(Gay) Pride (still) Breathing New Life into Old Ways

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

[Update June 4th 2017]While our thoughts and hearts go out to all those affected by last night's terror attack in London, we are also reminded not to let anyone attempt to pull our strings, neither terrorists nor bigots. In a free world, no one wears strings. If we allow others to influence us, on our own heads be it. We need to be aware, though, that there are those who see influence as power and power, as we all know, is easily abused.] RT

Regular readers will know that I did not come out to the world (only a select few) until my late 30’s, not least for having been raised in a gay-unfriendly home and school environment.

A boy at my school who had been surrendering to a desire to kiss other boys, albeit on the cheek, was made to undergo electric shock treatment to ‘cure’ him of any ‘homosexual tendencies’’ this, alone, was enough to keep me in the closet! Among crowds, I felt like a ghost, walking unseen with an increasing sense of other ‘ghosts’ all around me. They visited me in my dreams, these ghosts, and I sought them out in my spare time, discovering old haunts where we would meet and comfort each other emotionally and sexually. In this way I discovered how to ‘cruise’ along with the best.

It took a bad nervous breakdown in my late 30’s to (eventually) remove the blinkers I had been made to wear all life and get real about my sexuality.

Gay-unfriendly legislation in some parts of the world and various socio-cultural-religious obsessions a with the heterosexual ethos means that there will probably always be closet ghosts: I sense them wherever I go, make eye contact with some and we exchange signals of recognition and wishful thinking, much the same as men and women do when attracted to each other, albeit  invariably but passing glances because, once out, no gay man or woman wants to share their life with some ghost in a closet; been there, done that, got the emotiona scars to prove it.

In my 70’s now, I still walk with ghosts, but none of the closet variety; any hauntings now are of an inspirational nature, voices in my ear across centuries of their being abused and misunderstood simply because the less initiated prefer to home in on one aspect of a person’s identity - his or her sexuality - failing altogether to appreciate the whole person. Words of wisdom in my ear, indeed, prompting me to look the world in the eye, unashamedly gay, and that’s my business, no one else’s; not an employer’s and certainly not a cleric’s. (The prevailing notion in some circles that being gay effectively undermines our ability to do a good job or any - related or unrelated - sense of spirituality is absurd; it always was, of course, but especially in a so-called ‘progressive’ twenty-first century.

Thanks to successive pioneers determined to give gay men and women a voice, G-A-Y can take its cue from O-U-T, refuse to be cowed by divided societies worldwide and feel proud to keep company with all gay-friendly souls...past, present and future.

Common humanity will yet get the better of socio-cultural-religious bigotry. 

(GAY) PRIDE (STILL) BREATHING NEW LIFE INTO OLD WAYS

Walking out

where few had walked before,

talking with those

with whom few had talked before,

sharing secrets

few ever get to share in a lifetime

of repression

Treading dreams

where many had dreamed before,

fed nightmares

no psychiatrist ever quite understood

because they know

only the theory, nothing of living

in fear of shadows

Ghost, a scrapbook

of would-be memories, fictions

I’ve sought to act out

in closets with doors I’d leave ajar

for light enough

to read minds by, assess potential

friends and enemies

Loneliness,

gamut run, nor safety in numbers

or (quite) free to talk

as we walk (as we do anyway) given 

public opinion

inclined to portray the same profile

hanging us out to dry

Returning

to places that defy any returning,

in memory

of exorcising demons once hell bent

on destroying me,

but I resisted, fought back, live

to tell the tale

Copyright R. N. Taber 2017