Dreams

I want to remove myself from the Internet.

More specifically, I want to remove myself from Facebook. Is it too late?

You may be familiar with a man named Alex from previous postings on this blog. He is that man that I took out to do Astronomy with, the closest I have ever had to a date with a man, and the closest I have ever come to letting loose and allowing my tongue to plant a flag on his - to make it my territory to own, settle, mine, and exploit.

Well, Alex still talks to me on facebook. And he has pictures of himself on facebook. And I want to know, why is it that I can't stop looking, wishing.

Dreaming and failing to fall to sleep.

Why couldn't I have put more effort into discovering your domain and deciding what to do with it while you took advantage of an opportunity to be experimental. Hopefully.

I should've mentioned to him that, when I said I was a touch-guy rather than a sight-guy (talking about sex), and he said that I would one day make a wife very happy, I should've mentioned that I wasn't looking for a wife but a husband. Just as an off-hand, completely comfortable response to clear the air.

And make it all the more possible for him to explore my ______________ (fill in the blank) with his tongue, to make it his territory to own, settle, mine and exploit.

My biggest fear in life is that I will wake up for the rest of my life in a bed with nobody beside me.


My second biggest fear is that I will wake up next to somebody that I don't want to spend the rest of my life with.

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Last week I was reading a friend's blog. They have decided to include advertising in their blog in order to support their children as little as they can. One of their pieces of advertising was for an online dating service for men.

I clicked.

I felt so much less than human, even without having signed up.

Promotions and Demotions

A gay youth sponsor, Tory Inglis, from First Presbyterian Church in New Westminster, British Columbia was called to task recently because of her involvement in organizing her city's first-ever Gay Pride celebrations. As a result of a front-page photo of her at the celebration, she was called into her pastor's office and asked to remove herself from the organization as they felt it promoted an improper lifestyle.

She decided instead to remove her membership from her church.

"Above all, I want to promote peace and love and acceptance," Tory said. "And in a place that condemns people for loving, I would much rather be in a place that accepts people for who they are."

As a community, we want to turn Tory into a martyr of hatred imposed upon us by the church. I don't oppose that in the slightest. But, as somebody who has left a church and my involvement with a youth group that I loved with every single muscle of my heart - and sang with the beauty of sunrise at each of its events - to ensure that this did not happen to me, I want to recognize the pain that Tory is surely feeling at this moment.

As Tory is somebody who still believes in faith, and the stories of love and acceptance that are pronounced throughout the Bible. They are good stories, even though they are interrupted by stories of God's hatred for the "other". As somebody who "believes", she feels as though she is dying right now. She has lost one of her homes, been swiftly rebuked and kicked out on somebody else's terms, and is now feeling as though a part of her is missing.

Which it is.

It is very difficult to replace the environment of the church once it has been lost. There really is something special about it.

So, Tory, my heart goes out to you. Not for the pain that you have already felt at the hand's of church-endorsed hatred, but for the pain that will continue to affect you for the months and years to come. I know that you will miss those children, their laughter and energy. I know that you will miss those moments in church when you are reminded of the goodness of the so-called God, and reminded of Its bigness and Its wholeness. I know that you will feel as though your world has crumbled into an ancient dust too fine to be held in your hands for more than an instant.

It will take you forever to forgive. Alzheimer's will set in before you forget.

For this, I apologize on behalf of the sins of the church - a right that I do not have but that I wish I did for this moment.

Continue to live beautifully, and strive for nothing less than promote peace and love and acceptance.

Things that make you happy.

Something is right in the world today.

Barrack Obama made a valuable decision, and refused to let the site of the 9/11 Twin Towers terrorist event become a monument to anything more than the lives that were lost in the devastating attack. It will not recognize the wars that developed as a result, or the economy that fell to pieces trying to maintain a conflict that cannot be completed.

Or the unrelenting hatred of Muslim people and their religion.

My hats off to you, Mr. Obama - for realizing the importance of maintaining our rights in the present to ensure a better future.

A ravaged heart...

Last night I went for a bike ride, making it about 10 km out of town. Just as I turned to head back I was reminded of the wonder of Saskatchewan.


This is why I will always want to come home, and this is how I shall measure it. There is no experience quite as majestic as watching the rays of the sun dip behind a cloud that will bring ravenous rains overnight. Watching spasms of light dance in the sky is an experience only rivaled by the thundering of the sun to its daily death; a beauty that cannot be conveyed with a clicked photograph or stroke of a brush deserves nothing but to simply exist.

I felt that my camera cheapened it.

But my momentary lapse in breathing did not. Did my heart skip a beat and my life lose another minute because of this series of momentary beauty that could not and would not cease?

Val Marie, Saskatchewan - you have found another way to steal my heart. And this time his name is Apollo rather than Ryan - a god driving a chariot into the depths of the rotating earth rather than a man driving a tractor to the farthest reaches of the Val Marie Flat.

Is this what they call prayer?

Last week I took an extended, 4-day long weekend, and went home to Regina.

I also went to the Bible Camp that I used to work for, and still view as one of the most significant places of my life. One of those spaces that made me feel connected to something larger than myself.

Upon visiting it, for the first time as an out-gay man, looking to visit some friends working for the camp administration, I came to realize that I've turned my back on something that is of great importance to me. Relationships.

Months ago, perhaps almost a year ago, after a friend of mine found this blog (well, was actually directed to this blog by a poorly placed comment on his own) and confirmed his suspicions that I was gay, I admitted to him that I was stepping away from a lot of relationships so that I wouldn't ever have to tell them that I was gay.

Including in these relationships were the dozens of young men who saw in me a passion for Christ's justice and a refusal to accept anything other than the ideal pursuit of economic equality and legal/social parity for all peoples.

