Feeling Like a Faggot

I continue to learn from reading The Way Out, a book by Christopher Nutter that I wrote about last week.

We all learn to internalize messages that are conveyed to us about our self-worth, starting in our childhood. Some rare, fortunate children are taught – both through words and actions – that they are persons of infinite worth, goodness and light. Most of us, however, have varying degrees of negatives self-perceptions that are encoded into us from birth.

Most of the time, perhaps, these negative messages are conveyed unconsciously by parents, siblings, friends, teachers, etc. Sometimes, however – as in the case of child abuse – they are conveyed directly and dramatically. Some children literally have it beaten into them that they are not worth much just as they are. They learn that they have to be someone else in order to be accepted and loved, or in order to merely survive the trauma they endure.

These negative messages eventually become encoded, woven into the very fabric of our unconscious self. And we find that, as we grow older, we bring these messages with us from our childhood into the adult world, where they can create all kinds of havoc. 

Gay men and women typically have a whole other set of negative messages conveyed to them about who they are. As the truth about their sexuality begins to dawn on them, having already been recipients of vast amounts of societal disapprobation of homosexuality, their unconscious spews additional negative thoughts and fears, which control – to one degree or another – how such a person navigates his or her way through life.

Part of Nutter’s message is that the process of coming out should involve shining the light of consciousness on all these fears and negative self-perceptions; because until we do, these fears continue to control and shape us. As he comments, we end up carrying a closet around with us as we encounter situations where our sexuality “comes up" in case we need to temporarily duck back in.

As I try to become more conscious of such situations, I can more fully examine what is actually going on when I suddenly feel self-conscious or embarrassed about the fact that I am gay. Nutter points out that what I encounter in such circumstances are my own fears that I often unconsciously project onto others:

“You have no idea what people feel or think about you now or what they will feel and think later – it is only your own thoughts and feelings that you think and feel. It may seem as if someone else thinks you’re a faggot, but it can only be you who feels like a faggot. If you do not feel like a faggot, the term ‘faggot’ does not exist for you. End of story.  

“Realize this and you will realize the end of the reign of power your own internal, personal abuse system has over you that is trying to keep you down. Looking at the unconscious self in this way, it is just like an external abuse situation – as the abused you take it because you believe it’s true and you deserve it. Realize it isn’t true and that you don’t deserve it and the power the abuser has over you goes away.”

What we often don’t realize is that we are often our own worst abusers. We have internalized so many beliefs about homosexuality. Unconsciously, we tell ourselves that we are bad, we are immoral, we are corrupt, we are less than. We then punish ourselves because of these unconscious beliefs and live our lives controlled by the fears that these beliefs generate.

If, however, I can strive to become conscious of these beliefs and fears as I encounter situations in which they arise, then I can begin to dissolve their power. Nutter writes:

“If you come from a state of fear, that is what you will engender in others. Your whole point in coming out is to leave fear behind, so why in the world would you couch your freedom from fear in fear? Though being afraid will make sense to your internal abuser trying to keep you in the prison of fear and pain, it does not make sense to a conscious mind always working for liberation into sanity, opportunity and love.”

I have found these concepts tremendously enlightening as I myself continue my journey out, as I confront situations that challenge my sense of self as a gay man, as I strive to unravel negative thoughts, perceptions and fears. I also find these same concepts applicable to other areas of my life where I have too often let my unconscious fears control my destiny. In this respect, as I pointed out a week ago, being gay is a gift. I intend to embrace it and use it.

Homophobia, Consciousness and Coming Out of the Attic

My partner and I went out to eat last night, something we don’t do that often, but which we enjoy. The food was fairly good – not outstanding – but what we enjoyed most was the experience of being out, tasting something different from our normal at-home fare, and absorbing the ambiance of the restaurant.

We also enjoy being able to go out as a gay couple and not feel like we have horns growing out of our heads. 

There weren’t that many people in the restaurant, a place on the east side of Salt Lake, and our waiter was very attentive. I think he figured out fairly quickly that we are a couple, and, though our gaydar wasn’t going off, we deduced that he was either gay or wanted a nice tip. How? When he brought the check back after having run the credit card, he briefly rested his hand on my shoulder as he thanked us.

We gave him a nice tip.

This experience came to mind as I was reviewing passages which I had underlined in the book I wrote about yesterday, which I’ll refer to by its abbreviated title, The Way Out, by Chris Nutter. As I explained yesterday, a gay men’s book club I have joined is currently reading this book.

