Reflections on Majdanek

I've gotten somewhere?

2011-07-05T20:57:00.000-07:00

My friend turned to me on Saturday night.

There was noise, but not much. I could hear her. There were blinking lights, but they were deadened in our part of the dance hall by the intruding foyer lights. I could see her. Wow, I thought, your wife is lucky to have you - you are a beautiful person.

She was speaking. I was listening.

- I've finally found somebody else like you!
- What do you mean?
- An optimistic gay man!

How unfortunate that it took you this long. Also, am I completely optimistic? Do I deserve such a title.

- And I want you to meet him, and I want you to marry him.
- Wait a moment; this is just unfair. Tell me more. Excitement.
- He is from the Ukraine. He came to the Pride Centre office yesterday - you remember that meeting I told you I had with some guy I didn't know and you told me you hoped it went well, and that you'd care more if the youth in question was a high school student because you're a jerk like that - and he started talking and I talked back and he was talking about how his parents don't like him being gay and how he didn't care and how he just needed a place to talk about being gay because he didn't have any gay friends in Canada yet... but he is crazy optimistic... she continued.

I thought, my favourite book I have read this year was set in the Ukraine... I am listening...

And thinking, maybe, just maybe I've gotten somewhere. I'm one of the optimistic one's. And there are so many of and so few of us...

Pride Week

2011-06-23T21:35:00.001-07:00

You wouldn’t have known it if you lived in Regina - hell, you probably wouldn’t have known it if the Gay and Lesbian Community of Regina building was your neighbour - but last week was Pride Week here in town. As such, I got to participate in my first ever Pride events.

And I was thoroughly ___________________ (fill in the blank) with everything. Except the dancing.

I went to a film viewing. The Politics of Pride. Made me sad, and want to cry, and carry dramatic signs at the parade.

I went to a Coming-Out Party. Watched a woman ask various voluntary speakers (anybody from the audience) questions about their coming out experience. Made me sad, and want to cry, and carry dramatic signs at the parade (particularly when I saw a student that I had taught collect the courage to go up and speak).

I went to a White Party - which is merely a party where everybody wears white and dances with strobe lights until the end of time (or whatever that instant in which the lights are turned on at the bar is actually called). Had a great time. Smiled a lot. Felt like I was a part of something. Made me want to carry dramatic signs at the parade.

Saturday afternoon came and past.

I went to a coffee shop and read.

Didn’t go walking down any streets with my ‘brothers and sisters’ carrying rainbows and waving signs and holding hands and kissing and wearing minimal clothing - or anything like that.

I started a new book instead.

Saturday night arrived. I danced. There was supposed to be a drag show, but it was cancelled - so there was only dancing. And more meeting of people. Lots of people. Having random men call for my attention - offering some random men my attention and then moving on. If only I was a slut.

So I danced. Me and some lesbians, avoiding boys that I didn’t know.

Overall, a good-ish week. Nothing special - except for a reminder of the importance of being gay, and the joy of being gay.

I disappointed myself though. I kept my participation in the festivities limited to myself - meaning, I didn’t tell people I was going to them. My parents didn’t know I was going to a viewing party. Neither did my friends (not even the friends I happened to run into down the street from the theatre who were curious about what I was up to). These people know I am gay. Why did I not tell them?

Oh yeah - because I don’t know if they are willing or able to accept the cultural side of me being gay. One of those things where I have to give them a chance to decide, and behave as a response to their decision.

This is our government.

2011-06-12T00:06:00.000-07:00

I am sure that I am not the only Canadian who took the events of May 2nd with a little bit of concern. When Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada made history, becoming the first majority Conservative government elected to power since the 80s, there was a sensation in the country. Not many people were happy it seemed.

But there was also a sigh. No more elections, for four years. Some stability. Certain stability. For four years.

A sigh of concern, or a sigh of relief?

I'm not going to complain about the government, or about how Canada needs to reorganize their electoral laws to be more representative of the population.

Instead I am going to make a note about the Conservative Party of Canada.

The CPC just finished their national convention, where they surely celebrated their recent victory and thought of ways that they could take this chance as a means of organizing how they are going to socially reconstruct society. Which is the ultimate result of any election - particularly those that result in a majority.

And we are on the chopping block, it seems.

Buried in this CBC News Report on the results of the convention is the following couple paragraphs:

...delegates passed a resolution saying the party supports the freedom of religious organizations to refuse to perform same-sex marriages or allow the use of their facilities for events incompatible with their faith and beliefs.

The resolution changed the wording of an existing party policy on gay marriage, which said the Conservative "government" supported legislation saying marriage is between one man and one woman, with delegates voting to change it to say the Conservative Party supports the move.

The resolutions set party policy but are not binding on the government.

Gay marriage has long been a thorn in the side of the party and an issue opposition parties have used to paint the Tories as behind the times. Canadian courts started the process of allowing gay marriage in 2003 and the Liberal government in 2005 passed a law making it legal.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper allowed a free vote on a motion whether to re-open the same-sex marriage debate in the House of Commons soon after the Conservatives took power in 2006. After the motion was defeated, Harper said he didn't want to revisit the issue.

But the ability of religious organizations to be able to say no to performing the ceremonies has been an irritant to the party's grassroots supporters.

It is important to note that party resolutions are not binding on government policy. Indeed, as the right to marry has been passed in the courts already as a Human Right (happening even before we had the legal right to marry, in 2003 rather than 2005), it would take a complete reshuffling of the Supreme Court of Canada in favour of Conservative seats. Which just happened.

Still, I am not overly concerned. Unless Harper wins in 2015.

Regardless, we should make it clear to people - to our friends and family - that this party does not support us having the right to marry. I will be sure to tell my few conservative friends in the coming weeks that their party does not view my ability to love as equal or as legitimate as their own - and that this prejudice has been formalized in party documentation. I hope you do the same.

Knowing somebody who is gay only gets us so far - using our relationships to help people understand how we exist in the world gets us so much farther.

For example - earlier this week my farther told me that I had gotten a phone call from the Canadian Blood Services.

'They want your blood'
'No they don't.'
'They say that they do.'
'I can't give blood anymore.'
'Why not?'
(insert snarky tone suggesting that he should already know this)
'Because I'm gay, dad.'

Silence. (and it is not because he didn't know I was gay)

That changed how he understood my relationship with the world around me. And that is regarding my right to give blood, not my right to marry...

Burnaby and Tennessee

2011-05-31T21:32:00.000-07:00

Burnaby, Burnaby, Burnaby.

My relationship with today's problems started years ago. It was my first year of University. I was sitting in my education advisor's office, talking about what classes I should take to best prepare me to teach curriculum, and that got us started.

My advisor is the most respected authority on evaluation and social studies curriculum development in Western Canada. She was doing a study on this new curriculum for the B.C. government. A year-long course required for all graduating high school students, combining Canadian History with Indigenous Studies and Social Studies with a focus on Social Justice.

Sounds cool, hey?

At the time I never would've thought about it, but it only makes sense now. One of the units is about gay rights, or, more specifically, the history of gay people in Canada.

Some parents don't like this. The vocal ones seem to live in Burnaby. They perceive this as an attempt at social engineering through curriculum - the government trying to convince children to comply with things that are objectionable.

I have a couple, complicated responses to this.

Firstly, the point of social studies curriculum, expressed in every text book and article I have read and written on the topic, is to engineer society into something that is more civically coherent. It always has been the purpose of Social Studies. Always will be. Does that make it right? No - but I will defend it anyways. It is the great equalizer that can serve to enlighten children by providing them some lens through which they can begin interpreting the world other than their parents. And it has been somewhat successful - we are seeing a better integration of immigrants than ever before in Canada (though these tend to be the children or grandchildren of immigrants), for example. Just one example of social cohesion increasing (though there are perhaps valid arguments that it is not - though you'd have to consider pandering to extremists to buy into them).

Secondly, gay education does not exist. It does not even need to be about the sexual realities of being gay - for the majority of the human population, this is of limited interest (if of any at all). What should be of interest to everybody is the way that homosexuals are treated by, perceived by, or themselves perceive society. And starting to break down the barriers that exist between our cultures by educating people about a fuller breadth of gay society than that presented in the media during Pride Festivals or that is read on the walls of the bathroom stall. This is done poorly in education generally whenever discussing a minority, but by offering a voice to them, something is being accomplished - even if it only acts as a spark for interest later in life. It is not bad to introduce people to another culture. We are everywhere - you cannot hide from us. Not even at your church (we are likely your organist, choir conductor, and lead tenor all wrapped in one...)

Thirdly, we should not be presented separately in curriculum. We should be fully integrated into it. This concern is a major feature of feminist curriculum theory - one that has not been listened to well by curriculum writers by has started to affect curriculum delivery in the classroom in the past ten years. We are part of society - we are everywhere - we are not separate or hidden in a ghetto. Don't place us in one at school, particularly not in curriculums. It produces frustration in teachers and in students - "Oh, we're going to do the GAY unit?" (dramatically roll your eyes).

Early this year I read Felice Picano's Like People in History. I did not love it. I did not buy into it entirely. I didn't like the drugs - I think that is what turned me off. But I'll be damned if it didn't help raise my personal awareness of how homosexuals have always been around - always been interpreting the world through a slightly different lens. Changing with the times. Sometimes changing faster than the times - sometimes slower, but always changing. With society - not separate from it.

To the B.C. government (who is doing a lot of right things with this curriculum renewal): Include us in the curriculum. But don't toss us into our own unit. We are an integral part of society, and have been here since time immemorial. We need to be included in curriculum just as heterosexuals are - if only to present a more realistic image of society.

To the parents of Burnaby: Yes, what your child is being put through is social engineering. It is the nature of education. Go read about the goals of education, particularly public, mandatory education - read the books and articles written by academics - and you'll realize that it has never been otherwise. And though you are a stakeholder in the system (and this has been my stance on education ever since I was in high school), you are perhaps the least important of all. Take a back seat and let your child learn about the world in which he lives in the class that is designated to teach him about the world.

Tennessee and Burnaby (hey that rhymes!)

2011-05-29T21:55:00.000-07:00

Let me start with Tennessee.

The middle of May 2011 has not been kind to teachers in Tennessee. Or to gay people. I can't imagine being both at the same time. The Tennessee Senate has passed a law that will prevent teachers from discussing homosexuality with their students. This is being called the 'Don't Say Gay!" law (what a deceptively exciting title!).

Instead, any discussion of sexuality will be limited to natural-health sexual-reproduction.

Which, aside from being a reality that no longer exists, is essentially the sexual education that I was provided with and that has completely failed to prepare myself or many of my peers for sexual health as gay or lesbian men and women. And I have made it clear in the past that I feel this is a moral oversight.

Previously, it was a curricular concern - and teachers mostly choosing not to deviate from the guidelines of the curriculum. Soon (as early as 2012 - when the bill will be taken up by the House) it will be illegal to deviate from this curriculum and talk about homosexuality in a sexual health course. Or at all.

