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garrymacI just reposted an article I'd written for World Mental Health Awareness Day last year, written as I was just finishing up therapy. In it, I talked about my experience of learning about my depression and the coping skills I discovered with the help of a wonderful therapist. We're now almost six months on from that point, and that feels like a good enough time for a revisit.
Since therapy ended, I've continued the process of overcoming the depression and anxiety. First things first, I'm still at the mercy of my "moods" at times. They come and go as they've always done but, and I say this slightly tentatively, they have far less impact than they did before. When a low mood comes on, I'm far more capable of recognising it and putting things in place to tackle it. Hypermaccus, my totemic self that I created during therapy to act as my emergency defence mechanism, still comes in handy when things get tough. The anxiety is slightly more difficult to deal with because the anxious response is such a full body thing that I'm having to really go in and explore where it sits in my body and use relaxation techniques to try and help my body unlearn all those knots and tight spaces.
Overall, though, things are better: so much so that I'm now in a position to begin tackling some of the manifestations of these faulty responses that have accrued over the years. For example, I've long been a very sexual person, but I've also had numerous blocks and barriers in place that have made it difficult to let myself go sexually, something that has affected almost all of my relationships in one way or another.
Growing up catholic and gay is a recipe for repression and, despite continuing to grow and evolve as a gay, sexually active adult, those repressed fears and hangups often get in the way of pure connection and enjoyment. Having decided that I am absolutely not in a position to throw myself into a relationship again, like I've done so often in the past, I've been tackling how I, as a single adult, can negotiate the territory of pleasure without a) feeling overwhelmed and wanting to move in with the guy after three dates or b) becoming a monk and having no sexual or emotional contact with other men for an extended period of time.
I want neither of these; I want fulfilling, adult experiences that have no "strings", but which are enjoyable, exploratory, safe and have a degree of emotional connection. To that end, I've been exploring the friends-with-benefits or fuckbuddy dynamic: getting to know guys and spending time with them, sexually and also hanging out and enjoying each others' company. I've also had the occasional no-strings, have-sex-and-depart thing too, but that's less fulfilling for me for a number of reasons.
However, at the same time as engaging with this fairly new experience of mature, sexual encounters, I've also been wrestling a bit with my sense of identity. I have a problem with the increasing amount of gay guys out there whose idea of sex is a very binary facsimile of what I experience as the more toxic side of masculinity. To wit, forms of BDSM and kink have become normalised and attractive to such a degree that dom/sub, dad/son style hookups are more and more commonplace. This means that a high level of possible encounters are, from the beginning, expected to fit into a very narrow mould of roleplay that doesn't necessarily speak to the multiplicity of experience that's open to us as queer men.
Just to be clear: I am in no way kinkshaming, or denigrating the importance of such roleplay. I enjoy it, and engage in it from time to time, but it sometimes leaves little space for guys like me who are broadly speaking "vers". When it comes to penetrative, dick-in-hole sex, I can be top or bottom, depending on how I feel, who the guy is etc. But I'm also vers in my head. Sometimes I can be dominant, sometimes subby, sometimes in between, and something I particularly enjoy is the trading of roles during play. There's nothing hotter than being in a dom role only to have the sub get heated and take that role over, forcing me to become the dub. Or vice versa: taking the dom role from a guy and having him take a submissive role.
That head-fuck aspect of roles is way more interesting to me than straightforward "roleplay" which, I believe, is often just a means of allowing men to live out binary genedered roles within their sexplay. Partly, this feeling comes from my own instinct and experience but, increasingly, it's also coming out of my exploration of queer studies.
