KEEPING MUM DESPITE OPPORTUNITIES TO SPEAK GAY

It was a rainy welcome when I arrived by train from Vaasa, Finland to Helsinki. I grabbed a cab, checked in and went to a nearby café someone recommended on an online blog. (It was okay, but I won’t pass the baton with a further recommendation.) As I left the café, I noticed several tourist pamphlets and took a few. This form of paper advertisement is no better nor worse than random online sources. Still, one brochure stood out.

 

The main heading on the front of the pamphlet said, “WE SPEAK GAY…FINLAND.” I added it to my little stack. 

 

In truth, six days later and in a different country, Estonia, I am only now glancing through it.[1] I consider the brochure more of a novelty souvenir than something that would have helped navigate my stay in Helsinki.  

 

Helsinki's Oodi Library

Before I travel—often only the night before arriving at a destination—I will Google a few things online. Typically, I look for museums and special exhibits, best coffee spots, bakeries and the central library. Food is not an issue. As a vegetarian with an eating disorder, restaurants are not a highlight, especially as a solo traveler, which is my preference. I simply look up the closest grocery store once I get to the hotel.

 

I don’t give any thought to looking for gay things—bars, bathhouses, bookstores. Why would I park myself on a stool, drinking a margarita, when I could be out seeing the city (or prepping for the next day’s agenda which usually begins before sunrise? I know many gay seek a sexual encounter as part of the “pleasure” component of the trip. I’m not adverse to it, but I don’t establish eye contact in bars and men use apps just as ineffectively abroad as they do back in Vancouver. Why would I respond to a faceless “Hey”? Why would I be interested in a profile that fills in nothing? I am quick to stop checking my one app. Really, if I have nothing to do, it’s easier and perhaps more pleasurable to read my new book. 

 

A romance, go figure.

 

My aversion to a gaycation goes back to one of my early boyfriends, Gary, whom I met through a newspaper personal ad in L.A. It was the type where you had to send a note to a related box number in care of the paper.  Old days. Similar to online messaging in terms of process, but a written note required words beyond “Hey” or “Wassup.” Can you imagine getting a letter and that’s all it said? Trash can. (This was before recycling.) Standards have changed for many, but a “Hey” still goes immediately to trash for me.

 

Gary and I didn’t travel much during our year and a half together. San Diego, Santa Barbara, San Francisco. The loveliest trip involved seeing San Simeon and staying in a cabin in Ragged Point as raccoons stared in and we stared back. The city visits were not as fun. Gary’s primary objective was to check out the gay bars, of which there were more back then. I didn’t see the point. He never danced; just sat on a stool, smoking one cigarette after another while keeping a growing bar tab. Part of me was insecure. Why did we have to be immersed in gays when we had each other? I’d hoped being in a relationship meant I could stop going to bars. But then Gary was the alcoholic, not me. He was getting something out of it, not me. 

 

Gay bars on holiday? Not me.

 

I also have never planned my travels around Pride celebrations. I’m not a parade guy. I love dancing, but I’m not a raver. Pride would, in fact, be a reason for me to reschedule my trip to a different weekend. I know this makes me sound sad or sour. I am neither. I did the Rose Bowl back in 2010 when my school, TCU, won the game. That won’t likely happen again in my lifetime. Mardi Gras, Mexico City’s Day of the Dead and anything to do with Carnival in Rio are the only parades left on my bucket list. Carnival is a distinct event. Pride in Amsterdam or Munich or Taipei? Pass. I don’t need to see how they do queer parades in London or compare the abs of twenty-two-year-olds atop floats in Barcelona versus Sydney. With Pride generating big turnouts more than ever, hotel prices are bound to be higher and the non-Pride events may have larger crowds. These are the same reasons I don’t travel to Europe in summer. I love taking photos and I don’t want every shot of Mona Lisa or the Trevi Fountain photobombed by people’s shoulders. 

 

This has been my fifth trip to Sweden which I broadened to include bits of Finland and Estonia. I know I am safe in Sweden. I know I don’t have to repress mannerisms that might be viewed as stereotypically gay. Swedish society is incredibly progressive. More than that, they give you space and leave you alone unless you approach them. My gayness is not an issue. 

