Since I began this blog, I have always posted a poem every Tuesday. This week will be different. I will post the poem that I had ready for today, tomorrow. I’m doing this because I wanted to address a few things about my post yesterday. I would have answered these things in a comment or two, but there was a lot I wanted to say, more than I wanted to leave in a comment. I want to thank everyone for their comments and for reading what I wrote, but I think a few things were misunderstood.

First, let me make it very clear that I was not attempting to have a pity party. Yes, when I wrote that I was in a very depressive mood, and I was extremely worried about an event that had occurred and been on my mind. I often deal with those issues by either talking them out, or writing about them. This time, I chose to write about being in the closet on my blog. It’s my prerogative to be able to do so. I apologize if it sounded like I was whining. However, I wanted it to be in writing what it was like for me personally to be in the closet. Many times I find that by writing about an aspect of my life, others can identify, and maybe for some it makes them feel better about their own situation to know that their own life is either better than someone else’s, or to realize that they are not alone. This blog is about all things gay, and it is my way of stating how I fit into that world and to put forth my knowledge of the gay world, however limited that might be.

Second, it was said that I was overly hyperbolic when I wrote, “Being in the closet is one of the most humiliating, degrading, and torturous things I can imagine.” First of all, I said “one of the most,” I realize there are many other life circumstances that fall under that category. However, I do believe that being forced to live a closeted life is a demeaning life. People live closeted lives for many different reasons. I have my own reasons, and while there are things I could do to change those circumstances, right now the cost would be too high. Furthermore, before returning to Alabama, I lived an out and proud life. I did not care who knew I was gay, nor did I care what they thought. Those circumstances changed when I moved back.

Also, as it was pointed out, I’m a 37 year-old man who has never been married and loves poetry and literature. My sexuality is an open secret. Gay men who have lived in larger more metropolitan areas may not understand the full dynamics of what that means. People may suspect, they may “know,” but they can ignore it and merely snicker and gossip behind your back as long as they do not have proof. Once they have proof, then they cannot ignore the facts, and they will decide to act and most will act negatively.

You might ask then, “Why the hell did you move back to Alabama?” One word: MONEY. I was a graduate student, and I was at the limits of my finances. I believed at the time that I had three choices. I could continue working a meaningless job and continue to be non-productive with my dissertation; I could find a teaching job that would pay enough for me to finish my research; or I could move home with my parents, finish my dissertation, and save some money.

The first option was not possible because my job did not pay enough for me to continue living over there and get a new apartment that I needed because my lease was up and my home was being rented to a family member of my landlord. I worked extremely hard for the second option; however, after more than forty applications and several interviews, the economy bottomed out, and all but two of the jobs I applied for, cancelled their job searches. In the case of one of those jobs I applied for, they had posted the wrong job description and when I was interviewed it became readily apparent that the job I’d applied for was no longer the job being offered. That left me, with what I believed at the time to be my only choice: move home.

It was supposed to be for one year as I finished my dissertation and looked for a job. Little did I realize that my graduate advisor would take a job elsewhere, and I would be stuck with a graduate advisor that neither believed in my research project nor believed in me. He consistently did everything to hold back any progress on my degree. My own bouts with depression over what I felt was my own failure in addition to living with my parents again, did not help the situation. However, I continued to pursue jobs elsewhere, all while realizing (remembering) why I’d worked so hard to get away from home in the first place. I do not get along with my father, not in the least, and my mother thinks I’m an abomination for being gay and pretends that conversation never existed. I had thought we had each matured to an understanding that we could all live with. I was wrong. After application after application was sent through the local post office, the local postmaster stopped me one day to tell me that the local private school was hiring. Unlike all of the other places I applied for, they were thrilled to have me, so I took the job.