Because my numerous memories about being properly instructed about having sex with men made me want to have sex with men. Just like my numerous memories of being instructed on how to insert my penis into a vagina made me want to do that.

Wait a minute.

This is an example of a law that has been written by a government that is directed by belief rather than proof. Constitutions should be adopted where proof is recognized as the only viable means by which a law can be produced, non?

And, on a personal note, in having gone through this re-examination of my own existence, I was aware of my attraction to men well before completing middle school. Was I confused by it? Hell yes! Would I have approached a teacher and asked questions about it? Hell no! But only because the language did not exist for me to do so.

Burnaby next time. It angers me more - but only because I can relate to it more.

And honestly, the result of this law in Tennessee is likely going to be beneficial. The backlash that will result, whenever it happens (and it may not be for twenty years), will force homosexual sex curriculum into the sexual curriculum of young peoples - a place that it has never held before. And, the reality is that homosexuality as a topic may be discussed in a middle or elementary school, but it isn't examined. Students can't comprehend sexuality at that age - they are just learning it. And teachers don't want to teach about homosexuality - it is a topic so few are familiar with, and a topic that they do not want to field questions about.

So, ultimately, this law is not going to change how education is practiced in the state of Tennessee. It will just formalize how it cannot be (and has not been) practiced, solidifying the curriculum in the early 90s until the state is forced by society to catch up to other parts of the states.

Once again, that could be twenty years from now - and there will be many lives hurt and lost in the interim - but the end result will be very, very beneficial for gay education in public schooling.

More later

2011-05-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

I am a teacher.

And if you've been following Saskatchewan's news at all recently, you'd surely know that I spent the past two days on strike.

I am a teacher.

And I am a gay man.

I am a gay teacher who happens to be a man.

I am a man who happens to be gay and a teacher.

I am a teacher who happens to be gay and a man.

I am not happy with my government. I don't know if I will be happy with them when an agreement is made regarding the funding of teachers in our province. I know that the current goals of teachers are unrealistic if only because the public thinks it is demanding too much - in reality, it is about where we should end up, if not aiming a little low. We won't end up there though. We will have to give up more than a third, maybe half, of what we want and deserve in a raise.

But I am not going to complain about politics. Or my job.

I am going to complain about being a teacher who happens to be a man who happens to be gay (which means I happen to like men).

Because education is a big part of where my heart is, and I am seeing it mix with sexuality in some pretty disastrous ways right now.

In Burnaby, B.C. (my future home). And the state of Tennessee (which I doubt is my future home).

More on both later.

Sports

2011-05-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

I am not a big fan of professional sports. If I were to construct my ideal world, they would likely not be on the list of things I would remember to reproduce. But I'd make sure athletes were included - and that these athletes were on my soccer team, or worked out at the gym that I work out at. I would hate to miss out on being around them.

But it is the Stanley Cup playoffs. And Vancouver is doing well. And I am Canadian, so I find myself interested in what is happening in sports. For some reason - and I assure you that I am pretty much completely confused about why. I asked somebody yesterday how the game went. I was working while it was happening, so I couldn't watch. Would I have anyways? No. Did it give me a momentary conversation topic? Yes. Did I know what the consequences of the game were? Yes. Mostly.

And then the past month has blown my mind. In sports. (Did I just type that? - who am I, and am I still lost in the world of that beautiful man that I have not yet seen again?)

(yes, I can confirm that I just wrote that. Weird)

One of the blogs I follow, Gay Persons of Colour, has been popping up on my dashboard for the past couple weeks with headlines like Dutch gymnast Jeffrey Wammes comes out, and Sean Avery endorses marriage equality with video. Sorry. What?

How about Carolina Panthers linebacker Nic Harris in support of marriage equality.

Pheonix Suns President Rick Welts comes out; players featured in pro-gay PSA.

San Francisco Giants to produce "It Gets Better" video.

Is this the same world of professional sports, filled with the same dumb-ass, homophobic jocks that I grew up with? The fans that I remember hating the idea that I may be gay?

I was out for a visit with some friends this evening. One of them is a former varsity basketball player - a lesbian who admitted that she hadn't watched a single professional basketball game since ending her basketball career years ago. And then she mentioned this story.

Joakim Noah directed a homophobic slur at a fan. Is getting fined for it, much like Kobe was (and as I mentioned in a previous post). But, unlike Kobe, Joakim has come to the press with a complete apology for his actions and words. He provided no excuses. He said his comments were bigoted and wrong. And that he apologizes for the ideas he seemed to be promoting.

Sorry, what?

This is a changing world, my friends. If we can reach some of the most popular leaders of male, misogynist culture, and make them leaders in the fight for marriage and social equality, we know that this is a different world.

And my friend, the former varsity player, has said that she is going to start watching professional sports again. Maybe. She feels like she has a place in it again, or for the first time.

Sleep

2011-05-11T08:22:00.000-07:00

I've not been able to sleep properly for days. Ever since Saturday night.

Saturday night I went dancing, and got lost in somebody across the dance floor and haven't been found yet. I fall asleep and I imagine his body and face and eyes. I wake up and am haunted by his body and face and eyes.

The man who I wrote about months ago - depressed, incapable of falling out of love with me - has managed to fall out of love with me. Or so it has been reported to me by a very good mutual friend of ours. And I'll believe her. And I will say that this frees me up to *ahem* pursue some of the *ahem* distractions that I see every now and then - and to do it in his presence, and to do so sparking his jealousy but not his sense of self-worth. Or so I hope.

So this man in whom I have been lost, I address you. When I next see you, prepare to be approached - because I need to find myself again, and it would seem that I can only do so by meeting you. Cause I'll be damned if I don't want to get to know you, and find out what it really means to get lost in your body and face and eyes.

(not about really about silence but on the success of talking)

2011-05-08T20:46:00.000-07:00

I went out with friends last night. Met some new people, and really enjoyed myself. Watched a drag show, danced until the world ended - classic kind of stuff.

Afterwards, as I was driving my friend home, she said something that made me really happy.

This friend of mine has worked for the on-campus GLTB centre for the past couple years as either a staff member or a board member. She has noticed that involvement in the group has declined in the past couple of years. Alarming, no?

She said involvement in urban-raised youth has particularly been reduced. Rural youth involvement is actually on the rise (but is a much smaller population than urban populations so it does not make up for the loss) - and their reliance on the centre as a social environment has increased.

But she has noted (and this is the happiness-inducing factor of my late-evening/early-morning) this:

Young gay people are much more confident now than she ever expected she would see. They exude happiness once they are out. They like who they are. Depression is on the decline. People are visibly happy in the gay community. And even though they hate themselves a little bit, they have never hated themselves less in history than they do now.

Smiles abound.

A treatise on How Silence is Broken

2011-05-07T21:46:00.000-07:00

A shout-out to Amak over at Queer Behind the Mirror for introducing me to this video earlier this week through his blog; it fits in well with what I am developing at the moment.

Silence

2011-05-05T10:49:00.000-07:00

And why do we get frustrated by our friends who are silent? This is a question that we must also ask ourselves, because it is more of a reflection on us than anything else.

Most of us grew up in fear, and a fear that is far more real than many perceive it to be. We hear the comments on the playground, and we see the hatred in people's faces - all directed at this mythical creature. The Faggot. And we create this creature - we draw it in our minds. It is ugly, and it is feminine, and it is not popular, and it is not well-liked by anybody. It is disgraceful. It is not worth defending in public. It is a monster, that eats children after boiling them in a cauldron of lust, that offers them candy and asks them to come into the car for some more, and then drives away and does things to them that everybody knows is bad but nobody knows what is.

And we do everything we can to make sure that this mythical creature constructed in our head looks nothing like us.

And so we are silent.

We also know that people direct these words at us - that people can smell it on us, somehow. And so we know that if we stand up for them we shall only confirm what they already think is true. And with that confirmed we can only imagine what life is going to be like - our skin will turn green, we'll grow longer teeth, and carry cauldrons in the trunks of our black sedans. All the words that have been thrown at us like spears will turn out to be true.

And so we are silent.

And our friends are silent because we are silent, and everybody continues to be silent except those who are particularly talented at throwing spears.

And then we decide we are gay, and that our skin is not going to turn green, and that we don't have to buy that black sedan if we don't want to. And that the image of a Faggot, the one that was so ugly so long ago, is slowly becoming more and more like the one we see in the mirror, and slowly it is starting help us affirm our own identity. And this bothers us at first and then it stops.

And we stop being silent, sometimes (but not all the time, we have to be safe still, right?).

And we somehow ask our friends to no longer be silent.

2011-05-04T22:24:00.000-07:00

"In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends."

- Martin Luther King

Is this perhaps an explanation of why so many young gay men and women and inbetweens have such a hard time trusting others and exalting the relationship into the realm of true friendship rather than the dance between acquaintance and friendship that can only be termed business?

Perhaps the silence of our friends is more painful than anything else.

A letter to Gay Family Values

2011-04-30T22:12:00.000-07:00

This is a response to a post about transgendered rights on a friend's blog that I recommend you check out.

Bryan and Jay! Long time, no post.

I'm loving this topic. It is something that has been bothering my quite a bit over the past couple weeks - ever since a Transgendered Rights bill was brought up in the House of Commons and then shot down because of the Senate and our current election (it only passed the House of Commons because of our minority government, not a single Conservative MP voted in favour of it).

Recently a read a Canadian novel called Annabel by Kathleen Winter, which is about growing up transgendered in rural Newfoundland. I thought it was a great novel, and I found myself relating to it far more than I ever anticipated - not only in the parent figures who often reminded me of my parents, but also in how the main character so often feels alone and trapped in a body that doesn't make sense to them.

I'm not trans.

But I am gay. And oftentimes I realize that, even as a 'relatively masculine' gay, I play with that gender variant line a lot more than I ever could've imagined I would. And that is important to me. For the past couple weeks I have been toying around the philosophical idea of being transgendered myself - or perceiving myself as such - because I am not exclusively male in a traditional sense. And I am not a woman. I sit on the fractured earth between the two continents of our cultural ideas, and sit there with millions of others who can't identify as one or the other.

Today I was filling out a job application. It had me check a box for my gender. Male or female. I checked male - but only as a formality. Inside I knew that it wasn't me in that word, and I wished I could've drawn a line between the two and place myself on that spectrum.

Some people encounter that moment every day. And moment of their existence.

I would highly recommend Annabel - if you can't get your hands on a copy in the States, let me know and I will ship one to you.

- Neal

So a gay man and a priest walk into the bar...

2011-04-26T23:49:00.000-07:00

This title has nothing to do with this story. Sorry if you came here looking for a story because you won't find it.

Instead I've a much less interesting story for you.

