Month: May 2013

Categories
Gay Queer

A Tale of Two Gay Communities: Poz and Neg

Just Like You

Listen, I want you to know something about me.  I hate condoms. I hate wearing them. I love fucking raw. I love it. I don’t do it. I can’t do it.  I wanted to fuck my lover without a condom.  I want to cum inside you.  I love you.

This is what HIV looks like in 2013:

Brandon, he’s 22… he wants to be hog tied and fucked in the mouth and ass. He wants to meet me.

He wants me to ‘take control’ he wants me to beat him and fuck him.  He wants ‘verbal’. He enquired if I preferred him to call me daddy or sir.  I’m interested. This daddy loves an obedient boy.  We talk on the phone, he’s upbeat and sweet-natured but after we agree to meet he texts me:

‘Before we meet. I’m Positive. And I’m honest about it. Thoughts?’

I wait a moment. Restraint of pen and tongue.

I text him back. ‘Can we talk?’  I explain why I can’t meet him. I tell him that I’m scared and I don’t want to risk an infection. I’m too old to get infected. I lived through the AIDS catastrophe. I didn’t get infected.

The conversation I had with Brandon is not common. Usually when I say that I can’t have sex with someone who is HIV positive they spew vitriol.   They tell you that it was a ‘mercy fuck‘ anyway, that I’m ugly , that I’m ignorant… of course… I know what they are really saying.   They usually get what they want when they want it and woe-betides anyone who fucks with their plan.

Some HIV poz men feel that by being honest I will feel equally warm and fluffy and my respect for their honesty will translate into a fuck.

Let me tell you what I remember when someone tells me they are HIV positive.

I remember the gaunt, yellow faces of formerly beautiful young men crying because they don’t want to die. I remember men hermetically sealed from the world in plastic tents. I remember the smell of piss and shit.  I remember the quiet sobbing of newly widowed men.  I remember all of that and I cannot go there.

More controversially… when you tell me you are HIV positive I am confronted fair and square with your sexual history.  I imagine other men cumming inside you.

I just do. I can’t help myself.

That’s why I can’t sit facing the toilet when I am in a restaurant. Imagining people pooing and wiping their asses. It puts me off my dinner.

There are two communities. Two gay communities. The HIV negative and the HIV positive.  I have no interest in interacting sexually with the latter. I will be damned for writing that.

Brian says: ‘Duncan, someone who knows they’re positive and is on treatment can easily be less infectious than someone who doesn’t know that they’re positive and happens to have a high viral load, and is therefore very infectious.  That could be the issue of ignorance of which they speak. I agree no one has the right to go off on you for not wanting to play, but the issue is more complicated than pos/neg.’

IMG_5568

The issue is NOT complicated for me. I don’t want to be HIV positive.

The community with HIV is very eager to diminish their responsibility and guilt those without HIV into thinking it’s all ok just because they describe themselves as ‘healthy’.  They still have HIV and they can infect you… however low their viral load.  They claim they are ‘undetectable’ which means they have a very low viral load.

Undetectable is a big problem.  It is used incorrectly by many people to make others feel that the sex they have is safer than with those who are not undetectable.  Undetectable people are still HIV poz.  The condom breaks. You are now a slave to toxic chemicals.  A slave to big pharma.

Who are these undetectable people? These invisible men? Gay ghosts. Scarcely there.   Leaving behind just the whiff of AIDS.  HIV is totally avoidable in 2013. Yet, we still go on being the largest group of new infections in what is still an epidemic.  I don’t want to talk about Africa or straight people or intravenous drug users.

I want us to take some responsibility.   Especially those of you who are transitioning from the Neg community to the Poz community.  Those of you who make the choice… who made the choice last night to take a risk.  Those of you who thought, or did not think, as he came inside you… that you would risk the consequences of HIV.  You are packing your bags, you are moving to the other side. To the other gay community. The undetectable gay community.

Finally, one last nail in my gay coffin.

What’s this crap about gay men and shame? We can’t shame gay/bisexual men into wearing a condom?  Because they are gay or bisexsual and have shame about their sexuality?

