Tuesday, February 19, 2008

LAST WEEKEND...

Aside from finishing off the leftovers and watching a bona-fide beautiful, if tragic, love-story, the Goat and I also managed to lock horns on some of our standard topics. He went so far to say that I was parroting the views of the straight world to him.

I did not take this gently.

Since when was there a single straight and a single gay opinion? And when did it become a requirement of gayness to believe everything every other gay person thinks? Talk about the Borg Collective...

He then trotted out his tried-and-true opinion that, once I have finished coming out, I will come around to his point of view. I was [and am] perfectly willing to admit that in a year or two I may have completely changed my mind, but I don't want to be told what I will think. I am completely allergic to being told what I think, in any tense, especially if it comes wrapped up in my oldest brother's lead-in, "Well, if you say that, you must think X," where "X" is never anything I would have said or do in fact think.

Ask
me what I think, don't tell me.

So, there I was, in high dudgeon, telling him that in spite of a number of remarkable similarities, our lives were not the same, and that his insistence I would in time come to the same conclusions from my own experience that he had drawn from his, in the face of my insistence that my experience led me to completely different conclusions, drove me nuts. And, furthermore, I did not believe that we are determined by our society or our family, or even our own decisions in life, having thrown over the traces of most of them at some point, and most recently having thrown all of them over. But it was largely a waste of breath.

I don't believe in determinism except as dead-weight we are all called to slough off to live in the real world. I am willing to admit that most of us initially line up as we are told to, but I believe that sooner or later, most of us express who we really are, one way or another. And it is never a one-way street: I see no reason why I should, having shaken off shackles I imposed on myself of my own free will, put on another set of politically correct shackles from some other source... To hell with it.

As I said to the Goat: you don't love me for my opinions, and I don't love you for yours. That does make life more difficult than it sometimes appears, but in my experience where two people are constantly of one opinion, one of them is keeping a lot of "stuff" underwraps. I am also convinced that sooner or later it will come out from under, either slowly or all at once with a bang.

We just have to deal with the hand life deals us, and that means that for the moment we are stuck with each other the way we are. He seemed OK with that. It is actually quite striking, considering how long it took him to get around to the "L" word, how often he now reminds me that he loves me. Rather more than the other way around, which makes for a nice change.

But then, I am also always telling him he shouldn't go fishing for compliments; they are worth so much more if they come of their own free will...

Just because I love him doesn't mean I'm any less covered with spikes and spines...

Hang in there, all.
C

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