Majorca Flats -- 98

Jason couldn't bring himself to speak. Instead, he took her hand and held it, and she squeezed it back.

When at last she did speak, her voice was ragged. “He … took his own life. I'd been out, and when I came home he had … he was … he'd hanged himself. He …” but here she was unable to continue, and, now crying freely, she rested her head on one hand and vigorously scrubbed her eyes with a wad of bundled-up tissues held in the other.

Jason couldn't speak either, his own loss and grief mirrored in hers. Together, they wept, joined in grief, joined in regrets.

At last, Eleanor stopped. “We're a fine pair,” she said forlornly. She sat in silence a while longer, then added, as an afterthought, “So you see why I blame myself.”

“Oh but Mrs Cum … Eleanor … it wasn't you who are to blame. It's the bullies. They're to blame, not you. They were the ones who drove him to his death. Not you!”

“But I might have saved him. See, I thought it was perfectly fine for a boy to be like he was, but not a man. Men should be manly. Not quirky or funny of effeminate. That's what I thought. So he never got to be a man, because of my stupidity, my prejudice. I worked it all out afterwards. I should have done something, but deep down, I was afraid, I was reluctant to let him grow up the way he was, to be what he was. How very stupid I was!” There was a long silence. At last, she said, so quietly Jason almost didn't hear, “Well, I've had twenty years to reflect on my folly.”

First Majorca Flats post      Previous MF post (#97)       Next MF post(#99)

Majorca Flats Episodes 1 to 10

Majorca Flats Episodes 11 to 20

Majorca Flats Episodes 21 to 30

Majorca Flats Episodes 31 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 41 to 40 

Majorca Flats Episodes 51 to 60 

Majorca Flats Episodes 61 to 70

Majorca Flats Episodes 71 to 80  

Majorca Flats Episodes 81 to 90

Majorca Flats -- 60

He got to The Lord Grey just before six p.m.. He and Keith arrived at the same time.

“G'day, sexy!” greeted Keith.

Jason smiled. He punched Keith lightly on the arm.

“Behave!” he snorted. “How do you know I'm not a married man?”

“Ooh, we are chirpy. Did we have a good sleep then?” Keith was being deliberately camp.

Again Jason merely smirked.

“That didn't take you long, did it?” said Keith, the campiness replaced by a trace of bitterness.

“I have no idea what you mean,” said Jason, colouring.

“Yeah, right. Was he good?”

Jason stared at Keith until the other man looked away. Yeah, he said silently to himself. Yeah. He was good. 

First Majorca Flats post  
Previous MF Post (#59)    
Next MF Post (#61) 

Majorca Flats -- 46

Friend.

Luigi was entranced. He'd been looking for friendship, he'd been looking for a friend. He'd been so lonely. The idea of a friend undid him. Cody could be his friend. He didn't need more. Just having a friend would change his whole life. Someone to trust, someone who trusted him, someone to confide in. Someone who didn't judge him because he was queeny, someone who cared for and about him. Someone who accepted.

A real man. A real man wanted to be his friend! Luigi wandered around in a daze of happiness. At last.

Luigi'd watched the other guys at school, when they teased each other or casually sauntered along the school walkways, shoulders brushing, confident in their maleness, secure in their affection for each other. Trying not to be noticed, he would sneak glances of two or three friends together and wish with all his heart that he too could be part of such a grouping.

But it had never happened.

First Majorca Flats post            Previous MF Post (#45)            Next MF Post (#47)

Majorca Flats -- 42

Luigi leant against the wall of the tiny hallway of his flat. He sighed. Why did he do this? He knew that having sex with straight blokes always left him feeling bitter and bereft. He knew – yet still he went back for more. His weakness disgusted him. What was the point of trying to connect to straight guys? The pattern had repeated itself again and again. He'd find it easy to get a straight guy to have sex with him. But they always walked away afterwards. Once or twice, they'd been hostile immediately after sex, and had left without speaking. Once he'd been beaten up. He'd been off work for a week. He'd told everybody at work that he'd fallen down the stairs at his block of flats. For a while after that he'd been careful. But as the fear wore off and the need to connect grew, he'd gone back to picking up strangers, the straighter the better. He was too intelligent not to see that this was destructive behaviour and that his dislike for other queeny guys was just another aspect of his own self-loathing, but when his emotions took control he couldn't stop himself. And afterwards he'd do just what he was doing now: he'd beat himself up, castigate his own folly and short-sightedness, and generally feel depressed and a skinny failure.

