Ex-Gays

…can fuck off. I say this with all the love and compassion I can muster in my little queer heart. Ex-gays can fuck off.

I have no problem with ex-gay folks who are just, you know, not gay anymore, for whatever reason. I have no problem (okay, no huge problem) with religious folks who decide that since the Qur’an does not condone homosexuality, they must live celibate or straight lives. It upsets me, I think it’s foolish in a very this-world-is-going-to-suck-for-you-and-those-around-you sense. But to everyone their own religion and their own sexual preferences – who the hell am I?

BUT! – Those folks who think that since they are no ex-gay, have found the light, the rainbow, the pot, the gold, the whatever, they must come over to my world/life/blog/mobile phone/dinner party and tell me all the fuck about it? Those people can fuck off and take my dildo with them for assistance. Proselytizing about the merits of celibacy in the eyes of God, about how homosexuality is a test like so many tests Allah gives us (other tests you can pass, dumbass!) and about how, particularly, you are ruining your family and friends by being gay – these are things that I have no time for, no room for, no empathy for (and I’m full of fuckin empathy) and many bad bad words for.

I don’t go around proselytizing queerness or saying that everyone should be gay or that everyone should be lesbian except the men, who should be shot. I don’t exhort you kindly, dear reader, to see how lovely it is to lick pussy, just try it one time, you’ll like it, it’s like peaches. I don’t talk about how het sex and male penetration of a woman is a violation, inherently violent and oppressive, and you should realize every time you fuck your husband, girlie, that you’re bringing the sisterhood down.

Live your own damn life, and fuck off of mine.

This has been a reaction to several people saying shit, people privately directing me to ex-gay blogs recently and a general knowledge of gaymuslims dot org, which I don’t link to because they don’t bloody deserve a hat-tip. Got a crow-bar and a mean temper, though…

Okay, not really. I’m really short. I can’t take anyone. Bye.

Bisexuality Blues

My girlfriend, from far across the land, asked me yesterday if I thought that femme women in Pakistan were lesbian for a transitory time before marrying a guy and turning straight again.

Now, the thing is that I’m PMSing big time. So I’m mildly homicidal. And, to be honest, I don’t like anyone when I’m in that mood. So I was having a great deal of trouble communicating civilly as it is when this question was flung at me and I got sort of pissed about it.

But what was difficult about the question for me was this:

1. women who are femme are less devoted to their queerness
2. women who are bi are less devoted to their queerness (perhaps a leap there, but I’m a bi chick pmsing)
3. she’s not femme!
4. it’s a choice based on anything besides surviving to live a tolerable, abuse-free life.

One of my best friends, when I was lamenting about this to him, asked me if that wasn’t an old chestnut – the thing about bisexuality and copping out being linked so closely together. But I’ve never experienced it as something that is dying a natural death. It’s always been fairly live in my life – either as a form of self-loathing or as something that comes from outside and usually as a combination thereof. It doesn’t matter where you are; it’s lesbian or bust, at least in your philosophy.

So I finally decided to fuck that shit. And I did so with my usual sudden righteous indignation. I haven’t really unleashed it anywhere (and I don’t call this unleashing because I’m not using enough of the word ‘fuck’ for it to qualify) but it’s coming. Because a lot of things become easy for a lot of queer people and easy is good. Easy is better than misery, torment and a recurring desire to kill yourself. And there is no ease in bi-ness: just because you could fuck a man doesn’t mean there is a man out there you want to fuck and, if there is, it doesn’t mean you stop wanting to fuck women and, when you do, that desire and consequent action is no less deviant. As my Chasing Amy lifestyle will attest, it’s a barrel of angry monkeys on acid instead.

Internalized Homophobia, Here I Come

I’ve managed to upset myself lately, with that last post and my life in general, so I’m going to riff on the notion of comfort and bisexuality for a bit.

I came out to myself when I was 19 and I was sure then that I was bisexual and not a lesbian. I was sure because I remembered being very attracted to the only boyfriend I’d had until then, as well as a host of other boys in my life. There wasn’t an issue about it in my life until a bit later – when I came out, I was bi, and this was good.

