Sunday 12 November
Re: The Gay Factor.
Hello, my name is Michael and I am a homosexual.
Shocked? I didn't think so.
Neither was I when I first started to come out as a fifteen year old high school freshman. Yeah, I was a pretty early bloomer, I suppose. I never even went through the obligatory pre-gay girlfriend stage. Instead, I spent most of my elementary and middle school years silently dreaming of Jesse Longo, Billy Fagan and Jerry Sonessa. In a way, I guess I accepted my gayness before even comprehending the meaning of the word. I changed my status from "am not" to "am" in the matter of a few short days without so much as flinching and with minimal amounts of anguish, torment and the ever famous gay teen angst. I don't really remember being "confused" at any point in the process. I simply decided to acknowledge the fact and share it with all who cared to know.
And that was that. Case closed. Kaput.
Easy enough, yah?
Too easy?
Maybe.
The roommies and I threw one of our now famous BYOB parties tonight (which I had had no knowledge of until D decided to call and invite Drew (who's in Liaisons with me) on his cell phone while we were backstage. "Hey, Mikey, I'm coming to your party tonight!"
"Great! Didn't know I was having one, but great!"
Hey, I'm pleasant and flexible.
It turned out to be a lot bigger than I had expected. The ten people - six hippies smoking in the living room and four actors bitching in the kitchen, typical - who made up the entire "party" by 11:45p had multiplied by at least 10 or 11 an hour later. I spent most of the evening introducing myself as, "Mike ... I live here," to 95% of the people roaming around my apartment until 3a. A few of the BFA graduates from last year showed up too which was cool since one of them, Aaron Stanford (remember his name) was just cast the leading male opposite Sigourney Weaver in her new flick. Around 2, I had had enough of the harsh clubby music and decided to cool it down a bit with a little Olive and Enigma. With the music now in the background, I was able to sit down and have a very interesting and revealing conversation with Greg, the writer of the project I was just cast in, Playing House. As one of the rare gay guys in my overly-straight arts school (I know, the oxymoron sirens are going off, but it's true), I was thrilled to talk to another intelligent gay guy who had something more valuable to say than "Danny from the Real World is SOOOO hot!" We started trading coming out stories and I began to tell him about Kym and our "line theory" (the one about the horizontal line which represents the gray area in between the two gay/straight extremes), and all our creative variations on the word "bisexual" ("bicoastal," "bilingual" and "bicycle" come to mind) which was so much easier to find the guts to say than "gay." After a few months of beating around the bush (so not an intended pun, ugh), I was able to fully come out and declare myself a gay boy. To be totally honest, aside from a few scary spats with the parents before I was able to come out to them as well, my coming out and post-coming out experiences with my friends and in school were 99% pleasant, smooth and drama-free. I figured that the cooler I was with myself, the cooler everyone else would be with me. So I adopted a very nonchalant attitude about the whole issue, decided that being gay was no different than being straight just with switched sexes, and kept on doing my own thing. I think I gained a lot of respect by doing that. I wasn't one of "those gay guys who threw it in your face." I had desire to be either. I didn't want to be known as Mike, The Gay Guy and I refused to let it happen. I focused on what I considered to be my more notable attributes and let the gay issue simply become a slight factor to be added into the whole of me.
But recently, I've been having these ... thoughts, I guess, that aren't exactly typical for me. For the past month and a half to two months, I've been feeling as if I really needed to go home - to Cherry Hill. I've been thinking a lot about my friends from home that I spent the majority of the past five or six years basically attached to - Melissa, Marissa, Brooke, Tamara, etc... - and how badly I want to see us all together for a while. I call home once or twice a day just to bullshit with my parents and e-mail my family every morning which is something I used to do only once or twice a week. I haven't even been to the city in over a month when I used to starve for it after a mere three day absence. I hesitate to even reveal this one as actually saying it will mean that it's true, but believe it or not, I've been missing high school. UGH! I can't believe I just said that! I never thought in a million bazillion years those words would come out of lips, or, um, my fingers, but holy friggin' shit, would you look at that? So, as you can imagine, I've been completely freaked out about these odd and bizarre feelings (not that wanting to see my friends and family is odd or bizarre. Much love to you guys who are reading this... hopefully not my family, though) that have been consistently coming over me for two months. At first, I wrote them all off as being due to the fact that I've basically been stranded in New Brunswick without even the option of returning home for a weekend with having to be here for Liaisons rehearsal and all. And with the mounting stress and emotional drainage that goes on in basically every one of my insane conservatory studio classes, I figured it was simply my mind telling me that it deserves a vacation, pronto. With the work we've been doing in Acting lately: crying and screaming twice a week over some insanely upsetting circumstance that we've been trained to believe as the truth, who wouldn't have even the slightest desire to go back to the fun, simple way of doing things back in their high school productions of Grease and West Side Story?