We can’t shame gay men or bisexuals into making better choices for themselves?  Like we do smokers?  No… because the gay community must be shameless at all cost. We are gay! We live without shame.  We’ve been shamed ENOUGH.

Huh?

I say… shame those who knew they were HIV poz and took away the neg status of others by lying.  This really happens.  I know a few good men who have had their good health stolen from them by unscrupulous gay men.

There are two gay communities. One of them is HIV positive. The other is not.  Those who are not positive are described as elitist by those who are.  Those who are HIV positive scoff at those who are not… because the implication is: they weren’t pretty or handsome or desirable enough to get infected with HIV.

I am scared of getting HIV. Like some people are scared of snakes.

I am happy that I am HIV negative. In fact… I am proud to be HIV negative. Does that make me elitist?  Well, yes… if elitism means that I mostly took care of myself.

That I don’t have to buy costly drugs every month to stay… undetectable.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Categories
Queer

Is it So?

Tom of Finland

Why is it that words like these seem dull and cold?

Is it because there is no word tender enough to be your name?

Categories
Queer

Hoarding

Bearded Straight Man

1.

Holding onto the past. Cluttering up the present.

2.

I saw athlete Jason Collins on the TV. He was being interviewed by Oprah.

As I listened to him tell his story I thought a great deal about other people I had known who lived as adults in the closet.

Collins was not involved with a woman when he came out.

He was single.

For those gay men who are married or engaged to women when they come out the trauma this causes the woman cannot be underestimated, yet somehow their trauma is ignored.

The woman from Connecticut hoards craft materials she intends to use. She never uses it. Her house is uninhabitable.

Her husband left her for another man.

A lie is revealed. The life of the lie is shared. Often those who have lived unwittingly with a liar also feel that they have lived a lie.

My important gay writer friend mocked Collins ex girlfriend Carolyn on Facebook.

He made fun of her for ‘not realizing’ Collins was gay. Not realizing that she was living with a lying sociopath?

My friend is a gay man who has had sex with women and dated women yet he can barely disguise his misogyny.

Like so many gay men he is, whether he likes it or not, a separatist.

Carolyn is an intelligent, kind and articulate woman who was duped by a liar.

I listened to Collins wondering how this man was cast as the hero?

He’s not the first athlete to come out of the closet, many women came before him and some men.

The Collins cocktail of gay, black and startlingly good-looking is somehow more intoxicating than remembering that Martina Navratilova had come out decades before.

Collins hopes that his coming out will ‘make it easier’ for others to do the same yet… it seems unlikely.

Is his coming out really a coming out at all?

He will only really know how it feels to ‘come out’ once he is back on the team.

At the moment he is cushioned by celebrity and an American media fascinated by his ‘bravery’.

Is he brave?

He is not a normal black kid from the ghetto.

He is not the normal black kid at the local church.

He is not a kid. He is not normal.

Celebrity assures him of that.

If you identify as LGBTQ then every coming out is circumstantial.

There will never be an easier time to come out because most everybody wants to fit it. To fade away. To avoid the glaring spotlight even if that spotlight is no longer hostile.

No one wants to say: I am different. Not today, not in America… where individuality is scorned.

Jason’s parents look suitably loving on the TV. They know they’re going to ‘love him no matter what’, they’re going to ‘get through it’.

I wonder sometimes what the expectation is for those new, enlightened parents who suddenly have a gay son or daughter to dote on.

Judging by those who now look sweetly at me and my partner whenever I am brave enough to hold onto my lover in the street… their reaction may have changed but the feeling I have remains the same.

They look at us… like I look at a particularly fluffy puppy. “Ah, how sweet.” They want to say. “How fucking adorable.”

I know they want to stop us and tell us how fucking adorable we are.

Those people who gawp and smile supportively are just as irritating as those who glare disapprovingly.

I don’t want you to have an opinion about us as we walk in the street.

I have no opinion about you.

Jason Collins coming out also poses questions about others who have not come out sooner.

I mean, If Jason Collins can do it… why can’t you? Why is it an issue? How could you not tell us the truth?

