aMMusing

June marks the beginning of another season of Gay Pride celebrations in major Western cities. On June 28, 1969, the Stonewall Riots in New York City occurred, marking the moment when gays and lesbians stood up against persecution, thus the usual choice of a date in late-June to commemorate the event. But over the years, as Pride events have become more mainstream and commercial and akin to a circuit party, the date choice can range from June to September in different cities, as in Sin City North, for instance, where it now happens in mid-August.

The fact we use the word “celebration” today is telling of the shift that has happened over the years with regard to this commemorative event. Thus, I’m glad that former Winnipeg mayor Glen Murray reminds us that the event, not that long ago, used to be a protest. It’s hard to imagine that a mere 20 years ago, it was imperative for some to be secretive about their sexual orientation for fear of losing their job. Thus, some would avoid the event at all cost in order not to be associated with it in any way.

Indeed, much has changed for the better HERE since I was in my 20s, so the term “celebration” may not be totally out of order. What’s more, I now live in perhaps the most tolerant, if not downright accepting, city in North America with regard to being gay. As well, for my employer and my colleagues at work, my being gay is a non-issue. I never fear of losing my job or my apartment over it, just as I don’t for loving coffee too much or having blue eyes. But it never escapes me that our cities and my country are still oases. Too easily we forget there are places on this planet where being gay is an offense — sometimes criminal, and in extreme cases, sometimes punishable by death.

Even among ourselves, though, we don’t speak with a common voice, and thus don’t form a cohesive community. To be blunt, the only thing I have in common with the vast majority of the guys who hang out in the Village is that we prefer to kiss guys, and even there, there’s a wide array of preferences. (Some don’t like kissing!) So, when it comes to Pride, there are many who can’t stand seeing scantily clad people or adherents to whatever fetish parading down the street, as they not only can’t identify with them but also, in some cases, take offense. “That is not me,” they say, and they resent that others might think they’re anything like them. That’s because, in reality, they aren’t, and it’s way too facile for anyone to accuse them of self-hatred or inward homophobia. For the life of me, I can’t comprehend how a gay guy can be on the socially conservative side of the political spectrum and I would definitely say loud and clear that “he’s not me.” That doesn’t make me self-loathing. He might be, but even that is a cheap shot.

The reason I wish Pride today had more of a protest element is that we don’t have to stray too far from our oasis to find deep resentment and hatred for the gains that have been made in the last 20 years. I don’t know if and how that can be changed. In Canada, where the legal front has been reasonably taken care of, there’s one thing left to protest: ignorance. But elsewhere, there’s that and much, much more. Thus, isn’t it selfish of us to be resting on our laurels and setting aside the notion of protest?

El Poema and I have come to terms with the fact that we’re a little bit crazy.

This week we spent a lot of time planning our big day. To be truthful, before this week, I didn’t know anything about the Cartier trinity ring portrayed here. And now here we are: that is what we selected as our wedding bands. In the 1920s, Jean Cocteau adopted it and turned it into a symbol, where the three interlocking rings represent the three virtues of love: loyalty, honesty, and romance. Not, as the Queen of Sheba feared, the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

We have a date set — soon, obviously — but we’re giving ourselves license to postpone if, at the last minute, we feel we’re rushing too much. In other words, if we feel we’re being a bit TOO crazy.

…baptism by cold?

El Poema and I have booked his trip to Canada next month. We’re meeting in Montréal on the 9th, apartment hunting together until the 13th, and then he’s coming to Halifax until the 2nd.

Of course, the point of apartment hunting together is that Montréal will be a new beginning for both of us, so I can’t imagine him not having a say on the new digs. But what a wretched time of year to come to Canada for a Mexican who’s unusually sensitive to the cold! Obviously, we’ll have to devote part of our time in Montréal to clothing him properly. And then, back in sleepy little Halifax, it’ll be …well …realistic in some ways because I’ll have to work during weekdays. And I think it’ll help categorically firm up our plans on which approach to take for his coming to the country (assuming the cold doesn’t freak him out so badly that everything comes to an abrupt halt).

Meanwhile, last weekend, I visited my mom in Moncton because I couldn’t possibly tell her by phone what transpired in Mexico over Christmas. This is the rub: the fact I like to kiss boys has been a weird and convulted open secret in our family for 25 years, with some of my siblings officially not knowing about my “affections,” shall we say. But now that we’re all in our 40s and 50s and that my marital status is about to change, the denial has got to stop. And I expect nothing less than a recognition that this family is getting a new member.