A friend of mine was talking to me today. We sing in choir together - we've known each other for quite a few years. She found out last year I was gay; I had my suspicions of her being a lesbian confirmed at the same time. We have been good friends since - beforehand being connected by nothing but our mutual love of singing with large groups of people.

We had a rehearsal for a performance not too long ago. A technical rehearsal actually; our performance involved a lot of changing lighting, projections, and much more - everything was very studiously considered and synchronized by the director. And she had an image.

In the consummate love song, towards the end, the director asked us to hold our partner's hand or do something else to communicate a sense of attachment and friendship. I was ok with it. So was my friend. I held my partner's hand - a stunning young alto that I am sure has been admired by many people from afar for her amazing black hair - and my friend held her partner's hand - some young man that I can only recall for occasionally failing to sing the correct tone.

Being in a choir, there was not quite enough men for all the women to be partnered to one. (what I am not telling you here is that we accidentally had a couple sopranos get through the auditions who could neither sight-read music with pitch or with rhythm, and so we had to search for more sopranos to try and smother them, and this almost destroyed the balance of the ensemble as a result.) So some women were partnered with women.

One, a friend of my friend, refused to 'hold hands with a woman'. I remember overhearing this and being a little bit annoyed - as I was holding hands with a woman myself. A stranger at that. And regardless of her beauty, I had no interest in her whatsoever. The friend of the friend did not provide an explanation, but the song we were singing was clearly written with romantic love in mind. What was communicated was that a woman cannot being romantically involved with a woman, or, at the very least, a woman who is not interested in being romantically involved with a woman should not be forced to act as though there is some sort of chemistry between her and another woman.

This bothered me for a moment or two, but I let it pass. She is young, and from a small town in B.C. I figured she would grow up in her years at university.

My friend did not let it slide. She told me how she raised it with her friend in a conversation, as something that really bothered her. That she was angry at her friend for her comment, her insensitivity to the fact that all of the homosexuals and other-sexuals in the room were actually not having their romantic relationships recognized at all but were in fact being asked (once again! oh scourge of existence!) to act straight. She was angry.

My friend then told me how her friend did not feel she had done anything wrong, and that she was confused by how anybody could possibly think she had. This is a friend (of a friend) that knew of my friend's sexuality, and that was supportive, and that celebrated my friend's recent first move into the world of romance with her.

And they have not spoken since. Certainly there are many rational explanations for why they have not spoken for the last couple weeks - it is finals period, which is busy for students. My friend's friend has been moving to a new apartment, and is prepping to do a quick visit home to B.C. before her job starts up. My friend just started a new job herself, and has had a series of concerts and associated rehearsals ever since (the joy of being a musician during Holy Week).

But she wanted my advice anyways.

And I told her this (not a direct quote):

"Don't ever get mad at your friends for what appears to be insensitivity. This existence is newer for them than it is for you. The language we expect of them is confusing. They will make mistakes all the time - we make mistakes all the time. Your allies are your core people, and they will suck some times. Be patient with them, just as they have been with you."

Thankfully my friend is quite introspective. I know people who would never accept a response of that nature.

Don't become hetero-phobic and get angry at people when they are making mistakes about gender and romance in a new world of developing sexual equality. This is hard stuff for society to accept, even harder for them to change consciously. Let them make mistakes, and don't correct them in anger.

2011-04-23T14:42:00.000-07:00

"Different though the sexes are, they inter-mix. In every human being a vacillation from one sex to the other takes place, and often it is only the clothes that keep the male or female likeness, while underneath the sex is the very opposite of what it is above."

- Virginia Woolf

I should be promoting this only in my other blog, but I have started reading a piece of Canadian literature about transgendered individuals in rural Newfoundland. It is called Annabel, it is by Kathleen Winter, and it is beautiful.

This quote from Virginia Woolf is provided before the prelude.

I wonder if we will ever see the day when we all recognize our own transgendered-ness.

I support my gay son because he is my child.

2011-04-21T09:01:00.000-07:00

The Fondation Emergence released a campaign in the March of 2011 to encourage immigrant families in Quebec to support their children if they are gay (which is something that many immigrant parents have never had to consider, as many come from countries where the social stigma against differing sexualities is painfully oppressive). I don't need to tell any of you, I am sure, about the enormous benefits of having supportive parents for gay children - the reduction it plays in our potential to commit suicide, or the potential to contract STIs and HIV/AIDS. So when I seen this kind of promotion, directed at parents of gay individuals, I think 'What a beautiful thing.'

Inspires me. And makes me wish we had stuff like this happening in my hometown.

Which would not be difficult at all.

A word that matters.

2011-04-16T18:18:00.000-07:00

Dearest KindaGayBlog,

I like your blog. I like your videos. I like your perspective on life, and on how we make relationships, and on how important those relationships are. I think you are a smart man, who has started to make his life into what he wants it to be.

But I think you are wrong about this word.

But first, I like the basis of what you are saying. I like that you want us to rise above this word as a community, so that we don't allow this word to have power over us. You are right in pointing out that the only reason that we recognize this term as a curse is because we allow it to be one - not because it inherently is.

But I would argue that the vast majority of gay people, particularly those of us who are young and grew up with it in the school yard - hidden somewhere in between the sandbox, monkey bars, and swing set; stuck in the unheard lexicon of childhood, used when we are free from the supervision of teachers and adults and other sources of authority. "You throw like a girl." "Your mom!". "Fag!"

- We don't allow the term to bother us as we encounter it in our day-to-day existence. Even though now it is generally heard under breath (unless your first name is Kobe and your last name is Bryant), we manage to get over it. We are used to it. And we've found the strength to get past it - we've accepted who we are.

We have come out.

Perhaps, KindaGayBlog, this is my eternal educator coming out (won't somebody please think of the kids!), but I remember this term used in its virile sense as a closeted young teen - not as an out-of-the-closet and outed young adult. I can remember hearing it, not as an under-the-breath, slightly ashamed grasp at freedom of speech, but as an insult. And it was for these insults that I stayed in the closet.

And hated myself.

Because I knew that there was something wrong with me. Not because of the term (it is not inherently bad), but because of the tone of it. And as an isolated young man who was interested in other young men, I was not able to get over it. I couldn't imagine ever being able to get over it.

And, because I am only a young gay man, both in the sense of my actual age and in the sense of how long it is since I have come out, I cannot help to remember the pain that being closeted caused me - the fear, isolation, hatred, self-hatred, the false sense of love and acceptance. And I think that, if anything, my concern as a gay man should not be for those who are 'out' but for those who are not yet 'out' - who still hate themselves in ways that I can only just barely remember, and who hear the term 'faggot' and hope that nobody knows that this is who they are (but also who they aren't).

We should be concerned about love. Always concerned about love. And the term 'faggot' prevents us from being able to love ourselves.

And it is for this reason that we should fight to have it removed from popular usage. Yes - making it a big deal makes it clear to those that hate that it is a term they can use and use with success. But it has also forced society to consider it in a new light. People no longer scream out the term 'faggot'; they say it under their breath. Society chides those who do. Even if your name is Kobe and Bryant.

And this is a good thing.

I hope that my opinion does not discourage you from what you do, because I do enjoy your videos.

- Neal Adolph

Answering questions in a context where the question can't be true.

2011-04-13T12:00:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was my one year, Drag Show Anniversary. And I celebrated by going to another Drag Show! Nothing quite like watching people bend gender barriers, celebrating courage, and pride, and Lady Gaga.

I had several 'straight' friends join me for their first Drag Shows. Just as I mentioned one year ago on this blog, it was a cultural experience. One thing they noted was the diversity of people in attendance.

The other thing they noticed was the breaking of gender barriers.

Every new performance on stage was accompanied by the somewhat-but-not-entirely hushed query: "So, girl or guy?". I answered the questions, though as the night went on I did so with increased hesitation.

Because the point of the night was for that question not to be asked, but to be comfortable in the ambiguity of gender that exists for people all the time - all physical, sexual, and psychological. Answering the question made it seem as though the only way to determine gender is by looking at somebody's junk, even though the other two forms of gender that I mention (and I am sure the dozen other forms that I am not yet familiar with) also play an important role in determining how we identify.

So, the 'man' dressed in a shimmering golden mini-dress, is he a boy or girl? Or both, or neither, or the thing in the middle that isn't really allowed to have a name?

And, how does that reflect on me? I am a boy - I have testicles, and a scrotum, and I like playing with them. But I also have somewhat feminine tendencies at times - and these become more and more pronounced the more comfortable I become with myself. Am I a boy? Yes, and no. And I am not a girl, but I can be. And I am not that thing in the middle that doesn't have a name - though I probably could be.

In answering the queries as I did, I missed an opportunity to outline the mysteries and complexity of gender, not only for transgendered people, or for drag queens, but in how they affect my everyday existence. And I sold out the soul of the show - the soul of pride, courage, mystery, and Lady Gaga.

2011-04-08T16:10:00.000-07:00

In this season of disgruntling politics (when I am forced to realize that, once again my vote will not be of any importance to the government), I am forced to cheer up by the weather.

Spring has arrived.

In the past week, the glacier that has dominated my lawn for the past 5 months has receded. I can now see my flower bed.

And what colour is that I see?

Green.

There is green there. And it isn't from bulbs, but from root-based perennials.

That I planted last year. And that are growing back. Is it wrong of me to be joyful?

I am now planning what I will be planting in my vegetable garden for the last time; what biodegradable foods I will be giving my perennials for the last time; how I will help my parents turn their yards into gold.

I will miss having a yard in Vancouver, I am certain of that. But I will be able to find an urban garden to volunteer in, I am sure.

A message from Charlotte Bronte

2011-04-03T22:11:00.000-07:00

Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last. To pluck the mask from the face of the Pharisee, is not to lift an impious hand to the Crown of Thorns.

These things and deeds are diametrically opposed: they are as distinct as is vice from virtue. Men too often confound them: they should not be confounded: appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ. There is--I repeat it--a difference; and it is a good, and not a bad action to mark broadly and clearly the line of separation between them.

The world may not like to see these ideas dissevered, for it has been accustomed to blend them; finding it convenient to make external show pass for sterling worth--to let white-washed walls vouch for clean shrines. It may hate him who dares to scrutinise and expose--to rase the gilding, and show base metal under it--to penetrate the sepulchre, and reveal charnel relics: but hate as it will, it is indebted to him.

On being outed.

2011-03-29T21:51:00.000-07:00

It has happened.

I had no control over it.

My friend was at a Bible Study (wait, did I actually just capitalize bible?). People were leaving, the night was nearing the end. But the discussion was apparently just finally getting interesting. And somehow, as my friend often does, she managed to bring up the many sins of the church to which she is so committed.

And the sin that was on her mind was the sins made against the gays.

And, for the sake of her argument I was outed. People cried - particularly those who know me. And she was ok with it; she felt as though those around her, whom would deny me the right to do the things I love (like spend time with children, spend time with men, spend time with humanity), were finally slapped in the face. They knew of somebody that was gay, and was hurt by their prejudice.