First Majorca Flats post            Previous MF Post (#41)            Next MF Post (#43)

Episodes 1-500

Gay Sex by any name . . .

 . . . "but I'm straight"

This is an old report, but I remember commenting on it then, in a group which has now vanished.  The article reported a major study comparing men's sexual identity compared with their actual sexual activity.  About 10 per cent of men who say they are straight have had sex with other men, yet claim they are not gay.  Seventy per cent of them are married.

Point one:  this was ten per cent who admitted to having gay sex.  Yes, the interviewer may have promised anonymity, but  . . .  The report indicated a class divide with working class or members of a minority group or the foreign-born having a higher percentage of men who do this.   I don't know what this means.  Are middle-class whites more in tune with their inner selves, and therefore more likely to be open about their sexuality (which would imply a higher proportion of middle-class than working-class or minority men identify as gay) or are they just better at not telling the truth to unknown interviewers?  It's very hard to believe that the same-sex class divide reflects real divisions in same-sex desires.  But it surely reflects differing perceptions of "truth".  And given unwillingness to admit to a shameful/sinful social predilection, the real number is probably the higher one.

Two:  in the article, a local (Ozzie) spokesman said "many of the 10 per cent would be unwilling to be identified as gay because of the fact that same-sex relationships are still stigmatised, even in a relatively liberal place."  Well, yeah, some.  Except they would prolly not have told the interviewer about the fact they were having sex with men, would they?  Actually, they may simply not think of themselves as gay, either because they like sex with women as well as men so are bisexual (or, better, identify with one of the many bisexualities), or because they regard "gay" as queeny men who dress up in feather boas and wear thong undies.  They're not like that, they believe, even if they do like to fuck men or be fucked by them.  Labels.

"Male" men may enjoy and seek out sex with men but still think they're "all man". If we start talking clichés here, these are men who will bond by talking about how the cement they're standing on has been laid (a recently overheard conversation between two ostensibly straight guys) , or what their car is, or which footy team they barrack for.  They think of themselves as belonging to the whole male tribe (in a way I don't.)    And the cultural majority has defined "male" as identical to "not gay".  Therefore, in their own eyes, and in the eyes of all the blokes they know, including possibly some of those they're fucking, they're straight.  No matter how many times you and I might say "straight? yeah, right," they regard themselves as essentially male except that they fancy a root with a bloke.  Who'm I to piss in their Wheaties?

Three:  these are big numbers.  The UK income tax authorities (not known for their heart) did an analysis about the percentage of the population who would use the new civil marriage provisions, because this would cut tax paid by gay and lesbian couples.  They decided that 7% of the population was gay or lesbian.  This suggests that something just under 20% of the male population either identifies as gay or identifies as straight but is having sex with other men.   Kinsey said:

25 per cent of the male population has more than incidental homosexual experience or reactions (i.e. rates 2-6) for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. In terms of averages, one male out of approximately every four has had or will have such a distinct and continued homosexual experience.

(from my article The End of Gay: the reference "2-6" is from the Kinsey scale, and means all except exclusive heterosexuals)

Think about this:  in a randomly selected group of men, say the blokes in the train or on the tram or in a supermarket, one in four (according to Kinsey) or one in five (according to this analysis) has had more than incidental sex with another man.

 

Four: because these blokes don't think of themselves as "gay" they probably won't support gay rights causes.  It doesn't mean they won't favour gay rights, but we tend (on the whole) to fight harder for causes closer to home than those which (appear) not to really impact us. Similarly, the Christian-Fascists and rocko rightists can say that there are few gays.  The man in the tram will go on thinking that gays are flamers, not "real men" like him, because the at least one in ten of the men around him who have periodic sex with men remain invisible. This is of course why gay rights advocates get so pissed off at these men: the more gay-shaded men are hidden, the more stereotypes are accepted, the harder it is to fight for the right to be accepted as normal.  Hence the continued need for gay pride parades, stereotypes and all.  But do the stereotypes make it more likely that straight-acting gay men or the men discussed in this article will be less willing to support us?

