Gay Issues | The Liberty Musings

RSS Feed

Twitter

Archive for the ‘Gay Issues’ Category

He’s a Survivor

February 13th, 2007

The J.P. Calderon we saw come out on ‘The Janice Dickinson Modeling Agency,’ and in the February issue of Instinct magazine, was a much different, humbler man than we saw on last season’s ‘Survivor.’ Is he hot? Hell yes! We saw that in every episode of ‘Survivor,’ but his adorableness wasn’t seen until he revealed his true self to us on Oxygen.

It’s not really a surprise that he’s gay, but what is a surprise is how some have been critical of his coming out. Okay, I’m the first to admit that I co-wrote the book on bitchy, opinionated queens, but everybody is different. Given the same circumstances, each person will deal differently. Should we not admire and respect those who have the balls to put themselves out there, opening themsevles up to the world rather than admonish them?

I suppose I have a lot in common with him and found his story to be very moving. He was clearly struggling with the decision that had to be made in an instant – whether to reinforce or shed the facade he had built up to protect himself. When you don’t like yourself, everything is augmented – how you think other people perceive you, how you interact with other people and basically obsessing over everything involved with interacting with others and the resolve to keep the walls up and the facade going of who you think others think you should be.

We all should have such courage and fortitude. WTG J.P., you d’man!

Posted in Celebrities, Gay Issues, TV Tales

No Comments »

When Did You Know?

November 19th, 2005

So Oprah just did a show today about when was the first you knew you were gay. I got thinking while watching and my story is very similar to her panel’s. I can’t pinpoint a precise moment, but I always knew I was different in some way.

When I was about 10, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ came on the scene. I was obsessed with Starbuck and the actor who played him, Dirk Benedict. He was so cool and so hot. I remember this one picture I had of him in his Colonial uniform and the way he was posed his package was really out there. I just adored the picture. I was so into him that when it came time for my confirmation and I had to choose a name, Benedict was one of the possibilities and chose it, and my mother let me. I suffered a lot of “Benedict Arnold” cracks from the other 4th graders, but the sisters seemed to think it a very good choice. How interesting it is today that the name was very well chosen in that St. Benedict is the patron saint of music, the arts, and philosophy – my huge topics of interest.

Then came the Duke boys. Through my early teens other boys had pictures and posters of Farrah Facet and Charlies Angles and such in their rooms, but on my door was an incredible poster of Bo and Luke Duke from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ with open shirts and chest hair showing and in tight jeans. ::SIGH:: All the other boys were into the show too, but they were more interested in Daisy and the car and such. But I think for me it was a cover. When we would role play though, I always ened up being Uncle Jesse. Come to think of it, I always ended up being the old fuddy duddy when we did role playing games.

I always seemed to be better friends with girls than with boys… could just never seem to relate somehow that was not explainable. My first sexual fantasies didn’t include girls, in fact at the time I didn’t even really know that that’s what they were. I found myself jerking off and thinking about other boys that I went to school with… not doing stuff to one another, but just seeing them, and maybe jerking off together.

The first time I heard the word “gay” was while watching an episode of ‘WKRP in Cincinnati.’ The word came up in an episode about a character that was a guest that week. My mom asked me if I knew what that word meant and I said no. She replied, “It means he like men.” I was like… oh… ok.

All through my teenage years and into my 20′s, I still did not think of myself as gay or even call myself gay. I tried to daydream about getting married and having kids and the perfect family life. I tried to start fantasizing about women when jerking off, but it seemed that there was always a guy in the scene that was playing out in my head and it was him that was getting me through it. For the longest time I tried to rationalize it by saying to myself that I grew up without a father, a brother who was absent, and no male friends from my mid teens into my twenties and that I just craved the male companionship and the because men always sexualized things, that made perfect sense to me. What hogwash.

Posted in Gay Issues

No Comments »

Doctor, Who?

September 19th, 2005

‘Doctor Who,’ a series about an eccentric alien who travels around the universe along with a myriad of companions in a time machine shaped like a British police telephone box debuted in Britain in 1963 and continued in regular production through into the early 90s. It was regular fare on PBS stations throughout the 80s. There was a U.S. movie version with series option produced for Fox in the late 90s but the Americanization of it tanked, unlike ‘Queer As Folk’ which attained huge success as an American adaptation. The show left British airwaves but continued in book and radio show forms. Last year, the BBC reinvented it as a splashy new Sci-Fi series relying heavily on the history and mythos of the legendary Timelord known as “The Doctor,” but less on the camp that the show was known for during the course of its run. From what I understand, its comeback and stronghold is akin to that of Sci-Fi Channel’s ‘Battlestar Galactica.’ Since the show has run for so long, a number of actors have played the title role over the years.

