It's been a while since my last posting. Life's been hectic, of all things.
1) I got into a car wreck. (No injuries, but my car's got some major damage -- Ford Escort hits Ford Explorer, and the Explorer drives away with nary a scratch.)
2) I'm swamped at work. (Apache's mod_rewrite is -stupid-. There's no way, short of writing a pair of chained rules, to erase the current query_string and put a new one in. If you put a query string in the URL to redirect to, it adds to the current query_string, not overwrites it. I need to overwrite the damned thing.)
3) Emotional crap of a gay guy. This one's going to be the longest of the three, cuz that's what I'm thinking about most right now.
I got together with Tren and Steele last night, and watched _Torch Song Trilogy_. (The one that Harvey Firestein wrote and acted in.) Amazing movie, and one that I'm not certain I liked... but I'm quite certain I needed to see it. (Not to mention the amazing quotes from therein... "Oops is when you douch with DRANO!")
After the movie, Tren said that he's been trying to get one of the concepts through the minds of the furry community here in the Bay for the past five years: "You cheated me out of your life, and then complained that I wasn't there for you." (This was specifically spoken by Mrs. Beckoff, the lead character's mother, to Arnold Beckoff, the lead character.) Since I've been accused of almost exactly the same set of actions, I feel that I have to speak out against this.
Warning: This rant is not going to make much sense unless you've seen the movie.
(Spoken from the point of view of Arnold Beckoff:)
You say I cheated you out of my life, and then complained that you weren't there for me. You've never understood, or accepted, anything that was important to me, and you've never done anything other than make me defend myself and my own feelings against "the harsh light of logic" -- dammit, if I weren't so sensitive and caring, I'd do the same damned thing to you when YOU were feeling like you were hit in the gut by life. But I'm not. I recognize your pain, and I offer sympathy, and support, until you push me away or until you're okay. But why, when something important happens to me, do I not get the same treatment?
I didn't tell you how Alan died, because I was -deathly- afraid that you were going to say something cruelly insensitive. You always did, and you always do. I didn't tell you that I'm in the process of adopting David, because I was afraid you were going to say EXACTLY what you DID say. "Oh, think about HIM, think about his future, think about how living in this environment is going to make him turn out..." As though my being gay were something to be hidden, something to be ashamed of, something that I -CHOSE- to constantly hurt myself with! Do you think I'm a masochist or something? Do you think I -LIKE- being forced to hide myself, being forced to hurt every time something that I see something that was written ASSUMING that the reader (me) was STRAIGHT?!
Sure, maybe I do push my sex life down your throat. I tell you who I'm seeing, and what my reactions to him are. And when I do, you always throw your hands up and say "maybe someday you'll find a nice wife"... and completely reduce my feelings to ashes. But when my brother tells you about who HE'S seeing, you coo over him and then look daggers at me that I'm not seeing a "worthy match for me". I don't need money, I need support... and the people I'm supposed to get it from, my family, want to knock my world out from under me!
I've never had to deal with the pain of a lover beaten to death. I've never had to deal with the horror of not being allowed to be in the hospital, saying goodbye. It's something that gays -still- don't have, the freedom to walk down the street (except in the so-called 'gay enclaves' of larger cities) and not be harassed. It's something that gays -still- don't have, the freedom to visit their lovers in the hospital. It's something that gays -still- don't have, the ability to dictate how their lovers are going to be treated -- the blood family gets that privilege, regardless of whether they love him or hate him or want him dead, and the person whose life is being shared never gets a vote, much less control.
I accepted my own gayness a long, long time ago... but I'm finding myself more and more afraid of being gay, now. I'm finding myself more and more afraid of the unfairness, the things that straights who get married automatically get... things that I -can't- look forward to.
May whatever God you believe in help us all.
-Mat
posted by Anonymous | 8/29/2000 05:23:00 PM
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