This Won't Ever Haunt Me When I Run for Office - NO COME-UPPANCE!

There are certain expectations we have of artists, though this varies by medium, by town, and by gender.  We always expect artists to be a little weird, a little off - seductive, but alien, like the way elves are always described in fantasy books, but then when you really think about it, that doesn't sound that great at all.  Like yeah, ears that stick out two feet from your head and eyes the size of tea saucers - cool story bro.

And with artists it's much the same - all that passion!  All that intensity!  All that truth bottled up into one soul just waiting to burst out!

Well, all that passion tends to manifest as mania, the intensity comes out as tics or paranoia, and most of us don't much believe in truth these days, so anything bursting out of us is probably something we drank in order to quiet the voices and still our beating hearts.

Regardless, there's a romance, a mystique, and an image that we've come to expect of the tormented creative soul, which is why at the turn of this century, I decided it would be a great idea to give bisexuality a try.

I was out with the incomparable Miss Stacey this last Wednesday when the topic came up.  One glass of wine led to a martini led to another, and somehow the topic of hot girl-on-girl or guy-on-guy or any combination thereof action came up, and I just sort of blurted out that of all the things I regretted being closed off to, any sort of "teh ghey" was out of the question.

I know this because after a lot of soul searching circa the year 2000, I had half-convinced myself that the only reason I had any aversion to guy-on-guy amore was some sort of rote societal conditioning which I made up my mind to break.  Plus, Boys Don't Cry came out the year before, and that made everyone a lot more sympathetic to Hillary Swank.  Though to be honest I didn't see it, not because I had a problem with Hillary Swank or Lesbians or anything, but because I totally had it mixed up with Boys on the Side, which I had seen, and I couldn't understand for the life of me why it deserved a sequel. 

The culture had gone way gay-friendly, and plus girls were starting to kind of dance with each other and grind and freak at clubs or whatever, and the rave scene was really liberal, so I actually started to feel like I was missing out.  I mean after all, a guy knows what a guy wants, right?  That's what the trannies at the truck station always say, and I don't want to live in a world where you can't trust ambiguously gendered methamphetamine addicts living in the back of a rusty abandoned Peterbilt.  .

So I tried to go through all my fantasies, and I hit my first obstacle:  not a single one involved a guy.  I mean, there's the one where you fantasize that you're James Caan and she's Cathy Bates and if the little ceramic penguin isn't always facing due south then you'll be hobbled to prevent your escape - but you're not fantasizing about a guy, you're fantasizing about being a guy.

Wait, what the fuck? 

Anyway, I figured there was no teacher like experience, and if I didn't have any gay fantasies, then maybe I just needed more stimulation, and my second big warning light came on - it doesn't matter how cute I thought Tom Selleck and Kevin Klein were in In and Out, there was no way I wanted to see either one going in and out of the other.  What I mean to say is that I discovered I had an almost pathological aversion to dong. 

I have one of course, and I think it's just great - it's been a real boon companion over the years, and we've had a lot of great adventures.  And who doesn't like to see the heavy artillery come out in their favorite porn, right?  I figured a little guy-on-guy video might be just what I needed to kick start the libido.

But having grown up around guns my entire life, I can tell you that whenever a firearm is pointed at me my adrenaline goes into overdrive.  I don't care if I know for a fact it's not loaded.  I don't care if nobody is within ten feet of the damn thing when I'm walking past it - my ass clenches like a venus fly trap and my only thought is on getting the hell away from that barrel before it goes off.

And that's how I felt about penises pointed in my direction - I just wanted to avoid a headshot.

But I didn't give up - I still maintained the slim hope that I could go ahead and be a swinging modern libertine, a real firecracker.  And so over the span of a few years this little project of mine simmered in the back of my head, like a book you keep meaning to finish just as soon as you get the time, and that time finally came in 2003 at one of my house parties: Shockin' Da Block VII.  (Yes, I had terrible skin in 2003 - I have no idea why.  I make no apologies for the way I dressed).

It was by every account a smashing festival full of merriment and revelry.  As the party swung into gear, I found myself standing in the archway between the dining room and the living room with two good friends (one XX, one XY), gossiping with only marginal interest about who had had, or who wanted, or would never get, whom.  Given the liberal nature of our little scene, it certainly seemed like just about everyone had had everyone else to some degree, and the lady suggested that the only two people who hadn't were me and the fellow standing with us.

At this point, a very drunken lightbulb clicked on over my head - I knew my friend was willing, I was extremely curious, and so with no shortage of zeal or waste of time, we got down to swapping spit in the middle of the party.

Three years of anticipation, self-examination, and self-persuasion had eventually come down to me and my friend tasting keg beer on each other's mustaches in the middle of a crowded house party.This was no kiss of mincing trepidation like giggly school girls playing spin the bottle - we went for it like a pair of Kenyan sprinters.

And how was it?  Only one word really does the experience justice:

Anticlimactic.

For all the fretting, for all the expectations I'd had, for all my imagined bon vivant, anything-goes / take-off-your-clothes liberality, I felt absolutely nothing in my heart or loins when I finally kissed a man.  It was mechanical.  It was unexciting.  It was an act.

The lady who'd subtly (and probably unintentionally) encouraged the whole thing informed me that, from the bleachers, it was incredibly hot.  For my part, I just felt let down.  There were no fireworks, no great awakening of that 10% gay that everyone is supposed to have somewhere deep down inside - just another experience to say I'd had, another thing to say I'd done just so I wouldn't ever have to say I  hadn't.

As for the young gentleman - he will remain nameless, but I will say that things were really awkward at our D&D game that week.

One has to push their limits to really know them, I think, and the whole incident still works as a fine case study for me -  I tried to walk on the wild side and I found it not so much a daunting challenge as a bit of a bore.  It's a strange and unfortunate double standard we have that allows, even encourages, women to engage in erotic play with one another, but frowns on even so much as a hug between two men that doesn't in some way involve A) sports B) violent pats on the back or C) your father dying. 


My own feeling on the matter becomes one of freedom:  just because I don't want to doesn't mean I don't want to be able to.  Just because I can't look sideways at a guy and think anything but whether or not he'd be any good in a fight or alternately could help me move furniture doesn't mean I think someone else shouldn't just go ahead and ask him out.  I mean, I'm not going to - but you go right ahead.  Go, go to him, make him yours and never look back!    

I'll be over here watching football or something. *cough* Yeah, how 'bout them Lions?