She told me the following day that she had outed me.

And I liked it.

There has been no fallout thus far. I don't know what to anticipate, but I have no concerns. This is a moment that I have feared for far too long, and now that it is just starting to arrive - now that I am being shoved over the cliff side into that precipice of the unknown - I am anticipating salvation.

And I crave it.

And I know that good will come out of it. Because I have faith in humanity, in my friends, and the people that surround me. And though I am sometimes disappointed, I am finding my faith is very rarely misplaced.

2011-03-28T15:59:00.001-07:00

“I don’t have a sexuality. I don’t feel like I’m female or male. I don’t belong to the gay or straight society, if there is such a thing. I feel like I’m capable of falling in love with other people. I’m not saying I’m bisexual, I’m just sexual!” -Elly Jackson

What a lovely sentiment. Not something I can relate to, but something I wish more people would accept as a social philosophy of sexuality.

2011-03-25T22:30:00.001-07:00

"Do not treat life as a way to pass the time until you die."

- Anonymous

Take it all in stride...

2011-03-21T22:02:00.000-07:00

My mom has told me that I have to tell my brother I am gay before I move to the coast. Which I totally understand.

She also wants me to tell me grandmother. Which I totally understand.

And I don't really have any concern over telling either of them, really.

She is urging me to, so that she feels as though she is free to talk about me with her friends as a proud mother - something she wants to do, but refuses to do until the rest of my family knows. Which I totally understand.

When I initially had this discussion with her, I felt like she was forcing me to do something that I don't really want to do. I don't agree with the philosophy of 'coming out', as I have stated before. And I don't really want to tell my brother - though he has changed considerably over the past couple months and our friendship has improved drastically.

And then I thought it through again.

My mom wants me to confirm to my brother and grandmother that I am gay so that she can talk about me with pride.

I am a very fortunate young man.

School sucks.

2011-03-15T20:06:00.000-07:00

"The answer would be no." - Gerald Casey, Bruce-Grey Catholic District School Board Superintendent of Education.

When asked if a Gay Straight Alliance would be permitted in their school, he responded that 'the answer would be no.'

Having finished high school just years before GSAs became relatively common, I never had the opportunity to benefit from them. Indeed, even with them in place I do not think that many students of sexual minorities take advantage of the opportunity that is allowed to them - and the valuable resources that GSAs have access to. But, and this is a massive but, they remain an important fixture of high school cultures in fighting social homophobia in school cultures - in classrooms, changerooms, hallways; among teachers, students, and visitors. They make it clear that sexual minorities matter. And they provide a potential safe place in a world without safe places - the only of its kind available.

So, when a school board would deny this safety to some of its students, one must ask upon which educational basis they are doing so. And the obvious answer is that it isn't based on any educational philosophy, as most modern ones recognize the importance of safe spaces in schools for people who self-identify as a minority. Unfortunately, it is upon the basis of religion that Catholic sexual minorities, including those individuals who are not catholic, are forced to remain in the closet. Not that I would suggest Catholics support hatred in any way (I think that many are very good at fighting it as best they can), but I would suggest that they are very slow at adopting the gay rights bandwagon.

Xtra.com, a Canadian Gay News Website, recently surveyed all of the Catholic School Districts in Ontario and asked them if they supported or had operating in their schools a GSA. None of them could confirm the existence of any.

None.

In Corpus Christi, Texas, at Flour Bluff Intermediate School, all school clubs have been discontinued. So that a GSA could not be started. Which just makes sense, right? I mean, rather than overcome our discriminations and prejudices, we should make sure that everybody is treated fairly (and that, once again the gays get blamed for the cancellation of much beloved programs).

Schools need to become aware of how they are producing a culture of hatred and, at my most possibly kind, indifference. Failing to include sexual minorities in a school culture ill-prepares students for a changing world, and can very negatively affect the psycho-social development of those who are sexual minorities. Which is something that the 'gay' community is already, and always has been, dealing with. Expecting children and young adults to hide this part of their being ruins their sense of self, self-confidence, and self-respect - it contributes to violent behaviour, sexual promiscuity, and a general lack of healthy decision making in the community.

It is dangerous. And it fails our students.

Reflections on Majdanek

2011-03-11T21:09:00.000-08:00

It is odd that a historian-in-training has not yet completed his first viewing of Band of Brothers. But I am getting close. A lot of credit is owed to those who were a part of the production of this mini-series.

Tonight I watched the 9th Episode in the Mini-Series. 'Why We Fight'.

It includes the scene in which Easy Company discovers a Concentration Camp.

After watching the episode, I began talking about it with a friend of mine. And I had to hold back tears. Because what was shown was powerful, and painful to view. As it should be - and hopefully is for everybody. But, when we started talking about Auschwitz-Birkenau, and we started talking about Majdanek, and the feeling of walking through the camps and knowing where you are, recognizing your location in a photo taken 60 years ago by a journalist documenting the extermination of people.

As cattle.

Individuals treated as cattle and left to die as though they are worth less than over-ripe cabbage in a flooded field. Only worth death, but just barely worth that.

When I was on my tour of Germany and Poland, and going through death-camps, I was given a 'person' whose story I was to follow from day-to-day. My person was named Ruth. She was Polish. Jewish. 14-years old when the war started in 1939; a dedicated piano player who loved to go to the library. She had two brothers, both younger. Lived in a house with her parents and grandparents (on her mother's side). In 1941, at the age of 15, she was taken to Majdanek. She survived the first selection, and the second, and the third. Her mother and grandmother did not. Her father, grandfather and brothers were separated long before - and she didn't know their fate (none of them survived the camps, only the father made it past the railway). On the fourth selection, without hope and having been defeated long before by the death and disease and death and disease and harassment and death that surrounded her, she failed. She was killed in late 1941 - aged 16.

My brother had a completely different story, of a boy from Yugoslavia. Jewish. 7 years old. 1943 - put into a train cart. Selected for extermination. Killed, 1943. 7 Years old.

There were 22 individuals on the tour with us. 24 different stories dangling around our necks as we walked through fields of rapidly deteriorating barracks that once housed hundreds of people. Tiny buildings, tiny beds. The ruts where the water was the run were still there. In some places you could still get a sense of how human traffic moved from day to day - weakly, but with purpose. To survive to the next meal.

That boy...

2011-03-09T19:52:00.000-08:00

There is this boy in my life.

He is a nice boy. And he likes boys. And I like boys.

And this boy really likes me. So he talks to me, as much as possible. About his life. And, admittedly, his life doesn't interest me -

- because he makes it seem very dramatic, as though the world is against him, as though his life is the only one in the world that sucks. And yet, even with all of his complaints and self-hatred (oh my, his self-hatred!), he does nothing to deal with it. He has no happiness or joy, and is dealing with some serious depression regularly.

It is as though coming out of the closet confirmed for him the reality that he is a lesser creation. And he can't ever allow himself to forget that he is gay, or that he is an important person, or that he has a right to allow himself to feel good. Beautiful. Worthy to be loved by real love.

I have things I can offer this boy, but I can't. His attitude, and desperation to get my attention and pity and maybe my affection, drives me away. I want to remove him from my life because the vibes he sends also pushes other men away - in the same way that it pushes me away. And yet he has managed to have some success; I won't leave him entirely because he concerns me. But I won't reach out and truly help him feel good about himself either - for fear that it may lead him to think that I want to spend life with him (he has started talking about moving to Vancouver). But he is the reason that I need to find myself more gay friends.

Because I need to find other gay people in town that I can hang out with.

2011-03-07T10:53:00.000-08:00

Grasslands and Val Marie wants me back.

Dear future home.

2011-03-03T08:13:00.000-08:00

Dear future home.

You may not have been informed yet, but you and I will be together in only a matter of months. I hope you're ready for me, and I hope that I am ready for you.

I hope you can provide me with all the academic opportunities that I am seeking, and all of the social ones as well. I hope you can take me hiking up mountains occasionally (I am bringing my tent and backpack), or down to beaches (I am buying a new swimsuit). I hope you can make me love the rain as much as I love the snow. I hope you can give me a space where I will feel completely safe and yet always on my toes in the 'big city', and that maybe - just maybe - you'll be able to place somebody special in my life. I hope your library is large and vast, and I hope your archives will provide me with knowledge that I want to know.

Simon Fraser University. Vancouver, Vancouver. I'll see you soon.

Things I love. (28)

2011-02-28T11:42:00.000-08:00

I love being gay.

And I love being more than gay.

I love how being gay has granted me an opportunity to discover parts about me that I wouldn't have otherwise done. The coming-out process of tackling one's own self-hatred and winning means that you have confidence to try new things out. I no longer feel bound by the ideals of manliness or gayness, or by any ideals other than being myself.

But being gay has given me an opportunity to dance with people, to laugh with people, to cry and hold and nourish the soul. It has given me confidence, torn it down, given it back. It has made me a martyr and a saint and a golden child and a black sheep. It has allowed me to sing with passion, to teach with personal experience about pain and healing, and it has made me cherish those moments of loneliness that so rarely puncture our hectic lives.

And so I will dance, I will sing, I will teach, I will climb mountains, I will free fall, and I will get back up and try again. Because I am gay. And because I am more than gay.

This is how I wanted to spend my February. As a single man I had no hands to hold or eyes to stare into on the 14th, but I had 28 days to remember what it is that I love about the world that I live in - and, by proxy, what it is that makes me feel complete. And my list just kept on growing through the month, as I had moments that I loved and wanted to add to the list but couldn't because I already had 28 items. It was a month-long reminder that there are reasons to live - reasons other than being gay or straight (though these are also reasons in and of themselves). And these reasons abound so long as you will look at the world with eyes prepared to see, ears prepared to hear, hands prepared to touch.

Loving. Learning. Living. And never ceasing.

I love being gay.

And I love being more than gay.

Things I love. (27)

2011-02-27T11:08:00.000-08:00

I love silence.

Or, more specifically, human silence.

While in Val Marie, I could sit outside of my house and hear nothing for hours of human existence. I could see it - the town, the bright lights of distant farms. But I could hear nothing. There were no cars running the distance, no air-conditioner motors whirling in somebody's backyard. The mechanical world of never-ending noise did not exist. And it was beautiful.

Coyotes would howl. You would hear them. Slowly the reeds of grass would bend and crackle as their veins snapped under the pressure of an animal stalking its prey. Bugs, bugs, bugs - buzzing and screeching their melodies of life and death. A badger would be digging up a hole in the darkness, its eyesight so much better than ours in the dark, and you knew to avoid them rather than to investigate. The wind, calmed with the coolness of night, whispering through the night.

It wasn't completely silent, but it was beautiful.