I'd gone off the idea of hookup apps, by and large, until a mate showed me one that allowed you to both identify as queer and search for guys on that basis. Immediately, I realised that the use of the word queer on a hookup app could, at least partly, help me to find folk who have a similar outlook on sex to mine. So far, that's been the case; I've had some great, repeated hookups with guys who are willing to explore and, even if they have subby tendencies, are more willing to let that role trade back and forth during our encounters. I've also had experiences with guys who are usually bottom but top with me. There are still guys for whom the role they play at the time is fairly fixed, and that usually results in the least fulfilling and most perfunctory sex; still very much the "I am top, you are bottom, kiss, suck, fuck and done" type of sex. Fair play, guy, I enjoyed myself. But it's a bit boring.
What I'm really enjoying is the sexplay where fucking will come later, and we'll negotiate who does what to whom, but in the meantime, we're exploring other avenues of lust and desire. Where there may seem to be fairly defined roles between us, but which is flexible enough to allow for a little headfuckiness.
Queer studies face some of these questions head-on. What's the point of a queerness that just apes heteronormative roles and behaviours? One of the disadvantages of this behaviour is that it buys into the idea of submissive guys being more feminine and dom guys being more masculine. That leads to fixed power dynamics and, all too often, a form of homosex that is potentially dangerous and may in fact be driven at times by internalised homophobia. For example, the "straight-acting/faggot" dichotomy: men who have sex with men, but who fuck "queenier" or submissive guys who they call faggot and expect them to be in complete service to the tops' pleasure.
Fine, fair enough: this power dynamic is one that is explored in BDSM for a whole variety of reasons but which is usually done within a trusting and safe environment. The play is play, the roles are deliberately worn and can be removed if necessary. What happens when a section of a generation of gay men identify with those roles, though? You get a culture where "straightness" is elevated beyond "queerness", where masculinity is the dominant and most desirable trait, and that femme-ness is seen as the bottom (excuse the pun) of the hierarchy; to be used, ridiculed and denigrated.
Again, no kinkshaming; some folk have incredibly fulfilling experiences within the structure of such a dynamic. I have a problem when it becomes an expected mode of being, though.
If I was mid hookup and the top started calling me a faggot, I'd kick his arse out of bed and my flat so fast he wouldn't have time to pull up his briefs before he was hopping down the street. Sorry, son, you don't get to call me faggot; only I get to do that for myself. My faggotry is burgeoning, and is a process of becoming that is also a tearing down of all that toxic masculine shit I accrued over the years. I used to avoid femme guys, I thought they were "letting the side down". I avoided queerness because it felt dangerous and proved everyone's worst fears about the rest of us, who just wanted to be accepted and loved.
Assimilation, versus liberation. Now, at 38 years old and having lived with the reprecussions of growing up in a male-dominant world, the mental health problems and self-esteem damage that caused, I'm learning that queerness is something to be proud of. I don't want to follow in the same footsteps as those men who damaged me in my life. What benefit is there to me to play pretend that all I need is a nice, heternormative relationship when that's patently not fulfilling to me?
I enjoy the mercurial aspects of queerness; that doors are always open around me to do things differently. To forge our own path through relationships and sex, unencumbered by the social expectations and directives that we grow up with. Don't give me homonormativity either: don't assume that my queerness is the same as any other, or that my queerness is equatable with someone else's gayness. Those things overlap, but they're not the same thing.
Expectation is the death of a full and happy life; overcoming my mental health problems is showing me the value of a life lived fully, on your own terms. About manifesting your true will in life, without the strictures of other people's expectations. Don't expect me to fit neatly into a box, a role, a mode of being... Allow me instead to be unfixed, mercurial, flowing, trading roles as I feel them emerge and submerge into the memeplex of being. Expect me to be free and willing to experiment, within the structures of openness, honesty and trust.
Allow me to be me, with all that that entails.
Since therapy ended, I've continued the process of overcoming the depression and anxiety. First things first, I'm still at the mercy of my "moods" at times. They come and go as they've always done but, and I say this slightly tentatively, they have far less impact than they did before. When a low mood comes on, I'm far more capable of recognising it and putting things in place to tackle it. Hypermaccus, my totemic self that I created during therapy to act as my emergency defence mechanism, still comes in handy when things get tough. The anxiety is slightly more difficult to deal with because the anxious response is such a full body thing that I'm having to really go in and explore where it sits in my body and use relaxation techniques to try and help my body unlearn all those knots and tight spaces.