I used to feel that I was the only man I knew who was attracted to other men.  But I have become convinced that there are many, many men who might have sex with other men in the right circumstances. Those "right circumstances" will vary: two sportsmen who are attracted but convinced they're not gay because they're both so "manly": the man on the path in New Zealand who flirted with me (he's not gay, perhaps he thinks, because he hasn't fallen in love with a man, and doesn't want to share a house with one, even though he likes sex with them); the man who loves his wife and his kids but likes to bottom sometimes; the man who simply feels that his affection for his mate needs to be expressed sexually; the man who doesn't even notice the cultural mores, so doesn't really "know" that having sex with your friends is "wrong".  Male (and surely also female) sexuality is much more fluid than we are led to think.

My First Time

I've already talked about the guy I fell in love with, long ago.  He gave me my first blowjob, and I reciprocated (so to speak).  It seemed obvious to me that I was gay: after all, I'd fallen in love with and had sex with another man.  A victim of the tightly confining logic of either-or, I was convinced that I couldn't possibly be bisexual.  You had to be one or the other, gay or straight.  You couldn't -- Heaven forfend! -- find both sexes attractive and desirable.  It took me a while to get over this nonsense.

But since I was (I believed) a homo, I felt that I had better learn how to be a proper homo.  I didn't much care for the clichéd image of a homo prevalent in films and books and general culture of the time, though even here, I felt the need to stand up for the right to be me.  I took up ballet, and made a point of telling everyone about it!  However . . . .  everyone knew that homos only made love by having anal sex.  My first guy and I hadn't done that, and so, after he dumped me, I decided, as I was embracing the whole gay identity thing, that I'd better find out what it was all about.  When I look back on the me of forty years ago, I'm kinda touched by my militant enthusiasm.  I was emphatically gay; I saw nothing wrong with it; it seemed to me that society and religion had got it all wrong; and that to pretend I was anything other than gay was dishonest, immoral, shabby and cowardly.

With this exemplary moral fervour, I set out to lose my virginity.  I was staying in a flat in a high-rise in Cape Town's Gardens suburb at the time (having moved out of the decrepit old house I was sharing with my guy) and I'd seen a guy around, who spent a lot of time eyeballing me.  He was not the sort of man I'd normally go for, old, very queeny, skinny, and balding with a comb-over.  But when needs must  . . .  In those days, I still had a lot of residual homophobia, convinced that real gays ought to be as macho and male as straights.  The multiple subtleties and tribes of gaydom were unknown to me, which wasn't really surprising since I didn't know any gay men, and wasn't a part of the gay "scene".  So I rather despised him.  I've learnt to be more accepting since.  Poor old bugger.  I noticed him a couple of years later wistfully (knowing he didn't stand a chance) eyeing a group of handsome young men.  I pretended not to know him.  The casual cruelties of youth.

Anyway, he ogled me and I made with the nods and becks and wreathèd smiles and we ended up in his flat, and one thing led to another and I finally found out what it was like to bottom.  A big flat blah.  It didn't hurt, it just felt a bit weird.  The earth didn't move for me: in fact the guy fell asleep after he'd come inside me (no condoms in those pre-AIDS days) and I had to bring myself to orgasm.  It hardly seemed worth the trouble.

The next day was my graduation ceremony, and I sat in the great hall and at lunch after with my parents revelling in the fact that now I was a real homo.  Good grief!  Was I ever that young?  It seems so.

Flamers

A little while ago I read a remarkable blog post, from a blog which shall remain nameless. In it, the blogger described how he'd been approached by a effeminate (but very muscular) guy. This guy suffered from a -- shock! horror! -- lisp. Repelled, our intrepid blogger assaulted the "queen" and then vomited. There followed a diatribe against feminine guys.

