From: twpierce@amhux1.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Re: Wishing What You Were.
Keywords: There's no place like homo 
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Sat, 15 Aug 1992 19:20:51 GMT

My apologies for having apparently abandoned this thread immediately
after starting it.  I have this nasty tendency to post long polemical
or cathartic articles, or both, immediately before my work grinds me
into the turf.  (Whatever that is supposed to mean.)  All you
wonderful folks who have sent me e-mail will have it answered, sooner
or later.  (As I will be without Internet access until Monday
afternoon, that will probably be later.)

In article <1992Aug7.163620.28086@hemlock.cray.com> steven@cray.com (Steven Levine) writes:

>You write of two different phenomena in your post:  a
>sense of "identity" and a sense of "home."  I think you
>need the former to feel the latter, but I think you
>equate the two more than I would.

Perhaps I do.  But without a "home" or some sort of focal point -- two
more concepts I am probably equating unnecessarily -- how coherent can
my "identity" really be?  An identity based on being not one thing or
another is, I think, precious little identity at all.

>>I try time and time
>>again to accomodate my identity to fit more comfortably in
>>gayspace, but I have not yet succeeded.  I really wonder if
>>I ever will.
>
>*Can* you accommodate your "identity" (fluid as identity may be over
>time)?  That smacks of compromising it.

That is precisely what I was thinking as I wrote that.  Should an
identity even be accommodated, or manipulated?  It feels like an
attempt to fit a square peg in a round hole (to conjure up Nelson's
recent images of thickly veined cocks).  If the peg is square, it's
square.  Don't shove it in that unlubed round hole -- cut a new one to
fit.

>And that is what
>it seems you do not want to do.  And should not do.  But you
>want to "fit more comfortably in gayspace" -- to feel that gayspace
>provides a sense of home.

Or, rather, I always thought it would.  It's that sense of
disillusionment -- all the more bitter because it is self-imposed --
that really hits home.

>I first felt a strong sense of home many years ago when I transferred
>to Brown University and joined the marching band.  It was the right
>confluence of individuals and circumstances for me at the
>time.  Sitting up all night in those awful cold dormitory
>hallways, singing on the band bus, lingering over Sunday
>breakfast -- this was home to me.  Hanging out in gay bars (even
>piano bars), attending gay college functions, attending
>meetings of the campus gay organization (not lesbian-gay, at
>the time, just gay -- a big problem I thought) -- this was
>not home.  Active as I was in these things, much as I presumably
>belonged, I was certainly not "comfortable in gayspace."

An excellent point.  Queerness is one facet of my identity, computer
geek another, and casual film enthusiast (what a concept) a third.
Each of these have their own place and their own time, and attempting
to overlabel can wreak havoc.

>>While all of the gay men and lesbians I
>>personally know are completely accepting of my opposite-sex
>>fetish, I cannot shake the feeling that gayness *in general*
>>rejects it.
>
>By definition I suppose it does.  But so what?  It shouldn't
>affect how any individual lesbian or gay man treats
>you in your interests.  And you explicitly say as much.

I suppose so.  My biggest problem in all of this may be seeing
"gayness" as some concrete object that, someday, I'll be able to walk
up and touch.  Then I wonder why there is a difference between what I
perceive as "gayness" and "gay people" -- silly me.  One is more real,
the other more constructed.

>>Gay men and lesbians need a space where it is fundamentally
>>clear to them that _not_ loving someone of the opposite sex
>>is perfectly good.
>
>You see this as rejection of opposite sex love rather
>than acceptance of same sex love.

How else am I to interpret it?  My love incorporates men and women
inextricably together.  Not loving someone of the opposite sex is
indeed perfectly good -- but not for me.  I find it close to
impossible to reconcile being encouraged simultaneously to love men
and not to love women; it feels like being told that I can eat but not
swallow.

>Even though you say
>that all the gay men and lesbians you personally know are
>accepting.  There is some dissonance here.

There is, and I think it is related to what I described above as
constructing "gayness" as a THING, something with certain axiomatic
and monolithic beliefs.  Even though I try so hard to dispel those
beliefs in others.

>>If that
>>space requires the rejection of opposite-sex relationships,
>>so be it.  It is not my place to dispute that.  That space,
>>however, is not one which can accommodate me.
>
>What, specifically do you mean by this?  That you don't
>enjoy yourself at a gay bar?  In soc.motss?  At a gay
>mens chorus concert?  That you won't feel part of the
>crowd until you, too, can compare Libby Holman's
>blasting vaudevillean rendition of "Moanin' Low"
>with Lena Horne's softer, Ethel-Waters-inspired version recorded
>15 years later.  (I have it on a 78 -- has it been
>reissued?  Arne?)

Heh.  Enjoy myself, yes I do indeed!  If I tried to make any of these
into the idealistic "home" I dithered about before, I would have
problems.

>>That should
>>have been more obvious.  I realized this some time ago, but
>>tried to deny it in the hopes of finding something more akin
>>to middle ground.
>
>A middle ground?  Tim, you have friends and fans and enemies
>and e-pals.  You have a girlfriend and boys you've slept
>with.  You have a name and an identity in a campus community.
>Someday you may even have a beard.  Why concern yourself
>with grounds, high, low or middle?  It doesn't seem to
>be a useful construct for you here.

I think not.  My anxiety stems from having assumed for so long that it
WOULD be useful.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "Bisexual just means you pay for it."
\  / twpierce@amherst.edu      /  
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /   -- Rock Hudson
Newsgroups: soc.motss