But Jason Collins has The President, ex President Clinton (the DOMA signer) the President’s wife Mo to congratulate him.

They are ‘proud’ to call Jason their friend.

Well, Jason Collins and those other gay people I allude to… they are adults. They came out as adults.

They can control the outcome.

They are ‘straight acting’ there was ‘no clue’, no tell-tale fabulousness, no lisp, no prepubescent flamboyance.

He was never harassed, he was never told ahead of time what he was before he knew himself.

Jason Collins comes from a ‘close and loving’ family.

Like other gay men who came out late in life… if their family was so close, so loving…why couldn’t they come out sooner?

What did they think they would lose?

The closer the family the harder the riddle.

The fantasy that one has for ones children, the perfect future… the wedding, the christening… cannot include a same-sex partner?

Well, no… not if you have invested in the lies your adult child told… again and again.

Lied to those very same people who now bathe you in their unconditional love.

Obviously, my ‘coming out’ as a teen… was very different.

Having no real option… was all at once a blessing and a curse.

I was brought up in a different age.

My coming out was an act of terrorism.

I threw it at them like boiling water and told them to get used to the burns.

3.

Meanwhile, there’s a teenager in Northern England struggling with his decision to reveal the truth.

He saw me on TV and sought me out.

He told his family he was gay… face to face.

He told his friends on Facebook

Tonight he told everyone how miserable he feels. How dark this place is.

Jason Collins has not helped him. He does not have the President of the United State to support him on Twitter.

Feeling different, facing a new world… not as an adult but as a child.

Things don’t get better… because he now has the prospect of British parochial gay life and all that entails.

He has predatory men to deal with at the local bar, he has rampant desires that remain unfulfilled.

I think he regrets not waiting.

It’s a big deal coming out when you’re a poor kid a long way from the big city.

It always will be… however many athletes steal the limelight from boys like him.

Categories
Death Film Gay Hollywood Los Angeles Money Queer

Liberace: Behind The Candelabra

Liberace Scott Thorson

I was asked to direct this movie, or a movie like it, ten years ago.

It was a script based on the autobiography of Liberace’s lover Scott Thorson.  I read the script, I met the producers, I met Michael Keaton who was, at that time, attached to the project.  Now, I don’t remember the script, I don’t remember the producers.  I remember meeting Michael Keaton in an obscure room in Santa Monica. Michael was very quiet, not at all enthused.

I remember asking myself why he would want to make this movie. I remember sharing ideas about performance and parameters.  He didn’t want to do an ‘impersonation’.

Another script about Liberace arrived, a more dynamic, dramatic and excessive script. It piqued my interest.  It began with Liberace’s final moments in the back of a limousine.  Liberace is often damned for claiming he wasn’t gay, for never admitting to his HIV status. That those around him at the end of his life went to extraordinary lengths to hide that he died of AIDS.

Of course, there are still people, (living people) who never admit they are HIV positive.   Such is the shame around HIV and AIDS.  But equally there were many people at the time of Liberace’s death who went to extraordinary lengths to reveal that he died of AIDS.  They exhumed his already buried body to prove their point.

There were too many people eager to shame him. For that’s what they wanted to do. Shame the gay man.

Liberace never said publicly that he was gay. He denied it. Again and again.  I sympathise with his denial. It was his choice, a choice we now condemn.  In these prescriptive times if you are not willing to say you are gay… someone else will.

Liberace was a brand.  Like Posh and Becks.  When David Beckham was caught cheating… they went to extraordinary lengths to protect their brand.  It’s understandable that Liberace lied on oath. He had everything to lose.  In those miserable homo-ignorant times there were plenty who would have delighted and profited from his downfall.

Lonely?

Reading the reviews for this film a theme emerges: Loneliness.

Mary McNamara LA Times: ‘A darkly moving look at two lonely men who briefly found something like love.’

Michael Thornton The Telegraph: The Lonely Liberace I knew.

There are countless other references to this ‘lonely’ man Liberace. His ‘lonely’ mother, his ‘lonely’ boy friend Scott.  Scott was ‘damaged’, Scott was a ‘gold digger’, Scott was a ‘lonely soul’. Scott was ‘played too sympathetically because he’s in jail for burglary’.  It seems like the prophecy of fearful mothers comes to pass in this movie, that their gay sons with end up alone, abandoned, unhappy.

