When I was in relationships, i had them with older men. a freudian would say that i was replacing an absent father, and maybe there was. how did I see myself ? I saw myself as a boy, who looked up at those who chose to love him and marvelled. I was a bottom. Not a physical bottom, but a psychological one.

I remember Edmund who sent white flowers to school on valentines, calla lilies, orchids, tulips (that slender small miracle of tulips in February, and slick greenery. That evening, as I walked off a bus, i was attacked. Blood commingled with snow and flowers, it hurt, but it was cinematic, and he was prone to large gestures. I was then a set piece, one who followed cues well.

I remember Kevin, who seduced me when he was on a missionary. There was a long slow seduction that I thought was religious, and then sexual and now i realize is both. He was sent back home to California after he begged the stake president and jesus to forgive him. I didn't realize what needed to be shameful, or forgiven. I got church court and excommunication. He has three kids and a house in Clovis, a suburb of Fresno. I was the acolyte, and the priest betrayed me.

I remember Adam. Who I was going to marry in a big pink tent, with John Coltrane as the music to go down the aisle to and the Magnetic Fields as our anthem of retreat. I loved his gentle, casual care. He would leave cinnamon buns on the counter in the morning after our encounters. He would hold my hand at lunch and put my foot on his foot at supper. He was tall, and I was not scared in his shadow. His presence became my refuge, until he left. I was the patsy there, playing house and thinking i was doing my duty as loyal wife.

Men leave. They are not to be trusted. They are silly, over obvious, take the safe root, promise to protect you and then do not. They are brutish, sometimes. But then I am at fault here, with my desire to be protected instead of loved. Two halves of the same whole never seems to happen, and the system of balance tilts to those who want power more. These are the relationships that lasted past the night or were somewhat more advanced then the adolescent fumblings of boarding schools at 13 and hospitals at 14. These were my proof that I was queer, that it was not theory and abstraction but a devoted practice, which had few rewards. Theory is safer. Foccualt is dead, he can never really hurt me.






I am queer. I am Catholic. I love men. I love Jesus. I arrived at these thoughts very early, just as i was becoming isolated from the Latter Day Saints. People do not understand, as a general rule. They wish I wasn't, and some days I agree with them.

I am celibate now, have been for a year and a half. I did so because I wanted to be a priest, and wanted to prove that I could do it. I did it cause i was not sure that I was happy looking for a relationship and I needed a break. I did it because I wanted to make sure I knew what love was before I climbed on board with the whole thing. I did it because I was becoming a cynic, and I thought that not thinking about it would make me happier. I never was truly celibate, desire that was supposed to drop away like leaves of a maple stayed forever. I can never avoid desire, and am no longer sure that I want to deny it or even re-channel it.

I wonder what Christ would say now about the issue. I wish that I did not have to pick through the bible looking for verses that i can use as narrow claims for a liberating agenda. Sometimes I think that the celibacy came because I internalized the homophobia of the church and bought into the idea that I am objectively disordered and that I could not have sex. There is a documentary called Trembling Before G-d about queer orthodox and Hasidic jews, which just won a few GLAAD awards. There was someone who said there "I am gay, that is what God made me, I cannot practice it, though. He did not make that mistake" (I am paraphrasing it) Conservative Christians who like to pretend compassion call it my Cross to bear. I think that Sex is a gift, but gifts need to be used, and I am not sure that by denying his gift I am showing proper thanks.

It is not the sex i mix, even now masturbation seems obligatory, something to do to relive anxiety or boredom or to go to sleep. An ineffective and inexpensive substitute for gin. It is the sense of communion, the resting my head in the clavicle of a lover, hearing his breathing and coming into an awareness that this is among the voices of God. I think also of my queer brothers as priests and queer sisters as nuns. Do they think of these issues or are they closeted to the point of denial ?

There is a cruel binary at work here. There are two options, marriage or priestly orders. We are not allowed to be fully and honestly either. So what do I do, continue in this romanticized ideal sexuality, away from the compilations, beg forgiveness and pretend my agitation means nothing.

I know that the Spirit does not mean the Church, I know that spirituality is different from religion, but at the end of the day who I cast my spiritual lot with was the Mother Church. They have grips on my soul, and they are making it very difficult to move. Even the loopholes feel like hangman's nooses.