The particular passages I had underlined refer to “the closet.” Nutter described the process that the vast majority of gay men, even today, undergo, to one degree or another, when he wrote:  “Believing that [being gay was abnormal] didn’t change my sexual nature, and so I began to create a system of denial and separation from it, which was how and when I first stepped into the closet …”

This short sentence is pregnant with meaning. First of all, most gay men are taught that being “queer” is abnormal and wrong. However, that doesn’t change the fact of whom such men are attracted to. 

Secondly, most people usually think of the closet as being merely a place of hiding, which it is of course; but the metaphor also implies to most people that once it’s ok to come out, everything will be fine – like a game of hide and go seek: we’ll just hide in the closet for a while, then come out when it’s safe and rejoin the game of life, only this time we’ll be fabulously and openly gay.

What most people who have never lived in the closet don’t realize, however, is that living in the closet creates, in Nutter’s words, “a system of denial and separation”: denial of and separation from who we are. Nutter then points out the obvious: “By hiding [in the closet], you do not change your nature [i.e., your sexual orientation], you only put it out of sight from yourself and from others.” 

In discussing his own experience, Nutter then made a statement that literally took my breath way when I read it for the first time:

“I became … an Anne Frank in the attic of my own being, only I had to hide from myself, too.”

The imagery was so powerful, of the Frank family sealing themselves off from the world, a world in which they were no longer welcome or tolerated. But Nutter takes the imagery further, to the point of sealing oneself off in the attic of one’s being, hiding not only from others but from one’s own self.

It is comparatively easy to come out of the closet, but it is much more difficult to come out of the attic and deal with the years, or even decades, of psychic and emotional separation and hiding. Nutter points out that the key to navigating this process is to shine the light of consciousness on the fears that are buried deep within us:

“The degree to which you do acknowledge [your sexuality] to others is based entirely on the degree to which you realize the deep truth underneath all the lies about yourself that you absorbed from the world around you – that there is nothing wrong with being gay, and, therefore, there is no reason to hide it … [Coming out is really a matter of having] transcended the closet altogether – you no longer have to be ‘out’ because no part of you is ‘in.’ You simply are.”

In his book, Chris Nutter talks about his own journey, about how he came out in a big way, of how he started living the life of the party boy, diving head first into the fabulousness of gay life. But he eventually came to see that life as shallow and misleading and devoted himself to some serious soul-searching that led him, metaphorically, back up into the attic:

“When it comes to coming out, there are two essential intents. On the one hand is the intent to do as little self-examination as possible in order to get what your ego – i.e., your identification with the part of you that lives in fears – wants from being out … without having to more substantially come out of unconscious living.  

"On the other hand is the intent to stay conscious about being out for the rest of your life in order to utilize the endless challenges to your authenticity as endless opportunities for healing … The point is to keep these intents in mind so that you are always aware of which one is guiding you … [However,] the point isn’t to make a political statement or convince homophobes that you’re just as good, but rather to help heal the part of you that is still judging yourself to be wrong because you are gay. 

"Of course, we all feel the pressure to recede into the background even once we’ve come out – to, in a sense, stay where we’re told to stay in our neighborhoods or in our bedrooms. This pressure to recede is exercised in the form of fears … which are instilled in us in adolescence and which so many of us accept as true. But fear only emanates from the unconscious mind, and like all unconscious thoughts, it is on an endless journey to prove itself true. So the problem here is that if you have fear in any form – and homophobia is itself a fear – then you will indeed see it everywhere because it is your own that you see” [bolding emphasis added].

Last night when we went out to eat, as well as other times we’ve done this in Salt Lake City, I didn’t and haven’t felt self-conscious at all, i.e., about being gay. If, however, we were to go to a restaurant in Bountiful – where my children live – it would be another story. (In fact, it has been another story. Mark and I took the younger kids out for dinner at Applebee’s in Bountiful then to the theatre in Centerville, and I could feel the eyes looking at our large table and at us as we sat in the theatre, trying to figure it out.)

What I realized about our experience last night, especially as I meditated upon what Nutter had written, is that I and other gay men project our fears, our own internalized homophobia, onto others. I decided that I am going to follow Nutter’s advice and, whenever I feel self-conscious about being gay, I will reflect on the “two intentions,” and try to be mindful of my internalized homophobia and to heal that part of me that is still judging myself to be wrong because I am gay.

The GIft of Being Gay

I have been ambivalent about gay organizations during the past 16 months or so. Up until rejoining the Salt Lake Men's Choir last October, I hadn't spent much time at all around other gay men. In part, this was due to a conscious decision to invest time in my relationship with my partner. Beyond that, however, I was finding my own gay way, and I felt I needed a break to strengthen my own perception of myself as gay.

