QUESTIONS

Nothing new in this post. It’s just me spinning in the same old spot.  

In my twenties, I thought I knew it all. Even though, deep down, I knew I didn’t. There were many adult things I did not want to grasp. Stocks. Home ownership. “Murder, She Wrote.” Still, I had a clear sense of how to foster a loving relationship. Even if said relationship was only a hypothetical. I did not date ANYONE until I was twenty-five. 

In my thirties, I may have actually known it all. Seriously. Everything clicked. Real relationship with a seemingly perfect partner. Heritage house. Pet. Job with growing leadership responsibilities. Potential everywhere! I was set for life. 

Or at least until my forties. Relationship? Gone. Not a single hopeful sign in that area. House? Got one, but it’s a dead weight that I cannot seem to shake. It’s like the Hotel California: You can check-in anytime you’d like, but you can never leave. Job? It’s gruelling and utterly thankless. There is no time to savor a moment of success as more crises demand URGENT attention. Crises that began from the actions of others. I am the professional sanitation worker, expected to clean up everyone else’s mess. Pet? One of my beloved dogs died in March and I still miss him terribly, but at least I have my other one to be nonjudgmental, to pretend I am the greatest thing since sliced bananas (his fave), to get upset when any other dog seeks my attention. (Yes, dogs dig me. Gay men? Not so much.) 

 Life is now as much a puzzle as it was in my teen years. I am left with a long list of questions, but at the top of the list is, What happened?! 

I know I have many changes to make, but the waiting is maddening. When will my house sell (if it sells)? When will I be approved to return to the U.S. (if at all)? What kind of peon job will I get while I strive to make it as a writer? And will I make it? Will all the changes turn out to be foolish in retrospect? If there is someone for everyone, where is my guy? What if he has lost his way due to the ex-gay movement? What if I leave Vancouver when he was here all along, always walking the seawall ten minutes before or after me? What if he’s in L.A. and settles for someone else before I get here? How long will I have to sigh longingly as moviemakers lead me to believe Mr. Right is a fender bender away? What if there really isn’t someone for everyone? Why shouldn’t I be one of the have nots? 

No more questions, please. I have enough uncertainty despite decades of experience. To modify a common expression, the more I live, the less I know.

FRIGHT & FLIGHT

As a middle-aged single, gay wannabe writer, there are so many opportunities for self-doubt. (Why is it that my parents feel they need to nurture that?)

Life would be far easier if I stayed on the ground. After all, being “grounded” is deemed an admirable quality. Unfortunately, I’ve got this urge to walk the tightrope. I’m a wee bit afraid of height so I’ll set it three feet above ground, but still there’s a huge risk of an ankle sprain. I’d be quite the wuss on crutches.

I have a solid job, one that I feel more satisfied doing than I ever have. I go about the days calmer, with a clearer understanding of what I can impact and what is too burdened by personalities and other issues. And yet I’m walking away from the job and the career in nine months. (Yes, I’m counting.) Perhaps seeing the finish line is what makes the work easier. Maybe it strengthens me. It excites me to think I’ll leave on a high note. If only all life changes could begin that way.

When I move, take a peon job (“Welcome to the Gap!”; “Have you tried our newest McFlurry?”) and put all my energy into writing, it will feel in some ways as if I’ve sunk below ground, but really I’ll be flapping, hopefully soaring, above. The pension fund will sit stagnant, enough to buy kibble for the dog in what has the potential to be a frugal Meals-on-Wheels-seniors’-bus-pass-thrift-shop-scrounging future retirement. I turn forty-seven this week. That leaves me with plenty of years to keep hoping my lottery numbers will come up if my writing dreams prove as silly as my childhood aspiration to work as an elf at the North Pole.

A nagging message in my head (presented in my mother’s cautionary voice) says, “Why would you quit your job? Why not write on the side?” Ah, yes, so practical. A sage suggestion for the grounded folks. I’m not wired that way. I require risk and discomfort to push me into action. When there is nothing to fall back on, I waste no time fretting and doubting. I write.

To my parents’ dismay, I’ve done this all before. I went through law school, passed the California Bar, clerked for judges and then worked as an attorney in a boutique firm with an office view of the Pacific Ocean and the Santa Monica Pier, only to decide as I hit thirty that I needed to start over. To do so, I had to leave California so there would be no way I could fall back on my license to practice law. I moved to Vancouver where I had but one acquaintance and no job prospects. I took a Christmas retail job on Robson where my manager was twenty-three and my coworkers lived for Saturday nights at The Roxy. I didn’t get as psyched about selling leather jackets as my colleagues and rarely made my daily sales target. Management chose to end my seasonal employment after Boxing Day.

