Monthly Archives: August 2021
Going Solo
Now that the gay scene is opening up again in Vermont, I have begun thinking about leaving the house again for some gay socializing. The date the other week is a first step. Like many gay men in America, I have found myself growing somewhat more isolated and embracing my inner lone wolf side during this pandemic. Being a lone wolf can be great when you’re just working from home, jerking off, and watching Netflix for many months on end, and it often feels daunting to go out and about in the world and enjoy quality gay excursions by myself. But maybe it’s time to abandon those fears as gay events begin to get into full swing again. We are just four weeks away from Vermont Pride. For a variety of reasons, Vermont celebrates Pride the first week in September, not June like the rest of the world. I recently read that it is becoming not only more and more socially acceptable but also hip and cool to go at things solo. Who knew?
There are a lot of things I have gotten used to doing on my own: going to see a movie, eating out at a fancy restaurant, going to a drag show at a gay bar, etc. I am not an extroverted individual, and I am trying to be less of an extreme introvert. Therefore, these activities can be more anxiety inducing than they’d be with friends, but I am doing my best to get over that. In most of my trips to Montreal, I have gotten over my fear of going to bars alone, and usually I have a great time. I am working on doing the same at the gay events in Burlington. Many times, when I go alone, I think everyone will notice that I am alone and are judging me. However, I usually find that if someone does notice I am alone, they will more likely come up and chat with me. Although, there are times when no one even notices I am there by myself. At times, I guess I can just blend in and be unnoticeable. Maybe as I continue to lose weight, that will start to change.
Exploring the world solo is said to be a great way to find a new lover, arguably a lot better than endlessly swiping thru torsos on dating apps. It hasn’t been that long ago when gay men did go to bars to meet other men instead of just signing on to Grindr, Tinder, or any number of dating apps out there. One thing I must remember when I go out to bars on my own is to make sure that I don’t erect walls of solitude around me that appear impregnable, because then I may be unable to seize the opportunity for a love connection when it happens. Some advice I have read is that we should treat every day like an adventure, if we do, we’re bound to attract likeminded and independent men like ourselves. Plus, when we’re just always hanging out with our usual friends, for me they are usually women, you have a harder time reinventing yourself. Sometimes ourselves and our social orbit needs a bit of a makeover. A bit of independent excursions into the gay world can do that.
Ultimately, going out with friends rather than solo will always have some benefits, especially for an introvert as it makes us more comfortable in public. But for someone who’s always been too scared to try an excursion alone, then we owe it to ourselew to give it a shot. What better time than the present, just when the world is opening back up? Besides, if I end up getting a new job, I will be without my current social network and will need to get out there on my own. How exciting, and anxiety inducing, will it be to explore Chicago’s Northalsted (formerly known as Boystown), if I get the job there? I just have to realize that excitement awaits no matter where I am.
Taking Your Olympic Measure
Taking Your Olympic Measure
By Alberto Ríos – 1952-
—Poetry was an Olympic event from 1912-1948.
Think of the records you have held:
For one second, you were the world’s youngest person.
It was a long time ago, but still.
At this moment, you are living
In the farthest thousandth-of-a-second in the history of time.
You have beaten yesterday’s record, again.
You were perhaps the only participant,
But in the race to get from your bedroom to the bathroom,
You won.
You win so much, all the time in all things.
Your heart simply beats and beats and beats—
It does not lose, although perhaps one day.
Nevertheless, the lists of firsts for you is endless—
Doing what you have not done before,
Tasting sake and mole, smelling bergamot, hearing
Less well than you used to—
Not all records are for the scrapbook, of course—
Sometimes you are the best at being the worst.
Some records are secret—you know which ones.
Some records you’re not even aware of.
In general, however, at the end of a long day, you are—
Unlikely as it may seem—the record holder of note.
About the Poet
Born in 1952, Alberto Ríos is the inaugural state poet laureate of Arizona and the author of many poetry collections, including A Small Story about the Sky (Copper Canyon Press, 2015). In 1981, he received the Walt Whitman Award for his collection Whispering to Fool the Wind (Sheep Meadow Press, 1982). He served as a Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets from 2014 to 2020.
The Never-Ending Coming Out Process
Couper Gunn, 20, is a captain of the men’s soccer team at Colby-Sawyer College, which is a little over an hour southeast of me, and will be graduating in 2022 with a major in History and Political Studies and a minor in Education on track for a master’s in Education. In January of this year, Couper wrote about his coming out for Outsports. He has said that wearing a Pride shirt inspired him, a gay college soccer captain, to come out.
In the video above, he talks about something that all of us have had to deal with: coming out. If you are not out, then coming out is something on your mind constantly. If you are out, coming out is on your mind every time you meet someone new. It’s not a one-and-done thing. We first have to come out to ourselves. Then, we have to come out to others in our lives. We also have to decide: Are we coming out at work? Should we come out in church? Do we come out to just friends or do we also come out to our family? When, where, how, why, and to whom are all decisions we have to make.