 

Helsinki harbor

I felt Finland would be similar. Nothing about my stay made me worry or think I should tone anything down. If you’ve read this much, you probably think this non-raving, parade hater, hookup app critic has nothing to tone down. You might say, if I toned things down more, I  would be flatlining. I do like good conversation, good times and big laughs, all just on a smaller scale.

 

Perhaps I should have read up on gay rights in Estonia. It is, after all, a former Soviet Socialist Republic. The Soviets weren’t known for individuality or freedom of speech and expression. 

 

Here is my belated research on the status of a couple basic gay rights in each of the countries I visited, with Canada (where I live) and the U.S. (where I’ve lived) thrown in for comparison.   

 

Here are the relevant countries ranked based on when homosexuality was decriminalized at the national level: 

              Sweden – 1944

      Canada – 1969 

      Finland – 1971

      Estonia - 1992

              U.S. – 2003

 

Here they are ranked based on when marriage equality became a national right:

              Canada – 4^th in world, since 2005 

              Sweden – 7^th, 2009

              U.S. – 17^th, 2015

              Finland – 20^th, 2017

              Estonia – 35^th, Jan. 1, 2024

 

With a few countries having gay marriage pending, we’re at about forty countries in the world that allow this. It says something that, yes, Estonia is now on the list. It may say even more that homosexuality was decriminalized so soon after the fall of the Soviet Union and more than a decade before the U.S. 

 

Yes, a safe trip. They speak gay in Finland. I’d say they speak it in Sweden, too. Estonia as well. Assumptions, to be sure, Finnish pamphlet notwithstanding. Quite honestly, I spent this trip with my mind on the frequency of Ukrainian flags more than gay men. How does anyone visit Helsinki and use a gay pamphlet as a conduit to all-things-gay without considering how Finland shares a border with Russia. Same for Estonia. 

 

Awakening Faun by Finnish artist
Magnus Enckell

I also went to several art museums, my mind focused on how hard it is for a talented, successful artist in one country to have their work seen and appreciated elsewhere. I saw much that was on a level with Rembrandt, Picasso, O’Keeffe and Warhol. Presumably, the Finns and Estonians know and are proud of their own art wunderkinds. If only the art world were better at broadening the platform and elevating the exposure and status of painters like Finns Sam Vanni, Tyko Sallinen and Magnus Enckell as well as Estonians such as Henn Roode, Olga Terri, Peet Aren and Eduard Ole.   

 

Beyond that, My Big Non-Gay Vacation involved lots of cafés where I wrote and people watched, bike rides to get me beyond city centers and runs through the forest, along the Baltic and in my favorite park spaces in Stockholm. 

 

I didn’t speak gay this trip. I didn’t speak Finnish or Estonian either. I read small amounts of Swedish but didn’t dare speak it despite five years of daily practice. The only different speaking turned out to be French which I slogged through with a lovely straight couple from Normandy while we tried to navigate how to use public transit to reach the Tallinn airport. Bus drivers didn’t speak gay or English or maybe even Estonian. They just stared gruffly, a very clear form of nonverbal communication. 

 

Speaking anything is not always necessary.

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[1] The actual pamphlet is a listing of a hundred businesses throughout Finland…a few gay bars but mainly restaurants and hotels. There is reference to a pledge these businesses take to show their commitment to the LGBTQ+ community. The closest I could find to a pledge on their website is the following:

“We stand together against homophobia, transphobia and all kind of discrimination. We are working for a safer and more inclusive society.” All good. 

  

THE SWEDISH EXCEPTION

More than two months ago, I took guidance from Air Supply and realized I was All Out of Love. Five times love happened. Five times it un-happened. I was done. I was ready to let go. All those songs about love could shift over to the meaningless category along with tunes like “Tubthumping,” “Barbie Girl” or even “Mary Had a Little Lamb.”

 

My thoughts on love have not changed. Done. In the past. It feels good to be single and free.

 

But there is an asterisk that belongs to that July blog post and it’s only become apparent this past week.

