Having Choices

Posted on September 9, 2002 in Sexuality

Red Water Lily wrote an impassioned article about her feelings upon discovering the dyke-born-dykes webring. This is one of those groups for women who “always knew they were lesbians” and acted upon it. Red took offense at their haughty if veiled dismissal of women who came out after leading an active heterosexual life style for some years. “You had your choice, now we have ours”, they sniffed.

I wrote in reply:

I recently had a conversation with a forty year old friend who was worried because she felt her lesbian credentials were threatened by the fact that she was becoming attracted to a man and liked it. I told her that in no way did these feelings negate her positive experiences with women. Even if she went straight for the rest of her life, these loves she’d had for her own would remain with her and she could cherish them. I actually used the example of women who went your way in life to comfort her.

It’s not really about being straight or homosexual, it’s about being a human being. That’s what both rabid heteros and rabid homos both miss. I prize you, my dear friend, because you are human first. When you speak, I hear another human being, a Buddha struggling to be. If you base all your friendships on this simple fact, I don’t think you will go wrong.

Red’s actually touched on one of those vague life issues that I’ve been trying to put into words for a long time. It’s root is anger and I have found that when I get into scrawling about rancorous things, I begin to lose the sense of clarity I need to write. The keyboard doesn’t freeze up: it keeps going, paving blind alleys and cul de sacs in my reasoning. How do I explain, for example, why, when thwarted in my desire to study English Literature, I ended up as an Anthropology major? It seems to make no sense who have mapped out their lives along certain avenues, but you must take my word that events transpired in such a way that this was the path that was allowed me by my father. My mother emphasizes that I had a choice, but in retrospect, I know that my choices were blocked by expectations, ignorance, and fears. Combine this with the mental illness I now know I had and you can begin to perceive the perverse picture. A sick mind responding to a dysfunctional family does the queerest of things is the only way I can summarize it.

I actually experimented with homosexuality before heterosexuality. What I discovered is that I don’t like the way men dominate relationships and turn you into a sex object. Some gays I have met have tried to persuade me that I really was one of them, but the truth is, I am perfectly happy being asexual in the absence of a decent female partner. My wife is beautiful to me. I love her for her mind and for her form. I honestly have to wonder if I prefer women mostly for the fact that I can be a dominant partner. I don’t think so, but I see occasional signs of my own manliness coming out. (I started writing “manliness” as “man-ness” to sound more like “madness”.) I boss Lynn around, ask her to bring things. She complies, but I realize that for her it’s not an act of submission but of true charity towards the sick dope she has chosen to live her life with.

How did I come to be this whimpering tough guy? Right now, I think it’s probably better to think about how I might change. To explain why I am the kind of husband I am is to make excuses. It’s enough to remember that I can choose to change, just as I did a year ago when I was told that I have Type 2 diabetes. I sat myself down on the deck and made myself consider life and death. I concluded that I had no idea what death was all about, so I decided to keep alive as the only sure means I had of enjoying the pleasure of thinking. Every day is another opportunity to have those kinds of thoughts. The deck is still there and the cacti offer convenient metaphors upon which I might hang a truth like a shrike hangs a mouse on barbed wire.

I had my choices for a long time — about whether to seek help about my mental illness; whether to take medications for my condition; whether to date men or women; whether to learn about good nutrition and stick to a diet; whether to brush my teeth; whether to have children; whether to go back to school; whether to reach out to other writers, etc. Yea, I made choices, but having made them, does this means I cannot make new ones when I get more information that suggests to me a truer sense of my own person? Who said “We are what we are not yet“? Red Water now knows that she had been a lesbian all along. And, though I cannot see the truth as a glyph quite yet, I, too, am making strides towards identity. And I will keep doing so as long as I have a mind able to observe the habits of mind that carve shameful wrinkles in my conscience and consciousness.