When I Need A Pick Me Up, by my friend Ryan King

Sunday, January 10, 2010

Checking In

Bullet Points;

-Still realizing that Life In The Closet is warm and toasty.

-Got with Former Father Figure a few Saturdays ago and eventually got down to my baseline. He had a lot of advice how to become "normal." I argued staunchly pro-gay. I represented my side of the equation and made many analogies so he could see my side of it. And somewhere in all that I realized that I didn't care anymore what he or my old church people thought about me. If they don't realize that I've done everything...EVERYTHING they taught me in order to be "normal" and NOTHING. WORKED. then they can, to a man, kiss my ass. All them blessed with "normal lives" and sex drives that happen to pull them in the accepted direction. So they can slap each other on the backs, attend each others weddings, make saucy innuendos about each others sex lives, have children, and the whole nine. How very fucking nice for them. But if they want to peer down at me from their lofty "normal" heights of superiority, point fingers at everything I've done wrong to "make myself this way" (yes, the Former Father Figure went there), and now wants me to wire up like Clockwork Orange to "fix this." then it's about time I stop caring about their opinions.

So I took the code of secrecy away from Former Father Figure. I gave him permission to tell anyone in the church that I'm alive, where I live, and what I'm doing. I told him he can give them my phone number if any ask for it.

And they can come get me.

But you know what will most likely happen? Not one God-damned thing. Ain't nobody but my Former Father Figure was checking for me all these years. They don't give a shit about anybody else's life but their own. They only try to convert people to Christ because it's a feather in their Holiness cap.

Now mind you, none of this means that I'm about to jump in the bed with the next dude I see.

In fact, at the gym this AM was a nice guy who I could tell had to leave his comfort zone to chat me up in the locker room, making small talk with me and hoping for the best. He was odd and not my type (unlike the Haagen Daas guy), but I had mad respect for his courage. I spoke back, flattered and responsive, but we were not going to be hooking up today.

I'm not desperate to pop my gay cherry with just any ol' bloke who comes along. And the scorn of the Holy Saints of My Former Church is not going to drive me to it. If the right one comes along, if I have the opportunity, if there's enough there to cross this line of sexual commitment -- I will do it. But if not, I'm committing to living comfortably, with quality and honesty. I'm here to help people, enjoy what I can in my life, and do no harm. If God is still real, surely He understands that. Who I am and what I've done. What I want. The true and honest beat of my heart.

Nothing is stopping Him from loving me. Nothing I can do can MAKE Him love me more. He either does or He doesn't. I've left it up to Him.

3 comments:

Ned Hodgson said...

How time does fly, eh?

I would suggest a few things - look at the tone of today's post v a year ago - so much more assertive of your rights to be who you are. And I do believe you dropped an F-bomb, emphatically rejecting anyone's opinions of you but your own.

You've been censoring yourself for as long as I've been reading. And now someone has tried to judge you, and you did right - you said - Fuck that, buddy. Your views aren't mine.

Yay for Alan. Yay.

Me said...

Keep me company in Hell?

But seriously, the former church (which is/are only those people, essentially) is the reason why I stopped cursing as much, and had heightened sensitivity about the f-bomb. That's the funny thing about being in a cult.

But even when IN church, I've always remembered Matt 5:22 where Jesus says, "and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, shall be in danger of the council: but whosoever shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of hell fire." and I thought,

'Didn't Jesus just SAY the words that he told people not to say?'

Which was an illustration to me that the pronunciation of the word(s) is less important than what's going on in the heart. And LORD knows, I've done much worse things in my heart during my no-cursing years than anything I could have possibly said with my mouth. So essentially, my moratorium on cursing, like my asperations to live a holy life, was based on bullshit. Sanctimonious people who wanted to earn unobtainable brownie points from Heaven.

Still, I like the ability to be communicative using a full range of English. When its very necessary, or just when I fucking feel like it (haha) I will drop that bomb.

God knows my heart.

GrizzBabe said...

I was surprised (and pleased) as well that you wrote a cuss word without disguising it to make it palatable to. . .who exactly? Say what you mean! It your blog, damnit!! If the rest of us don't like it then we can go to hell.