 

I’ll fall for a Swede.

 

The reason this became apparent this week is because I am in Sweden. It’s my fifth visit since 2017. There would have been more but COVID and one of those five past loves got in the way a few years. I have every intention of making this an annual trek. It would be even better if I could just stay. 

 

I mean that. I feel more at home in Stockholm than anywhere I’ve been. I have stopped seeing it as a tourist. When I visit, I go about my ordinary days, writing, walking, exercising, reading, musing. But “ordinary” here always seems to have an “extra” in front of it. My level of comfort and ease is exceptional. I didn’t know I could be myself this much.

 

It’s not something I can explain. It just is. Kinda like love. I know it when I’m in it. And I love being in Stockholm.

 

I also happen to find the men here exceptionally attractive. And aloof. I don’t think I have ever made eye contact with a Swedish man. They aren’t oglers. That’s why I can steal glances so frequently. 

 

I entertain myself by practicing my beginner’s Swedish in my head. 

 

“Du är min pojkvän.” (You are my boyfriend.)

“Du är min blivande man.” (You are my future husband.)

 

My mental messaging gets me nothing. Not even that coveted glance. 

 

Maybe that’s all it’ll take. Kismet. Same wavelength. Love at first sight. Why not? People speak of such things. 

 

Let a kind, funny, intelligent, handsome, stylish Swedish man be my asterisk. If that sounds like a lot, handsome and stylish are already in abundance among Swedish men so I tell myself the whole package isn’t such a stretch. 

 

I’m willing to meet anywhere and fall in love. My one condition is we settle in Sweden. Stockholm, if I may be so bold in the gentlest of ways. Like a true Swede. Or close. I’ll refine my understanding of that once I relocate.

 

  

MAKING "LOVE" OUT OF NOTHING AT ALL

Back in January, I wrote about finally being able to like rom-coms again. I was also reading romance novels and liking a few. In the late ’80s and throughout the ’90s, rom-com movies were my thing. I couldn’t get enough of Meg Ryan’s cutesy on-screen image or Nora Ephron’s sharp writing. 

 

Then a bad relationship soured me. He’d seemed perfect until I discovered he was anything but. I should have walked away after nine months…two years, tops. Unfortunately, I’d been raised in a bubble where no one got divorced and the words “for better or for worse” meant everything. 

 

“Worse” should never include abuse. I finally escaped that horrid relationship after seven years, emotionally beaten down and battered.

 

Love was a bunch of hogwash. 

 

I saw through rom-coms and their happy endings. Sometimes I felt especially disheartened, sensing that the couple was not meant to be together. Why would I cheer when they made up after a breakup? Why in hell would I want them meeting at the altar?

 

I credited my new boyfriend for making me a believer again. I was in love, I’d learned from my past and I felt secure in thinking we would go the distance. Let’s watch rom-coms! Bring on the romance novels! Happily ever after yet again! Why would I want it any other way?

 

Two months later, my two-year forever love went kaput. I hadn’t seen it coming. I still can’t explain where or why things went wrong.

 

I should be repulsed by rom-coms and romances again…for a while at least. I mean, I’d flown from Vancouver to Denver for a two-week visit and he dumped me ten minutes into the ride from the train station where he picked me up. It also happened to be Valentine’s Day.

 

F%#k love, right?! 

 

Happily ever after, my ass. Utter bullshit. Enough with the Hollywood endings. Life—mine, at least—looks nothing like that.

 

At the time, I was muddling through the middle of writing a gay romance novel. The logical thing would have been to set it aside or kill off one of the two main characters. So long romance; hello, murder mystery. 

 

Let the survivor go on, living triumphantly on his own. Let him realize love is but a distraction from greatness. Or it’s fleeting, at most.

 

But I wrote on while trying to recover from a severe case of What Just Happened? as The Supremes’ “Where Did Our Love Go?” played on repeat in my mind.

 

My fictional characters, Jeremy and Shaw, had problems and broke up, too. Conflict is a fundamental element in fiction while something I avoid at all costs IRL. Still, I set aside jadedness and cynicism. I shrugged off the dumping as best I could and told myself it would not impact Jeremy and Shaw. 