My new job basically paid peanuts and my financial situation worsened considerably, especially after moving out of my parents’ house. For the first time in a year, I had some freedom. Money continues to be what holds me back. I cannot afford to quit my job, and I can barely afford to keep it. I realize now that I made a terrible mistake moving back to Alabama, but it’s too late to change that now. What is left is to attempt to escape again. If you have ever been deeply in debt, barely treading water, and drowning little by little, then you may understand the depths of my despair. It has been suggested that I just leave my job, move elsewhere, and force myself to land on my feet, but when circumstances keep going against me, and it seems like every decision I make is a bad one, there does not seem much hope at the end of the tunnel. I am forced, for now, to keep my job and hope that as I continue to send in application after application to other places, one of those places might hire me. Teaching jobs may be abundant in many places, but if you were to pay attention, the teaching positions in demand are not social studies or English positions. So, I continue putting in applications. I have applied to positions across the country and even some beyond, so geography is not an issue for me. I will go where a job takes me. Until one of those schools or colleges hires me, I feel trapped. And before anyone asks if I have considered non-teaching positions, be assured that I am looking at all avenues for which I am qualified, but teaching is my passion.

Furthermore, I do not blame my current circumstances on anyone but myself. I am merely attempting to explain and not make excuses. However, because I have a precarious situation, not all of which I am willing to outline on this blog, I do feel that my statement of “Being in the closet is one of the most humiliating, degrading, and torturous things I can imagine,” is an accurate statement. Maybe I should have said instead that being poor, drowning in debt, and in the closet after previously being out and open are a few of the most humiliating, degrading, and torturous things I can imagine, and I do live that everyday. To at one time have my freedom and have it yanked out from under me due to a series of unfortunate events, some of which I was all too willing to do to myself, is very disheartening. I made mistakes, and I am addressing those mistakes and making progress. I will be the first to admit my mistakes and believe that we pay for those mistakes. My job is currently my security, and trust me when I say that if I were out, I’d lose my job. It might not be the reason they found for getting rid of me, but they would find a reason.

Finally, let me make it clear, I am not looking for your pity. This is my fault. I will find a way out of my current situation. It will take time, but it will get better. Of that, I have no doubt; God does have a plan for me and it does not include this current torture. It’s just a detour through the briar patches. I may get a few scrapes and scratches, but I’ll make it to the other side. On that day, I will rejoice, but until then, I will trudge through using every resource available to me to overcome the obstacles in my way.

Being in the closet is one of the most humiliating, degrading, and torturous things I can imagine, and I live it everyday. I hate it, but life circumstances have demanded it for now, hopefully, that will change someday soon. Teaching at a small conservative private school, where gossip is a sport that ranks up there with football makes it even worse. To explain, my students are taught by parents and pastors that being gay is disgusting and sinful. They hear their parents constantly make racist and homophobic comments, and so words like faggot and nigger roll off their tongues like any other word. My students learn quickly that any derogatory language will not be tolerated in my classroom or in my presence.

To give an example of the attitudes that I am trying to fight against and teach more tolerance to, let me tell you about teaching the Holocaust. As I was describing the systematic murder of 11 million people, including 6 million Jews and 1.1 million children, my students were laughing, joking, and gossiping. One had the gall to ask me to tell a holocaust joke, because they think it’s funny. I was beyond furious and frustrated. If I could just make them understand that it is attitudes like these, the attitudes of hatred and indifference that led to the Holocaust in the first place, maybe they would take life more seriously, but as long as there is no support from parents and pastors, the role of teachers is diminished.

They do not understand the consequences of their actions, and a large part of that has to do with their parents who have always gotten them out of trouble and made them believe that there are no bad consequences. I have a few students who find it one of their great joys to gossip about my sexuality. They have tried in every way to out me, but yet they don’t understand the consequences of their actions. So I wanted to simply put in writing what some of those consequences would be. First, I’d lose my job, publicly and humiliatingly. There would be those who would fight for me to keep my job and those who would fight for me to lose it. It would either become an ugly public battle in the community, or I’d leave quietly with my tail tucked between my legs not being given the chance to fight.