Because there was no noise - just sound. No motors or sounds of gravel being crushed under the weight of man. Everything was absorbed into creation - and creation was absorbed into the noiselessness of nature. Nearly silent, but alive with energy.

It is a thing I have missed in the city - where there is always a human doing something and intruding on that instant of focus of thought, of reading, of nothing. And yet we mostly sleep through it, never realizing what silence is - never appreciating it and how it can cleanse our mind as water does our body.

Things I love. (26)

2011-02-26T14:14:00.000-08:00

I love backpacking. Not in the classics, hitch-hiking across Europe kind of 1960s hippie mumbo jumbo (though I have no opposition to an experience of that sort at all). But in the wandering mountain, backcountry, distant and forgotten land kind of approach. Where you saddle up 50 pounds on your back, including your food, shelter, clothing and a few luxuries for a week, descend into the barren prairie and to the heights of a mountain or the mysteries of a forest, with no intention of returning until you've achieved your goal. Which is both based on distant, renewal, and discovery.

This is an activity I love in Winter, Summer, Spring and Fall. With snowshoes or hiking boots, naked while wading through a river (to keep your clothes from getting wet) or fully clothed to keep the cold from stealing your soul. It doesn't matter the temperature, challenge or weather, so long as my back is strong enough and my friends are willing, I shall tackle nature and be tackled in return. I rarely come home winning in this battle of human and earth, but I never come home without a smile - and without feeling as though the city, the enormous swarm of people, is foreign in a new way. Cars are alien products that I cannot and do not know how to drive, phones are communicative tools that connect very little and reveal even less.

I love backpacking, because it connects me with nature, makes me more Canadian, human and animal, and unites me with my friends. It is an experience that I will love for as long as my body will let me.

(and I most sincerely hope that whoever it is that I end up loving completely and totally in this life will love it as well...)

Things I love. (25)

2011-02-25T19:15:00.000-08:00

I love art galleries. I find them inspiring. When I travel abroad I make sure that I go to one, two, three local galleries displaying local work. Or National Galleries, displaying local work from a vast array of history. I love watching time change with the styles and techniques - the adoption of breezy paint-strokes in the impressionists and the precise darkness of baroque religious art. The use of computers in modern-day sculture, precision and anti-precision. The works of Michelangelo and Matisse.

Art galleries allow you to see the despair of man, mixed with the joy of humanity - the perfect place to gander, be inspired, and imagine what made the artist make what you see and how it is possibly making you feel what it is you are feeling.

I love art galleries because you never leave one thinking the same way as you did when you walk in. Instead you come out and start seeing the world in the lines and details of the artist that most impressed you - trying to view the world as they do, hoping that maybe you could make something so incredible in your mind as you saw inside those four walls.

Things I love. (24)

2011-02-24T21:47:00.000-08:00

I love cinnamon buns. In a way that can only possibly be unhealthy. I can't describe my love of how soft the dough it, or how the filling ripples out of the coiled goodness in melted rivers of sweet. But I can tell you that I once had a rule - that, for several years, whenever I saw a cinnamon bun at a coffee shop or other diner of sorts, I was required to buy it. I had to have it and try it.

And then my metabolism shifted.

And then I realized how many places sell cinnamon buns just so that people fooled by their love for them would purchase them.

And then, momentarily, I felt like a fool in love.

But I can tell you that I was (and continue to be) so rarely disappointed by buns involving cinnamon. Because I love them. And always will.

And, just for clarification, baking is a fine, fine activity. I've not been able to make a truly phenomenal batch of cinnamon buns yet, but I'm gettin' there...

Things I love. (23)

2011-02-23T18:27:00.000-08:00

I love senior citizens. Those one's who are just looking for somebody to brighten their day, so they will sit around and wait for somebody to talk to them on a park bench - not really doing anything but looking. Walking for a bit, maybe. I love how, even though their skin sags and the wrinkles remove every hint of emotion other than a presumed longing, the moment that they are wakened into joy (of any degree) every single pore of skin, including those hiding from the sun in the darkness of the wrinkles, is bright and dancing and beaming and joyful in an absolutely beautiful way. The laugh that accompanies this is either silent or so hearty that one cannot help but to smile - and you do. Because senior citizens, our sources of wisdom and love and curmudgeonry (on the off days), are things worth loving, appreciating.

And my grandma is one of the best.

Things I love. (22)

2011-02-22T17:08:00.000-08:00

Stars. Glowing orbs in the sky, contorting into shapes that don't really resemble anything but our imaginations. And doing this with absolute and total beauty. The milky way racing across the sky as though being dragged by the great horses of Apollo, crashing into the terran absolute on both sides into the great invisible that is the other side. Galaxies, distant and hazy and almost impossible make out with the naked eye - worlds to discover and explore.

I love the night sky. Everything that it contains. The darkness - the brightness - the darkness. Orion's belt (in winter) and the wings of Cygnus (in summer).

It makes you feel small. And young. And child-like. So much to see and explore and see again because you aren't sure you've seen it before. And just as it all starts to make sense you get the sensation that you may be on a large ship in the middle of the ocean, star chart in hand, baffled - trying to make it line up to figure out where on this god-forsaken planet you are. And where you need to be.

It is as though the stars contain all the wonders and dangers of life while also being the metaphor for it.

Things I love. (21)

2011-02-21T10:07:00.000-08:00

I love dancing. I have a theory that dancing is complete freedom, something that people always say when tearing up on "So You Think You Can Dance" about how dancing defines them. Oh! how I believe them. Ever since Leanne Womack's "I Hope You Dance" came out, I wanted to dance and dance and dance.

While dancing, I love the feeling of rhythm, the feeling of exhaustion, the refusal to leave the dance floor because the song being played is so fantastic. And then refusing with the next song because it is equally fantastic. I love the way your body collapses once you leave the dance-floor, tired beyond tired and wanting nothing more than rest - all the while knowing that in another 5 minutes you'll be back on the dance floor for more - where, just as before, you will mouth along to all the songs you know and dance to the one's you don't (mostly those from Europe) until you've figured out the words.

I hate how the morning after your ears are not quite right. They ringringringringring. But this is a case of when the means totally justify the ends.

Also, ballroom dancing is a total joy.

Things I love. (20)

2011-02-20T11:21:00.000-08:00

I love soccer. Really, any team sport will do. But soccer is unique. Something about the experience of using one's feet to make magic happen - a game where you always have to use your team-mates and cannot manage on your own. It is a game where you have to perform at your peak at all times, using ever ounce of athleticism in your body to ensure you are not letting your team down.

And it is a game where goals are so rare that getting one, and winning as a result, feels like a real accomplishment.

Soccer truly is the beautiful game.

Things I love. (19)

2011-02-19T13:35:00.000-08:00

I love nudity. Or, to be more specific, I love being naked. Even being nearly naked is wonderful - but being naked is a truly wonderful experience. Not because I claim to be a particularly beautiful person or because I like to look at other people being naked but because there is something about the feeling of being naked that is refreshing.

Things I love. (18)

2011-02-18T10:06:00.000-08:00

Like all people who have been raised in the Canadian Prairies, I bear one love/hate sensation that returns every year for at least 5 months. Personally, this relationship is mostly defined by love.

I love snow.

I hate it when it first arrives, but it grows on me throughout the season - until it is, at this point, absolutely stunning. To the point that I forget what grass looks like until it finally breaks through its white prison cell in April or May. I love the way it sounds beneath your feet as you walk through a field of fresh sparkling crystals, and the way that it absorbs sound. The world becomes still, covered in a blanket, slumbering. Beautiful in its sleep.

I love the promise of snow-shoeing, and cross-country skiing, and skating, and sledding, and watching hockey, and walking around town the see the ice sculptures, and attending winter festivals, and drinking at an ice bar, and curling (and just watching curling with my grandmother), and making forts with my god children (please never let them age, for my sake). I love the memory of making piles of snowballs to throw that some unsuspecting victim - hiding the pile in my backyard for just the moment when I will unleash my terror on my neighbour or my mother.

When there is snow on the ground, there is a reason to be outside.

Things I love. (17)

2011-02-17T21:32:00.001-08:00

Dogs. I love dogs. I always have - but my love grew exponentially when, at the age of eight, a new neighbour moved into a house down the street and brought with her a pack of Golden Retrievers and a recently born litter of pups. What absolutely stunning animals they were. For weeks I watched them through the chain-linked fence, and then she invited me in to play with them and handle the 3 week old scrunch-faced animals with care, and then (years later) she invited me to house and dog sit for her. And now her children are my godchildren (though this is really tangential to my love of dogs).

My own dog is blind and deaf, and aging rapidly (as is expected of animals you have loved for fourteen years), and I don't expect him to see another Christmas. But I love him too - there is nothing like sitting on the stairs of my house in the summer, with the light of the window beaming through the stained glass art that my father delicately constructed and dancing is shades of amber and gold on the hardwood floor below. I will sit there, read a book in one hand and pet him with the other. And he will lie - contented. For hours. I miss him more than anything else at home when I am away. He may actually be my best friend.

Things I love. (16)

2011-02-16T19:47:00.001-08:00

I love road trips, the longer the better. It is an experience so rarely shared between friends and strangers these days - when you are forced into a small compartment and have no option but to find means of entertaining each other through conversation. Road trips are where relationships are made and friends discover new things about each other. And they are infinitely more entertaining than an airplane ride - you get to see so much, with the freedom to stop and gander at new and previously found beauties.

I think I would like train rides in Europe too.

Things I love. (15)

2011-02-15T21:24:00.000-08:00

I really do love eyes. Big ones, small ones. Aggressive or docile. Eyes are not only the window to a soul, but they have the potential to shine somebodies personality. I have not yet found another part of the human body that can tell you so much about how somebody feels and, at the same time, be the vessel into which you release your own soul and feeling. Eyes are everything human, animal, animate and living.

Things I love. (14)

2011-02-14T21:16:00.000-08:00

I love the human body. For all of the right reasons, and for all of the wrong reasons. First the right. It is intricate, it is detailed, it is an object of creativity. I am fascinated by the linkage of muscle to bone and bone to cartilage, and nerve ending to nerve ending. Second the wrong. The body responds - and oh how it responds. We are people - we are individuals. We are masters and victims of our daily temples, and it is for them and against them that we live. We can feel touch. But, most stupefying of all, we can feel love.

Things I love. (13)

2011-02-13T21:27:00.000-08:00

I love the moment when the power goes out in the middle of something that is of immense importance. It doesn't happen often, but when it does it is like a scream from the world. In the immediate isolation comes the realization that whatever it was that you were doing was not really that important. Not so important to call the power company and get angry with your power supplier for something that is likely beyond their control. And then you can step outside. Relax. Walk.

Things I love. (12)

2011-02-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

I love the flickering of a candle. The way that it dances, and the world sways with it in complete awe of its form. I love to imagine that there are people out there who are like candles, and I know that I have seen them around me because they are the kind of people that you can't stop watching. Candles are deserving of our love.