 

I couldn’t control my relationship and its demise, but I had full authorial command over my world of make believe, playing out in an expanding manuscript. Not once did I think they were forever doomed. Never did I wish my woes on them. I rooted for them, even when they were apart. They needed to grow, together and separately. They needed to realize how much love they had between them and take action to not just restore but strengthen it. 

 

I am pleased to report I finished the first draft today. SPOILER ALERT: happy ending. It’s not actually a spoiler at all. Romance novels are required to end with Happily Ever After or, at a minimum, Happy For Now. If I could, I’d escape real life and jump into a rom-com or romance novel. With my luck, I’d be nothing more than a supporting character, the Rosie O’Donnell to Meg Ryan or the Rupert Everett to Julia Roberts. 

 

But, no. Jumping into a rom-com is not possible. In life, I’m solidly single. I’m fortunate that my novel lets me play around and imagine what might have been. I’m truly happy for Jeremy and Shaw. 

 

As I do with all my novel first drafts, I’m setting this manuscript aside for the next six months. It creates some distance between the characters, the plot, the word choices, the tone and me. When I open up the document again in April, I hope I will still see a spark in the work. I hope I’ll still like both Jeremy and Shaw as individuals and love them as a couple. I hope I will see enough in them and the work to dive into the challenging process of revision with the intention of making the story even stronger.

 

Right now, Jeremy and Shaw can just sit back and relax. For the next half year, they have no more conflicts or challenges. They are firmly in love. Let them savor that. Let me step away from their love while I focus on a new project. Something involving a sad-sack character. Something I can authentically write.  

 

 

THE FLASHER

There’s a time and place for nudity. Stepping into the shower after a morning jog. Yep, soap up all those sweaty bits. At the doctor’s office when that dreaded part of the physical comes up where he has to check for lumps on the testicles and give the “all clear” regarding the prostate (while I ramble on about a hike I did near Whistler—not that he’s interested; I just need to normalize an awkward situation). Sex, I suppose…if keeping a shirt on feels stuffy and the belly isn’t still showing off last night’s dinner. (Why did I eat the entire loaf of sourdough?)

 

For me, that’s it. I’m out of nudity scenarios. I don’t vacuum naked. I don’t plop my bare ass on the sofa while watching Jeopardy. I don’t skinny dip in the river at the cottage. (Lurking somewhere near the bottom are really big fish called muskies with countless teeth. I don’t want them mistaking anything for a worm.) 

 

I like clothes. 

 

Not long after arriving at the family cottage in Ontario, I got a message from Farmer Luc on the only dating-or-whatever app I still have on my phone. A polite, if say-nothing note: “Good morning.” Farmer Luc was the same age as me and apparently eleven kilometers away. That’s basically next door when you’re in rural surroundings. I noticed he’d actually bothered to fill out parts of his profile with words—sentences! Sounded like a normal guy. I’m done with dating, but I thought I should be neighborly. I good morning-ed back.

 

Your move, Farmer Luc. Now maybe you’ll really have to say something.

 

He fired off three thousand words. Or the equivalent if you ascribe to that notion that a picture is worth a thousand. 

 

Farmer Luc doesn’t like clothes as much as I do.

 

The fly buzzing around in the cottage may have noticed my eye roll. I had deleted Grindr. I thought I’d put an end to unsolicited nude shots. Clearly, Farmer Luc was intent on bucking that stereotypical image of farmers in overalls, a strand of hay dangling between front teeth. (It’s true. The hay thing would have been a turn off. I’m not a dentist so no bonus points are awarded for creative flossing.)

 

Farmer Luc had nothing to be embarrassed about. Apparently he could resist whole loaves of bread on one go and something about the daily tasks in tending to cows and chickens had flattered his biceps. Maybe it was all that manure shoveling.

 

I am rather certain Farmer Luc hadn’t wanted me to visualize manure shoveling when he sent me three thousand words. 

 

After making sure my eye roll registered with the fly—a genuine protest—I messaged back: “Happy to meet for a coffee in town if you’re interested.”