I am certain that they feel somewhat betrayed by my actions.

And rightfully so. For I never gave them the chance to love me as I am by allowing them to discover that I am gay and choosing to get over it anyways (as I would hope many of them would). I lost my faith in my friends, and chose fear instead of love. In doing so, I have confused many of them and almost certainly caused many of them to direct their faith towards people and influences that I find less desirable. In doing so, I have broken promises to my friends.

Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I have lead your children astray in the interest of taking the easier road. I have been selfish and committed the greatest of all destructive deeds - breaking hearts, souls, and relationships. Have I learned nothing of love?

God, if you exist and if I am prepared to allow you to exist, please allow me to fix some of these relationships so that I can help these young men and women become the great adults that I know they can be.

Thank god I am not a tramp...

I often wonder what is in between your legs.

And then I catch myself staring, at one of those awkward moments when everybody else is laughing, and I quickly adjust.

And yet I know that you've figured out that I can't stop looking at you; whenever I get a glimpse I want to keep staring. And then I make some offhand comment and try to interact with other people. And then I realize that I'm looking in your direction again.

I wonder where your tan lines are.

I wonder if the skin feels different on the bright side of your body - if it exists. Is the dark side seasoned?

Saturday, after spending 45 minutes convincing my friend that I was, indeed, gay, I was bombarded with that single question that drives me absolutely insane.

"Have you ever had sex with a man?"

No. I have not ever had sex with a man. I'm too much of a romantic to allow myself to become a slut - to allow myself to sleep with every man that would be interested in sleeping with me.

This is the more-than-third time that this question has been asked of me, which seems outright pathetic. Just because I'm gay does not mean that I have any experience in it. And, your knowledge of my gayness does not give you any more of a right to ask questions about my sex life than my knowledge of your non-gayness grants me the right to ask you questions about yours.

Most of the people that I make a point of telling tend to be relatively intelligent people. And still, I find myself disappointed by this question. It tells me that people still have a frighteningly poor understanding of sexuality - that it is limited to sex.

I hope that at some point I can convince them that sexuality is about so much more than sex...

Observations

I happen to be in town for the August long-weekend, having purchased tickets to the traveling Cirque de Soleil show, Allegria.

It was last night - and may have changed my life. I want to be so incredibly fit that I can make that kind of magic happen with my body.

It was so impressive that it wasn't arousing. And this show involved many-a-shirtless man...

But my observations are more focused on the events that followed. I decided, with my friends, that I needed to be reminded that it is "ok to be gay" while I was in town - just enough to carry me through the next month of sexual prison.

So, off to the Rainbow Bar we went.

And I found the experience hilarious - and enjoyable for its hilarity - but so thoroughly immoral and disturbing that I had lost any interest in being there well before the night was over or the alcohol had worn off.

First of all, I hate going into a bar and being eye-raped by every single gay man in the establishment - being judged for my height, the colour of my hair, the size of my eyes mouth feet arms legs, the hair that pops out of my shirt, the brand of the shirt. I hate that they would smile at me in a way that they would never smile at somebody who may appear less attractive than I - and that I would never be permitted to know people who think that I am not their "type".

I hate being labelled for my sexuality the moment I walk onto the dance floor. I am forced into a niche market, with a specific purpose for a specific group of other people who have also been forced into a small niche. This is the gay pride that has developed?

I hate 19-year-old boys who know me from the University, become clingy because they recognize me/know my name/want to explore my body. I hate them even more when they are drunk. I hate them most when they are accompanied by numerous straight women who are effectively cockblocking them from contact with any other men in the bar, except for those who have enough compassion to give him a chance to be gay in the gay bar.

I danced with one of those 19-year-old boys last night. He was pathetic, and it broke my heart.

And I didn't even enjoy the dancing. I wasn't actually into it - despite the partial arrousal (can you blame me? I've been living in Val Marie for several months now...). Here I am, the hopeless romantic, imagining that all the eroticism of dancing in a bar happens automatically, and instead of being into the moment when it happens (even with somebody that I'd rather it not be happening with), I'm trying to remember the french translations for the five species of snake that live in Grasslands National Park.

I needed something to entertain me I suppose.

The most fun I had was dancing with my friend's female ex-roomate. We two-stepped for a time period. It felt like a more agreeable form of dancing to me. There was a sensuality, a sway, playfulness - it wasn't about getting as close as possible and feeling somebody else's penis rubbing against your leg. It was about the form, the pattern, the classic-ness.

I wish courting didn't have to involve going to the gay bar...

Spiders part 2.

Hatred produces a web of fear.

My friend’s wedding is next weekend. This is the friend for whom I am acting as the Master’s of Ceremony.

Yesterday, a friend of mine happened to come over for a bit. She and I have been friends since she was in kindergarten, so for about 17 years. My guess is that this friend is bisexual - she dabbles with temptation towards women, but can't imagine life without men. I can't imagine that kind of sexual torment.

She knows Brittany from Church - much the same way that I know Brittany. The two of them are a year younger than I, and ended up going to the same school for post-secondary education for a couple years. My friend became quite emotionally attached (perhaps even dependent) to Brittany - a dangerous thing to be; though it must be said that the two were never actually good friends.

Brittany is too conservative. My friend (Jen), is too liberal. They are both vocal, and both stubborn.

While she was over, Jen told me a story about a boy she was attracted to in her first year. He happened to be bisexual. Jen, rightfully, did not care - though, perhaps one could say that she should not have become so infatuated with him. Though, when Jen told Brittany of her attraction towards a self-professed bisexual man, Brittany condemned Jen for having been attracted to a creature with such twisted sexual desires (even though they would only account for a percentage of those desires).

Jen learned very quickly to stop talking about her love interests with Brittany.

That is part two of the web this venomous friend of mine has constructed.