Things I love. (11)

2011-02-11T21:22:00.000-08:00

I love Christmas with my family. Every year there is a puzzle that must be tackled and a new board game to learn how to play. I love when the puzzle isn't finished at the end of the holiday so my mother and I must sit down together, in silence for hours, studying and placing pieces diligently. It is an act of passion and perfection. And those hours in silence are those moments when I love my mother most - all thanks to Christmas.

Things I love. (10)

2011-02-10T21:19:00.000-08:00

I love the vast prairie. It is not mountains, and in contrasting them it tells me so much more about my existence than I have yet discovered. It is subtle in its changes. It requires tender alertness and awareness of everything that is seen, felt and inhaled. I love that about the prairies - the fresh air and the freedom to inhale. And the storms, which, simply because they are so grand, can only possibly be limited to the prairies of the world.

Things I love. (9)

2011-02-09T21:12:00.000-08:00

I love the theory of music. I study it on my own. I take the pieces I am playing or singing, limiting myself to masterworks of many eras, and study intently how music is possible in some places but not others. I read texts on music theory. Not often, but often enough to keep me aware of what is taking place when I listen to a new piece. And it makes me admire composers so much more. I love music theory.

Things I love. (8)

2011-02-08T21:10:00.000-08:00

I love that moment of secret when, late at night, I start reading my magazines about fine-crafted carpentry. Not as a distraction but as a way of figuring out how things have been made, and then as a way of imagining how I can make things in the future. I'm almost getting ready to draw out a blanket chest for my father and I to make together. He'll have no idea that it is something that I want to do when I present it to him. He doesn't know that I love making things, and seeing them used, and knowing that I was a part of the production. I am an industrialist at heart.

A break in the theme....

2011-02-07T23:08:00.000-08:00

"Dear Neal:

It is my sincere pleasure to inform you that the Graduate Program Committee is recommending to the Simon Fraser University Senate Graduate Studies Committee your admission to the Master's program for the Fall 2011 term... ... Professor Mark Leier [head of the History Department] has expressed an interest in acting as your supervisor."

- Mary-Ellen Kelm
Graduate Program Chair, Department of History, Simon Fraser University

I really, really did not want to break the theme. I like this series. And it is going somewhere important (in due time, like all of my series...). But when you've got something to celebrate, like getting into the graduate school and program that you so desperately wanted to get into, any series should be disturbed...

Things I love. (7)

2011-02-07T21:07:00.000-08:00

I love discovery - finding things that have been found before but by different minds and hands and eyes and feet. That moment of first encounter, when your mind is racing to understand the implications of newness. I find it happens most when researching for history papers. Discovering that somebody had an addiction to alcohol, or that France in the 1790s was actually a collection of small states rather than an organized, functioning nation of one people. But it happens all the time.

Things I love. (6)

2011-02-06T21:03:00.000-08:00

I love the village of Hoddevik, in Norway. It is the birthplace of my great-grandfather, and it is a place that I have had the honour of visiting. Beautiful is a word too small to explain that tiny town of 30 inhabitants. I can remember that moment when you just turn the corner, go over the ridge, and then descend the mountainside in your car, on the road built by Nazi slaves, and you see the unending ocean in the background. In the foreground you are bombarded by green, grasses and mosses and lichens that grow year round in the warm, salt-infused, moist air. You see yellow houses surrounded by trees imported from British Columbia because of their resilience to wind. And I also saw a Canadian flag on a flag-pole, waving to me and welcoming me to a land that felt like home even though it was nothing like home.

Things I love. (5)

2011-02-05T21:01:00.000-08:00

I love to play my piano. To sing and play my piano. To sit and watch somebody else sing, or play their piano, or sing and play their piano. It is the most humbling thing I have ever encountered, the piano. Nothing has caused me more heartache and excitement in the past 5 years than discovering a piece, playing it for months to the point of perfection, then hearing a recording and realizing there is so much more to learn. And then doing what I can to learn it. I love the piano.

Things I love. (4)

2011-02-04T20:59:00.000-08:00

I love mountains.

Things I love. (3)

2011-02-03T20:57:00.000-08:00

I love watching parents in public in that moment when their children are having too much fun, making too much noise - and just on the brink of drawing more attention to the family than the parent wants. Because I love seeing the happiness in children, I love imagining the love of that mother or father for their child, I love seeing joy. I smile - and wish I could tell the parent to let their child continue because their joy is brightening my day.

Things I love. (2)

2011-02-02T20:55:00.000-08:00

I love the feeling when you are just leaving the gym after doing an hour of cardio. Muscle work-outs make the body cry. Cardio makes the body surge with an energy that makes you feel like you are six inches taller just for that 5 minute walk to the car. It is so refreshing.

Things I love. (1)

2011-02-01T20:25:00.000-08:00

I love a good book. A really good book. Just "acceptable" is not worth my time - and unfortunately I have spent time reading more than a couple "acceptable" books. There are so many worlds to traverse, authors and minds, philosophies and ideas locked in the intimate papers of the imagined for me to continue spending my time with the "acceptable". Stellar books are lovely.

2011-01-31T09:26:00.000-08:00

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and yet depreciate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle." - Frederick Douglass

An Egyptian friend of mine whose family still lives in Egypt sent me this quote yesterday.

And then he demanded of me...

"What is out there is immoral and bad. Where is it? In Egypt. What do we fight for? And are we prepared to fight? Yes, we are. But are you? Will you fight beside of us - become one more drop of water in our rushing ocean tides?" (I had to translate this from French - he does not speak English well and grew up in Quebec)

Stunning.

And then I found this on GayEgypt.com (thanks to gay persons of color):

"Egypt's gay and lesbian community has had enough of years of police brutality and torture and GayEgypt.com calls on all lesbians and gays to join their brothers and sisters on the street to peacefully express their demand for immediate change."

You know those characters...

2011-01-29T22:00:00.000-08:00

You know those characters. We find them around us all the time. In books. On the news. In the line-up at the shopping mall (and not at Wal-Mart, right guys?).

This one hit me in the face in a film. A film that was made for me, and only me.

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World.

It features all the coolest things from my childhood.

Like video games. And imagining massive sword fights where my defeated enemies fell to the ground. And trips to Toronto's Casa Loma to watch the filming of a show. And fighting over Chinese girlfriends (which didn't happen for me), dating blonde rock chicks (which didn't happen for me), and then fighting off her new vegan boyfriend (which didn't hapen for me). And sleeping in my gay room-mates bed because I can't actually afford one of my own (which didn't happen for me).

But lets talk about the characters rather than about the life that I wish I had (seriously, sword fights all around me...).

Particularly that gay room-mate.

Friends, meet Wallace Wells.

And, friends, let me tell you why I should hate him.

"Look, I didn't write the gay handbook. If you got a problem with it, take it up with Liberace's ghost." (he says this in the film).

But I can't. I can't hate him. Because he was hilarious. His floozy, sleep-around, drunken and live-for-the-moment character; his I'm-the-cool-room-mate that you sleep with; his way of pushing Scott out of the bed near the end of film so that he can use it for sex (for a week). I should hate him. WE should hate him for showing a side of the gay life that isn't completely true, but is so clearly an introduction to gay life that young people who want to have daily sword fights and battles with ex-boyfriends (and girlfriends) will see.

But I can't. Instead I laughed. I hope you did too.

"Okay, presumeably, you may have just seen a dude's junk, and I'm very sorry for that... so is he."

William

2011-01-23T00:45:00.000-08:00

I danced beside you tonight. Not with you. In the same dancing circle of ridiculous movement set to a monotonous beat, so with you. But not with you. I was beside you on the outside rim of the circle.

I wanted to dance with you. Ask you for your number. Suggest coffee, or tea, or a walk, or beer. Or wine with cheese and a bread platter. Whatever interested you.

Because. You were physically attractive. And dramatic women who I don't really like decided you were rude for some reason in a sideways conversation about you. And I like people who are just barely arrogant enough, just barely sensible enough, to know that they don't need to be friendly with everybody they meet when they are mostly comfortable with the people they know. That entices me.

And the way that we looked into each other's eyes only after avoiding them, and continue to avoid them afterwards, and took glances again and again. Hoping not to time them at the same moment - the electric pulse of the air and the flash movement of poor lighting putting us both at risk.

So. William. Hopefully I didn't miss my chance. And I can one day have the opportunity to dance with you rather than in a circle that we both happen to be in. Hopefully before then you learn my name.

It's Neal.

And - if you have to search my wallet for it while I am using your toilet the following morning - I won't mind. Even if you tell me.

It's Neal.

The Book of Eli and the Last of the Crazy People

2011-01-21T23:32:00.001-08:00

A movie. Mediocre at best (and one that loses its meaning more as you think about it).

A book. More than mediocre, at best (and one that I think haunts more as you think about it).

That is my title tonight...

As tonight I watched the Book of Eli, with friends that I am beginning to see more and more as the Last of the Crazy People.

I just don't get 'belief' anymore. Not in the same way that they do. And I don't think that concerns me anymore. Other than for the fact that they can't perceive 'belief' as anything less than what they 'know' it to be.

That concerns me.

Because what they 'believe' in and what they hold as 'true' are flimsy. Not false - but probably wrong - yet flimsy.

Are they crazy for believing in it? Or did I miss the point of the film. Or the Book of Eli.

2011-01-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

"To be 'gay,' I think, is not to identify with the psychological traits and the visible marks of the homosexual, but to try to define and develop a way of life."

- Michel Foucault

This makes me wish more than ever that everybody had the profound opportunity to be 'gay'.

2011-01-18T20:10:00.000-08:00

Children are beautiful.

My friend just had one with his wife.

He is an honourable man. A good husband to his beautiful wife. And a fantastic father to the son that he already has.

And I am very, very happy for him.

Land of living skies...

2011-01-12T11:34:00.000-08:00

Saskatchewan is, at one moment, a source of immense pride and, at the other, a source of shame.

Earlier this week, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal upheld a ruling of the lower courts, saying that marriage commissioners could not use their own personal bias as a means of determining who it is that they marry. In effect, they could not refuse marriage to anybody, regardless of sexual orientation, skin colour, or other feature. It is their duty as representatives and employees of the government to provide marriage to those that choose not to have a religious ceremony.

As such, the individual rights of the commissioners are superseded by the rights of the marrying couple. It is now unlawful to deny one's services based on conscience or religious ideals.

I imagine this is a cause for celebration for many.

Unless you are a member of the Saskatchewan Party. The governing party of our provincial legislature had asked the court to consider two alternatives. One would have allowed marriage commissioners to deny public services to gay couples, and the other would have allowed only marriage commissioners licensed before the legalization of same-sex marriage to do so.

Both were ruled unconstitutional. (though perhaps not entirely unacceptable?)

