Continuously Coming Out

It's me. Picture taken by my friend Nella and if you look closely there's our friend Diana in the background. It was taken after a talk given by our photographer friend Rita.

Gay man. Aged 57.

My sidebar comment is inspired by Rachel Giese in the Globe and Mail, "Lose the plot: Why there’s more than one queer narrative". She observes

Coming out doesn’t guarantee a happy ending, in life or in movies. But being out affords the opportunity to exist on your own terms and, hopefully, be seen in the fullness of your humanity.

She's right. It makes a difference. Life offers constant opportunities for coming out. The mode of being out involves perpetual revelations. At any age.

And so for day 2150
01.11.2012

On the Temporal Nature of Coming Out

A digression from an essay on the various versions of Adrienne Rich's "Heterosexism and Lesbian Existence" [said essay about the shifting valence attached to gay men as characterized in its various emendations of the footnotes] …

For every impasse, a digression. Coming out stories are narratives of separation, passage — risk taking — into uncharted territory. But not always against the grain of connecting with our past. For our coming out stories also reflect how we found the resources to step out of time. Through the telling we become our own models experiencing history not as then but as now.

The temporalities of "coming out" would involve a recuperation of the past. Though not always.

And so for day 1837
24.12.2011

Casualties of Propriety

In She's Gonna Be edited by Ann Decter one finds a short prose piece by Annie Coyle Martin entitled "Jody". It begins in unassuming fashion with a character's wish

"I wish once, just once, my mother would come alone to see me," Jody said. The light was behind him, fading in the big window, his face was in a shadow that hid the expression in the huge, near-sighted eyes. "Is that too much to ask?"

The narrator progressively reveals Jody's story and ends with Jody's funeral, observing the mother and wondering if Jody got his wish. It is then at story's end that we learn the stakes. We are put in the position of the mother.

"I wish, just once, that my mother would come alone to see me, so that I can have her sit there and tell her, 'Mother I'm gay, and I'm dying of AIDS, what about that mother?'"

And just as a little voice in my head begins to clamour "why didn't you?" the story treats us to a mirror glimpse of just how alike mother and son are in what they value. And close the book on the tale of missed opportunity and an expression of anger averted.

And so for day 1409
22.10.2010

Gratitude & Attitude

It was part of a work-related self-esteem workshop. We were asked to write down five things we are grateful for in life. I tend to resist being social-worked but once I wrote the first the others came swiftly.

my lover
our house
our garden
our 30 something years of memories
years ahead

Then we shared. Ah, coming out all over again. (Not sure everyone in our little group knew or wanted to know.)

Coming out again and again. Every mention is like a little bit of flaunting. So be it. It is a struggle to be unselfconscious. Sometimes delivery is smooth. Sometimes there's an edge.

Regardless, I am brought to meditate upon questions of style and the accommodations of another generation.

W.H. Auden begins "Dichtung and Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem) with the following observation and wish:

Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought: — I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.

He continues with a self-directed demand:

of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me.

For me pronouns matter. He-to-he. Or is it words like "lover"? Marking a relationship as sexual and passionate. Definitely claiming our own terms.

And so for day 378
27.12.2007