Pride's Last Stand

Love can't win if we're losers

It’s all fun-and-games invoking Bacchus until the blood-letting begins.

(Rather listen? Press ‘play’ above.)

And so we come to the end of Pride season, that jubilant time of year filled with rainbows and orgies, parades and pills, glitter and the clap. So much to be proud of. There are rights, after all (sort of, in specific places); there’s market share (sort of, until the shareholders swerve Republican, as they always do); and then there’s marriage (sort of, more like college bros with access to half the money). Good job, us.

In the closing pages of Larry Kramer’s Faggots, which started this whole series, the hero, Fred Lemish, who has spent the entire novel chasing a man-whore, finally comes to his senses, and in a speech to the immature man in question, who wants a friends-with-benefits arrangement, sums up what I’ve been writing about this month:

“I don’t want a friendship with you! That’s something else entirely. You don’t fuck with your friends. And every faggot couple I know is deep into friendship and deep into fucking with everyone else but each other and any minute any bump appears in their commitment to infinitesimally obstruct their view, out they zip like petulant kids to suck someone else’s lollipop instead of trying to work things out, instead of trying not to hide…”

We’ll pause here. Near ninety-percent of gay men that I’ve known over the course of my lifetime maintain friendships with guys they’ve hooked-up with, and full transparency, I’m not one of them. If I’m fucking you, we’re together in a romantic relationship; otherwise, we’re girlfriends, and friends don’t get access to my body. That’s for my lover, boyfriend, husband, whatever. Sex is a sacred act – not in a Catholic way, obviously not in a family-rearing way (I have a hostile womb), but in a way that binds people together. One-night stand or not, and as inconvenient as it is to our gay politics, sex is intimacy, vulnerability, and love.

I’ve adored sex since I can remember, something that at times has surprised friends and would-be lovers as I’m not the picture of a libertine. You won’t find me cruising the park or making eyes at a stranger in a bar or provocatively dressed and leaning against a lamp post like Brad Davis in the erotic, yet execrable, film adaptation of Jean Genet’s Querelle. My head is usually in a book – at the doctor’s office, on a bus, even at a gay bar while waiting for a friend. Found cooing over flowers in row home gardens or petting dandelions erupted from the sidewalk, I rarely notice when someone checks me out. A tad cerebral, I’m not sure how to respond to a direct hit.

“I bet you’ve got a really big dick,” purred some man in my ear on a metro ride in D.C.

I immediately fell into a whirlpool of ruminations. By what comparison? Does he always use this line? My gods, does he actually think I’m a top?

But once the bedroom door closes, it’s another story. Like most gays, I’m a whore, but unlike many gays, I’m only a whore for the man I love. I always wanted to be a homo courtesan with a diary full of assignations – Marco on Thursday, Guido on Friday, Miguel on Saturday, Domenico on Sunday – but I’m not built that way. I’ve fallen at least a little bit in love with every man I’ve had sex with; even when I knew that interaction wasn’t about forever, the glorious intimacy and circuit-breaking pleasure kindles something within me whose crackle is akin to the fires of adoration. It would have been a lot easier on my heart if I could have gotten what I wanted physically and walked away, that person never to cross my mind again, yet I don’t see paramours as objects to be used and thrown aside. One time in the throes of it all with a guy that was never going to develop into long-term or even medium-term, I saw the cosmos whirl inside his chest, galaxies and nebulae spinning in their eternal dance. How not to fall in love with the universe?

This isn’t special to me. More gay men feel these dazzling, soulful connections than let on, because I’ve heard them say as much, only in their most vulnerable moments, before they bring down the lamé curtain and skip off to another assignation they can add to their tally of meaninglessness.

Fred Lemish goes on:

“I’m tired of using my body as a faceless thing to lure another faceless thing, I want to love a Person!, I want to go out and live in that world with that Person, a Person who loves me, we shouldn’t have to be faithful, we should want to be faithful!”

Fidelity is not a punishment. It’s a desire. For more. For better. More love, better sex, more sweetness, better times. You’ll never enjoy any of the riches of a mature relationship, if you value yourself so little as to be like everyone else, a worn-out Lothario.

Fred comes to his enlightenment on the eve of his fortieth birthday, and while, on the eve of my fiftieth, I’m not learning about how to be a gay adult, I have realized I’m less interested in playing along with everyone else’s delusions. Over the years, gays have insulted me subconsciously or outright in how I live my romantic life.

“That’s so straight of you.” When asked if I’m into “playing” (read: cheating).

“How hetero-normative.” When asked about my sexual interests.

“Well, that’s not how we queer people do things.” When I’ve broached the topics written about this month.

“I never have to worry about that – I’m a polyamorist.” When I foolishly confessed my own jealousy, the rare moment I let my guard down, something I’m unlikely to do again.

“You’ll get sick of it at some point. Or he will.” My personal favorite. The sour-grapes response to my contentment, or in the words of novelist Dawn Powell, “…no matter how generous friends are in your failure, they do not easily forgive your success.”

There’s a misplaced liberalism among gay men, a mask for licentiousness, that has all of us nodding our heads in encouragement at our brothers’ bad behavior, or laughing together over choices hatched from internalized homophobia, or patting each other on the tired ass for being a skank. Maybe we should hold each other accountable, maybe we should help each other grow up, instead of patch-up that threadbare Peter Pan costume we’ve been stuffing ourselves into.

A few pages later in Fred’s argument he says, “I’ve lived all over the world and I haven’t seen more than half a dozen couples who have what I want.”

“Then that should tell you something!” the ill-beloved exclaims.

“Yeah. It tells me something. It tells me no relationship in the world could survive the shit we lay on it. It tells me we’re not looking at the reasons why we’re doing the things we’re doing. It tells me we’ve got a lot of work to do. A lot of looking to do. It tells me, if those happy couples are there, they better come out of the woodwork fast and show themselves pronto so we can have a few examples for unbelieving heathens like you that it’s possible. Before you fuck yourself to death.”

And that last line is why the gays refused to listen to Larry Kramer when, a few years later, they did just that – fucked themselves to death – and while I don’t believe we’re on a similar brink (who could ever know such a thing?), we continue to fuck ourselves over, poison our potential, spend our days and nights popping PrEP and DoxyPEP, pharmaceutical shields against the marauding horde of sexual diseases rampant in the “community,” instead of asking whether or not any of this is a good idea. The sex is. But the quantity? The treatment? Of other men, of ourselves?

But only grown-ups can answer those questions, and you won’t find any of those on Fire Island.