The relationship between Scott and Liberace may seem familiar to any powerful, older man who lets a younger man into his life:  “They establish a bond that is a blend of romantic love, father-son affection, brotherly playfulness, and prostitution.”

Liberace, like Brokeback Mountain before it brings into hard focus the lives and loves of queer men.  There is the obligatory delight and revulsion (in equal measure) of the kissing. Two men kissing.  Two men kissing seems to remind many straight men that a tender intimacy can exist between men and that may very well interfere what they imagine we do.  The gay butt fucking they imagine… immediately… after meeting one another.

Men kissing, like men getting married, seems to inflame the homophobe.

I’m wondering why Steven Soderbergh wanted to make this movie, why a gay director wasn’t chosen?  Did he do it because it seemed like a cool thing to do? A straight man, so comfortable in his own skin that he can work with queer subject matter?   It still feels to me like straight boys (actors and director) getting together to prove a point.

With so many talented and extraordinary gay directors in the world how did this end up being made by a bunch of straight guys?  Was Liberace too difficult and distasteful and potentially divisive for a gay director?  When ever I have stood before a queer audience with my queer films (confirmed by other queer, male directors) the audience who have the most problems are those who want to say: I didn’t see me.

Gay man are desperate to see themselves and their lives as they live them in TV and film. It is perfectly reasonable for them to expect this.  Rather than the gay freak, the gay priest, the comedy gay… they, understandably, want to see themselves fairly represented. They want to see gay detectives, gay wedding crashers, gay teachers, plumbers, gay undocumented workers.

Many reviewers of Liberace: Behind The Candelabra smirk at the foolishness and naivety of the straight women who swooned at this obviously gay man.  I once researched a documentary about fag hags. All the women I spoke to who identified as fag hags felt adored and listened to, appreciated, respected by a man. Even if that man was gay.  Those women provide the clue to Liberace’s denial and downfall.  Liberace wasn’t lonely. He was a performing artist who found solace and validation, like many do, on the stage.

Every night he performed he bathed in the glory of his screaming fans. The unconditional love of his audience.  An adoring audience of many thousands will never be any match for the love of just one man.  I remember saying that to Michael Keaton as I sat there in that small room realizing who Liberace was.

Categories
Dogs Queer

Black and White Garden

Mountain

Categories
Queer

Dark Water

 

Categories
Gay Queer Rant Whitstable

Winning The War Against Homophobia/Racism/Sexism

Garden 3

Ha.  Don’t hold your breath.

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when people hated on black people because they were black and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when nearly all top jobs in industry and government were taken by white men and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

Will you tell your grandchildren that you remember a time when a gay man was shot in the face in the middle of the most liberal city in the western world for being a faggot and your grandchildren raise their eyebrows in disbelief?

A thousand years from now?  Maybe that’s the kind of incremental change brown people, women and queer people expect?

When will you fight for more?  Why do you put up with the status quo?

Fight for marriage and all things are equal?  No.  Fight for white men to stop taking everything, determining the agenda and we might get somewhere.

A French octogenarian shoots himself in the face because he hates gay marriage.  If he were American he would have massacred first then killed himself.  I think that this scenario seems plausible.

I wouldn’t like to hang around in gay bars right now.  Not with all these emboldened haters amongst us.

Thank God I don’t drink.

I am wearing my pink shoes.  People understand what I am when they look at my feet.

I’m trying to jettison ‘straight acting‘, I’m trying to abandon my invisibility but I know what that means.  It means hostility from gay men and straight men.

I like it when they describe drag queens as fierce.  That’s what I have spent life being:  FIERCE.  Of course, this has been perceived as angry or anti social or…  can I explain something?

Anger is an emotion related to one’s psychological interpretation of having been offended, wronged, or denied and a tendency to react through retaliation.

Anger management?  The management of justified anger.

Listen to this.  I have been reasonably angry for a long time.