This need to find one's gay self was alluded to in a book I am now reading by Chris Nutter, entitled The Way Out: The Gay Man's Guide to Freedom, No Matter if You're in Denial, Closeted, Half In, Half Out, Just Out, or Been Around the Block. (I think he could have gone with a shorter title, but whatever.) Too many gay men, Nutter writes, think that coming out of the closet "as the singular answer to the gay 'predicament.'" He continues:

"As transformative as it is, coming out is not enough, for there is now a gay world ready to take over your mind and fill your head with yet another 'reality' about who you are. All you have to do these days is become conscious enough to realize you aren't straight, move over into gay society, and then slip right back into unconsciousness by letting gay society tell you who you are and who you should be. It's like waking up for a coma in intensive care only long enough to shuffle over to another unit where the bed is a better fit and the pain medication is more intense and then going right back to sleep."

I was introduced to Nutter's book because I recently decided to try out a gay men's book club here in Salt Lake. I had heard about the club, but had put off attending - partly because they meet on Friday nights and I have my kids every other Friday evening, and partly for the reasons I've just referred to. I guess I was afraid of being/feeling like I was being sucked into someone else's view of what it means to be gay.

But I was very pleasantly surprised. I enjoyed the evening very much, met a number of people and found the discussion of Nutter's book stimulating. I am sure that I will have a lot to say over time about The Way Out because it is very thought provoking, and I have found myself underlining nearly every sentence. What I have read so far has providing me with an entirely different way of looking at not only the fact that I am gay, but also at the entirety of my life.

Today, however, I want to just say a few words about the basic premise of the book, which can be summed up in one word: consciousness. Writes Nutter:

“Being gay is a special gift for men because by coming out we willfully trade in our great place of privilege in the world for a greater sense of our true selves … This is the essence of the gift of being gay, for while straight people have it ‘easier’ in the worldly sense – and it is truly a first-class world for straight people – they do not have it easier when it comes to waking up from unconsciousness because they are not challenged in the profound way that gay people are. And that’s where it counts ...  

"By being brave enough to cross [the] chasm between fear and freedom, we empower ourselves to rely on our own awareness to judge what is true and untrue about ourselves, freeing us from the judgments of the world forever, and in the process discovering the awesome power we have to create reality in accordance with our own will … That is the moment that the crisis of being gay in this world transmutes into opportunity for profound realization." 

I remember thinking and writing, shortly after I came out almost 2-1/2 years ago, about how anyone could possibly be grateful for being gay. I had read a statement on another blog that the author was not only grateful for experiencing same-sex attraction, but also considered it a gift from God. At that point in time, I still saw my homosexuality as a curse, a cross to bear, not a blessing. I had come out because I was sick of hating myself, living in a secret closet. But I was a long, long way from being on good terms with the fact that I was gay. My "condition" was to be merely accepted, not celebrated.

Since that time, I have gone through several "regret cycles" in which I have tried to make sense of my life, tried to "justify" coming out when I did (i.e., instead of earlier in my life), rationalizing that I wouldn't have had my kids (whom I love dearly and wouldn't trade for anything or anyone), wouldn't have met my partner, and perhaps have died of AIDS back in the 80's. In this cycle, I always came to the same place: acceptance of what is and moving on.

However, I have recently realized that, at the core of that regret cycle was that same sense that being gay is a sentence, not a gift. The roots of internalized homophobia run very deep.

Nutter's book has helped me and is helping me to finally view my being gay for what it is: a remarkable gift for achieving consciousness (or, if you prefer, self-knowledge). Accepting this gift enables me to transcend the regret cycle. I can see that all that has gone before in my life has prepared me for what I am now experiencing.  As Joseph Campbell has written: "The Hero gets the adventure he's ready for."

I can also see that accepting this gift, i.e., embracing my homosexuality wholeheartedly, will result not only in self-love, but also consciousness and enlightenment. This realization in turn has given me a whole new perspective on the quest for consciousness. In the past, I have sometimes been frustrated by Buddhist principles because I could never quite relate to them, and at times they have seemed just plain airy-fairy. 

I tried to and have accepted such principles - intellectually; but I now have a "hook" on Buddhism (or, if you prefer, principles of consciousness, living in the now, being present, mindfulness, etc.) that will allow me to make emotional contact with these principles and to forge my own path, removing the feeling that I have to follow someone else's path - whether with respect to being gay or being conscious. 

Following someone else's path never brings true fulfillment and happiness. Doing so may provide a temporary sense of direction and some degree of meaning, but it cannot provide lasting fulfillment. Sooner or later, the journey becomes tiresome because, once again, we are not being true to ourselves. As Nutter pointed out, we trade one form of unconsciousness for another. In order to achieve consciousness and, ultimately, enlightenment, one must find and travel one's own path, fulfilling one's own destiny, blessed by those whom we meet or join on that journey.