The talk with Mom went as well as I could expect. I introduced the topic by saying that I had some very good news, but it’s the kind of news I had to tell in person because it has an impact on the family, and family matters a lot to me. She was okay at the point where I declared that El Poema was my “significant other.” But then, understandably, she couldn’t hide her surprise when I went on to tell her how significant and what we intend to do about it. I may be 42 and she may be nearing 80, but I’m still her baby, after all. And I detected some panic coming from her at that point as she tried to imagine how to lift the lid from the house of cards that she so carefully built over all these years and figure out how it should now be reconstructed.

Then, a breakthrough of sorts came when we were looking at our Mexico pictures and she saw him for the first time. Not that it would have changed anything, but I have to admit I worried that she would dislike this tall, long-haired Mexican who has become the object of my affection. But at one picture in particular, she finally said that she could be contrarian but “je dois admettre que c’est un bel homme” (“I have to admit that he’s a handsome man”), noting in particular his beautiful brown eyes. (Coincidentally, within five minutes of my meeting El Poema’s mom in person, she commented on my eyes and how they were so much like her own mother’s.) And then Mom asked me to help her save a particular photo of us to her computer’s pictures folder.

I know my mom. She probably looked at that picture a few dozen times this past week. And although I assured her that I’m happy and confident that we’re doing the right thing, I know she worried at lot …not so much for how to let the cat out of the bag, although there was probably some of that. But simply about me. ‘Cause, like I said, I’m still her baby.

David astutely remarked on my previous post immediately after my return from Mexico, “Although this [the Maurice and El Poema engagement] is not what I would have expected many years ago when we met, I am pleased you are at a place where you can enjoy this sort of happiness.”

Now there’s an understatement! Not even a year ago did I think that I would be into “this” a year later. In fact, so huge, sudden and abrupt is the change for both of us that we sometimes find ourselves pausing and saying, “Oh my gawd, are we really doing this?!”

Granted, for me at least, pretty much everything in the last two years has been about change — not just making changes, but also recognizing a deep sense of restlessness within myself that has forced me to assess the previous 5 to 10 years. And what I concluded, at both a very conscious and subconscious level, is that not only have I merely coasted through those years, but that I have also, in many ways, remained relatively static. Sure, new and old friends have come; new and old friends have gone; some people who seemed like friends turned out not to be such great friends; some projects got realized while others never evolved beyond ideas; there were great moments of shared happiness, serenity, fun and support as well as seriously unsettling moments of conflicts and sadness. But really, when one thinks about it, that’s just the normal ebb and flow of living, where the faces, situations and endeavours may vary with the passage of time, but once a tally is done at the end of each year, very little has essentially changed.

It seems pretty clear to me now that fear of commitment is what fuelled my inertia. I don’t just mean fear of settling down with one person; I mean how, even professionally, I resisted for so long commitment to an employer. Yet, in contradiction, loyalty and dedication are values I cherish and, I believe, honour. But I guess at one point, namely shortly after I turned 40, I asked myself the question the insufferable Dr. Phil would ask: “How is that working for me?” And my non-verbal answer — the deep sense of restlessness that very question triggered — was that it wasn’t working. I was left feeling ungrounded. And yearning. Not so much yearning FOR anything or more “stuff,” but yearning TO be able to give more and to find reason to celebrate the comfort that can be found within what on the surface may seem common but perhaps isn’t so common.

There’s something El Poema said to me numerous times from the very beginning, which I won’t repeat here for the sake of our privacy and in order not to seem boastful. But it resonated. What he said is true, I think, and by recognizing that it is, I’ve finally begun to shed my fear of commitment.

In spades! Because not doing things in half-measures is one of the few traits that hasn’t changed.

I never delete e-mails (except spam, of course). I keep them all — incoming and outgoing — and, for the most part, sort them in folders. I’ve been using different versions of the same e-mail program since the mid-1990s; consequently, I still have messages from 1996. You might be wondering what’s the point of keeping all these messages. But last night, I rediscovered why.

Before e-mail, I used to be a prolific letter-writer, and my friends who’ve received those letters could attest that my letters were not only long, but unconventional. I would narrate my thoughts and what was happening to and around me as little stories — stories that were sometimes funny, sometimes sad, sometimes thought-provoking, sometimes silly, sometimes banal, sometime irreverent, sometimes sentimental. It was before the time I was addicted to word-processing for writing, when my handwriting was still legible and my prose, if I can dare call it that, would flow easily from one paragraph to another, unlike today when I can’t write worth shit with pen and paper and jump all over the place to edit and cut-and-paste as I write (as I’m doing right now).

However, when e-mail came along, I made the deliberate choice of viewing the keyboard and computer screen as a modern form of pen and paper, and the Send button as a stamp and envelope. I didn’t see it as giving me license to be telegraphic and sloppy, but at the same time I got off on the idea that, unlike old-fashioned letters, my missives would be received instantly. I kept my voice and continued to write the tales of my life as I had always done, and much to my delight, many to whom I wrote adopted the same candour when writing back to me.