I was a kid and I knew I wanted to fall in love with and have sex with men (and women) but the man part of my desire was outlawed, derided.

I fell in love at school.  I fell in love and explored men’s bodies.

I remember when I was 14 I was walking along the beach in Whitstable.  I met a man.  I lay on the sea wall with him.  Furtive.  Illegal.  I never saw him again.  I wonder about him.

They hated us for something we could not change.  I ignored them.  I parried the blows.

I lived in a dream world because living in that reality was simply too painful.

Margaret Thatcher didn’t want me and men and women like me… she didn’t want us to exist.

I’ll tell you what makes me angry:  Brown people not getting a fair trial.  A third of all black men in the USA are in jail.  Women in the military being raped and sexually abused.   Drag queens damning trans people.  I am angry that some people are denied bail.  I am angry that my lover left me when I found my tumor.   I am angry with myself for falling in love with men who could never love me back.  I am angry that the breast cancer gene is privately owned, that innocent brown people are still being held in captivity in Guantanamo Bay.  I am angry that gay men think that marriage is the answer.  I am angry that I grew up with an angry step father.  I am angry that Monsanto kill bees.  I am angry that my neighbors park in front of my gate so I can’t get in and out of my house.  I am angry that two young girls are criminalized for falling in love.  I am angry that most agents (realtors and talent) are sociopath.  I am angry with gay men and straight men for over simplifying sexuality.

How do you live with that?

I set it aside.  The anger.  I find peace wherever I can.  I pull weeds.  I walk the dogs.  I feed the fish.

I forgive them for their sexism, their murder, their bullying, their insistence that they WIN.  At all costs.  Like the bees.  Winning the market means… killing the bees.

When I buy something at auction the others applaud.  They congratulate me.  They tell me that I have won.  I didn’t win.  I just paid the highest price.  It’s not hard to do.

So.  Today I am wearing my pink shoes.  There you go.  ‘Nice shoes,’ they scoff.

Oh, I’m wearing them because I’m queer and I really want you to know.  Because I exist somewhere between Liberace and Jason Collins but I’m still trying to work it out.  Working out what kind of man I am.

I don’t think I’m alone.

Men make their own history but they do not make it as they choose.

Karl Marx

Categories
Queer

Kill The Faggot

My Pink Shoes

1.

Mark Carson was a black man and a gay man. He did not have the luxury of invisibility.

When he was shot in the head yesterday, he was already walking away from the man with a gun.

He was killed moments from where Joe and I lived on 13th Street in the West Village, NYC.

He went down fast.

This story is peculiarly American. It includes race, guns and queers.

The narrative is so familiar I am no longer shocked.

In London a white queer couple are walking home arm in arm. They are beaten to the ground.

We can kid ourselves that our ‘visibility’ has somehow made things better, that Glee and Will and Grace have improved LGBTQ functionality but frankly… that’s the lie we tell ourselves to get by.

To walk the streets.

Holding my lovers hand in the street is still an act of rebellion.

2.

The rate of HIV infection is still epidemic, around 45-50,000 new cases every year, 60% of those are gay or bisexual men.

AIDS education has not served to change the attitude in the general GBTQ population to bring those numbers down.

That is the cold hard truth.

No use dragging in references to children in Africa. The causes are preventable here amongst Americans.

The immune defense systems of many people are compromised and therefore vulnerable to deadly viruses such as the new strain of meningitis.

I fully support my GBTQ community, but I must also defend and uphold the bare truth:  people in America want what they want when they want it.

They don’t care to understand that they are living off the principal instead of the interest.

3.

When Jake and I were in Paris we sat on the Terrace of the Hotel Mama Shelter.  We were dining,  holding hands and kissing.

During a tumultuous and difficult relationship it was a moment of tender kindness.

From a window high above where we were lounging a man called out:  “Pede!”

Jake didn’t speak French.  He, thankfully, did not understand that we were being insulted.  “Faggot!”

I expected something to be thrown.  A shot to ring out.  My life felt threatened.

I wrapped my arms protectively around him.  Just in case.  I loved him so.

If you are queer.  You know what I am talking about.