Overall, though, things are better: so much so that I'm now in a position to begin tackling some of the manifestations of these faulty responses that have accrued over the years. For example, I've long been a very sexual person, but I've also had numerous blocks and barriers in place that have made it difficult to let myself go sexually, something that has affected almost all of my relationships in one way or another.
Growing up catholic and gay is a recipe for repression and, despite continuing to grow and evolve as a gay, sexually active adult, those repressed fears and hangups often get in the way of pure connection and enjoyment. Having decided that I am absolutely not in a position to throw myself into a relationship again, like I've done so often in the past, I've been tackling how I, as a single adult, can negotiate the territory of pleasure without a) feeling overwhelmed and wanting to move in with the guy after three dates or b) becoming a monk and having no sexual or emotional contact with other men for an extended period of time.
I want neither of these; I want fulfilling, adult experiences that have no "strings", but which are enjoyable, exploratory, safe and have a degree of emotional connection. To that end, I've been exploring the friends-with-benefits or fuckbuddy dynamic: getting to know guys and spending time with them, sexually and also hanging out and enjoying each others' company. I've also had the occasional no-strings, have-sex-and-depart thing too, but that's less fulfilling for me for a number of reasons.
However, at the same time as engaging with this fairly new experience of mature, sexual encounters, I've also been wrestling a bit with my sense of identity. I have a problem with the increasing amount of gay guys out there whose idea of sex is a very binary facsimile of what I experience as the more toxic side of masculinity. To wit, forms of BDSM and kink have become normalised and attractive to such a degree that dom/sub, dad/son style hookups are more and more commonplace. This means that a high level of possible encounters are, from the beginning, expected to fit into a very narrow mould of roleplay that doesn't necessarily speak to the multiplicity of experience that's open to us as queer men.
Just to be clear: I am in no way kinkshaming, or denigrating the importance of such roleplay. I enjoy it, and engage in it from time to time, but it sometimes leaves little space for guys like me who are broadly speaking "vers". When it comes to penetrative, dick-in-hole sex, I can be top or bottom, depending on how I feel, who the guy is etc. But I'm also vers in my head. Sometimes I can be dominant, sometimes subby, sometimes in between, and something I particularly enjoy is the trading of roles during play. There's nothing hotter than being in a dom role only to have the sub get heated and take that role over, forcing me to become the dub. Or vice versa: taking the dom role from a guy and having him take a submissive role.
That head-fuck aspect of roles is way more interesting to me than straightforward "roleplay" which, I believe, is often just a means of allowing men to live out binary genedered roles within their sexplay. Partly, this feeling comes from my own instinct and experience but, increasingly, it's also coming out of my exploration of queer studies.
I'd gone off the idea of hookup apps, by and large, until a mate showed me one that allowed you to both identify as queer and search for guys on that basis. Immediately, I realised that the use of the word queer on a hookup app could, at least partly, help me to find folk who have a similar outlook on sex to mine. So far, that's been the case; I've had some great, repeated hookups with guys who are willing to explore and, even if they have subby tendencies, are more willing to let that role trade back and forth during our encounters. I've also had experiences with guys who are usually bottom but top with me. There are still guys for whom the role they play at the time is fairly fixed, and that usually results in the least fulfilling and most perfunctory sex; still very much the "I am top, you are bottom, kiss, suck, fuck and done" type of sex. Fair play, guy, I enjoyed myself. But it's a bit boring.
What I'm really enjoying is the sexplay where fucking will come later, and we'll negotiate who does what to whom, but in the meantime, we're exploring other avenues of lust and desire. Where there may seem to be fairly defined roles between us, but which is flexible enough to allow for a little headfuckiness.