Thus it really isn’t that surprising that I took to blogging nearly five years ago; it was an extension — a natural evolution — of what I had always done. But there are significant differences between my letters of old and this blog. The most notable difference is that, because letters and e-mails were one-on-one, my correspondents and I allowed ourselves to be a lot more coarse and politically incorrect because we knew each other well enough to recognize that we were indulging in hyperboles and that we could divulge raunchy details with the knowledge that they would remain between us. Writing in a blog, however, requires more tact and discretion, unless, of course, I as a writer chose not to care an iota that readers might misconstrue my musings due to their lack of context about me and knowing that I’m merely being flip.

Take, for example, a passage of an e-mail to my oldest friend, who happens to be quadraplegic. Although I’m able-bodied, I’d call him “The Crip” or “The Quad” in the same vein as gay guys might refer to themselves as faggot or how some Black guys might use the N word among themselves even though no one including myself would ever consider that very same word as being acceptable coming out of my mouth. Someone with no knowledge of my long friendship with him and the fact I was his attendant for several years — not to mention that he’d often call me a slut and a cocksucker — wouldn’t understand how anyone could write:

Speaking of people with that monicker, remember the crip who’s been studying at our alma mater since the Year Dot? Well, her wheels drove her into the ground so she’s six feet under now. She was a pain in the ass but no one wished her dead.

All this to say that last night, I started reading e-mails dating back more than 11 years. I don’t know what brought me to doing that, but it was an experience that, at various times, brought me to laugh out loud or get a bit misty-eyed. Moreover, these e-mails now stand as a detailed journal of countless happenings which, at the time, were incredibly consuming but that, until last night, didn’t even register as a memory anymore.

One set of three extremely long messages I wrote for the benefit of two of my closest friends at the time (as well as myself, I suppose) recounts, in the present tense, the days of my father’s open-heart surgery in 1996. I can’t tell you how glad I am to still have such a detailed journal of that difficult period of my family’s history. Many of the details are mundane while others are not; however, I was amazed last night to realize how many significant details I had long forgotten.

Monday, July 29, 1996 (the day before my father’s surgery)
[...]
Eight thirty comes too soon. Dad will have a big day tomorrow and he still has some pre-op prep to do before going to bed. He gets up from his chair, ties the belt of his housecoat and escorts us out the ward. He and Mom stop in the hallway so that my oldest niece can snap a picture. When we reach the entrance to the ward, we look out the large windows overlooking the parking lot and Dad points out our cars. He has few interests, but cars have always been one of them. Then we start saying goodnight and that’s when his tears come back. All choked up, he echoes our goodnight and, gripping his IV poll, he turns around and starts walking away from us, back to his room.

I break my own rule. I look back. But he does not.

Not only had I forgotten that moment; upon reading the whole series, I realized I had forgotten the long days of waiting for his surgery and the longer days of worries afterwards when the hospital was intent on shipping him out five days after the surgery even though he clearly wasn’t ready to be discharged. It was in those five days I figured out in my heart that the system had irreparably broken my father, and indeed, the remaining seven-and-a-half years of his life turned out ghastly when they weren’t wretched.

But not all the stories I’d e-mail at the time were of sadness and heartbreak, as evidenced in the first quote. The early/mid-1990s was the period I was bestowed the nickname “Whore of Babylon.” And I really played into that character both in writing and in action, whether to recount tales of whoredom or non-sexual incidents, like when I e-mailed a good friend about my then-car Homomobile blowing up on the way to the airport.

This here Whore resolutely gave up his spot in the fast lane a week ago yesterday when Homomobile decided that life wasn’t worth living.

Homomobile, you must understand, is the most ungrateful of creatures. He doesn’t care that this here Whore spent two grand on him less than three months ago to prolong his life by a few years. Nor does he care that, on any other four-wheeled motorized device like himself, the repair he received would work like a charm. And he certainly doesn’t give a sweet flying fuck that this here Whore is officially on the verge of unemployment.

Picture it: May 17, 1996, and the Whore of Babylon is driving the Queen of Sheba and Colonel Snodgrass to the airport so that they can catch their plane for Helsinki. At precisely 1.5 km from the exit to Halifax International, the Whore feels Homomobile lurch back and his gas pedal stiffen. The Whore’s losing speed. Without alarming his passengers, he starts moving into the slow lane. As he does, he notices through the rearview mirror that he’s leaving behind the thickest trail of oily blue smoke you could ever imagine. The cars behind him are not only peeping their horns; they’re keeping away in case the thing in front of them (to wit, *us*) blows up. Maintaining control of Homomobile, the Whore manages to get to the airport exit and crawl to the garage near the exit ramp, where, upon turning in the parking lot, all of Homomobile’s lights go on and he not only stalls, but seizes. As the Whore’s sexy neighbour commented a few days later, the Whore has a way of getting cars that are real drama queens.