 

Like a GPS recalibrating after going too far, he replied. “So sorry if I was too forward. Yes, coffee would be nice.”

 

All right then. We met a few days later at a café. He showed up fully clothed—shorts and a polo shirt that still showed off his biceps which still made me think of shoveling manure. (I can fixate on things…often the wrong things.)

 

The conversation was fine. Nothing kinetic. I’d mentioned I was dog-sitting while my aunt and uncle were on a cruise and he shared about his first cruise last year. 

 

A gay cruise. My nightmare, being stuck at sea with too many attention-seekers. 

 

A nudist gay cruise. Okay, my worst nightmare. 

 

I withheld judgment. I conjured Lady Gaga and maintained my best Poker Face. I nonchalantly asked him about food and ports of call. 

 

Presumably, he poker faced it too instead of revealing what a prude he may have thought I was. Why hadn’t I asked any titillating questions? In my twenties and early thirties, I went to many coffees—and yogurt shops when in L.A.—to hear other gay guys offer retellings of their sexcapades. (No surprise, I had none.) The whole kiss and tell thing just feels passé. 

 

Yes, I know. Prude. Once and always.

 

Ten minutes into my ride back to the cottage, I had a message from Farmer Luc. I did not check it while driving. The non-cruise part of the coffee conversation had revealed a sense that he might feel somewhat isolated as a gay man in rural Ontario. I presumed the message would be about arranging another coffee, maybe dinner. I figured I’d be fine with that. Since I come here every year, it would be nice to develop a new friendship.

 

Once back at the cottage, I checked Farmer Luc’s message. Five thousand “words” this time. A different kind of invitation. 

 

Maybe the poker face response had been a bad call. Somehow none of my prudishness came through or, if it did, all his isolation made him rusty on social cues (and non-cues). 

 

I countered with another offer of coffee. He responded with a day that looked glitchy for me. He must have viewed this as playing too hard to get…not that I was ever to be gotten. I didn’t hear back again. Lots of tasks to tend to on the farm, I’m sure. 

 

Just as well. My biggest work-around during our single coffee outing had been avoiding a certain conversation-killing question: “What are all the cows for?” As someone who has been a vegetarian for forty years for humane reasons, I could have accepted “dairy” as part of the response but he’d mentioned “selling the cows.” That had been an answer, hadn’t it? 

 

Farmer Luc and I were never going to be anything regardless of the size of his biceps or anything else, no matter if we found common ground for ongoing conversation. Eleven kilometers between us…so close in one context but still worlds away. I will most definitely be keeping my clothes on.

 

 

  

INSTA-GAIN & INSTA-SHAME

A quick plug:

FOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM!

rxtraveler

 

As a writer still clinging to big dreams, I am aware that the writing itself is not always enough. I must somehow stand out from all the other writers who dream big. 

 

I can bemoan a lot of things that make making it seem unfair. How much of Madonna’s picture book did she actually write? Why doesn’t a New York editor stumble on this blog and declare, “We must publish this! All of it! And more!”? Why can’t I be seated next to an agent on a flight, have her volunteer this fact and then say, “We’ve got three hours. Tell me all about your manuscripts”? 

 

I’m flying again next week. When I check in, I’ll ask to trade my window seat for one beside a literary agent. “Pardon me, sir?” Worth a try.

 

At writers’ conferences and in articles in writing magazines, both of which thrive based on us (desperate) dreamers, it’s often said writers need a platform. We need to be known. Five appearances on CNN panels last month, a cute shout-out to the number 5 on Sesame Street (with Grover, pretty please!) and a Live chat with Kelly Ripa that goes viral for all the right reasons. 

 

If not all that, well, maybe a lot of followers on social media. That’s something, isn’t it?

 

The hope is that, if an agent and publisher take a chance on me, I’ll earn them money, not just from positive word of mouth and a Pulitzer Prize, but from me tweeting to my 7,000 followers on Twitter: “Hey! Me again. Buy my book. Pulitzer stickers on the cover mean something. It makes a great Christmas present too…for EVERYONE on your list! Even a great read-aloud for your toddler!” My 7,000 tweeps love me. Only three of them may like my latest selfie but they’ll surely pounce on my buy-my-book pleas. (Please!)

