage really was just living together . . .
and I was too young to know
that my fascination with shirtless men
and bare-chested farmers
was anything more than fascination . . .
I had already discovered
the secret of human flight
and could make myself invisible.
I disarmed the world
by invisibly transporting
Russia’s and America’s atom bombs
to my factories of destruction,
because Mennonite—pacifist—boys
must do that first.
Only then did I secretly save
high-school basketball players
(in those revealing uniforms)
and the handsome neighbor
(who mowed the grass t-shirt off)
from evil captors.
And they were not the only ones.
You would be surprised how many villains
conspired to lock away hard-muscled men
in secret basement dungeons
under the buildings of Goessel, Kansas
—a town of just three hundred or so people.
After I rescued them—,
naked, cold, and lonely
—and nursed the wounds on their strong chests,
and on the exquisite skin of their arms and legs
and fine-looking faces,
they would come to live with me
in my not-so-Mennonite mansion
with many bedrooms
just outside of town.
There we lived together
in chaste contentment
in a time before I knew that
something more super was possible.
(two months and twelve days after legal marriage)
Love of my life,
how redundant it felt
to make vows of marriage
having traveled
a thirty-one year road.
Did we not take vows the night we
set out on this journey:
anointed by coffee at Perkins
sanctified on a sofabed alter?
Neither of us anticipated then
that a day would come
when force of law would bind us.
But court rulings do not define the heart.
On our thirty-first anniversary of love,
I undertake this vow:
No “I do” shall supersede
our queer covenant:
to be friends and lovers first
and married second
to value spiritual growth
above conventional relationship
and create “family”
intentionally
to dance across the lines
of social respectability
and seek justice
promiscuously
to celebrate sexuality
spiritually
and sex
playfully
to risk adventure
flagrantly
and seek joy
recklessly
So that whatever life may throw in our path,
our world may be renewed
just by our traveling
together.
I pass the sign on the way to the upper swimming hole at the Rock River near Newfane, Vermont. The sign doesn’t say it, but optional should be in quotation marks. From this point on I will feel more exposed with clothes on than with them off.
So I strip as soon as my feet touch the gay beach. That only shifts my sense of exposure. Is it really possible to feel more naked in the midst of a crowd of naked men? In my youth we would have called this skinny dipping. Dipping, of course, hardly describes even the secondary purpose for our activity. Although I hold no expectation of a side trip into the woods with a handsome stranger, a palpable energy pervades this place no less than the fresh smell and sound of the water rushing over the rocks on its way to the West River. I feel the little arousals in me prompted by the bodies surrounding me. I compare my own skinny, aging, untanned body to theirs. Does every other gay man hold a gym membership and spend all his days lying naked in the sun? Few, if any, tan lines show. My dermatologist would be appalled even as I am enthralled.
Continue reading
I move through the labyrinth on my knees, like a supplicant on a pilgrimage to a holy place. I pluck every dandelion, every blade of grass. Seedling trees and other wayward plants nearly obscure the stones that mark a path to the center. I must remove them, too.
Every spring the same exercise awaits me. I make my way, revealing the path, inch by inch and foot by foot. Where the moss threatens to envelope a rock, I pull up the rock and turn it over—showing another side, darkly moist but clean of moss. It sharpens the edges of the path.
In the labyrinth, clearing and clarifying the path take time and patience. All vegetation except the moss must go. Even the rocks may need to shift slightly. Some need to be turned over or repositioned after winter’s frost and settling. Each stone helps mark the path. I make the labyrinth my metaphor as my queer life turns, inward and then outward, perpendicular to and then parallel to a center. But as I follow the path, I trust it will lead inexorably toward a center. Continue reading
I have become an old man—despite it all. My sisters have long since passed. And sometimes the miracle seems like a curse. How long must the “magic” last? Will I ever enter the valley of the shadow again? As long ago as it is, I remember those days. Younger folk have learned, to their regret, that if they give me any excuse, I’ll retell the stories in excruciating detail. Like that last Sunday before everything fell apart—or seemed to.
He didn’t say he was running from the law when he showed up. But we knew. Even if I hadn’t owed him my life, we would have taken him in. We had loved each other long before that. Continue reading
Sometimes, when we pray in church
sitting
with hands neatly folded
in our laps,
I want to kneel.
Sometimes, I want to raise my hands
and sing off-the-wall praise songs
—maybe even with a band.
But mine is a generous faith
that knows God embraces Muslims
and Jews and Buddhists
(without converting)
and finds it perfectly reasonable for
atheists to join a community of believers
Continue reading