Maurice Vellacott, a Member of Parliament and the Conservative Party, and an outspoken opponent to same-sex marriage: “The Court has hereby belittled religious faith or any faith for that matter. It sets up a hierarchy of rights saying these same-sex rights are more important than freedom of conscience and religion.”

Is that really what the court did?

Read. Don't Read.

2011-01-08T15:01:00.000-08:00

Over the past several months, without the pressure of school work (other than applying for graduate programs) and only working one job, I have found myself fortunate enough to have free time. I've used it to play the piano, play video games, try and learn a new language (German, I'm looking at you), and, most enjoyably, read.

In this time period, my favourite facebook application has become Virtual Bookshelf - where I can show my friends what I am reading and share my perspective on books I have read in the past.

I am currently reading one of the most compelling books that I have ever picked up. I don't agree with it, but I find it hard not to be completely wrapped up in it. I look forward to finishing it (I'm about a quarter of the way through) and sharing my thoughts with you about it. With any chance some of you have read it (it is a classic) and we can discuss it.

Anyways.

A book you should read:

Alias Grace by Margaret Attwood. My first Attwood book turned out to be a truly gripping novel written with incredible style and tackling some very serious and complicated issues. I was completely impressed by the book from cover to cover.

A book you should not read:

Homecoming by Bernard Schlink. My second novel by the writer of The Reader, and I was thoroughly disappointed. It unravels and intoxicates you, though you are not entirely certain of why. It is neither compelling nor a complete story - like a first draft or an outline that could've been something great if only it were fleshed out more and the ending was changed. I would not recommend this novel to the worst of my enemies.

And the answer is... (42?)

2010-12-30T23:55:00.000-08:00

So I am an educator by trade. As a gay educator, I am always in the spotlight of the criticizing eye of the adolescent. And, if you read my post entitled Moral Education, you would know that sometimes I encounter challenging and painful situations as a result of my sexuality - and that sometimes these make me angry.

That was back at the end of November.

Days after I posted Moral Education, a friend of mine uploaded Hint #6 to her facebook page and introduced me to something very, very powerful. Her fiancee (also a woman) and I were blown away by what we saw; it made the It Gets Better Movement seem trivial for all the reasons that it is trivial.

We can't promise people that it will get better later. We need to promise young adults that it will get better today, and make that promise come true. But... how do I do that?

Enter the fiancee's passion for gay activism and my interest in education. Somewhere, despite my frustration with the current generation of young people and their lack of work ethic, attention, or care, I have faith in education - in discovery - to change people. And if we are true to ourselves, we all know and feel on a daily basis that society needs to change.

So for December the two of us organized ourselves. We talk about gender theory and how we felt it needed to become something that everybody learned about - rather than just those who were in sexual minorities. We talked about how that is possible - how it fits into the curriculum in Saskatchewan and, (sadly) how it does not. We talked about what power we have to educate young people about gender and sexuality, and how this can be done with an approach of discovery rather than lecture. We talked about questions - to be asked and answered. We talked about our own sexualities and discovered things we never imagined about ourselves. We talked, because we know that these are concepts and topics that young people deal with everyday, that young people want to discuss as they try to figure themselves out, that adults don't want young people to discuss, and that young people feel uncomfortable discussing.

And from that, we made something that we hope is powerful and brilliant. A comprehensive discussion session - 1 hour in length (but potentially longer). Introducing the basics of the gender spectrum, the unreality of extremes - even introducing circular gender theory as something even less finite and more flexible. Providing students with basic ideas about gender - to liberate them all (even the "straight" ones from the ideas of being "straight" - the one's who are not "gay" but feel something other than "straightness"). We would present ourselves, honestly, openly, and carefully - answering questions about sexuality and providing ourselves as case studies.

We have people signing up to be a part of it. Including many of our "straight" allies who wish they had a better concept of sexuality before they discovered their friend was gay. Not because it informed them about their gay friends but because it helped them inform themselves about their sexualities. They were able to understand themselves better - they were liberated to understand themselves with more clarity but less "straight" and more "other".

In the coming weeks the fiancee and I have a meeting with the local Public School Board's board chair to ask their permission to enter classrooms. We are also in contact with our province's health curriculum consultant - we want to show them what is possible, talk about our approach, and outline how we imagine this affecting everyone positively. And how important it is to get this information to students at a younger age.

So there are circles (Hint #3). There are spectrums and women (Hint #2), and rainbows (Hint#1). There are questions (Hint #3, #4), and students (Hint #4, #5), and a reimagining of gender (Hint #6) - a reGendering - with our youth.

With any luck this will amount to something that is worth its weight in paper and time...

And the answer is...

2010-12-29T00:30:00.000-08:00

...

well, before we get to that, let me drag this out a bit more by telling you what I see. Perhaps you'll get to my point before you read it once you've read the hints from my perspective.

Hint #1 is a rainbow, similar in colour spectrum to that found on most gay pride parades though certainly not exact. It is a symbol of diversity in sexuality, non-sexuality, lifestyles and peoples.

Hint #2 is a straight line. This straight line happens to be on a shirt worn by a woman. The shirt is brown. The important part is the straight line (though the fact that I am calling it straight is of minimal importance).

Hint #3 is a question mark locked in a circle. Both of these parts are important. The former because it suggests curiosity, the latter because of the circle (which is in stark contrast to a straight line).

Hint #4 are hands raised in the air. As an educator, this is a familiar sight that is unfortunately less familiar than one would hope. Also, there are uniforms on - I am unfamiliar with uniforms at the schools I have experience in. Focus on the hands in the air - probably wanting to ask (or answer) questions.

Hint #5 is an image of a classroom. This is likely of a community colle judging by the room size and the furniture in the room, though it isn't necessarily so. There is somebody speaking at the front of the room and the students are, for the most part, attentive to what she is speaking about.

Hint #6 is a video about Reteaching Gender and Sexuality. A damned powerful video - that is worth watching numerous times and imagining what can be done with that kind of philosophy.

And the answer is... that I am doing something with that philosophy. What it is will be revealed in less than 48 hours. But I like games, and imagine that some of you might still be willing to play a long with me...

A Non-Hint

2010-12-20T14:32:00.000-08:00

(I'm getting old)

(Today, I'm getting older)

I'll wrap up the hints next time. I swear.

Hint #6

2010-12-19T19:31:00.000-08:00

Hint #5

2010-12-13T20:02:00.001-08:00

Hint #4

2010-12-11T23:57:00.000-08:00

Hint #3

2010-12-09T20:44:00.001-08:00

Hint #2

2010-12-07T21:58:00.000-08:00

Hint #1

2010-12-05T20:58:00.001-08:00

Moral Education

2010-11-25T14:22:00.000-08:00

It was a long day today at work.

While I've been navigating the crevasses of graduate work applications, I've also been using my two degrees to make money. As a substitute teacher for the Regina Public School Board.

And there I was today, during homeroom, directing class. And my ears hear something that I haven't heard since I was a student.

"Yeah, he's gay."

It was from the back corner. I can still remember the face of the young woman that made the comment.

I can still recall that instant when I felt as though shutting down was the only response that was valid. These people knew. They were judging me for it. There was nothing I could do about it anymore.

And then I did the worst thing possible.

I let the comment slide. And now, I know that, for anybody that she encounters who is gay, around whom she tosses around the word with a sneer and a knowing gracefulness of cool, that i have contributed to the fear that they feel.

And, on my drive home, I couldn't decide if I should've pounced on her. As a young First Nations (Metis?) woman, god knows I had the ammo - I am incredibly capable of whipping up hatred in an instant.

Why didn't I?

Was it because I don't believe in humiliating students (no, thats definitely not the reason), or was it because I refuse to use race as a trump card (i'd love to pretend so, but the fact that I could whip up hatred for this woman in an instant because of her skin colour tells me otherwise), or was it because I knew that, in the moment that I defended homosexuals from hatred, I was outting myself to these students?

I could've incited foolishness, dumbness, ignorance, She could've retaliated with the same in some way, I couldn't asked her how she feels when she heard commentary about First Nations women being prone to drinking when they were pregnant or men sexually abusing their daughters in a drunken rage, and I could've answered with fear and hatred and remorse and shame at her identity for things that she could not control, and she could've gotten angry and disgraced, and I could've told her that she had no right to inflict those feelings upon anybody else and nobody has the right to inflict those feelings upon her, and She could've agreed, and I could've said that I would expect somebody who has been the victim of cultural hatred in the past to fight against it in all of its manifestations (just to let her know that I was thoroughly disappointed in her character), and She could've gone home and told her parents and the Parents could've contacted my boss and told her about the scenario, and I could lose my position, because God knows that my "teaching practices" were questionable I was thoroughly out of line and it isn't the right of a teacher to treat minority students in any way to calls attention to their minority-ness, and I would not be able to respond because this woman would have the same power as I would have over my temporary student in my class, and once again I am faced with morality in ways that are complicated.

It was probably the last reason.

And so I was silent. And let the tacit hatred of homosexuals survive for another day.

2010-11-18T19:29:00.001-08:00

I came to the realization yesterday that I don't allow my parents to love me.

I know that this must kill them. I wish that they could understand why. I wish that I could understand why.

Because I think that allowing somebody to love you is a beautiful thing.

2010-11-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

Glee deals with impressive content. It did so again this week.

Perhaps though its surprisingly substantial stories are lost in the bubblegum pop (and for the record, any show that can make a Katy Perry song sound incredibly sexy deserves a field of Emmys). But they are there, and for anybody who can relate to Kurt Hummel, there are shockingly familiar.

This past week dealt with romance - and that sense that romance doesn't exist for those who are anything other than straight. How painfully familiar. It also highlighted how useless allies are, because they are not gay. They can stand up to hatred, but they can never make a gay man feel normal - feel as though they belong with the rest of society - as though every thought that they have is just as valid as the thoughts that one's friends has.

And then Kurt Hummel meets Blaine. Suddenly he has an ally who, like him, knows the pain of everything. And everything is painful when you are gay, coming out of the closet, and incredibly lonely and isolated.

Last night I went out with a bunch of friends, all of them straight. Some of my best friends. And I felt isolated (despite them knowing that I am gay). At one point the thought crossed my mind that they were "holding me back from being me". How selfish of me, but is this possibly true...?

A friend who is gay is totally different than a friend who is straight...

Also, I hate the term "no homo." But, just like "that's so gay", one can always say "no hetero". I think....

Nothing quite like that.

2010-11-07T21:21:00.000-08:00

One thing I'm learning regularly nowadays.

Never ever stop letting people love you. Tell them you are gay, be fearless in it, and allow them to love you as they always have and with a newfound pride.

Because they will.

Let them be your ally.

Because they will be.

----

I am very fortunate to have the friends that I have. They are all remarkable people.

Today I told a youngin' (18 year old) that I am gay. "And thats how that goes."

He wasn't surprised - said he'd thought it for a while. It didn't matter to him, didn't change our relationship.