 

The trouble is I can’t make sense of Twitter anymore. I scroll, I try to connect, I feel I’m in a black hole. I didn’t even bother tweeting a pic of my latest haircut. 

 

But there’s still that big dream about being a famous, acclaimed, published author. I’ve taken to Instagram. I don’t know what the magic number is for an agent or editor to glance at my account and think, “There it is. Platform. Ka-ching!” I’m pretty sure 281 million would do it (Easy to forget about the haters, Taylor) or even 4.1M (Anderson Cooper!) or 3.4M (Kelly Ripa). I’m hoping 10,000 makes an impression, too.

 

Not that I’m there. I started posting on Instagram 318 days ago, sticking to the respectful one post per day, and I’ve gained 2,000 followers. A good start. 

 

Perusing other Insta accounts, I see many with thousands of followers despite only a handful of posts. Bots, I suspect. Plus, every day Instagram reminds me I can boost my account for a fee. I suppose I too can have a bevy of fake followers. I don’t want to go there. I’m saving my money for my next trip, my next writing conference and the next issue of a writing magazine with LANDING YOUR BOOK DEAL IN 2024 emblazoned on the cover. I’m a sucker but a selective one.

 

Every single person I follow on Twitter or Instagram has an account I’ve spent a few moments scrutinizing. Is it active? Are there signs the person is real and not just a re-poster on Twitter or someone who copies Google Images onto Insta? On the latter site, I refrain from following people whose entire account consists of selfies. (How about just one where the Taj Mahal or Van Gogh’s “Irises” isn’t relegated to background fodder?) I skip the ones where there’s always a woman with long hair and a big hat, her back always turned to the camera, no face reveal. These, I suspect are AI-generated. I also pass when one or more of the three latest photos includes dead game, a closeup of lip fillers or a man who misplaced his shirt. Sorry, but these are previews of what will fill my feed and I choose not to volunteer to be traumatized on a daily basis. (We all have different triggers.)

 

I do follow normal people, even interesting ones. My Instagram account may have a goal of building a platform to shuck my book—er, books—but, unlike Twitter, I’m also genuinely enjoying the site. I have a new appreciation for productive knitters. There’s a guy in Miami whose macramé reminds me of origami. (I mean that in a good way.) There’s a woman in Vancouver who posts pics of graffiti and I feel an odd (misplaced?) sense of triumph each time I can say, “Been there!” 

 

Since my Instagram is specifically connected to an in-progress collection of essays about mental health, I have a big following of people who, like me, have been diagnosed as bipolar. Their posts sometimes strive to uplift, other times address challenges and often avoid mental health altogether. (A bowl of blackberries with a mint leaf gets a “like” from me.) 

 

I tell myself Instagram will make me better at snapping pictures with my phone. I follow many photographers and, maybe by osmosis, I’m learning how to better frame a shot and how to make the mundane photo-worthy. One day, I too will get more than a thousand likes for a hiking shot or an artful image of a half-eaten piece of dry toast. 

 

There is one aspect of my search for followers that troubles me. I hesitate every single time I come across a man’s account. My little bio blurb includes a rainbow flag. I’m gay or perhaps something more vaguely queer. (The menu has so much more to choose from these days.) 

 

Despite all the hype about Pride, I’m still on shaky ground. I’m happy to be who I am, but I continue to feel there are many people who feel otherwise. I have always been guarded around straight men. There is a level of Trumped-up testosterone that I imagine to be present. With that, intolerance. 

 

I can hear queer advocates labeling me as having internalized homophobia, shaming me in the process. I’m not Proud enough. 

 

True. I have an aversion to having my identity dismissed, mocked or packaged into an overblown cry of intolerance.

 

If this were 2015, when Obama was president and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed the right to equal marriage, I’d be less wary. I’d presume instead that a man I followed on social media who did not identify as gay or queer would be open and accepting. He’d follow me because of my photos or my writing blurbs or just as a polite formality. (Maybe he’s building a platform, too.)    

