From: amz@iguana.cis.ohio-state.edu (Arnold M Zwicky)
Subject: *drama* in relationships
Followup-To: soc.motss
Summary: selective attention
Organization: earnestly practicing faggots (and osu, stanford,...)
Date: Mon, 31 Aug 1992 03:29:40 GMT

back when donohue had this program on bisexuality - i mentioned this
in parentheses at the end of of "sex scene for old lovers" - there was
this woman in the audience going on about how all the gay male couples
she knew were just into such *drama* in their relationships, and why
was this, what was it about gay men that made them so *extreme* in
their partnerships.

i thought about this, and told jacques about it, and we stared
uncomprehendingly at one another.  DRAMA, we said...DRAMA; leave it to
straight people to run off the scale and make their lives into opera.
or so we said to one another.

this woman was seeing what she was looking for, we thought, attending
selectively to a few cases that conformed to her idea of faggots
in love.  now our experience...

we are just shoulder-deep in the soap operas of our straight friends -
colleagues, dear friends from college, my *students*, for goodness
sake, our parents - and they are unimaginably complex and full of
drama.  j and i spend hours on the phone every week soothing these
people, telling them to listen to their partners but not to sign
anything they haven't read through carefully, advising them to respect
themselves.  we write them encouraging letters, trying not to take
sides in vicious pitched battles.  there are desperate phone calls
from budapest - i am not making this up - and no end of electronic and
postal conversation about apparently hopeless arrangements involving
four to six adults, and even more kids, in various overlapping,
intermixed, but not fully congruent, families.

all these people want some clean clear *pairing*, if possible
for life.  they have trouble dealing with unclear edges, multiple
commitments.

"STRAIGHT PEOPLE LEAD SUCH *COMPLEX* LIVES", in the words of a dear
(gay) friend [who i am not crediting only because i'm not sure he
wants this sort of electronic fame].  this after several of those
phone calls from budapest to california.

so on friday j and i went to a potluck dinner to welcome a friend back
from a couple of weeks' vacation in europe.  there we discover some
shape-note singers, some country-dance people, some assorted gay men -
including our friend's former gay lover and *his* current gay lover.
a great mix of the sexes, sexualities, and ages (20s through 60s).  we
view photographs of the trip, which show dino, *my* sometime lover,
cycling around switzerland with our friend, and everyone exclaims to
see dino again in photos, and unconcernedly talks to me - and jacques
- about dino, and everybody feels warm and happy, and we eat a lot and
then sing.

everyone knows that some of us seriously love several of the rest
of us.  this is no big thing.  (maybe it's not perfect, but it's
ok.)

yes, i know one gay male couple in pretty much constant emotional
crisis, but even this is not really in public.  (ok, maybe two dyke
couples, but they are even more discreet.)  it is not 10 to 1 in the
crazy-love love statistics for straight vs. gay, in my experience.
more like 100 to 1.  straight people produce interesting stuff, honey,
but it's really wearing.  easier being queer...

arnold (just half an hour ago i talked to jacques about
  how dino tweaked my nipples and got this *great* reaction from me,
  and j said he wasn't interested in doing that so i'd have to
  find that sensation away from home, but he stroked my nipples
  gently and made me crazy anyway, and i said i would probably
  find those sensations away from home (j smiled) but that i had no
  trouble finding things i liked at home ('cause i like an awful
  lot of stuff), and we laughed and complimented one another and
  kissed, deeply, a lot, and both of us got terrifically hard 
  while i sat on the bed next to j, and then he started to fall 
  asleep, so i kissed his eyelids and we made an assignation
  for 6:30 in the morning, when i'll be pressed up against him
  anyway)




Newsgroups: soc.motss,talk.politics.misc,ca.politics