Second, if I lost my job, in this economy, it could prove impossible to find another teaching job. I love teaching, but there just aren’t that many jobs available. Yes, the economy may be getting better, but anyone who is familiar with the politics associated with education knows, education, especially higher education, takes the first budget cuts when there is economic turmoil, and it is education that is the last sector to see a recovery once the economy improves. I may get frustrated with my students but I truly have a passion for teaching. Anyone who knows me, knows how excited and passionate I get about new ways to teach subjects, spreading the knowledge I’ve accumulated over the years, and seeing someone have even a glimpse of interest in what I talk about. Yes, I get frustrated with students, but the pros outweigh the cons.

Furthermore, my family would be humiliated. Grant it, I think my family should love me no matter what and accept my sexuality for what it is, but that’s a fantasy and not the reality. They would face ridicule and gossip behind their backs and sometimes to their faces. I’ve dealt with this all of my life, and it would devastate me to know that I was the cause of those I love facing the same torture. They would suffer as much as I would, and even if they accepted my sexuality, they’d still be ridiculed and shamed. All for something that I cannot change, and that God created as part of who I am. I can no more change my sexuality than a black man can change his skin color or a leopard his spots. I was born gay, I have always been gay, and I will always be gay.

I wish we lived in an ideal world where homophobes were the ones who were shamed, where racists were derided, and no one ever had to live in a closet. Sadly, that world does not exist. I hope it will some day, but it is a long way away. What I would settle for now is that people understand the consequences of their actions. Cruelty and gossip can have devastating consequences far beyond someone’s understanding. There is a snowball effect that can occur and slowly, deliberately, and effectively destroy someone’s livelihood and life. The life I live, I live because I have certain circumstances and obligations. Because of that, my depression often worsens. I hope one day I will not only be out completely, but I will also be out of this current situation. Alabama is not the best place for me, at least not the part of Alabama where I currently live.

Alabama may have seen their gay marriage ban ruled unconstitutional by a federal judge, but Alabama hasn’t changed much since the 1960s when federal judges declared one segregation law after another unconstitutional. Just because something becomes law through the courts, does not mean that it will be accepted. Discrimination will continue against the LGBT community, just as it did for the African-American community. As Tim Cook, CEO of Apple, said when he was accepted last year into the Alabama Hall of Fame, Alabama and the nation “have a long way to go” before realizing Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of equality (and I realize King’s dream of equality did not reach to LGBT Americans). Cook went on to say that Alabama was “too slow” to guarantee rights in the 1960s, Cook said, and “still too slow on equality for the LGBT community. Under the law, citizens of Alabama can still be fired based on their sexual orientation” Cook went further and stated that “We can’t change the past, but we can learn from it and we can create a different future.”

Yesterday, I talked about masks. Today lets discuss labels. Labels play a large role in society. Some choose not to identify with a label, while others find a sense of security in a label and use it to define who they are to others. Off the top of your head, how many labels can you think of for the LGBTQ community? Do certain groups not tolerate one another well? In history, the lesbian community and the gay male community have often been at odds. Some facets of the transgender community are hostile toward one another based on personal decisions regarding medical transition or one’s choice not to do so.

“Gay.” “Lesbian.” “Bisexual.” “Transgender.” “Pansexual.” “Genderqueer.” “Neutrois.” “Non-Identified.” “Queer.” “Femme.” “Butch.” The list goes on.

One of the most puzzling to me is “Cis” or “Cisgender.” The situation is more complicated for “cisgender,” coined in the 1990s to mean the opposite of “transgender.” The “trans” in “transgender” comes from a Latin word meaning “on the other side of,” and the “cis” in “cisgender” comes from a Latin word meaning “on this side of.” “Cisgender” refers to people who feel there is a match between their assigned sex and the gender they feel themselves to be. You are cisgender if your birth certificate says you’re male and you identify yourself as a man or if your birth certificate says you’re female and you identify as a woman. Presumably you are also cisgender if you were born intersex (that is, with some combination of male and female reproductive parts) and identify as an intersex or androgynous person.