If you are black, a muslim… anything other than a straight white male. You know what I am talking about.

You know that feeling very well.

4.

They want to march the street tonight.  They want to hold a vigil for Mark Carson.  They want to fight back.  But, what exactly are you fighting when you fight back?

The young men who want to hurt us, to kill us… are just doing what they understand: they are identifying the enemy and bringing it down.

To some they are patriots.

They are heroes from another age.

They do not understand our rarefied world because we have not done enough to explain it to them.

What do they know about us?  We may seem like a grandiose secret society… like the Scientologists or The Masonic Order and like any other secret society… we pose a threat.

We have done nothing to make our position clear except demand to oppress by joining historically oppressive institutions: the military and marriage.

They may have every good reason to hate us because they think we have everything and they have nothing.

They think we are rich, successful, they think we are celebrities… or connected to celebrity.

In this TV Quick world they see us living a dream. Why? Because we have sold them this in an attempt to seem ‘normal’.

5.

Dinner at Nobu. What a mess. Had to concentrate solely on my dining companion and not get side tracked by huge black eyebrows drawn onto Botox faces, short men with pony tails and overly developed biceps.

The creamy snow crab was delicious.

The crowd was not.

6.

My friend Benoit Denizet-Lewis has brought down Abercrombie and Fitch… a gay empire.

The morbidly obese, trapped in their mid west homes, are lifting their fat fingers and tapping one key at a time… declaring their outrage.

But, the rest of you… the gays… Mike Jeffries is gay… what did you expect?

Jeffries made a fortune from Bruce Weber’s homoerotic (bordering on pedophilia) A&F ad campaigns and the gays kept their mouths firmly shut.

What did you think that Weimar Nazi imagery was all about?

Did you see those highly collectible A&F catalogues now owned by all my gay friends?

Who complained that there were no fat models, no wheelchair bound kids frolicking in Bear Pond?

Now that Mike Jeffries is old, his face scarred with reconstructive surgery his very common gay obsession with youth and beauty is suddenly in bad taste?

HUH?

Perhaps fat people should stop eating if they want to wear hideous A&F clothing.

As for the guy who gave the stuff to homeless people. WTF? Ha Ha Ha. Not funny or clever or LIBERAL.

7.

Why isn’t the LIBERACE movie being distributed in the USA?

Why can you see this movie in European cinemas and not here?

I am told that very powerful gays here in Hollywood scuppered it.

It was they who described it as ‘too gay’ (camp) and inappropriate for audiences in the USA who might think we were all like Liberace.

In this ghastly straight acting world… we don’t want straight people to get the wrong idea.

God forbid… sportsman might not want to come out of the closet and be heroes.

7.

Today, at Gjelina, we sat next to 3 good-looking, rich, straight Russian boys on vacation from Moscow.

We charmed them. They thought I was so funny and sweet.

As we left I drained the smile off my face. I touched one of them gently on the shoulder.

I said very seriously, “When you go home can you tell your President to stop killing the gays.”

They laughed. They thought I was joking. After all, I had three beautiful women friends for lunch.

“No, I mean it… it’s really got to stop and it’s up to you.”

They looked foolish and embarrassed and that was good because the last thing you need when you are a rich, white Russian on vacation in LA are liberals making fun of your country… your government and you.

Most gays wouldn’t have bothered. But that’s the way you change the world.

Let them know it’s not OK.

8.

The 14-year-old son of state Sen. Brian Hatfield has been charged with four counts of first-degree child rape and four counts of first-degree child molestation in Lewis County.

The boy is accused of assaulting an 11-year-old boy from November 2012 until Feb. 14 of this year, when the younger boy’s mother interrupted an incident.

According to the police report, the mother informed detectives Hatfield told her on several occasions that he was attempting to ‘enter his son into therapy’ and would also be contacting authorities in Lewis County.

The mother stated that she knows that this has ‘not occurred’.

Neither parent called authorities at that time of the alleged incident and the mother said she had not ‘witnessed any physical contact’ between the boys.

Her son informed her some contact had occurred, but the boy later told detectives he didn’t reveal the full extent of the ‘abuse’ at that time.