What vision of myself ? There are a few of them. There is the one terrified of the wrath of God. There is the one who wants love. There is the one who would be satisfied by touch, and the one who wants just sex. There is the one who wants to be the bridegroom of Christ and the one who never wants to see Christ again. There is the one who wants to be Alexander to the Vaticans Gordian knot. There is the scared and obedient little boy. There is the one who capitulates to authority and the one who engages in punk nihilism for the hell of it.

I can best live out the vision of Gods wrath by being aware of it. God may be love, but it is the love of profound disappointment. To obey the rules but avoid legalism is the best way to do this but that requires knowing what exactly the source of the universe thinks about things. There are two commandments that Christ gives, to love god and love your fellow man. But that deals with the implications of agape not eros.

I can best live out the desire for love by loving myself. Cliched I know and rather an obvious cliche at, but its a difficult task for me, as my life seems to be a series of banal failures.

Within Christianity touch is easy to come by, if i bother showing up to mass, then the passing of the peace does wonders. But sex is another matter altogether. From Paul onward, Christianity has enough problems with simple sex between husband and wife, trying to view queer sex as sacred seems an impossibility. Maybe I could use Daoism or Hinduism but respect can turn into idolatry, which can turn into adultery. Christ requires monogamy.

There were nuns who wore wedding rings, and there were nuns who had orgasms thanks to the Lord's hand. I want both. Maybe I do in other ways, but it's easier to make a man a husband when he doesn't have to worry about the dishes or putting the toilet seat down. Having Christ as a husband is ideal, and ideal is not where the world runs.

Never wanting to see Christ again is bitterness and despair, both of which are mortal sins. Tell this to the priest and its worth a fair penance. Maybe thats enough ?

They would have to let me in to cut the knot, and they are not going to do that anytime soon. I become tired of beaurocracy quickly, and the exhaustion may suggest a break and then another go. I do not know in what forms this break would take.

Being a scared and obedient boy does not happen very often, and really it is a good thing in many ways, keeping me humble and keeping me aware of the awesome power of both God and his servants. Sometimes it changes over quickly, and I become the disobedient boy not being nice and making sure to point out that the pope is naked. This is when the punk nihilism comes in, it is refreshing to say "sod off" sometimes, refreshing and nessecary.
I think that marriage is about property and propriety, what is expected by lovers instead of any of the other options. I think that the possibility of gay marriage is heteronormative, a way to usurp the subversive powers of being a sexual others. I do not want our culture to be destroyed in a clambering attempt to be exactly like man and wife.

If human sexual practice is a buffet, then maybe marriage should be an item in it, something you can take or leave depending on preference or taste. Maybe if you are raising children it is more stable. Germaine Greer said this about love though: "Love, love, love -- all the wretched cant of it, masking egotism, lust, masochism, fantasy under a mythology of sentimental postures, a welter of self-induced miseries and joys, blinding and masking the essential personalities in the frozen gestures of courtship, in the kissing and the dating and the desire, the compliments and the quarrels which vivify its barrenness" and i think it applies to marriage. I think of how trapped Betty Friedan felt, and how my grandmother had to go back to school to avoid killing my grandfather. I realized how my mother tried to escape and never did. I remember generations of women who stayed together for the kids, and what special kind of heartbreak that must of been, the emotional equivalent of a backroom abortion.

This might be bitterness on my part though. My friends leave into a hermetic bubble after they get married and I lose them forever: Thomas and Mindy got married and I have not talked to them in months; the same applies to Tara and James, Erin and Garrett, and others. But thats not a marriage thing. My best friend Glenys fell in love with a wonderful girl, and now i talk to her once a month rather then once a week. I do not want to lose the community that i have pushed forward. But they seem happy and content and wonderfully together. It might last a life time, and that must be something to look forward to.

Maybe instead of theory, there is something else. I think one of the reasons I hate marriage is that I view myself too difficult to be a good catch, that no one would love me in a way that could be forever. The Mormons have a hymn that goes"families can stay together forever, according to Heavenly Fathers plan" and I remember talking to a church youth meeting just before I left the church, and I said the line "Some families cannot be together forever, mine for example"

So I don't know, my ideas about marriage is somewhere between being a hurt child of divorce, a profound series of loneliness, a theoretical understanding of heterosexuality, an isolation from the way the rest of the way the universe works and a cynical bitterness.