For a while, “cisgender” only appeared in academic journals. But now it’s all over the Internet, and not just on blogs and sites of, by, and for transgender people. It’s made it into online reference works like the Oxford Dictionaries. And since “cisgender” is one of the 56 options for gender identification on Facebook (along with “cis female,” “cis male,” “cis woman, “cis man,” “cisgender woman,” “cisgender man,” and just plain “cis”), it has already achieved a kind of pop officialdom.

There are a number of derivatives of the terms in use, including cis male for “male assigned male at birth”, cis female for “female assigned female at birth”, analogically cis man and cis woman, as well as cissexism and cissexual assumption. In addition, one study published in the Journal of the International AIDS Society used the term cisnormativity, akin to sexual diversity studies’ heteronormativity. A related adjective is gender-normative; Eli R. Green, an interdisciplinary scholar in Gender and Sexuality Studies, has written that “‘cisgendered’ is used [instead of the more popular ‘gender normative’] to refer to people who do not identify with a gender diverse experience, without enforcing existence of a normative gender expression”.

The thing is, and this is just my opinion, can there be a normal. We want to give labels to everything, but if you are male and female do we really have a need to say cis male or cis female? Wouldn’t that just merely he male and female? Sometimes people make life too complicated, or they try to make things even more complicated with all of these labels.

I use labels in my life for ease of identification to others like me, but I don’t discriminate against anyone for choosing to use or not use them. The bottom line is this: regardless of anyone’s labels or lack thereof, we’re all in this together.

In case you were wondering, May is National Masturbation Month. The celebration of May as National Masturbation Month began in 1995 in San Francisco as a response to the forced resignation of then U.S. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders.

After a speech at the United Nations World AIDS Day in 1994, an audience member asked Elders about masturbation’s potential for discouraging early sexual activity. She answered,”I think it is something that is part of human sexuality and a part of something that perhaps should be taught.”

That was the end of Elders’ career as America’s first black Surgeon General, but the spark for National Masturbation Month. Offended by Elders’ ouster, the ever progressive, pro-sex staff of San Francisco’s sex toy and education company Good Vibrations decided to find a way to keep the focus on Elders’ unjust firing, and to bring talk about masturbation into the mainstream in just the way Elders had envisioned.

Realizing that large number of folks lacked support and advice to help them enjoy the simple, basic act of masturbation, Good Vibrations sought to provide support, advice, and reassurance for people looking to open their own personal sexual horizons.

And so was born National Masturbation Month. Among the first steps Good Vibrations took was to promote masturbation as healthy, safe and natural way to express one’s sexuality, thereby removing much of the shame and stigma have so long colored the act masturbation.

So, is it true, as so many believe that masturbation is so commonplace, natural, pleasurable and healthy that “ninety-eight percent of us masturbate, and the other two percent are liars?” If so, why do we need an entire month to educate people on something they’re already enjoying?

The answer is twofold: First, to help those already enjoying themselves to delve further. Second, and most importantly, it looks like plenty of people might still benefit from some encouragement and education.

A recent cross sample study of American adults asked the question: “On average, over the past 12 months, how often did you masturbate?” Only 38 percent of women said they’d masturbated at all during the past year, while 61 percent of men had done so.

A 2007 article in Sexual and Relationship Therapy notes that masturbation may help men improve immune system function, build resistance to prostate gland infection, promote overall prostate health. Moreover, Australian researchers have shown that frequent masturbation may lower a man’s risk of developing prostate cancer.

A survey of men found the more frequently a man masturbates between the ages of 20 and 50, the less likely they are to get prostate cancer. In fact, those who masturbated more than five times a week were one-third less likely to develop prostate cancer.

These findings were the subject of a 2003 Doonesbury panel by Pulitzer Prize-winning Garry Trudeau. In the panel, one character alludes to masturbation as “self-dating.” Nearly half of the 700 papers which normally syndicate Doonesbury did not to run that strip, proving that public discussion of masturbation is still a thorny issue for some, and perhaps attesting to the need for an observance like National Masturbation Month.

Earlier studies have shown that rates of masturbation are higher for both men and women with higher education, more frequent sexual thoughts, sexual experimentation before puberty, and more lifetime sexual partners. Moreover, masturbation has documented physical benefits for both men and women, to say nothing of likely emotional and psychological benefits.

