Well, what can I say? I came out to friends. I fell in love. I came out to my parents. I was dumped for another. I came out to co-workers. I spent six months in a leaky boat, and I wound up in walking over the desert.
Retrospect is a wonderful thing but I have to admit that somewhere along the way it might have been great if I had perhaps learned a thing or two about drinking or light drugs, because being sober and conscious all of one's days leaves no room for hazy excuses or weary wonderment.
On the one hand, I had a lover who was clearly infatuated with a nitwit from work, and it was quite clear. On the other hand, despite dysfunction I had a loving set of parents, an accepting brother, good friends, and love. Thus emboldened, I came out. Not just about being gay, but about being in love, and about having hopes, and about having a particular future with a particular fellow. My mother pressing the issue was essentially a good thing. Coming out, believe it or not, probably helped hasten the inevitable break-up with Knucklehead. Probably? Definitely. While he was in the Land of Over There most of the time, I was expecting him to take on the son-in-law mantle, and that's too much to ask of anyone who is still not out to their own parents and family.
And so I lost my relationship in the fizzy waters of coming out. One unchartered course was traded in for one that was all-too-familiar. The hunt for a man. In the end, the whole relationship was basically a happy oasis, even if the water was a bit tainted by us both, by our inexperience, and our fears.
What ensued was a long and painful mourning of the relationship. As relationships go, it wasn't a good one, but it was the only longterm one I have had. It taught me a lot, and it haunts me still. But not for the reason you might think.
What haunts me since and haunts me now is not him, but possibility and optimism. In 1989 my only purposes were to be a good wife and mother, basically, and now I have a lot more. I don't think most 25-year-olds are qualified to know just how many possibilties exist for them. What follows me now is not melancholy for him, but the stain of an alternate reality. It's very odd; I cannot fully explain it to you. As better off I am now, as I do realize I am, there are times when I am at the movies alone, or dining alone, or at a wedding or bar mitzvah solo, and I cannot help but wonder what that time might not be like if I was not single. I wonder what sort of challenges I might face as a partnered gay man as opposed to a single one. I think an unpartnered queer is a lot less threatening to straight people. I think the whole issue of sex and love is just too threatening for too many. After all, "We have the children to think of!" Maybe I am being pseudo-Zen, but I am dogged by that alternate reality, and am hounded by the promise of my former life.
As much as I hate to agree with Tony Kushner, I think there's something to be said for struggle, and being on the march. Right now, however, I am a lot like Moses. Having wandered through the desert, I find myself perched and watching others enter the Promised Land. Unlike Moses, though, I am not being punished. I am just resting, with the hope of entering myself one day. What a lot of people forget, when they use the Promised Land metaphor, is that even when they got there, there was a lot of trouble. Every town along the way put up a struggle, and every victory was hard-fought and hard-won. For all my poouting, for all my criticism, and for all my urban curmudgeon tendencies, I am still a believer. I am still holding on to the one sprite that Pandora's Box retained. It's hope, and I am and remain, an optimist in a world where it's ridiculed. But there you have it.
And so, there it is. When I pass that massive condo tour on Queens Boulevard, which I do much more often than any Manhattanite I know, I still get a little sick when I see those blue balcony lights. But I also feel good, too, because I have lived a life in which a sweet nothing took root, and I can still smile a bit without being overcome by nausea or bitterness. I can look at those blue lights, and still wonder, which one of them might have been, or might still be, my own.q
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