Queer studies face some of these questions head-on. What's the point of a queerness that just apes heteronormative roles and behaviours? One of the disadvantages of this behaviour is that it buys into the idea of submissive guys being more feminine and dom guys being more masculine. That leads to fixed power dynamics and, all too often, a form of homosex that is potentially dangerous and may in fact be driven at times by internalised homophobia. For example, the "straight-acting/faggot" dichotomy: men who have sex with men, but who fuck "queenier" or submissive guys who they call faggot and expect them to be in complete service to the tops' pleasure.
Fine, fair enough: this power dynamic is one that is explored in BDSM for a whole variety of reasons but which is usually done within a trusting and safe environment. The play is play, the roles are deliberately worn and can be removed if necessary. What happens when a section of a generation of gay men identify with those roles, though? You get a culture where "straightness" is elevated beyond "queerness", where masculinity is the dominant and most desirable trait, and that femme-ness is seen as the bottom (excuse the pun) of the hierarchy; to be used, ridiculed and denigrated.
Again, no kinkshaming; some folk have incredibly fulfilling experiences within the structure of such a dynamic. I have a problem when it becomes an expected mode of being, though.
If I was mid hookup and the top started calling me a faggot, I'd kick his arse out of bed and my flat so fast he wouldn't have time to pull up his briefs before he was hopping down the street. Sorry, son, you don't get to call me faggot; only I get to do that for myself. My faggotry is burgeoning, and is a process of becoming that is also a tearing down of all that toxic masculine shit I accrued over the years. I used to avoid femme guys, I thought they were "letting the side down". I avoided queerness because it felt dangerous and proved everyone's worst fears about the rest of us, who just wanted to be accepted and loved.
Assimilation, versus liberation. Now, at 38 years old and having lived with the reprecussions of growing up in a male-dominant world, the mental health problems and self-esteem damage that caused, I'm learning that queerness is something to be proud of. I don't want to follow in the same footsteps as those men who damaged me in my life. What benefit is there to me to play pretend that all I need is a nice, heternormative relationship when that's patently not fulfilling to me?
I enjoy the mercurial aspects of queerness; that doors are always open around me to do things differently. To forge our own path through relationships and sex, unencumbered by the social expectations and directives that we grow up with. Don't give me homonormativity either: don't assume that my queerness is the same as any other, or that my queerness is equatable with someone else's gayness. Those things overlap, but they're not the same thing.
Expectation is the death of a full and happy life; overcoming my mental health problems is showing me the value of a life lived fully, on your own terms. About manifesting your true will in life, without the strictures of other people's expectations. Don't expect me to fit neatly into a box, a role, a mode of being... Allow me instead to be unfixed, mercurial, flowing, trading roles as I feel them emerge and submerge into the memeplex of being. Expect me to be free and willing to experiment, within the structures of openness, honesty and trust.
Allow me to be me, with all that that entails.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-01 05:14 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-04-02 03:24 pm (UTC)My comments on such guys isn't really a diss on them, either - we all do what we do and what works for me isn't what works for others, and occasionally I've been in a lucky enough position to help other guys explore their kinks while I do the same, or have had experiences where guys have helped me to understand my own kinks better, and I'm all for that process of learning from each other. But when you get stuck with a guy who doesn't really get it and isn't open to exploration or learning, it's quite an unsatisfying, unfulfilling experience, for me.
Thanks for the comment!
no subject
Date: 2018-04-02 01:45 am (UTC)I really enjoyed reading your thoughts, and you've given me a lot to digest. Mostly, I keep thinking how catholicism (and really, you could substitute any dogmatic religion here) seems to permanently screw up humanity, either in suppressing the inner personhood, or by inflicting depression when the realization comes out that no one can humanely live up to some of those so vaunted "ideals".
However, one line you wrote in particular stood out to me:
I personally think that this essential thought is the whole point of living. It is something that everyone-- whether they be gay, queer, straight, or alien-- should try to go their own way. I would argue that it isn't just a queer philosophy, but a human philosophy.