A psychiatrist or psychologist would surely find the whole episode remarkably revealing. To me, it indicates a very strong internalised homophobia. Ah, many will reply, but what if you don't find effeminate men sexy? Well, what of it? If it had been a straight guy responding to a gay one in this way, the conclusions would have been obvious. It would have been seen as a gay hate crime. And let me make it quite clear: I'm not saying that you have to have it off with someone you find unappealing just to be politically correct. Some blokes prefer busty brunettes, others brunets with muscly pecs. Each to his own. But to hit the other guy and then vomit? C'mon! Whatever happened to Sorry, I have a headache?

So why do I call it a kind of (internalised) homophobia? Because what is going on here is a comparable to what happens in race-obsessed societies. In apartheid South Africa, the "whites" were the most desired, the "blacks" the least. The "coloureds" (mixed-race South Africans, who ironically spoke Afrikaans*, the language of the dominant "white" minority) were considered superior to the "blacks" but inferior to the "whites", and the "whiter" your skin was the higher your social standing. Manufacturers of (dangerous and ineffective) skin-whitening pastes and hair-straightening liquids did a roaring trade. Self-hatred brought on by the perverted values of society.

But how is this relevant to the spectrum of gays from queens through to clones? The most acceptable gays (to gays and straights) are those who can "pass". They're "masculine" and "straight-acting". When last did you see an ad in the hook-up section of the personals columns for a "gay-acting" partner?

It's not for nothing that one of the biggest story themes on Nifty is about straight guys turning gay. There are all sorts of reasons why this trope is so powerful to us, and I'll talk about them in a later post, but one of them clearly is that a despised and discriminated-against sexual alternative is embraced by the "real man" (gays, by definition, cannot be "real men"). A straight man turning gay validates us. And the machoer, the straighter, the more masculine the other man is before he turns to the dark side, the better. Hell's teeth, even in my own writing, I use these archetypal stories. In Footy, a straight man falls for his gay best friend.

The least acceptable gays are the "femmes", the "queens", the "gay-acting", the "flamers". When straight society talks disdainfully about "homos", this is mostly what they mean. Effeminate men are despised by most straights and gays. And it's worth asking why. 'Just because' is not an answer. Consider how many gays wish that drag queens would keep away from the gay parades. "They perpetuate stereotypes" is the politest comment I've heard. Why is it more acceptable for a woman to do "manly things" than for a man to do feminine things? Why is it OK for women to wear pants but not for men to wear dresses? Why is being a macho sportsman (even if from time to time you have a mutual blow job with your teammates) acceptable but being a male ballet dancer not?

Think of all the gay icons. Gays are turned on by construction workers and tradies, marines (but not, curiously to the same extent by other kinds of soldiers), cowboys, firefighters, bikies and the leather-clad, policemen, and of course, sportsmen. One can understand the attraction in each case, especially for sportsmen, who must be fit, healthy and muscular just to follow their calling. But so much of the attraction is for a kind of off-hand, totally self-confident, unthinking maleness. Men who don't gel their hair, who don't wear designer label undies, who sprawl in a masculine way in front of the TV to watch the game, who emerge filthy from under a car they've just fixed (competence is a very male virtue), who don't wear deodorant or aftershave. Real men. The kind of men we want to be. So, since we are homos not straights, we indulge in the equivalent of skin-lightening creams and hair straighteners. Even the term "clone" is horribly revealing.

The irony is that I myself am not immune to the attraction of these archetypes. And that I had to spend a lot of time and thought to getting over my own internalised homophobia which made me despise myself because I wasn't real man enough, and made me deeply uncomfortable with flamers. But the first step to coming to terms with this is to recognise it for what it is.

I'm sure I'll get heaps of emails and comments, saying stuff like "but that's just what I like/dislike, it's not homophobia." Fair enough. But the question is: why do we have these likes and dislikes? Our personal values don't happen in a vacuum. They are affected, coloured, driven by societal values. We must understand, because if we end up disliking ourselves because we don't conform to some outdated sexist stereotype than we will just get hurt. Effeminate gay men are us, too. Flamers have feelings. Until they/we are whole-heartedly accepted, gay liberation will not be complete.