 

I know there’s more acceptance now, but I also know there is a hate that’s more entrenched—bolder and emboldened by politicians who emphasize differences and feed off fear, scoring political points and accruing larger financial donations by eschewing tough issues like climate change, healthcare and the economy for cheap shots at minorities who don’t align with their party in the first place. 

 

There is no Hippocratic oath for politicians. While I believe there are some who enter politics with good intentions, trying to navigate the gamesmanship while maintaining integrity, I also know there are many who are Machiavellian. Do harm if it means gain. 

 

I hate my hesitation in deciding whether to follow a man on Instagram. I scan the photos and the teeny bio to see if there’s anything that hints at intolerance. Despite great content, I have talked myself out of following a guy from Montana, someone with a bushy beard and a dude with a propensity for baseball caps. I’m making assumptions. 

 

I’ve never had someone on Instagram spew hate as a comment to my photo of a mountain or even my pic of rainbow-painted stairs, but I brace for that day. I’ve been blindsided by hateful rhetoric in real life many times. I know the most likely response for a person uncomfortable about any aspect of my Instagram account is to not follow me back, his reasoning never known.

 

My Insta hesitance is a reminder I am not as settled in my skin as I wish I could be. I am still more vulnerable than I should be. I may never shake self-hate and presumed hate. So often, I decide not to follow that man and the man after that. I feel shame, but I also feel safe.

 

Getting to 10,000 followers will take longer. In the meantime, I have manuscripts to finish, revisions to make and agents to accost in airports. 

 

Another shameless plug…

My Instagram account:

rxtraveler

 

 

 

  

ALIGN YOUR ALLIES

There’s a wonderful clip of Democratic Vice Presidential nominee Tim Walz speaking before the Human Rights Campaign this past weekend. He says, “It’s easy to be an ally when it’s easy to be an ally. What really matters is knowing who’s going to be at your side and stand up when it’s hard.” He said this after sharing an anecdote about stepping up to be the advisor to the Gay-Straight Alliance at the high school where we worked as a coach and teacher in the ’90s.

 

I was a teacher then as well. I worked in elementary school and we didn’t have GSAs at the time. Still, I’m not sure I would have stepped up had I been asked. In some regards, Coach Walz was bolder than me. I would like to think I would have done it, but I know I would have at least hesitated. I would have told myself it would be easier for a straight coach to take on the role. Coach Walz married his wife, Gwen, in 1994. Any whispers about him being gay (since he supported a gay club) would not have gained traction and, even if they had, he could easily shake them off. He was a straight man, no doubt about it. 

 

I, on the other hand, was openly gay on staff. It was easy at that particular school since three other gay men were on the faculty. One of them zeroed in on me on my first day subbing at the school before I landed a regular position. I was not out among students and parents. One parent suspected I was gay and, during the first week of school went to the principal to demand that her daughter be assigned to a different grade seven classroom. The principal acquiesced. The episode shook me. The student really liked me from my days subbing at the school. I know she’d have been highly motivated in my class and she’d have thrived. But mama was a homophobe and the principal liked “problems” to go away ASAP.

 

I became more closeted at all the schools I worked at thereafter. There wasn’t another gay colleague on any of those staffs. I never shook that worry that someday everything might blow up on me. Multiple parents would complain, students would be in the know and snicker constantly in class, my credibility tarnished by a distraction. What if a student made a false allegation? I never came out again to any group at any school. I felt certain staff knew and many parents as well but no one raised the subject and I grew resentful of always having to make what felt like dramatic reveals about my sexual orientation in any area of my life. I grew very adept at handling gay putdowns when students would try to belittle one another. These were teachable moments and I never shied away from them. I was an unofficial ally, but I never stepped up specifically as a role model. 

 

Hats off to the Coach Walzes of the world. Hats off to the queer teachers who had photos of their partners proudly displayed on their desks. (Most of my years, I didn’t have a partner. Pics of my schnauzers assumed prominent spots on my desk instead.)

