Eyes Wide Shut OR Stereotypes, Identity Fraud

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R._N._Taber

For those readers whose feedback suggests they feel it is 'inappropriate' for me to be carrying over some poems from one blog to the other, I am working on a new poem for this blog and a new poem for my gay-interest blog appears there today. Feedback also suggests that some previously less than gay-friendly readers have started to dip into the latter now and then; while the jury appears to be out on any verdict, it has to be better than any rushing to judgement...doesn't it?

Today's pom first appeared on my gay-interest blog in 2014.

Now, it took me years to shrug off the worst stereotypes (still) perpetuated by the less enlightened among the heterosexual majority.

One day, a straight friend accompanied me to a gay bar because he ‘wanted to understand gay people’. Later, I asked him what he had learned. He shook his head and replied,’ What can I learn from a bunch of clones?’

I was angry and upset, but began to wonder if I wasn’t - at least in part - replacing one set of stereotypes with another…?

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the argument, I began to realise that I was not (as I’d thought) reasserting my personal identity, but going along with a social identity that threatened to take away the personal freedom I had longed for after years of growing up in a gay-unfriendly environment. Sexual expression is only a part of who we are, and I was risking the rest of me.

Now, I am not knocking the Gay Scene; it gave me some good times, none of which I regret. At the same time, it was a learning curve for me, and in the end I turned to it less and less. I am a gay man, yes, but I do not need to make a public statement about it; at heart, I am just an everyday Joe who also happens to be gay and people (gay and straight alike, whatever their socio-cultural-religious persuasion) are as free to accept me or reject me as I am free to accept or reject them. In recent years, no small number of gay men and women have expressed much the same sentiment.

Life is about being who not what we are. We cannot expect everyone to accept or even like us any more than anyone can or should expect others to accept or even like them simply because of what or whom they represent. We can, though, respect others for who and what they are and for whom and what they represent. We should be celebrating a diverse human nature that brings a whole spectrum of personalities, ideas and passions to the global stage, not attacking any with which we may take issue for whatever social, cultural or religious based reasons.

Well, shouldn't we, and if not, I suggest we need to ask ourselves why not, and on a global conscience be it.

EYES WIDE SHUT or STEREOTYPES, IDENTITY FRAUD

I met a (very) ugly man

in a trendy gay bar, and confess

I wondered what on earth

he thought he was doing there,

but we got chatting,

and after a while I realised

he had a lovely smile,

his voice (a dreamy lilt)

returning me to days long before

I lost faith in love songs

He offered a firm hand

and told me his name, his touch

sending electric shocks

through me as (shyly) I gave mine;

his conversation was fun,

no dull small talk or the usual

chat-up lines although…

he grinned (winking) as he asked

if I’d care to come back to his place

for a coffee, or whatever

Later, sex as pure art form

filling my sad self with a passion

I’d never known before,

this ugly-beautiful man I met

in a trendy gay bar,

sense and sensibility colluding

with feisty frog-princes,

re-working happy endings,

and reminding me why I so missed

listening to love songs

Eyes wide open closed all self-programs,

and ran a virus check for malware

Copyright R. N. Taber 2002; 2014

[Note: An earlier version of this poem appears in First Person Plural by R. N. Taber, Assembly Books, 2002.]