"If you asked me what I came into this world to do, I will tell you: I
came to live out loud."
--Emile Zola
I must be losing my mind. I thought I wrote on this, but I cannot find it.
When I was at Callen-Lorde last week, I saw a quote pinned up at someone's desk. It was from one of my favorite authors, Emile Zola, the French realist who chronicled, among other things, life in Third Empire France. He wrote about unpopular subjects like sex, alcoholism, prostitution, corupt businessmen, illegitimate branches of ambitious bourgeoie families, and a host of social ills. social ills.
Zola is possibly more famous for taking a stand in the anti-semitic fever that overtook the French Republic in the late Ninteenth Century when Alfred Dreyfus was framed for treason and sent to Devil's Island.
Zola is the author of "J'Accuse!" and stood up to popular hatreds of the day, which caused him a lot of personal turmoil; he had to flee to England. He even wrote to the President of France that to give in to these ills would be akin to delivering the Republic into the "hands of his worst enemies." Reading those words, handwritten by him, at the Pierpont Morgan Library last year were very stirring, especially in the original French.
It's hard to say what Zola would have thought of gay liberation. I suppose I would have to read a bio to figure that out. But the basic sentiment, to live out loud, seems like such a natural fit to being a gay person here and now. There are a lot of dangers to being out, depending on your age, circumstances, location, but there are a lot of joys to living your life as you see fit, without worrying about "the world."
Reading The Advocate later that night, I read an interview with the openly out George Michael, and the conservative Andrew Sullivan. Michael, now that his arrest has plunged him fully into the icy waters of global publicity, related to readers that while he is in a relationship, he has an arrangement to extracurricular activity. Meanwhile, Sullivan, who from all evidence has no lover, is proclaiming that sex without love is a motive born of low self-esteem. Sullivan is a good writer, but he is the poster boy of the desexualized mainstream gay. Part of the "we're just like you" set. But isn't George Michael even more like us? Human, fallable, and complex. Perhaps he is different in that he is not moralizing, not sticking to mainstream values.
George Michael, in his interview, lives his life out loud. Andrew Sullivan, while the most televised gay man in terms of news commentary, is out, he seems to dogmatic to be true. He doesn't seem too far off from Father Ritter. "Save me from the sins I find so compelling." I won't be too surprised if we find an intern crouching behind Mr. Sullivan's dogma one day.
So, my advice: Don't read provocative materials before bedtime. If you are like me you will toss and turn as you compose that letter in your head.
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