So the Whore has managed to get the duo to the airport, although certainly not without incident, and he must then return to the city by shuttle bus. This is the beginning of the long weekend; therefore, no one deigns do anything with Homomobile before Tuesday. Already, the Whore figures that Homomobile is toast — not even worth the space he occupies. So a disgusted Whore finds his way to Stonehenge, where he drowns his sorrows in five DOUBLE gin and tonics, and gets the bartender to call him a cab home some two hours later.

Of course, I never forgot when Homomobile blew up; that story remains a fixture in the narrative of the days of the Queen of Sheba and the Whore of Babylon. But I had forgotten that it happened a week before my job at the time was ending and that I got drunk out of my mind that night.

When I was teaching, I/the Whore had no qualms in describing my colleagues as hot if hot they were, as in this passage I wrote to a dear friend with whom I studied in the late 1980s.

You wouldn’t know Gorgeous either; he completed his degree at our alma mater a few years ago, did a Master’s out West, and is currently considering a PhD overseas. But Gorgeous, who’s definitely (even defiantly) “family,” is nothing less than a Greek god: prematurely (short) grey hair; strong, angular Germanic features, pale blue eyes that make mine look like shit, and (based on my beach experience, although I regrettably have never partaken in the pleasure up close) a dick that grows hard and big and shoots like a freakin’ revolver. Gorgeous is generally extremely well liked by the students because he’s as challenging to them as was our own mentor in the program, with the added bonus that, unlike our mentor, he’s really not hard to look at.

And I certainly had no trouble telling friends of my escapades in the crudest words imaginable, like:

Yes, the Whore is back in Halifax after a dirty couple of days in Montreal!

Just got back tonight, actually. Fornicated with my rendition of a minor deity, a semi-Atom Egoyan lookalike, and then three guys sucked me off simulatenously in a dark hallway. I’m really tired today. Go figure.

Or:

I bumped into this guy at Infections, whom I did for a while in early ’97. To make a long story short, I found out that night that he just got a Nissan Sentra (same year as mine) and, later, I spotted it on the Hill. I waited around for him to return to his car and, no more than two minutes later, he “confessed” needing to be fucked in the worst way. So, what’s a whore boy like me to do but to oblige… There are plenty of guys who like to fool around, but fewer are those who want it up their ass — a particular delight for me to fulfill — pun definitely intended.

It’s with a considerable amount of shame that I admit now that reading some of these old e-mails reminded me of fuckbuddies and boyfriends about whom today I keep only an abridged and highly redacted recollection. That’s despite the fact that, at the time, moving on had been extremely difficult, but clearly when I finally did move on, I really did move on. And invariably, it was through writing and then shelving what I wrote that I was eventually able to escape from the pain. But reading some of this stuff many years later, I’m reminded of how long I’ve intrinsically known that I’m an “either/or” kind of guy in the sentimentality department: either a true whore, or a guy who, when he falls, falls completely.

Turning to Rachmaninoff. Seeing a carefully crafted sense of strength and self-reliance fall prey to so little. Heart pounding in my throat. An inexplicable sense of fatigue. No reproach; only a wish onto which I must hold, at least for now, to prevent myself from sinking into that pit I’ve once known. Bewitched, bothered and bewildered.
[...]
Alone in bed, deliberately lying on my back, fighting the urge to assume the fetal position I’d instinctually want to assume. Three sentences forming perfectly in my mind, with a sudden, irrepressible urge to send him flowers in the hope of expressing the different pains — his and mine — and the knowledge that our dilemma speaks more of our simplistic, adolescent immaturity …but that’s okay.
[...]
“You’re killing me,” he said to me as he was trying to leave my apartment that last night, his eyes locked into mine, and I echoed those words to him. And there stands the ellipsis.

Indeed, there it stands, amidst flashbacks and a few regrets, leaving a trail from intimate moments during which I committed the sin of sparing words for fear of irritating that unease within him that I sensed very soon after I first met him.
[...]
That afternoon the phone rings: it’s him, calling to thank me for the flowers. I can still sense that unease in him, even over the phone, just as I suspect that I might be adding another dimension to it. “Really nice card…” I hear him say. And then, neither knowing what more to say, what to do, if only, perhaps, speaking as though nothing more ever was. “What are you doing tomorrow night?” A play with a cast too large for the stage.