[This is the third of a linked series of posts. The previous two are Darl and Homophobia and Behaviour Modification. These articles I wrote for Wilde Oats also consider some of the issues I touch on here: The End of Gay and Gay, Then and Now.]

The Village People, making fun of the stereotypes.

*the first book written in Afrikaans was written in Arabic script to convert the "Malay" (Indonesian) Muslim slaves in Cape Town in the early 19th century. Ironic that their creole of Dutch became the language of the apartheid regime. Now there's self-hatred for you! And apartheid is pronounced apart+hate. Easy to remember.

Internalised Homophobia

I have a friend, called ____. To keep things easy, let's call him Edmond, the name of a guy I had a huge crush on in my first couple of years at high school (tall, sandy hair, blue eyes, a fanatical cricketer.)

Edmond is in a long-term relationship with a guy we'll call Steve. They love each other very deeply. Both had girlfriends before they realised that they were gay. Edmond lived with his girlfriend for 6 years before he started dating guys. Edmond was in the armed forces and had to endure the hypocrisy of the "don't ask; don't tell" military policy. Edmond is a classic southern gentleman, courtly, honourable, decent and brave. He has a lovely sense of humour, and is very likable. Both blokes were afraid to come out to their parents. Edmond's parents resolved the problem by putting the two men in the double bed when they came back from uni for a home visit, making it plain they knew. Edmond was very moved at their acceptance.

Steve was not so lucky. His parents are hostile to Edmond, blaming him for turning their son homosexual. Why is it that gay men aren't turned straight by good sex with women, if it's so easy to turn a straight man gay by a few fucks? It's because, doofuses, being gay or straight isn't about the sex. It's not about hot tight butts and erect penises or juicy pussies. It's about love. Now it is entirely possible that you may love someone enough that you partly set aside your primary sexuality and embrace the alternative, as I have done with my wife, as another guy I know (who is otherwise straight) did with his husband. But it's not because of the sex. Oh, when you love someone, the sex is special. Sharing your bodies and your pleasure is wonderful. But it's wonderful because of the love. Despite all the stories on Nifty about straight men turning gay because of one great fuck with a guy after the big game, it doesn't happen like that.

Maybe these guys were really bisexual. Bisexuality is extremely common. I argue this point (and others) in The End of Gay in more detail. I will quote just one statistic from Kinsey's research:

25 per cent of the male population has more than incidental homosexual experience or reactions (i.e. rates 2-6) for at least three years between the ages of 16 and 55. In terms of averages, one male out of approximately every four has had or will have such a distinct and continued homosexual experience. But most of them still end up married -- to women. Only 4% of the male population is exclusively homosexual.

So Edmond didn't "turn Steve gay". And maybe both of them are really bisexual. But they love each other, not women. Isn't that what matters? Really and truly? Love one another as I have loved you.

I'm rambling. The point is that Edmond, when Steve's parents turned hostile, became deeply depressed. Their homophobia brought back all his memories of the times when he doubted the morality of being gay, when he was filled with self-loathing and depression, when he wrestled with his Southern Baptist upbringing to reconcile the way he was with the way he thought he was supposed to be.

All of us who suffered from the implicit and explicit homophobia of our cultures and homes when we were growing up, still struggle with internalised homophobia. I do; and yet my first time with a man was absolutely, utterly right. I have a fairly well-honed sense of right and wrong. I can tell you that I know loving someone of the same gender as you is not evil. On the contrary, love is good, whatever the gender of your partner. (It's heartless casual sex that's morally dubious, but I won't go into that now)

All I could do was reassure Edmond that he was a top bloke, that I loved and admired him, and that he was a wonderful and worthwhile human being. Whatever Steve's parents say, whatever the batty religious right say. But it's hard persuading him.

One day the churches will be as embarrassed by their position on gayness as they now are about their support for slavery and the oppression of women in the past.

(BTW, the pic comes from A Day In Hand, a group which encourages men and women to hold another man's or woman's hand one day a year. Nice idea.)