Culture

It is strange – months of active struggle, years of currents just under and sometimes breaking the surface, endless posts on labels and words and I say it, I say it aloud: I am gay. What happens –neither fireworks nor bolts of lightning. Worse: suggestions maybe I am overstating the situation.

So I go back to some basics. I am bi-sexual. My relations with women, emotional and sexual, are substantial and real. My relations with men have physical credence and my deeply held fantasies are not easily dismissed: my physical desires and emotional musings relate to men. I cannot imagine saying all of this every time I consider my orientation. Gay seems strangely simpler as a statement even if it ignores such depths of nuance.

I e-mail with a fellow blogger. His wife likes the long explanation – less threatening than gay. He points out that he does not feel a connection to the gay culture. My wife has lunch and tells her best friend that all is not well in paradise. She had sensed things – assumed I was having an affair. She is understanding, a good thing, and feels she understands, a slightly stranger thing. She tells KA that she knows - I do not fit into the gay culture. To her I am not gay: I am the married guy with a weakness for sex with men, something she suggests my wife should tolerate within reason.

In this little blog world when I have discussed gayness in purely sexual terms it has been met with a skepticism – these are matters of heart and soul, not just an excited penis. I know they are right but I also know that when that penis gets busy one would not be called straight.

I have come a full circle it appears. It seems this gay club is tough – I never learned the secret handshake. Of course it is a matter of what is gay and the answer is many things. There is the “culture” of popular myth. My niece and mate wheeling a baby carriage are not exactly hitting the Baths. They think they are still gay. Brad as lawn queer is anything but – a regular guy with a really green lawn. I have never asked either their cultural identification but when dealing with one in the real world and the other in our cyber community I am not struck by cultural issues – this is not my cities Halloween parade. I am struck by normal lives, normal relationships, and of course green lawns.

So I am off Thursday morn for a brief visit to the windy city. My trip is planned. I have already written of my plans – dinner both nights, a divorced bi man and a gay man my age. I did not leave time for gay bars and the like. It is a journey to learn about myself through real interactions with real people.


I have meant to change my sidebar for a month and when I saw Bea beat me to it I got my ass in gear. I hope no one minds but I have in most cases replaced your blog names with your screen names, real or assumed. I have done this for both selfish and symbolic reasons. From a selfish point of view it makes it easier to find where I am going. More importantly you are individuals who I think of in real terms. And while so much is shared in common, so much is different: many cultures, intersecting but not in lockstep.


When you say Dylan,
he thinks you're talking about Dylan Thomas,
Whoever he was.
The man ain't got no culture,
Paul Simon