Looking back at this sampling of my writing from a decade or more ago, I find myself in awe of how much has changed and how much hasn’t changed, and how committing such raw thoughts and emotions in the moment not only allowed me to forge ahead, but quite literally forged who I’ve become. I both am and am not that person from 10+ years ago.

While I miss — or at least look back nostalgically at — that guy who wrote so constantly and so vividly, the last thing I want is to rebecome that guy. That guy was restless, never quite content, and very vulnerable. In fact, “vulnerable” is a word a then-friend of the Queen of Sheba used to describe that guy after she met him, and he took considerable offense to that description at the time. Today, however, the guy I am agrees that that guy was vulnerable because, for whatever reason, he refused to own and vehemently rejected his “or” part. To cut that guy some slack, perhaps it matters to recall he was bearly 30 at the time. But that hardly excuses the viciousness with which he would cut down others who aspired for the “or” he expended so much energy deriding, as when he wrote a friend about how quickly a guy he’d just dumped had moved on.

By the way, Dumped is head-over-heels in love with a shoe saleman in the town where they live who’s even younger than I am and who’s extremely eager to spit toothpaste every morning down the drain of Dumped’s bathroom sink. What a fuckin’ relief for me, but then JESUS! I get just a bit angry, to tell you the truth. Here I was worried about shattering someone, namely Dumped, and he had a Plan B all along. I’m now brought to admit that, in many respects, Dumped is about as deep as a puddle of two-day-old rain. Funny how I glossed over the shortcomings when I was in the thick of things…

Today when I read what that guy wrote more than 10 years ago, I think, “What a fucking, petulant bitch!” But then I think about how it was all just a façade and, worse, an elaborate (nor maybe not so elaborate) mechanism to make himself believe that he was right. And then, when I realize that I hardly recognize the guy who wrote that nasty passage even though that guy was me, I can’t help but conclude that I have changed. However, I have to own up — and am owning up — to the fact that the bitchy façade of old contributed to the change in some way. The passage of time and the acquiring of more experiences not only proved me wrong, but it helped transform me from someone who’s “restless, never quite content, and very vulnerable” to someone who’s basically happy, optimistic, and at ease with the notion of not being able to control everything.

Some of you might think that I’m saying that now because of the entry of El Poema in my life — a kind of distancing. However, with all honesty, I think that’s reversing the cause and the effect. It’s not that I met El Poema and that’s forcing me to deny positions I once took. Rather, it’s that I have been changing my positions well before meeting El Poema and it was that slowly evolving and more receptive person El Poema met in that park in Montréal in August. I truly believe that, and that belief is supported by an offhand remark BeeGoddessM made, coincidentally, just days before I left for Montréal: “I sense that you’ve changed in the time I’ve known you,” referring to her feeling that I wasn’t destined to be a lifelong bachelor.

I remember my reflex kicking in and receiving her remark with only a mild degree of skepticism, whereas before it would have been met with flat denial. But shortly before, I had written in this blog in reference to the Town of Truro’s refusal to fly the gay pride flag in front of town hall:

The thing I envy the most of heterosexual couples is how they can walk down any street hand-in-hand without it being noticed and without them feeling they’re making a public statement of any kind. I despise the fact that if two men hold hands while in a restaurant, they still stand the chance of being accused of “flaunting their sexuality” when the same would not be said of a man and woman.
[...]
Actually, that last statement just made me swell up a little. I’m realizing how, at nearly 42, I’m yearning for that little something that has nothing to do with appendages and orifices. All of this because the mayor of Armpit …I mean, Truro, NS, decided not to recognize my existence?

Maybe.

Just as this blog provides me points of reference in my past, so do my e-mails from so very long ago. Many think it strange when I tell them I still have e-mails from 1996. But what they don’t realize is that, for me, e-mail was my way of keeping a journal well before blogs came into existence.

Hence, after reading samplings of those e-mails last night, I indeed did laugh and cry a little. And then I spent this afternoon writing this blog entry. Because the whole experience hit me like a ton of bricks.

This post shares its title with a particularly forgettable song by Michael Franks.

I Don’t Know Why… (mp3, 4.0 MB, 4:15)
I came unglued the night I met you
I felt my life divide by two
You’d think by now I would know better
Love is always blue

Thursday I had my bi-weekly meeting with AnShe, my supervisor at the day job. We talk several times a week, but this is our regularly scheduled “one-on-one” so that I can keep her posted on my progress based on my semi-annual performance report, to which staff’s (considerable) annual bonus is linked. It sounds like it might be very formal and stuffy, but the relationship between AnShe and me is anything but. And we always speak in French.