Something I would respond in kind is: how do you do things differently? Do you do those things consciously because of what is expected, or rather, because they just are? Thinking about my own question and I know I'm being vague, so I suppose this is intended to prompt any open-ended answer you care to put forth.
Thank you for the deep thoughts today.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-02 03:17 pm (UTC)One crucial point here though, and I think this is where you're coming from, is that I've been focusing post-therapy on trying to go my own way - as a homosexual guy though, queer liberation and theory is a critical part of that process.
Re: the last question, doing things differently for me is ultimately about making decisions that are in coherence with my true will and my authentic self - making decisions based on what I want, or what is right for me, instead of worrying constantly about what everyone else thinks. Whether that's straight, gay or other folks. For example, exploring my queerness led me to experience a polyamorous relationship for the first time, helped me to lessen the hold that masculinity has had on my psyche and other things like that.
I hope this makes sense and is the kind of thing you were looking for! Thanks again for the comment :D
no subject
Date: 2018-04-10 09:23 pm (UTC)I imagine that like in Scotland, in the US, coming out in any staunchly religious background is extremely difficult. I grew up in a very straight, catholic family (Irish-German-Polish background) so deviation from that is highly frowned upon. Most of the elder kin folk have passed on, but I'd like to think that my parents would have eventually come around, there's that niggling thought in the back of my head that, like their brothers and sisters, they would strongly disapprove of my coming out. Luckily, my own generation doesn't give a flip about my sexuality- so I think it appears to be a generational attitude in my family.
However, they're all more freaked out about my atheism. "Don't you want to see your parents after you die? Don't you know how they're disappointed in you?" and all that nonsense, the usual basic guilt trip/control games to the max. Even my sister, who's the most liberal freewheeling one of the bunch, cries about it.
The last time we went around over this- about 10, 15 years ago, I got the usual responses alone the lines of "I'll pray for you..." I snapped back. "Go ahead and waste your time and energy on something that doesn't do anything. I'd rather you got out in the real world and used that energy in really really help others in need."
It hasn't been brought up since.
I think in your case, you're successfully sorting out what you want and holding true to that. Whether you want it to be a sexually liberated lifestyle, or just a casual thing. Are you able to navigate or discard the bothersome attitudes that come part and parcel of being queer? And what is the best way for you to do that?
no subject
Date: 2018-04-30 07:50 am (UTC)Re: your last point, what bothersome attitudes do you mean? It's difficult for me to talk about navigating or discarding them when I'm not sure what those attitudes are that you find bothersome, I presume many of us find different things bothersome! :D
no subject
Date: 2018-04-04 02:55 am (UTC)I had to laugh when I read that. I was raised Catholic, but fortunately my family wasn't strongly religious, and I stopped practicing entirely, so repression was never really an issue for me. I've seen a few people really struggle though, not so much with their deity, but with fear of judgmental religious leaders and/or family members.
no subject
Date: 2018-04-04 08:13 am (UTC)I've always had an element of spirituality in my life and, while I abandoned the teachings of the church, I went on a journey of exploring comparative religion and magic, piecing together my own understanding of the universe as I went.
That's the problem, for me: religion may have something worthwhile to say about the spirit, or the universe, and our relationship to both, but they're often so wrapped up with dogma and judgement that they can become destructive for folk who grow up differently in those religions. I definitely felt that when I was younger; the weight of expectation, the internalised guilt and the "panopticon" feeling of always being watched.
Recently, I started imagining things a little differently; what if there was a religion where the only precept was: "God is watching; put on a show" and that helped me a lot 😂
no subject
Date: 2018-04-06 12:10 pm (UTC)Catholic guilt was a very real thing that a lot of my family have suffered from. And I felt it particularly pronounced, especially when I came out. The idea that God was always watching and judging was a hop, skip and a jump away from full-on paranoia and dissociation during my teens... Luckily I rejected the religion fully, but the process of deconditioning was long and arduous, and I reckon there's still some of that in there even now.