I could have taken going from successful lawyer to unemployed sales clerk as a humiliating game-over fumble, but I needed that awkward time to stop speculating about my future and to DO SOMETHING! I’m pleased that I found a path to follow for seventeen years. To continue to amble along and extend the trek to thirty-two years is not an option. It’s safe, but it would foster feelings of regret. It should come as no surprise that my favorite poem has always been Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”.

I can feel the excitement, but the pressure mounts as well. As Martha would say, it’s a good thing. I have a manuscript that will be ready to submit by the end of October and a screenplay that will be fully polished by the end of November. Maybe there will be bites, maybe there won’t. It is the beginning of a new phase in life. The journey on the tightrope is frighteningly narrow, with nerve-fraying wobbles. I don’t care how I look—I’ll wear a helmet and my old kneepads from volleyball—but I can’t wait to remove the safety net and give it a go. If, along the way, I have to mop up on Aisle 6 or cohabitate a moldy basement suite with a rat I’ll name Ben, so be it. I’ll twist a retro expression and say, “Write on!”

HOW OUT IS OUT--PART 2

At various times, I've subscribed to Out magazine and The Advocate. I've read the columns imploring all of us to come out, come out, wherever you are. Easy for a writer at a liberal (gay) magazine to say.

In sports, very few men come out and, if they do, it's typically after retirement. Even gay figure skaters play coy until the lucrative dollars from ice shows dry up. Sure, there are exceptions, but let's remember they are just that: exceptions. There are many (hetero) male-dominated businesses where being openly gay remains taboo, all "not that there's anything wrong with that" banter aside. 

I'm successful in my career. I've climbed as high as I want (and, really, I never planned to get where I'm at now--flukes happen). But there are times when I feel I am suffocating from my job. At work, I can chat about my dog, the Canucks, my run-in with the crazed lady who lifted the cauliflower from my grocery cart (a case where, indeed, size matters). But the boss doesn't have a dating life. (Even if I did in theoretical sense, the boss doesn't have a dating life.) 

It's not solely brought on by others. I perpetuate the notion that I must be the asexual one. Right or wrong, I can't break the established standard. Again, I'm suffocating. A career that I once adored and spoke passionately about for endless hours now seems to drag me down. Am I out? No. At least not enough. 

A career change would be prudent, but also foolish. At thirty, it was easy to deep-six the law career. I moved out of state to resist any temptation to change my mind, but my way of life wasn't tied to my salary. Sure, I took a huge pay cut, but my car was paid for and I didn't mind sleeping on sheets of cardboard on the floor of a rented bedroom. (Friends eventually pitied me and purchased an inflatable camping mattress at Canadian Tire.) I could "afford" to be young and stupid. Yes, Mick Jagger, time was on my side. 

I should try to get in with an arts organization, a charity or a publishing house. Of course, I'd be the middle-aged apprentice. I could take the coffee orders, stuff the envelopes, at least temporarily. I'd be out again. Free. 

But, alas, my mortgage isn't free. And my house won't sell. (It doesn't help that the flooring guy I had in last week spotted a leak in the ceiling. Curse him! Keep your eye on the ground, floor man.) 

At thirty, I thought my career change and country change constituted a premature midlife crisis. But now I can see that this is that moment. It's about feeling stuck. Quicksand stuck. 

I still smile, I continue to be amused by my blunders, but even my laugh has begun to sound more throaty, more muffled in the past year. 

Being out matters. Despite the fact that I cannot identify much that is gay in my current existence, it is part of an identity that I struggled for a dozen years to realize. For now, I have to restart the coming out process that I hated so much all those years ago. 

I swore in the mid-'90s that I was done with the drama. Let them ask. Why was it always on me? But they don't ask. Not my generation anyway. Never will. Despite how much I loved the message of "It Gets Better", I don't think it does when you remain passive. Happiness is about more than being away from the bullies. So for now I am not going to come out at work. I don't see that happening. And I'm not quitting. Can't. 

But I do have friends from prior work settings who still meet me for coffee and still only chat with me about dogs, hockey and large vegetables. I know they know; it's just never spoken. My next trip to Starbucks will be more substantial. Another big reveal awaits!

It's a start...