A few, rare times in my life I’ve wondered if maybe I’m not bi at all, maybe I’m just plain gay. This has been when sex with men has turned sour and boring and unpleasant, which has happened a few times in recent years. It’s been a combination of knowing, at this late, dirty stage of my life (late 20s) that not all men are as wonderful in bed as my first male lover was. That they are not all aware of how to please a woman. That, in fact, many straight want to get it in and get it out again. I’ve been bored by these men.

But sex isn’t really at the core of the issue. Of if it is, then the issue is a dual core thing. Because falling in love with men is just easy as falling in love with women, and it’s not the puppy love, sibling love, friend love that I’m talking about. It could be. Probably it is for someone who is oriented just the one way primarily. But it’s love love, romantic, sexy, let’s-move-in-and-cause-babies love.

I said in my last post that my image of myself in the future is me in a striaght relationshp, a marriage (ugh!) with a man, that would cause children to emerge from my own body. But I realized something there. There’s a level at which all of my issues these days are a manifestation of internalized homophobia.

My girlfriend and I were talking about a recent meltdown I had in which we went over the entire basis and premise of our relationship. And it turns out that I honestly don’t think a lesbian relationship is viable. Inherently. What a cunt I am, eh?

And then we discovered something else interesting: I’ve never been in a lesbian relationship before. I’ve fallen for women, I’ve been madly in love and pursued women. I’ve been in a “relationship” in which she and I spent next to no time together and didn’t have to do any of the things you do in a relationship. Specifically, I’ve never had occasion to contemplate the future with a woman as a partner.

Yargh.

Because now I’m in a situation where the future is bleak. And that sucks. It’s no wonder I cry pitifully once a week about what’s going on with us. I’m 27, this is my first lesbian relationship and, barring a miracle, it’s doomed to failure. Great stuff!

So yeah. I would rather be straight. Because it sucks to live this life. Sometimes. And I’m told that’s a symptom of internalized homophobia and, if it is, well, that’s what I got.

But if sometimes you wish you were striaght, and most of the time you’re willingly in a gay relationship, how homophobic are you really?

Abu, Abu, Abu

Well I’ll be buggered.

Actually, no I won’t. Not without some serious intoxication and a signed affidavit that it is an enjoyable experience.

But that’s not why I’m here. Today is post 252 in the series “How My Father Drives Me Crazy and Still Seems Right.”

I’ve been sitting with him and having a drink for the past 45 minutes. Somehow, inexorable, smoothly, we turn to the topic of children. Well, he does. I sit there and sip white wine.

He recounts the story of how the daughter of a younger colleague of his gave him an endearing name. How she played with his hair. The things she said. And how he spent that whole time thinking, “Wouldn’t it be great if she was my grandchild!”

Thanks, Dad.

He knows I’m queer but isn’t happy about it. And I can’t tell him I’m dating a woman who is taken and have gushy feelings for a guy who may not like me. I can’t tell him how depressing I find being in this relationship sometimes, how Lovely and I both depress each other on a weekly basis because of the sheer stupidity of this situation. I can’t tell him how unsatisfied I am with the way my life is going. I can’t justify to myself, not all the time, the reasons for being in this situation. I can’t tell him that I keep looking for Mister Right (yes, MISTER; now fuck off with your censure) but all I ever get is Mr./Ms. Right Now. And I really can’t tell him that I’ll take it – I’ll take the right now and still look for the forever because I can’t conceive of happiness as this princpled, stoic stand where you deprive yourself of everything except The One Thing you’ve been waiting for.

Every week, once a week, I think: today is the end of me and Lovely. This is where it ends, I can see that there aren’t any tracks ahead. And for a month and a half now, every week we’ve dug the tracks out from under the weeds and shrubbery and found a way forward. Every week, I find I love her more. But the relationship never gets even a little more flexible, never gains more future. It’s a dead end and we’re travelling blind.

You can’t imagine how much I want children. And a home to give them, and comfort in our daily lives and the boredom of knowing that I’ll come home to same sod every day, that it won’t be a lack of desire that keeps me faithful, but laziness, wariness of turmoil and uproar. You can’t imagine how much I want to just do stuff with one person, who says I’m beautiful but doesn’t look too closely, who doesn’t get upset when one of us forgets a birthday or anniversary, who assumes that things will keep going and only springs into action when it turns out that they might not. Someone with a lot of faith, some healthy cynicism and minimal fear.

I don’t have that. I have absolute delight right now, and no promises. I don’t have plans. I don’t have a future.