As long as I didn't try to grope him (he's a football player, groping him would likely result in a concussion).

I mentioned my two rules: Straight men are "no". 18 year olds are "no". (He's not married yet, so he doesn't need to know about the last one)

I'm his mentor. From Bible Camp.

.... there is nothing like being gay to make you realize how much pride you have... and how regularly you undersell the ability of people to love...

Hurt...

2010-10-28T19:09:00.000-07:00

There is nothing like being gay.

Nothing I can imagine.

It forces you to eat your pride, swallow it whole. Allow it to progress through the endocrine system, leave the bladder and spilled to the ground. Rolled around in - smelled.

This is what being gay does to your pride.

Because you are constantly reminded that there is something wrong with you. Something not quite right with you - not quite normal. Something you can't ignore, avoid, live without. And yet is something you embrace.

Until you can no longer embrace it.

I wish I could tell that man who decided that Tim Hortons was a great place to very publicly discuss some men that he saw at Superstore that I am not a "faggot" - but that I am gay.

And I wish I could tell him that I completely embrace it.

But one of these would be a lie.

"... I focused on the pain.
The only thing that's real."

2010-10-26T06:57:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, once the sun went below the horizon and all the warmth left the world, the snow began to stay. There couldn't have been much warmth to begin with - it had been snowing all day. But it was melting on the ground until the sun gave into the pressures of a rotating earth.

I don't know the full story of last night's weather system, but I can see the results when I look out of the window of this rented cottage in Maple Creek, SK. The ground is covered in about 2 cms of white stuff that is reminiscent of white stuff that was abdicated its earthen throne only 7 months ago. Like the prodigal son, it has returned to reclaim its rightful place as king of consciousness - making us ever-weary travellers, forcing us to alter our fashions before we are actually prepared, and allowing us to wonder whether or not sand has been put on the roads just yet to add some friction. Every morning.

Until the throne is abdicated again.

The snow has fallen. It has stayed. And winter is here.

And me, without a boyfriend to snuggle up to for warmth...

2010-10-17T12:59:00.000-07:00

I've fallen in love with a man named Richard Kim, editor of the American magazine The Nation.

"When faced with something so painful as gay teen suicide, it's easy to scapegoat child bullies. It's hard to create a world that wants queer youth to live and thrive."

I'm going to keep him around.

(Reason that science is bad is forthcoming.)

Disappointing Sex

2010-10-14T18:07:00.001-07:00

A sample of a texting conversation that I had today with a friend.

Me: My conclusion in life: wow! Some people are definitely worth looking at.

Leah (friend): Lol! What do you meaaaaan?

Me: Just thought that I would let you know that the most beautiful person in the world was just in my general vicinity.

Leah: Lol! Thats weird, I just called Heather (her fiance) and she didn't say you were in her general vicinity! :P Who was he?

Me: I have no idea. But that did not prevent me from admiring how he fit into his pants all the ways from produce to the check out.

Leah: Ahahahah you are just wonderful!

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And an unfortunate realization. The world is not interested in acting in love to everybody, and as a result, the world is not interested in transforming itself into a better place.

In an unfortunate twist, many "straight allies" have taken the tragic losses of life in the past weeks as a means of becoming ardent war-hawks, intent on ensuring that people can no longer have honest discussions about homosexuality.

I witnessed this on facebook recently, where somebody I went to church with commented on a mutual friend's status update about bullying gay teens. The person I went to church with commented that he loves gay people, but does not approve of their lifestyle.

This is something that we've all heard before. Many times, for those of us who straddle the social groups of church and gay.

And many people instantly attacked him. Many straight people, whose experience as a victim of gay bullying is arguably more vicarious than real, attacked him vehemently. And my heart broke instantly.

You see, this person that attends my church is actually a young teenager, trying to view the world as he has been raised, but just intelligent enough to be willing to step into an open debate about the topic. He is asked questions of his position, and he provides honest answers. And he gets asked more questions. And they become more and more pointed. And more numerous.

And more inappropriate.

Its a form of bullying. Intellectual in format, and it forces people to become more and more isolated and less and less willing to communicate.

You see, these suicides have arroused a massive alarm. Finally.

And yet, it has also caused an incredible amount of anger that, rather than looking to console and change the world, wants to point fingers and blame individuals. This instead of welcoming them, discussing, and allowing both to be changed as a result. And somehow I have noticed that to be the attitude shared by our "straight allies".

For some reason, those people who went through the scalding and terrorizing reality of gay bullying for their entire life (and who continue to go through it) appear to be more interested in having a heart to heart; a life-changing discussion. Changing perspectives demands, absolutely demands, love.

To my friend from church: thank you for your honesty, and your willingness to be vulnerable. Thank for sharing your verses, for saying that you do not wish to condemn and do not condemn anybody, and do not claim to know God's heart completely; thank for saying you love gay people despite their actions.

To those random people who claim to be allies: I appreciate your support for the cause of putting an end to gay bullying, but if you can't love everybody then I am not entirely certain that I want your love. Everything we do must be done in grace, must be done in the interest of change, and must put us in an equally vulnerable position. Otherwise we reinforce perspectives of being cold, arrogant, and lacking in love. None of these things are good.

To my gay allies: May we never forget that we have an opportunity to transform the world whenever people are prepared to honestly discuss with us. It is our responsbility to love, accept, and offer ourselves as a response.

(and next time, why science is bad...)

I wish I couldn't believe in God.

2010-10-13T18:40:00.000-07:00

But Leonard Cohen's torture makes me remember that, even through my torturous attempts, I can only fail.

2010-10-09T10:02:00.000-07:00

Kahlil Gibran

"Oh heart, if one should say to you that the soul perishes like the body, answer that the flower withers, but the seed remains."

2010-10-08T22:31:00.000-07:00

I try very difficult not to be angryfrustratedconfuseddisappointedbetrayed by church.

And I would love, absolutely love, to feel as though I could walk into a church and feel completely at peace with the existence of God - not bombarded by feelings that the people there think that there is something wrong with me.

Because there is nothing wrong with me.

But I don't see the church fighting for justice when it needs to be fought for.

As most people are aware, September and October have been very trying months for the gay community as there has been a noteworthy number of lives lost to bullying. And this is tragic beyond all belief.

I wish the church would stand up for this loss - own up to its role in this loss (even as a non-oppressive force, the status quo in church communities is that there is something wrong with us - and make it clear that Christ did not live so that we could feel rejected by those who calls themselves his.

I try very hard not to get angry, and point fingers, and take rainbow-filled spray cans and paint hate-filled words for everybody to read on the exterior of their homes of worship.

Because I believe that It Gets Better.

All the time, It Gets Better.

And this can only, possibly, include the church. (Because the church owns too much culture to be excluded from it.)

It Gets Better

2010-09-29T18:25:00.001-07:00

There is no truth greater than the truth that Life Gets Better.

Gay high school students are more likely than any other demographic to attempt, and succeed at, committing suicide. I tried, and I failed. And my life is infinitely better for it.

An almost story about being in somebody else's underwear.

2010-09-23T19:06:00.000-07:00

I've spent the last couple of weeks looking into some graduate school opportunities. For some reason I can't justify leaving Regina without it being driven by the need for more education - despite the fact that I feel exhausted the moment I see its golden lights on the distant horizon every time I drive home.

I'm thinking Vancouver. Is it safe to assume that a community that has existed for longer can offer me something that Regina can't? Or that I refuse to allow Regina to?

My friend, who is far far more well connected than I, says that she can't even think of anybody she could set me up with...

That said, my long underwear is now out of the cupboard. I am currently wearing it. And I am loving it. Its been cold here in southern Saskatchewan all September - which is unfortunate for the park's visitor numbers, and for me as I am not living in a winterized home. We've already hit the negative double digits in the night - my fleece was not sufficient to keep me warm.

The first night it was really cold, I didn't have any in Val Marie.

Aaron lent me his.

It is a good man who will lend his gay friend his long underwear.

Those heterosexual missionaries...

2010-09-11T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last night Aaron and I went for a walk in the Grasslands. We looked at the stars. I pointed out a few planets, some stars, ancient constellations. Found a galaxy with the naked eye.

He asked me questions about what its like being gay.

I asked him what it was like being straight.

He told me about his loneliness. I told him of mine.

He told me I deserved somebody special. I told him the same.

Just a classic conversation between friends who are getting ready to say goodbye.

I realized that somehow, as a product of some completely unlikely friendship between two people who have no reason to have met, I was talking about being gay in Val Marie. I was honestly talking about the struggles of being a young gay man in Val Marie. Somebody was actually listening to me. It wasn't while I was alone. I wasn't silently crying in my bedroom, or looking for serious emotional support. I was talking about who I am - and I was helping him discover what a gay man can be.

I was happy; almost proud of who I was.

And I woke up this morning with a smile.

That simple conversation changed how I exist on this planet of Val Marie.

I wonder if he knows that...

2010-09-05T23:04:00.003-07:00

So I asked him

- Do you have any idea what your eyes do to me?

And he answered

- Yes. I've known for a long time.

So I asked him

- Why do you still let me look into them then?

And he answered

- Why do you let me look into yours?

I don't know yet if that is the end of that conversation.

Story of my life...

2010-09-02T21:58:00.000-07:00

In the imaginary world of dualities conveniently constructed in a westernized culture rooted in a religious understanding of our environment which views the world as either good or evil (and nothing else), I am choosing to psycho analyze myself.

There are two parts of my mind.

One being the carnal, ravenous, incredibly sexual being. The other being the innocent, cautious, and frighteningly romantic creature.

Generally speaking, I imagine that the former is in control.

But there are four people in the world around whom I have to consciously put effort into not wrapping my arms around (likely the lower waist), kissing, pushing against a wall or couch, discovering, and imagining ways that we could continue to grow comfortable with each other.

One of them is a person in Val Marie, who is researching an endangered butterfly we have in Grasslands National Park called the Mormon Metalmark (don't get me started on the controversy of calling it an endangered species, I am more likely to side with the skeptics than otherwise).

His name is Aaron.

He is 30. Has incredibly sharp canine teeth.

Beautiful eyes.

He is here for three more weeks.

And I cannot possibly allow myself to get physically close to him when we are anywhere near alone, because I am certain that if that is so I may just lose control and flirt a bit too much. I am concerned that he may flirt back without realizing he was flirting back (a throwback to his younger days of boyhood fun, more than anything else I assume), and I would catch myself falling in love with him even more.

Time to work on making myself distant from those people that I want to spend time getting to know.

Again...

Dreams

2010-08-24T21:32:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-08-20T13:05:00.001-07:00

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.

-------------------------------

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

2010-08-16T09:57:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-08-13T19:08:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-08-12T18:33:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-08-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

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...

2010-08-09T18:27:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-08-05T11:23:00.001-07:00

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

2010-08-01T22:22:00.000-07:00

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...