Continuing my explorations of gay spirit through my own experience, I want to elaborate gently on the idea of difference, taboo, and androgyny as tools for healing. I often ponder why I am gay. As my mother once aptly noted, “It can’t be an easy life for you.”
In our world, with it’s focus on material existence, especially the materialism of thought, we are unbalanced in favor of control. Many folks enjoy this kind of energy, they thrive on it. They can stay in control without any apparent stress. My hat’s off to them. I don’t feel that way. Perhaps they don’t either, underneath.
In response to power and control, I find the opposite more fulfilling: to acquiesce, relinquish power, envelop strength with its opposite. I’m here to show a different view, to break down “normal” patterns, to balance the majority with spiritual and cultural difference, drawn from my taboo life. If I see myself in terms of society’s norms, I fail to awaken something essential in me. If I let go, give into the direction my sexuality takes me, forge my own path, I find I have power in my faerie spirit, a perspective few see.
Something in me tells me I need to explore the taboo in myself, and by reflection, in society. My sexuality is not just who I’m attracted to, but how I’m attracted to them. I feel a latent androgyny in my body, an ecstasy of opening rather than entering. (see Faerie Spirit) I sense in myself a burgeoning of confidence and power based on this opening, soft, letting, allowing spirit. It seems right. It connects me to something deep and rich which I barely recognize. I am also terrified of it, and lonely. I am unsure if this is an aberration of human nature, or a gift to it, or just a benign personal choice. I like to think there’s a mythical, healing reason.
I am drawn to very abstract explanations of why I exist, what my purpose is. (Existentialism worked for me when I was young, but leaves me cold now) I think it’s vital to human existence to acknowledge the need for myth. Whether we think so or not, we are constantly affected by the myth making power of popular culture. We are inundated. Perhaps that is sufficient to sustain the majority, but I feel deeply drawn to something more internal, something pure, consistent, universal.
Some find this in religion. I seek a unique spirituality to incorporate my unique sexuality. I look for timeless patterns and myths within my sexuality. And I am finding, or maybe even creating those myths by exploring the taboo ecstasy of my body. Perhaps I am here as a gay man to demystify and mythologize taboo, not only sexually, but throughout culture.
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