THE DARK BEFORE THE DAWN...

My wife and I had a long talk last night, covering a lot of ground, and moving forward an inch or two. I have tried to make clear that I have reached the point where a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind" no longer would hold me back from going public. It was come out or break down. And I've been in the break-down lane before; in fact, I think that what is driving me to the brink this time is the ten to twelve years' silence to maintain the peace.

After a decade on Amitriptyline, which saved my ass by letting me sleep through the night back in '96, I found that I was finding it harder and harder to get out of bed in the morning, and made a switch to Effexor. The trouble getting out of bed disappeared overnight, but I now wake up between 4 and 5:30 and don't go back to sleep, or not deeply. [It seemed like an improvement at first, but now I'm not so sure. Everything has its price...]

So there I was in the dark, not about to go to sleep, wondering about the bridge I might have to cross. I have considered various scenarios at arm's length, but this morning it suddenly hit me that there was actually no way I could afford to move out even if I wanted to: the psychic devastation would in all likelihood be matched or trumped by economic devastation. I work free-lance, and have been getting fewer and nastier offers over the last few years, as though my hitting 50 had set off some sort of alarm bell in "the business". We have enough saved to retire on, but probably not separately, and how we would ever manage to run two establishments until we can afford to retire is beyond me. So the choices were:
"moving out" within the house, which would be complicated but possible, or
selling the house.
At least one of our children would be tempted to kill us if we sold the house -- nothing is ever meant to change, from her point of view, which could make this summer interesting. My wife feels that coming out to the children is a big mistake, but I don't see how I can come out at all without coming out to them... I think we are at the beginning of a VERY long road here. Well, we have till the 4th of July, when she and the kids come home to roost again [I am alone for May and June]. I came downstairs at 5:30.

After I had made coffee, read the paper, done the jumble and the cryptoquip and checked the "Help Wanted" ads, she came downstairs, and our conversation continued in a perfectly friendly manner. In case anyone is keeping track, I am awarding her any number of gold stars for calm and openness above and beyond the call of duty. After a while her feet got cold and we went back upstairs where they could get under feathers --- and between knees. And we talked about what had upset her about the links I sent her [Drew and Bear], and I tried to make clear that I had not crossed the bridge that Out at 48 had, that I had no intention of crossing that bridge, but that I had no way of knowing whether this was not just one more layer of self-delusion. [see "Fool's Paradise", below.]

And in my drive for honesty, I began to wonder whether I had not crossed a bridge after all. Because while my marriage vows remain the words I live by, it had begun to strike me as odd that the words of the traditional service contained the words "forsaking all others", in a way admitting that there would be others. My wife found that a little over the top -- surely the meaning was "forsaking all others from now on" but I wasn't not so sure. [I'm still not.] In any case, I found myself thinking that I was no longer sure I could say "no" if someone I loved asked me to accompany him across a bridge. I was busy trying to formulate this in a non-threatening way [good luck] when I realized that this was in fact no "bridge" at all; even during the period when I was absolutely sure that I had "laid aside" my gay self, my greatest fear was that I would be unable to resist temptation if it came robed in affection. The focus of that fear shifted over the years, and was probably crazy anyway, as all the men I have had crushes on were unrelievedly and relentlessly straight. But the misunderstandings continue unabated. We pass like ships in the night sometimes; it is partly my reliance on a care with words that approaches code, and partly her ability to not hear what I say, but rather what she wants/fears to hear.

Back in 1993-4, when Tom of Finland finally raised his ugly head for good, I came to the conclusion that I needed to know more about I had in common with the leather community, and what set me apart [if anything]. I had a visceral distaste for the role-playing aspect of it, as well as some of its themes [more later] but there was obviously something there that plugged directly into my wiring and threw a Great Big Switch. So my mantra became "No More Fool's Paradise". By which I meant "no more settling for comforting illusions or partial truths"; getting this to be more than a solo effort has been an uphill battle, and in one of our many talks in the last week or so, I mentioned this mantra and laid out its meaning for me. And it turned out that for years she had assumed that it was a denigrating reference to my affection for/attraction to her. Sometimes I wonder if I can talk at all, given my track record at getting across what I mean.

Well, that is once again enough for one evening.