For some coming out is easy. They grew up in a loving and accepting environment, and they know they will be accepted. For most of us though, it’s not that simple. It seems that it gets easier for each generation, but there are still parts of the country that will always lag behind (the South, I am talking about you). It also makes a difference whether you live in an urban or rural area.
Once you do come out, it is a continuing process, and it’s not always easy for everyone. I came out very slowly. It began with telling two people I greatly trusted and admired. Then, I decided to tell a few other people, but for about a year, I was very selective of whom I told. Finally, I came out to everyone in my grad school, but that was by far not everyone I had to come out to. My parents were the hardest, but they found out before I could come out to them. Every time I have had a new job, I have had to go through the coming out process, most of the time, it has been done in a subtle way, and sometimes I never came out fully at all. Only a few people knew, like when I taught at the private school in Alabama.
Even coming out to my doctor in Vermont was a nerve-racking experience for me. I had only ever come out to one doctor before and that was a nightmare that I don’t want to discuss, though I think I have on this blog before. My doctor here never even batted an eye when I told him. Also, with my medical profile, I list that I am a gay man, so all of my medical specialists know that I am a gay man when they read my chart. The problem is that the process never really ends. I hope that one day, no one will have to go through the process of coming out. Our sexualities won’t be questioned, and we will be free to be who we are without fear of any kind. Until that day though, coming out will be a thing that all LGBTQ+ people have to grapple with.
Even once we come out, we should examine what parts of ourselves and our personalities are things we did to hide out sexuality. I told a friend not too long ago that I learned to walk without a swish and to stop talking so much with my hands. The same is true about the way I hold a cup of tea or coffee. For some, it’s the way we sit or how we cross our legs that we trained ourselves to do more “straight.” Sometimes we can’t even recognize all of the things we learned not to do or to do differently because we wanted to hide our sexuality. How many of us learned to check out men without being obvious? I know I learned to only move my eyes, not my head, but our eyes always give us away if someone is looking close enough. Do you recognize the things in you that you learned at an early age to hide or else you’d be labeled a sissy?
You can find Couper on Instagram @cmaxxg and TikTok @cmaxxg.
But of God
But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
— John 1:12-13
This week, the 11th Circuit struck down a Florida evangelical Christian ministry’s claim that it was discriminated against and defamed after the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) labeled it a hate group, causing Amazon to deny its application to fundraise through the online retailing giant’s charitable website. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Atlanta-based appeals court upheld an Alabama federal judge’s September 2019 decision to dismiss the lawsuit brought by Fort Lauderdale-based Coral Ridge Ministries Media (also known as D. James Kennedy Ministries) against Amazon, the AmazonSmile Foundation and the SPLC.
D. James Kennedy Ministries, formerly Coral Ridge Ministries, has actively campaigned against same-sex marriage and has a history of maligning the entire LGBTQ+ community. Over the years, Kennedy emphasized anti-gay rhetoric, particularly in his TV ministry. In an especially nasty 1989 edition of a newsletter, Kennedy ran photographs of children along with the tagline, ‘Sex With Children? Homosexuals Say Yes!’
Groups like D. James Kennedy Ministries have advocated that lawmakers across the country to propose or have passed a record number of bills this year that would impact the rights of transgender people. Groups like D. James Kennedy Ministries actively seek to demonize LGBTQ+ individuals, drive them back into the closet, and spread hate. They cherry-pick the Bible and take verses out of context to spread their messages of hate.
For many LGBTQ+ individuals we are treated like Jesus is described as being treated in the Gospel of John. In John 1:10, it says of Jesus, “He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him.” The Jews saw all that Jesus did and heard all that He said. They witnessed His many miracles and followed Him wherever He went. They became His disciples and were astonished by the gracious things He said and all that He did – but most did not believe the Truth, and Jesus was crucified. Similarly, LGBTQ+ Christians are part of the wider Christian community, but many non-LGBTQ+ Christians do now want to know us. They shun us from the Christian community and tell us we are going to hell. But that is not what God says.
The next two verses tells us that God does not see the world that way. John 1:12-13 says, “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.” These verses tell us that if we take Jesus in our hearts and believe in Jesus as our Lord and Savior, then we are born of God. We are the children of God. We all have an earthly mother and father, but when we choose to follow the teachings of Jesus, then we are children of God. We are not bound to the hatred espoused by men who claim they speak of Jesus. We are not of hatred little men, but of God.
John 1:17 even tells us, “For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” The truth of God’s love and his acceptance doesn’t come from earthly authorities, but God’s grace and truth comes through Jesus Christ. John 14:6 says, “Jesus said to him, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.’” Jesus doesn’t say, “No one comes to the Father except through leaders of megachurches or of hate-filled ministries.” Jesus says, “No one comes to the Father except through Me.” It is only those who love that are truly following Jesus’s teachings. First John 4:8 says, “Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.” It is as simple as that: Anyone who spreads love know God; anyone who spreads hate does not know God.
We are here on this Earth to know God and to love God. We cannot do that if we spread hate. God is very clear on the subject. Jesus spelled this out clearly in Matthew 22:37-40, “’You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
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