 

Whether it is for students or for adults who identify as something under the LGBTQ+ umbrella, allies are still vital. Allies need to be seen and heard now as much as at any point in my lifetime. We have had allies step up during the AIDS crisis, when the right to work in the military was at stake, when protections from housing and employment discrimination were up for debate and when gay adoption and marriage equality were at play.

 

Queer rights remain at issue. For my entire life, they have been used for political purposes to drive a wedge between voting blocs, to divide based on differences rather than to unite in spite of them. (Oh, how refreshing it would be to be embraced and accepted, once and for all! In my lifetime? Still a dream.)

 

Now is a time to forsake timidity—my old standby demeanor—and embrace the boldness within us. It is time to actively support the queers with the biggest target on their backs: trans and non-binary folks. It is time to engage in conversation to better understand what trans people are up against. If you don’t have a trans friend or acquaintance or if they don’t feel like bearing the weight of educating everyone for whom they are the token trans friend/acquaintance, then there is plenty that can be read through podcasts, firsthand blogs and published memoirs. Dig a little. Get out of your bubble. 

 

I fully believe that denials of trans rights will embolden haters to rollback other queer rights. Pride festivals, most of which are over and done with for this year, create an illusion of acceptance and may instill a sense of complacency rather than empowerment. Look at our numbers! Bigger than a Trump crowd!

 

On the macro level, Pride celebrations are easy events in terms of queer participation and allyship. (Yes, at a micro level, a questioning or newly out person makes bold steps attending any Pride function. I shook with both excitement and fear—what if I’m on news footage?—when I went to my first parade.)

 

Globally, there are swings to the right, as happened recently in Germany and as I fear will happen in the next Canadian federal election. All eyes seem to be on the U.S. right now and the stakes couldn’t be higher in terms of free press, democracy, women’s rights and, yes, LGBTQ rights. Trans people are being played in a political version of Fear Factor with ludicrous talk about girls losing places on sports teams, children undergoing operations while at school and, still, invasions of bathroom spaces. Indignancy about pronouns gets tossed in, too. All this goes unchecked in conservative media, for many their chosen—and only—source of “news.” All this also riles up those who don’t know queer people, who don’t hear about queer experiences, who don’t see how much alike queer people are to them. 

 

It's time for queers to do a little bonding. It’s also time for allies to have the conversations that queers get shut down from having. This would be one of those times that Tim Walz is referring to as when it’s harder to be an ally. These talks can make a difference, maybe not with too-far-gone Uncle JD (don’t bother; just keep away to protect your sanity), but with sheltered cousin Ken and good-at-heart neighbor Carol.

 

When my parents, who live in Texas, visited in June, I talked about more of my own negative experiences. I got very specific about what felt like homophobic harassment on several occasions with U.S. Border Patrol agents. I talked about my trans friend who has gone through a momentous year in terms of their journey to live their true identity. I talked as well about how trans people are being used as pawns.

 

At first, my parents tried to shrug things off. “Oh, that’s just Trump,” and “We vote based on other issues.” But I persisted. They have the privilege of shrugging because they are not targeted. But this rising culture of hate is deeply personal to me and choosing to vote based on other issues does not send a clear message that hate will not be tolerated. It tacitly allows it. These politicians take my parents, lifelong conservatives, fiscally especially, for granted. In the pocket. Without taking a stand, or at least not voting in certain political races, homophobe-pedaling politicians keep the traditional conservatives while riling and building up a base that does respond to unchecked allegations of They/Thems taking over the country, somehow taking something away from lowercase them. 

 

Eventually my parents said, “We didn’t know.” (They are Wall Street Journal readers rather than Fox News watchers.) I knew this was the right moment for me to say with conviction, “It affects me. This is personal. This affects your son and so many other people just trying to live their own normal lives.” 

 

It got quiet after that. When people truly listen, they also need time to process. 

 

Did they shift?

 

Maybe? A little bit? 

 

I had my say. I know that. It’s time for LGBTQ+ people and our allies to step into this harder time, to make sure loved ones living in conservative bubbles hear another side. Truth. It’s time to be polite—shouting and putdowns aren’t going to create forums for listening much less lead to progress—but resolute. LGBTQ+ issues matter. Our advocacy, as queers or allies, is essential.