Special

One of the things about being eccentric (which is Greek and means simply, outside the centre) is that we know that all the stuff other ppl take for granted doesn't apply to us.

I'm right outside every "centre".  I'm in the blank space outside the Venn diagram.  I'm a gay man, or at least, mostly gay.  But I'm married, and happily, too.  I'm a vegetarian in a society which is 95% meat eaters.  I'm an intellectual, which sounds very grand and snobbish, but the way I think about the term is that it's the best there is for ppl who are interested in ideas.  Most ppl aren't.  I'm male, but unlike most males, I'm not obsessed with my small head -- I value friendship and love more highly than sex (how bizarre, you will exclaim).  Many readers think, from the emotional insights and feelings in my writing, that I am a woman.   I'm not,  but I know that my feelings are much more "feminine" than most blokes.

I don't belong anywhere.  And it's kinda lonely, to be honest.

OK, I will at once concede that every generalisation* I've made above is just that.    And generalisations inevitably mean that you don't notice when someone doesn't fit the convenient label you've invented or accepted.  Or had foisted upon you.  So much easier to sit back into the warm fug of preconceptions and generalisations and easy-to-digest familiar clichés.  So easy to hate.  And I have to fight that.  Because the labels are wrong.  And mislead.

Take my dear friend S.  He was married to a guy, who except for the love he felt for S, was straight.  Or A, who is in love with his best friend, who is also a straight bloke whose only male love and desire is A.  How to categorise this?  Because we want nice easy categories, we insist that they're really bisexual.  And I suppose if you stretch the meaning of the word enough it's true.  But if you stretch the meaning of all words enough they'll get like old undies:  always falling down on the job.

So I know, in my heart, that I shouldn't be angry at straights, or more particularly, straight men.  (Straight women have been amazingly supportive of me and my sexuality.)  Because, if I were 100% honest, I would accept that "straights" make up a huge group, full of individuals, just as "gays" are each unique, and "bi's" are all over the shop, with many, many bisexualities.

And yet.  And yet.

Straights -- straight men -- have all my life been cruel to me.  They have judged me and found me not good enough.  They have despised me.  They have bullied me.  They blinded me in one eye.  And they're still doing it, to other gay-shaded blokes.  Hardly a week goes by without some poor gay kid (or even just a straight but effeminate or nerdy kid) being bullied to death by his straight classmates for not being manly enough.

And I am angry with them for it.  Very angry.

And yet.  And yet.

My friend Damo is straight.  100 % straight.  A real pussy hound.  Yet he is entirely accepting of me and my gayness.  Completely, totally, utterly unjudgemental.   He's a lovely man.  And I value him even more for his eccentricity, his outside-the-centreness, his near-unique comfortableness with my sexuality.  Because all the other straight men I know are at the very least embarrassed by me and my sexuality.  And many are plainly hostile.  For them it defines me.  None of the other things about me matters.  Only my gayness is relevant.

But Damo doesn't give a flying foo-foo valve.

And that's special.



*All generalisations are false, including this one.