MIRROR IMAGES II

I was at first a little puzzled by your reactions, gentlemen. Then I went back and actually READ what I had posted, which had some rather undigested thoughts in it. I have "corrected" them to reflect something resembling reality, but being an idiot, did not save the original post so I now have NO IDEA what I said. [sigh] As I have said elsewhere in cyberspace:

What hit me like an electrically charged custard pie when I read Cal's post was that, without even knowing it, I had apparently been looking for the possibility of something, more to the point of someone, as valuable and rare as the woman I love, but with a lower voice and a different distribution of hair and body fat. I really had no idea. The idea came as a shock, but it explained a lot. Somewhere deep down, I was looking for some one person who combined all the elements I have in marriage and long for beyond it in one person, thus neatly ending the division that currently pitts the halves of me against each other.

In my situation (and possibly yours) there is 'no place to go.' We are looking into utter darkness and completely unknown territory. Terra incognita. And for me that is terrifying. Terrifying!

That is what my wife and I talk about all the time. She seems to think that by saying that she could not stay married if I came out, she not only made the decision mine -- but that the abyss I was looking into as a result would stop me. It's not so easy as that; in an almost perverse way, considering what it is at stake, the more it costs to leave, the greater clarity I receive about the actual possibility of leaving. The cost might deter the coward I have ALWAYS been; but it is only a risk to a man willing to take a free step -- and above all I long to take a free step. Well, as I said to Flip, I AM FIRE.

My position still is that I will move heaven and earth to live up to my vows if I can only stop "lying". That is a condition we are still negotiating, or rather WILL be negotiating once my wife comes back from her months away. She has certainly settled down with the idea of my being in part gay to the point where she has started asking me specific questions about who I'm attracted to and why, though I imagine she doesn't like the answers much...

The point of my post [Mirror Images: both looking for a guy just like the gal that married me -- me being "Dear Old Dad" in this case -- AND the fact that Cal and I were up to the same thing] which I thought was clear, and obviously wasn't, was that it had never occurred to me WHY I fell so hard. It didn't mean that I was confusing reality with the obviously partial view of a blogger's revelations... It was just that the power of it was subterranean and far greater than I coud have imagined -- after all, it tapped into the One Great Thing I have known so far. Recognizing that should protect me, but of course I could fall again. One of the things I have discovered in the whole process of coming unhinged [oh, Those Bad Drugs] was that my Inner Girl was a beast of enormous size, and that she could fall for a guy as utterly and hopelessly as any girl REALLY in the fifth grade... My IG is sure to remain a constant threat, but now that I have her number, I hope to be able to keep one eye out for the raising of her ugly [?] head. I think that I can thank my Lord [and Flip's HP] that I fell, and saw myself fall, without actually driving out to a motel and doing the deed. You know that I don't make a moral distinction as far as my state is concerned, but it obviously affects others a lot less if my sin stays "onboard" [between my ears where my entire “gay” life since 1974 has taken place, and where it does, if not the most good, at least the least harm]. That way it doesn't wander about the countryside causing other people I love to suffer; and that in particular is something I am not ready for it to do any more of than it already is, just by my wanting to "come out", even without necessarily acting on it...

Mirror images are reflections, not realities. Flip, it's true that I have never seen Piggo, and it's a safe bet that if I haven't slept with any man in 30 years, I haven't slept with him in particular. There are really two completely separate issues here, one of which you sort of raise, or which I bend my way to raise myself: can I actually go back to gay sex? [which, to be perfectly frank, drove me wild with desire but never really satisfied me. That's a pretty big one. And, uh, what do I do if the answer turns out to be no?] You will forgive me if I feel that trumps whether or not my desire/feelings would survive what I call the "Gym Sock Syndrome", so as not to have to go into any details about night-farting or anything else...

The other one is what is really at the basis of my distress, and led to the single most wounding thing I have said to my wife in the whole process. I think it is something the rest of us are wrestling with here, as well, if I am reading the tea-leaves right: do I/we want to be free to love a man if I find one worth falling for? It is a wrestling match on a more profoundly disturbing level than whether or not I want to @#$%& somebody. Honesty [that old word again!] compels me to admit that while sex is wonderful, even here and now, the real issue is love, and that is a MUCH messier question, as anyone in relationship, let alone married, could tell you. [Leave Piggo out of this for the moment.] It makes all the other issues much thornier for our wives and ourselves, if we are honest. I think if it were as simple as a choice between gay sex and straight love, whichever way the chips fell we would find a way to DECIDE. But it is not, as most of life in fact is not, that simple.

Now, as to the One I Called Piggo. It's true that I have never seen Piggo, and I have to admit that I did a very good imitation of a twelve-year old girl for a while. But I can still quote Bock and Harnick with a nearly straight face:

I don't know his name or what he looks like,
But I have a much more certain guide,
I can tell exactly what he looks like inside.

When I undertook this correspondence,
Little did I know I'd grow so fond,
Little did I know our views would so correspond.

He writes me what his feelings are,
On Shaw, Flaubert, Chopin, Renoir,
The more I read, the more I find we're one in mind and heart.

I would not assume that our brief correspondence puts me even in anything like Amalia Balash's league at this point [after all, we never got as far as "Shaw, Flaubert, Chopin, Renoir"] and I am only too well aware, after 25 years in the theater, that musical theater is classed under "Fiction" for a reason. [And not just because all the endings are happy; theater people, a notoriously squalid tribe in real life, usually portray themselves as so relentlessly happy that it puts my teeth seriously on edge.]

I would be an idiot, Joe, to suppose that I "knew" you or anyone else with whom I coexisted from the neck up, but I think that I am aware of that, if not completely or always, then on some dependable level, most of the time. However, the fact remains that all of us in this little corner of the web know each other better than many of the people we talk to in the flesh, if only because we have a pretty deep emotional experience in common, in spite of all the carefully choreographed veils. The details are all different -- why else would ALL OF US be blogging, after all? -- but we know the promises and compromises we have made; on some level, we know the shock of the denied reality rising up to bite us in the ass [sorry, it's a phrase I use]; and we all struggle with issues of loyalty and fidelity, which are clearly presented by our collective stories as not QUITE the same thing.

Add to the mix the undeniable overlap of religion in many of our lives. [How much more likely are religious people to take the step, to make the "mistake", we have made? My guess is: a lot.] Suddenly you are looking at a lot of ties, whether or not they in fact are or ever can be binding. Without a name and an address, what is binding? I suppose that, given a choice, I would not have chosen to have my Inner Girl's Pre-teen Crush publicly identified -- or I might have expressed myself A LEETLE more guardedly along the way. I cannot say I know him well, but I would say nevertheless that he is a terrible tease as well as a man of principle, a very dangerous combo for some of us; and of course I can't help looking for that old convex/concave thing -- if the wolf calls to the lamb, the lamb has to live in hope that the wolf hears him bleating in turn. I will leave to wiser heads than mine for the moment, who is wearing which pelt, or even whether there is more than one of us playing the game. Was I rushing toward myself in the mirror? Well, that brings us full circle to Mirror Images, and there I just have to stop.

For those of you who celebrate it, Happy Easter.
And for those of you to whom that does not speak,
let me just say that what we proclaim is this:
Death is never the end of the life of the spirit,
but always carries within it the possibility of new, unheard-of life.

If I didn't believe that, I would have no hope for myself and those I love.
Please stay with me.
And pray for me.