The two boys had no further contact after the February incident.

Was this the love affair I remember when I was 11?  

Is this pubescent messing around or… rape?

Homo sex demonized by frightened parents?

There’s something so wrong about this story and it’s not the sex.

8.

Marriage equality would not have saved Mark Carson’s short life.

The cloak of equality he may have worn later on in life was not his to wear.

Joining the army may have paid for his education… but would not have saved his life.

Marriage equality would not get him to the hospital in time.  It would not have paid the hospital bills if he had lived.

Marriage equality would not have stopped the deathly glances of those who disapprove or those who thought he might rob them because he was black.

I am praying that Mark Carson took the bullet intended for this old faggot.

Mark… I shed a tear for you today.

This is What Homophobia Looks Like
Beaten in London Walking Home
Categories
art Los Angeles Malibu Venice

Beautiful Landscape

Chris

Categories
Queer

Bradley Manning My Hero

Vivienne Westwood wears Bradley Manning

So, I’ve been spending time on Christian Mingle.

Looking for God’s match for me. Well, I’m sorry but… it’s shit.

God (not my usual God) made it quite clear to me whilst I was scrolling obsessively through acres of men who look like pedophiliac geography teachers… he made it perfectly clear that a life of abstinent solitude was probably on the cards or (if I was really lucky) being violently murdered by a crazy sex therapist or… luckier… a hit man sent by some crazier ex.

Which brings me illogically to:

Bradley Manning. My hero. What can I say? This courageous young man has revealed not only international truths triggering the Arab Spring and a hasty retreat from Iraq by the USA… but the truth about American, white gay men.

Fuck me. What a bunch of crazy, right-wing cock suckers.

I mean… these gay white guys are voting Democrat, so they get their miserable marriage equality then… as soon as they do… they’ll jump ship and vote Republican… if they aren’t already.

Gay White Men won’t feel like they are part of any minority once they achieve parity with their straight white male colleagues.

Powerful white men famously loathe sharing the stage with immigrants, brown people, poor people, ugly people, fat people, trans… and women. Fuck them. Especially women. Their natural enemy.

‘They don’t mesh with MY lifestyle.’ he said.  Yes, he really said that.

It fills me full of dread to imagine a world run by gay white men. But apparently, according to Elton John. It already is.

So Bradley, I had to draw a line in the sand.

It’s Anderson Cooper, Elton John, David Geffen, the HRC and any guests at a typical Hollywood pool party over there… and it’s me you and the brown people over here.

Bradley, in the USA the gays want to ignore you, demonize you, forget you.

The rest of the world thinks about you every day, rotting in that jail. They agree with me. They think you’re the bees knees.

Bradley, you won’t believe this but, yesterday Vivienne Westwood wore a laminated photograph of you pinned to her lilac, silk gown at the Metropolitan Fashion Ball.

Perhaps the gays might take you more seriously now?

I doubt it.

I’m really sorry that our community has let you down.

Apparently what you did… isn’t gay enough.

“What does Bradley Manning and his treason have to do with being gay?” That’s what they say Bradley.

You just ain’t the right flavor. And, of course, they (elite gay snobs) know you only joined the military in the first place to get a free education.

You ended up educating the whole world.

“You should have known better. You shouldn’t have broken the rules.”

That’s what the rich, white, gay men say.

Just Like You

Bradley, they were going to include you in the 2013 San Francisco Pride event. Did you hear about that? They were going to honour you.

But they lost their nerve after the rich, white gays persuaded the poor, black lesbian who runs the event that you were just a common thief.

There are well researched articles about you and what happened at San Francisco Pride. Bradley’s inclusion and outrageous exclusion.

After it happened I had to defriend over 250 affluent gay white men on Facebook. Yes, I did.

I felt like a Jew waking up out of a blackout at the Nazi Christmas party. Or a Muslim at the NRA National Convention. Or a Christian in the back room of a gay bar.

I had to make a big decision. I had to weigh up: the differences versus the similarities and… the similarities between me and the gays were negligible.

I had to redefine myself.

Bradley, for you… I am not gay.