Probably most of you have experienced something like this during or after sex: a feeling of well-being which goes beyond sensual pleasure, and is caused by a change of consciousness. Perhaps earlier you felt stressed and worried, as if your life was full of problems—but often after sex everything seems miraculously different. Your problems seem to have disappeared and you seem to be glowing inwardly, as if a kind of dynamo has been switched on inside you, filling you with a feeling of completeness and serenity. You might feel tired physically or completely exhausted, in terms of muscular energy, but in terms of life-energy you feel fantastically alive. This is a form of transcendental sex.

When I think of transcendence or transcendentalism, I think of the nineteenth century American philosophical movement of Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. These transcendentalists believed that society and its institutions—particularly organized religion and political parties—ultimately corrupt the purity of the individual. They have faith that people are at their best when truly “self-reliant” and independent. It is only from such real individuals that true community could be formed. Though self-reliance can be a strong motivator, we also sometimes need others to help us transcend to a higher existence.

The adjective transcendent means going beyond the limits of ordinary experience or being far better or greater than what is usual. Transcendence exceeds or surpasses usual limits, that is extending or lying beyond the limits of ordinary experience. It is a state of being beyond comprehension. When there is an intense connection between two people, you can experience sexuality that is beyond a mere sexual coupling. The energy can flow between two people in a way that the connection itself is beyond definition. The result can be an intense love and longing and even need for that person. It brings an understanding on such an intimate level that the experience is truly mind blowing in its intensity. The key to this experience is communication and knowing your lover and being able to heighten their pleasure. I think it is paramount to a transcendental sexual experience that neither partner be selfish lovers. By providing the pleasure to each other, you reach a different plane of sexual existence that must be two sided and all encompassing.

There’s no doubt that the ecstatic feelings that sex can induce are partly connected to chemical changes, such as the release of endorphins. But I believe these transcendent effects are mainly due to the fact that sex has a similar—but often stronger—psychological effect to other ‘spiritual’ activities like meditation or contemplating nature. It empties our minds, and intensifies our inner energy. The sheer pleasure of sex creates a state of intense absorption. Our attention is taken away from the normal ‘thought-chatter’ of our minds, which quickly begins to subside. This is why we may feel that we don’t have any problems—because the worrying thoughts which created the ‘problems’ are no longer there. When we have sex there’s usually silence, stillness and darkness around us, and our attention is effectively closed to everything beyond the desire and pleasure we feel. As a result, we become quiet and still inside, and our psychic energy – which is normally used up in concentration and perception – intensifies, generating a sense of wholeness and well-being.

Like physical exercise and yoga—although again in a more powerful way—sex also appears to generate new energy inside our bodies, or at least of unblock and ease the flow of energy. People who have transcendent sexual experiences often report feeling that they have awakened new energies inside them. This can occur in many different ways, but in my experience it comes with a certain mental connection. It’s that intellectual sexuality that brings about this strong bond.

Religions tend to see sex as something to be slightly ashamed of, a ‘weakness of the flesh’, a part of the lower, instinctive being which we shouldn’t pay much attention to, or should even try to overcome. But perhaps not surprisingly, some esoteric religious groups had a more spiritual view of sex. The Tantric sects of Hinduism and Buddhism (which developed in India in the middle ages) see sex as a symbolic expression of the unity of the universe, and believe that sexual partners can directly experience the bliss which is the nature of the absolute reality of the universe. According to Tantra, the whole of the body is filled with divine energy which becomes aroused during sex, and which we can learn to control. And even within Christianity, the heretical medieval sect, the Brethern of the Free Spirit, had a similar attitude: to them a controlled form of sex was as acceptable as a spiritual practice as prayer or meditation.

So since we know that sex is a gateway to higher states of consciousness, perhaps we should place more emphasis on its spiritual side, rather than thinking of it in purely physical or emotional terms. It’s one of the most sacred activities of our lives, and has a transformational power even greater than meditation and yoga, or any other spiritual practice.