I met several of the actors from the show at conventions and recall one meeting vividly. I once saw Colin Baker (the sixth actor to play The Doctor) in a cabaret. I had an aisle seat and in part of the show he came in from the back and made his way down along the aisle bantering with other actors on the stage. Sitting in the row in front of me and a few seats in was a girl who was just obsessed with him. She had brought a red rose with her to give him and since he stopped to do his thing and sat down on the steps right next to me, she passed her rose to me to give him. I held it out, he looked at it but ignored it (well of course, he was performing). I was sort of glad. Even at 17 I felt that it was imposing of this girl to hand it over and expect someone else to hand it to him while he was performing. So I passed it back over to her. Shortly thereafter he was laughing in response to something from the stage and patted me on the shoulder and belly-laughed leaning into and on me. I was in heaven and thought I will never wash this shirt
again!

Anyway, just before he got up and moved on, there was something in his dialog with an actress on the stage that referred to someone being gay and he shouted back to her, “He was gay!” Now I wanted to sink into the floor. I was not out. I did not even admit to myself that I was gay at that point and… I was with my mother. At the end of the show when they all came out for a bow to a standing ovation, the girl threw the rose up on the stage. He ran over, picked it up and put it between his teeth and looked up at me with a big grin… now I really wanted to sink into the floor! And that was my close encounter with The Doctor!

Posted in Gay Issues, TV Tales

No Comments »

John-Paul Lavoisier in Hot Pursuit

September 3rd, 2005

I was at some kind of seminar, which is strange since I’ve never been to one and we all were sitting at desks. The guy in front of me was very chatty and kept turning around and talking like we were friends. I thought to myself this is the way people are and I will soon be out of here – not to worry. He became more and more intense and seemed to follow me around the seminar as we moved to doing different things. He looked like John-Paul Lavoisier (Rex from ‘One Life to Live’). I just wanted to get out of there and away from him and started packing my stuff up in my bag and I had forgotten something that looked like a big cell phone and tried to quickly recover it because I thought if he saw it he would know how to find me away from this place.

Then there was something on a dark highway where I felt he was following me there too. Then I was in a basement. It seemed like my brother’s, but darker. Then the dude just appeared there in the dim light and he was intense and I wanted to get away from him or make him go away. How could I explain him to the family?, is what I thought.

I was walking through my brother’s house to go to the kitchen from the basement for some reason. It was a combination of the old and new houses, but it was the new house and the hallway from the old house. It was all chopped up and stretched out and the lighting was eerie. Instead of ending up in the kitchen of the old house, I ended up in the sunroom of the new. On my way there I felt like I was being watched. The house was haunted and ghosts or something were all around, (always dream about the weird house and ghost thing) and so I felt uneasy. When I went in the room I was suddenly naked and the guy from the seminar was there, naked too. I had the feeling he’d been chasing me or following me through this whole dream. It was like It was like I was watching and participating at the same time. We both were hard and I knew he was going to have sex with me and I wanted him to. But then, all of sudden, it changed and I felt like he had been stalking me I was being forced and didn’t want him but I bent over anyway and as he started to penetrate me he collapsed back onto the floor. I panicked and saw and heard Emily and Elizabeth from ‘General Hospital’ coming from somewhere and I ran away out of the other door of the sunroom into an atrium and they didn’t see me as they sat on a bench and talked. I woke up and was late for work. I suppose I watch to much of ABC Daytime!

08.29 N.B. Had this dream last night and it troubles me. Not because of the ghosts and weird house – that is a recurring theme in many of my dreams. What troubled me is it’s the first time that I remember dreaming about being fucked and the fact that it started with me wanting him and changed to feeling like he was forcing me.

09.02 N.B. After thinking about this for awhile, as it still troubled me, I realized that yes he was definitely taking the lead and being very persistent, but it wasn’t that I didn’t want him or felt like he was forcing himself on me. It was more a fear of not wanting to do it for being discovered doing it and that’s why I wanted him to stop.

09.05 N.B. Still thinking about this… obsessing aren’t I? I think I’ve had a breakthrough. I don’t think it was John-Paul Lavoisier at all in the dream, more likely it was the boy who used to deliver our newspaper when I was teenager. I think his name was Alex and he was a year or two younger than me. Christ! Does that make me Brian Kinney if I can’t remember the name of a guy I almost had sex with? His look was the same as JPL — who is close to what he might look like today and so I may have been projecting. He could’ve been my first, we sort of played cat and mouse skirting around the issue, talking on the phone about what we would do, etc. But I was too much in denial, too scared and suddenly stopped it by telling him I was straight. He got mad, called me a faggot, and I never saw or heard from him again. He even stopped the paper route.

I haven’t thought about him a long time. I never really thought much about it other than childhood nonsense, but in retrospect I think he was very interested in me and he was probably scared too. I probably did hurt him a lot after weeks of cat and mouse and then suddenly telling him the big fat lie that I’m straight. It probably was the first time he put himself out there and I shot him down, coldly. For that, Alex, I’m so sorry. If I could do it over again, I wouldn’t have lied and backed out but would’ve gone on to see where it took us. As part of my coming out to myself and accepting being gay a few years ago, I made myself a promise that if asked, I would never lie about who I am. I don’t know if I can live up to it or not, but hope that I have the courage to.

Posted in Gay Issues, The Isle of Dreaming

No Comments »