I will have nothing more to do with them. Because of you.

Thanks for that Bradley. I owe you a club soda some time.

But, that’s only half the story.  I’ve been feeling very uncomfortable in my gay skin for a very long time.

It all began with that smile he gave me in the family court waiting area 3 years ago. He was with his dad.

That arrogant grin. You see… he thought he’d won the war.

Americans always think they have to win.

It was shocking because, until that moment, I’d only ever seen his ersatz humility. I did not recognize him any more.

But, I knew the smile. I’d seen it before… on the entitled faces of rich, white gay men.

Oh God. I thought. That’s who you are. That’s what you’ve been hiding.

The pain I felt around the gays. The revulsion I felt at the gay charity events, gay AA, gay white men, gays en masse.

The smell of them began to make me nauseous.

Perhaps, I thought, it might just be self hate? Internalized homophobia?

Just like I thought my gall stones were indigestion… it was the wrong self-diagnosis.

I am surrounded by millions of gay zombies.  In the perpetual search for fresh meat.

Zombies forcing other gays, gays with unnatural ideas to think like them.

Bradley, President Obama is on the TV right now… warming up his audience with a few self-deprecating quips.

The gays love him. They don’t care if they’re being used to shield what’s really going on.

Hey America! Look at this dancing gay who wants to get married… look… over here! Look over here whilst we torture these Muslims and spray the world with bee killing Round-Up.

If you ever get out of that prison… you’ll find a very different gay America. Oh yes.

But don’t expect a heroes welcome from the gays. It ain’t happening.

Don’t expect a GLAAD award.

Their ‘heroes’ are prescribed by good looking GLAAD president Herndon Graddick and his ilk. Heroes? A GLAAD ‘hero’ is anyone who comes out of the closet or a celebrity who says publicly that they like gay people.

Herndon Graddick?  Consider the source.

You know what, Bradley? The last time I saw Herndon (fascist star-fucker) he was sobbing in a gay AA meeting because he can’t stop doing meth.

The time before that I saw Herndon he was at gay traitor Ken Mehlman’s drinks party with his forked tongue shoved so far up Ken’s ass what he pulled out was scarcely chewed.

Bradley, you were very brave.

Most of the gays I know in LA and NYC are the kind of men who stayed close to the teacher at school because they lived in fear.

Fear has shaped their lives.

They are scared of you.  They used to be scared of radical homosexual Peter Tatchell.  Before Elton brought him in from the cold.

Bradley, you didn’t come from an affluent family, you’re not a great looker. You might not even be a man… that’s what they say.

But who ever you are, you are my hero. You made me rethink, reshape my life. Redefine myself as queer rather than gay… and I thank you for that… again. Because without you… things might have remained confusing for me.

But now… they’re not.

The story of S.F. Pride versus Bradley Manning and S.F. Pride versus the activist community of San Francisco is an ugly one that illumines the maggoty underside of assimilationist politics and policies. In the quest for straight acceptance that has propelled the LGBT community headlong into the arms of two of the most historically repressive institutions, marriage and the military, dissent has become anathema. The values of ads that used to pepper the personals in queer newspapers and magazines “seeking straight-looking, straight-acting, no fats, no fems” have become internalized within the community. The controversy over Manning highlights what has happened in the juggernaut move toward equality — there’s no room for outliers. Either you are a Lisa Williams-style straight-acting, straight-looking martinet with no temper for dissent or you are like the people who signed the complaint — activists all — who recognize that our queer story is not going to be told simply through marriage equality and being able to enlist openly in the military. Marriage and military equality are important, but they aren’t our only issues. Manning took the actions he did because of his outrage over DADT, which was still in effect throughout his deployment. But he also acted like so many patriots have over our nation’s history — out of loyalty to American democracy. Manning thought the government was lying to the people. So he told them the truth.

VICTORIA A. BROWNWORTH is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist who has won the NLGJA and Society of Professional Journalists Awards for her series on LGBT issues. She is the author and editor of more than 30 books, including the award-winning Too Queer: Essays From a Radical Life. She lives in Philadelphia. Find her on Twitter at @VABOX.