Anyway, the last point I raised at the end of our talk was the need to start the paperwork for that permission for a week off I want at year’s end, a process we could only start now that The Woman is back from vacation. I didn’t expect to hear about an outcome for a few more days, but no less than an hour later, my phone rings. “Okay, I spoke with The Woman about your time off,” I heard AnShe say. “Go ahead and book your ticket!” Needless to say (so why say it?), I was thrilled to hear the news and said, “Not only am I happy, but I can assure you someone in Mexico will be just as thrilled.”

Followed a little pause, a hesitation, until finally AnShe asked, “Mind if I ask you an ‘indiscreet’ question?” I instantly knew what she wanted to ask and I had no qualms in her asking about the identity of the “someone in Mexico.” I simply said, “Well, you do the ‘Facebook thing’ as I do and you’ve seen my profile…” And to that she said, “Yeah, okay.” Another hesitant pause. “This is a friend, a mother of 3 and a grandmother of 2 speaking, not your supervisor,” she finally said. “I just want you to know that, not matter what, my loyalty is with you and, come what may, I don’t want you to get hurt …but I also want you to be happy.” Then she let out a gasp and added, “That was a tough one to put into words.”

I immediately thanked her for saying that, for caring, and said, “You know, though, I’ve never in my life been more certain about something.” To which she said, without a hint of falsehood in her voice, “Good for you!”

Now let me be blunt. Whether it’s about the planned move to Montreal or El Poema, I still feel some trepidation and concern once in a while. However, what’s been most outstanding in my mind is not just the support all my friends have given me on both fronts, but the genuine sincerity with which that support has been given to me. And now add to that having everything out in the open with the peers that matter at work, and I can’t help but feel blessed.

But. There’s always a but, isn’t there!

As expected, El Poema was happy to hear the news. But he didn’t react to it immediately. Rationally I knew he’s had a lot on his plate in the last few days. And I started remembering another long-distance situation I was in some 12 years ago, where, in the end, I did get scared away because I felt stiffled by all the attention. That said, it’s not fair to compare the two for a bunch of reasons I won’t get into here. But as a corollary to that initial thought, I began to wonder if he was choosing to cool off the intensity a few notches just so that he/we can reach the other side of our 87 days of waiting with our sanity relatively intact.

The Skype phone rang around noon as I was reading blogs. As before, the instant I saw his face on the screen and we began to talk, I felt like a kid at Christmas. But eventually again today, we talked frankly about Canada and Mexico. It’s. So. Fucking. Hard. It’s hard for me to hear about another couple — one Canadian, one Mexican — and, you know, he left his super dooper job in Canada and came to live in Mexico. Not so implicit is the “you’d never do that, would you.”

The thing is, I can’t lie. I’m a lousy liar. So the truth I spoke was, “Like today, or next week, or the end of the year? No. I wouldn’t. But I am not saying NEVER.”

But even after making that point clear (or perhaps because?), I still felt overwhelmingly sad. The one person I would most want to love Canada still has, understandably, a very bad taste in his mouth about this country. And I still have 87 days to wait for a short 10-day stint to get a general impression about his.

Re-enter the day job. Never mind my lack of Spanish at this point; I can always work on that. The day job has become a means for me. I do my job well, but despite what some might say, I’m not wed to it. I’m using it. But, there’s more that I simply can’t ignore: I have the good fortune of a corporate job where my colleagues are openly accepting and accommodating. Right now, with my lack of language skills and credentials, I have to remain here. The alternative would be a 180-degree reversal that would only change the locale (and, frankly, be even more precarious), and thus would be an even greater strain on a fledgling relationship. It would take a very long time (if ever) before I could work in a third language I don’t know yet.

The killer is that neither wants to hurt the other. And each believes that this relationship must be given a chance. In fact, more than that: we both know the mere idea of giving up would tear us into shreds. That said, I still refuse to look too far ahead for reasons that are obvious to me. But at the same time, I do harbour ideas that I think could lead to where we want to go in the broader sense of the word…

Except …what if those ideas are not mutually acceptable? What then?

BeeGoddessM pointed out to me at dinner last night that there’s a string of comments in the online version of the Halifax Daily News regarding Truro town council’s decision, spearheaded by Mayor Bill Mills, not to fly the gay pride flag in front of town hall. She did warn me that the comments were disturbing and that a surprising number hailed the mayor as being “courageous,” so I don’t know why I bothered reading them. But I did.

Now I can’t even count how many things are on my tits right now.

– Why is it so hard for some people to understand that secularism, especially in government, is the best approach? There are so many examples of varying degree of why mixing religion and religious-rooted morality is a bad idea. Think the Islamic Republic of Iran; the right wing of the Republican party in the U.S.; the Reformers disguised as Conservative sheep in Canada. I don’t expect Mr. and Mrs. Religious Wingnut to be totally a-okay in private about gay people, but they do have the choice of privately not associating with them. This can be particularly sad if they choose to shun a member of their own family, but where it’s within the realm of the private, no one can legislate against that. But they don’t have the choice of causing anyone harm — certainly not in the public realm.