But I wasn't satisfied with my explanation. I couldn't help but feel as though some piece was missing from the puzzle. I felt as though I were looking for something that I either never had or something that had escaped me somehow. But I had no freaking clue as to what it was. I hardly had a clue as to what the fuck I was talking about. Looking for something? Looking for what? A change of schools? No, that wasn't it. Did I want to take a semester off to stay at home for a while? No, definitely not it as much as I do love being home with the puppy sometimes. A boyfriend? Well, no, but I felt like I was getting warmer.
As I continued my conversation with Greg, I felt like I was beginning to reveal parts of what may be lying at the source of what's been bothering me. As I explained the attitude I had adopted about being gay and subsequently my attitude towards other gay boys who spend too much of their time obsessing over their proclaimed gayness, I couldn't help but wonder if I had missed something. In my attempt to be the ultra-chill, ultra-comfortable gay dude had I somehow dodged the ball and skipped over a few crucial steps in the process? Had I managed to go from 0 to 10 without passing through 5, 6 or 7? Am I making any sense to you? (hehe).
I wondered how closely my situation would relate to someone who maybe just lost someone close to them and went from acknowledgement to complete acceptance without going through any grieving period in between. As much as we'd like to avoid the pain, it's a necessary component in the process. If it's ignored, more than likely, it'll wind up biting you in the ass later on.
And so I wondered: have I just been ass bitten? (If so, it's the only action I've been seeing lately...). Have these strange desires to go back a few years in my life been stemming from the fact that I may have passed over something that I should have paid more attention to as it was happening? I mean, I've said it here a million times: I don't feel comfortable around other gay boys. I'm actually a bit scared of the gay scene, let alone a part of it. Maybe that's why I haven't had the desire to go into the city lately. Maybe all of that anxiety about being around other gay people is due to the fact that I never fully took the time to deal with being gay myself. Not that I'm saying that I necessarily want to be some wild Kurfew boy, throwing my half naked glittery body around the NYC club scene every weekend and going home with a different hottie in leather bootcut pants each night. That's just not me any way you cut it. But sometimes as I walk by Big Cup or Cafeteria, or hell, anywhere in Chelsea really, and get stared at or just see a group of typical Chelsea boys standing around, I can't help but feel nervous or sometimes downright opposed to them. It's as if I had convinced myself to be so incredibly cool with my own gay factor that I'd crossed the line into feeling negatively about it. Like, "yeah I'm so 'whatever' about being gay that I don't even like it." I forced myself to believe that being gay was honestly no different than being straight, just that I choose to date guys. To a point the theory is true, but in so many other ways, it's totally off the map. Being gay, no matter how chill you are with it, is different. There is more that goes into it than simply dating guys. Unfortunately, I think I sped my way past letting myself understand that. The question now is how to redirect myself into understanding it and understanding fully what it means to be gay? I don't think I can stay on the level I'm at without adding something to support it.
Ugh, do you believe this? Thousands of gay teens all over the country are in agony and complete angst over wanting the comfort and togetherness that I have and I'm complaining about having never been tormented. How fucked up am I?
Poll to my gay readers: when did you come out? Did you find it an easy or difficult process? What are your feelings about being gay now? Do you understand a word of what I'm saying ;)?
Speaking of going home, I will be after my matinee today. Thanks be to God. It's my sisters 17th birthday (how insane is that?) and my aunt is picking me up from the Trenton station around 5:45. You have no idea how needed this is for me right now. Partly because of that whole schpiel I spat out above, but more because I need a fucking haircut! I've been wearing hats and bandanas for weeks now because it's just too damn long to do anything with. I have this fabulous American Crew pomade just sitting on my shelf begging to be used.
Hmm, maybe I'm more gay than I'd thought.