– I can’t even begin to understand the argument of how granting equal rights takes away from other people’s rights. It doesn’t take an expert of logic to see that, prior to 2005 in Canada, heterosexual couples were the ones benefitting of a “special right,” which normally right-wing ideologues dislike. Parliament’s passing of same-sex marriage legislation did not confer a special right to gays and lesbians; it removed an existing special right granted only to heterosexuals. And how that has dimished the “sanctity of marriage” simply cannot be argued logically.

– I can’t believe how many people still refer to being gay as a “lifestyle” and a “choice.” The former is defined as “the habits, attitudes, tastes, moral standards, economic level, etc., that together constitute the mode of living of an individual or group.” So, when I look at that definition, and when I think of that heterogeneous group of people that constitute the many gay people I know, I simply cannot bring myself to refer to the “gay lifestyle.” But the fact opponents use that term is revealing of how they believe “gay lifestyle” stands for “the sinful habits, hedonistic attitudes, bad tastes, low or non-existing moral standards, [yet generally] high economic level, etc., that together……” In short, they infuse their own values into an otherwise neutral definition.

– As for the usage of the word “choice,” I can’t believe this still has to be argued and belaboured in 2007. Even my staunchly Roman Catholic mother has come to recognize that it’s not a matter of choice. Or, if choice there is, it is between living in truth and living in lie and deceit. I told you recently about a “delicious character” I recently met who’s only 7 years my senior, and while I don’t know him that well (yet?), I feel my heart grow heavy thinking about the choice he has made, namely deceiving an out-of-town wife and two kids because he didn’t feel he had any other choice while living in a small town like Truro (although not Truro in his case). I honestly feel as much for the wife and kids as I do for him, having to live this elaborate lie.

– But speaking of what real “choice” there is, I have to point out that if today — 25 years later — I had a choice like those dimwitted individuals think I ever had and if all else remained equal, I wouldn’t choose to become straight. I think every individual is different, but for me, it has encouraged me to be more receptive to and respectful of difference. But here I’m just speaking for myself. Because there’s no such thing as a “gay lifestyle,” I can declare having met a lot of gays and lesbians who do not so readily make extrapolations between their situation and others’. The most appalling characters are misogynistic gay men.

– I could spit nails when someone thinks he’s so clever to suggest that there should be a “heterosexual pride” day to counterbalance gay pride. But then again, if those who fail to understand that every day is heterosexual pride day would consider holding a day to celebrate free, unconditional, respectful, consensual and non-dominant love and sexuality of the opposite sex, maybe that would help pull that moralistic broomstick out of their ass. For those who doubt the claim that every day is hetero pride day, I need only think about one of many isolated incidents that happened at work the other day. My boss, a.k.a. The Woman, was referring to how a female summer student was working on a short-term project connected to my own. “She’s very young,” she said, “but ______ [a male colleague whom I hold in high esteem] is liking it a lot!” It was just a joke and it was said in a very matter-of-fact manner. But I’m not so sure it would have been as matter of fact had the summer student been male (and possibly gay) and my colleague been gay. I think there would have been a little bit more tension in that remark.

– I think that gay pride organizations, especially in Canada, have become too apolitical prematurely. It’s a fact that it takes time before legislation gains widespread acceptance. Think of bilingualism in Canada: at first, it pissed off a lot of people — usually unilingual anglophones outside Québec; today, aside from a vocal minority, bilingualism in the federal government and on cereal boxes is just part of being in Canada. Gays and lesbians in Canada have certainly attained legislative equality, including the right to marry (and divorce), but just as there is still racism in this country — and those who deny that racism exists in Canada have their head firmly planted up their ass — there is still homophobia in this country. And the lower one’s socio-economic status is, the more vulnerable one is to this homophobia. Just like with racism. A popular marching slogan in the early 1990s was, “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” I think the slogan’s been abandoned too early: “they” still haven’t fundamentally gotten used to it.

– We’ve got a problem in this country as its population becomes more urban. The minority that lives in rural areas often claim that the “city slickers” are imposing their “politically correct, everything goes” views. Well, I’m going to be very politically incorrect and say, “As they should!” When I look at how legislative assemblies are constituted, I’m sick and tired of the overrepresentation of rural constituencies. Let’s take Nova Scotia as an example: about 31% of the seats in the legislature represent the HRM which has nearly 40% of the province’s population. A fair system of democracy should not weigh a rural vote more heavily than an urban vote. So if a majority, which happens to reside in urban areas, determines that recognizing gays’ and lesbians’ right to exist is not going to lead to the destruction of civilization as we know it, then I’d tend to trust that determination more than one coming from people who cling to an insular mindset. I’m cognizant of the arguments against the tyranny of the majority, but given a choice, I’ll take that over the tyranny of the minority.

– But coming back to gay pride events, as I told BeeGoddessM last night, I generally don’t recognize myself in them anymore. Begrudgingly I have to admit that I’m a pretty conventional guy. I’m not given to drag and, sadly, I’m certainly not (and never will be) a muscle god. So, I can actually understand how some gays and lesbians are pissed when those are the images the media shows after each gay pride parade. And I can see how these images may encourage some to remain closeted or choose to live two parallel lives. The thing I envy the most of heterosexual couples is how they can walk down any street hand-in-hand without it being noticed and without them feeling they’re making a public statement of any kind. I despise the fact that if two men hold hands while in a restaurant, they still stand the chance of being accused of “flaunting their sexuality” when the same would not be said of a man and woman. And I don’t see how parading flamboyant drag queens or middle-aged men in bottomless chaps is helping to make unconscious shows of affection among same-sex couples easier and downright unnoticeable.

Actually, that last statement just made me swell up a little. I’m realizing how, at nearly 42, I’m yearning for that little something that has nothing to do with appendages and orifices. All of this because the mayor of Armpit …I mean, Truro, NS, decided not to recognize my existence?

Maybe.

Truro is a town of about 22,000 people, located an hour’s drive north of Halifax. It’s one of Nova Scotia’s most conservative areas, which shouldn’t come as a surprise given the neighbouring “suburban” village is called Bible Hill.

Now comes word that town council voted 6-1 against raising the Pride flag at Town Hall to mark the area’s Pride celebrations next week. “God says I’m not in favour of that and I have to look at it and say, I guess I’m not either,” Truro Mayor Bill Mills said. He then dug himself even deeper by saying, “If I have a group of people that says pedophiles should have rights, do we raise their flag too? I don’t want to lump them in with homosexuals, but that’s the point, the issues, and that’s my feeling.”

So he doesn’t want to lump pedophiles with homosexuals, yet he goes right ahead and does. Plus, the well-being of a whole town is about Mayor Mills’ feelings. Uh, …right.

I remember when flying the flag outside city hall in bigger cities was a huge deal, like Fredericton Mayor Brad Woodside’s opposition some 15 years ago, and then when he was re-elected mayor a few years later, proclaiming Pride Week was one of his first duties in office. And then there are major cities that openly embrace their gay community all year round.

Don’t assume I’m saying that the Québécois are all that more tolerant. Just think of the recent debate about “reasonable accommodations” of minorities, with the town of Hérouxville (pop. 1,000) becoming the emblem of how rural Québec is not willing to sway from perceived “traditional” values. But just as Hérouxville’s “lifestyle guide” came across as ludicrous, so is Truro’s position about raising the rainbow flag. Refusing to evolve into the 21st century is bound to draw some bad press.

This video is a total scream!

Because the whole gay marriage thing really is a slippery slope, eh!

I think I just figured out why I’m in such a nostalgic mood these days. It’s simple, really, and I wonder why it didn’t occur to me sooner.

Exactly 25 years ago this week, a series of events yanked me out of the closet. I was 16, only turning 17 two months later.

Living on the Inside (mp3, 5.3 MB, 5:39)
Sombre as it may seem, this song from Tiger in the Rain is the anthem of my coming out. I can still remember listening to it over and over and over 25 years ago. I remember aspiring for the comfortable mood that song inspired in me.

Sanpuko (mp3, 4.0 MB, 5:39)
This one is also from Tiger in the Rain, and I remember spending many evenings in 1982 at Crackers in Moncton with The Quad or ‘Nique. (Bonjour, mon amie!) That’s when I started drinking coffee. And that’s where we first heard Michael Franks.

After that, Michael Franks followed me everywhere. With the South American ladies visiting Halifax in 1990…
Anthony’s Song (mp3, 4.8 MB, 5:05)
The Lady Wants to Know (mp3, 4.4 MB, 4:44)

…at my fantastic Morris Street bachelor apartment… (this one, ironically, reminds me of a remarkably warm late-October morning after a very inconsequential trick with the knitting sailor)
How I Remember You (mp3, 5.3 MB, 5:11)

…and at Fort Needham…
Abandoned Garden (mp3, 6.3 MB, 5:24)

…forever endearing to the summer person that I am…
Dragonfly Summer (mp3, 4.7 MB, 5:03)

…and bringing a smile through a bit of frivolity.
When Blackbirds Fly (mp3, 3.1 MB, 3:17)

Twenty-five years… Wow! How did that happen?