drunk gay family values
2004-09-13 : 10:17 a.m.

"The moment we choose to love we begin to move toward freedom, to act in ways that liberate ourselves and others. That action is the testimony of love as the practice of freedom." �bell hooks

I met L, P, and C at the Eagle on Saturday night. Well, let me clarify. I met L and P there at about 11. C showed up about 45 minutes later, stinking drunk.

Now, I am a strong believer in the Roman adage in vino, veritas. I tend to think that how people act when drunk tells you something about what they�re really like, at the level of basic desires and instinctive responses. Also, since I don�t drink, I have extremely limited patience for the stupid crap that people try to write off with �I was sooooooo totally drunk, dewd!� Because hey, I wasn�t. And frankly, back in the day when I was pretty much drunk all the time, I still managed to behave in a mostly socially acceptable manner. I mean, sure, I�d sleep with pretty much anyone, and some people might �judge� that and call me a �slut�. I prefer to think of it as �erotic generosity�. But anyway, that�s another story.

So C stumbles in and is immediately hanging all over me, pulling me onto his lap, putting his hands in my pockets, and demanding that I kiss him about 16 times per minute. Now mind you, the place was packed, quite literally. I had people pressing in on me from all sides. Those of you who know me know that very crowded places are pretty much my least favorite places in the world. I hate feeling strangers bumping against me, and the feeling that I�m always in someone�s way makes me very uncomfortable. So, here I am, getting jostled from all sides, on the verge of a panic attack, but wanting to stay, to hang out with some friends who I truly love, trying to be a normal person (and hoping that practice makes perfect in that category). I�m trying to remember to breathe. I�m chain-smoking. And here comes Mr. Grabby-Pants. And all of the sudden, I�m being pulled off-balance every 3 minutes as he demands that I make out with him in public.

Eventually, he grabbed both of my arms really hard while trying to pull me onto his lap, and I got pissed off and jerked away from him. I hate being grabbed like that. I loath it. I would NEVER grab someone else like that. It�s the physical equivalent of saying �you�re my slab of meat,� and it�s just wrong.

Anyway, he got mad and stormed out to drunk-drive home. Yay.

I guess I was a little surprised how much all of this upset me. I like C a great deal. He�s funny, and kind, and sexy. And I know, people do get wasted on occasion. But I think what bothered me most wasn�t the drunken, stumbling asshole behavior. I think what really freaked me out what the fact that when he was toasted enough that his guard was down, he was more than comfortable treating me like his own personal slab o� meat. His mission for the night was to make me engage in massive, extended public displays of affection.

Now, C and I haven�t even been on a date, really. We messed around one night. We had sex another night. We�ve hung out with mutual friends. I like of liked the trajectory of things.

But check this out: fucking =/= owning. I�m nobody�s bitch. And even if we were dating, which we�re not, that doesn�t mean you get to ravish me in front of 500 strangers. I stopped having serious make-out sessions in bars about the time I stopped using cocaine.

The larger issue is this: I�ve been single for three weeks, after a year in a relationship that was pretty much miserable and suffocating for me. I like being single. I have some real questions about what seems to be a consensus among gay men: that what we all are looking for is a monogamously paired long-term relationship roughly (or precisely) equivalent to heterosexual marriage. That�s not my dream.

Why do gay men all seem to accept that the only possible forms of sexual relationships are �trick� and �husband�? One option preserves freedom, but is emotionally impoverished, a mercantile transaction of mutual use. The other, aside from being vanishingly rare among actual gay people (as opposed to the smarmy suburbagays you see in HRC ads), makes space for care and affection, but only by replicating heterosexual norms of ownership. It preserves love at the cost of freedom.

Why can we not collectively imagine a middle ground, a space big enough to contain both love and freedom, both the bonds of affection and the fire of eros? Why can we not touch each other out of love without demanding that we own each other?

�Everyone knows� that gay people all want long-term, stable relationships, right? That�s what everyone puts on his or her personal ad on gay.com. We�re all supposed to be pushing for marriage rights, etc. You listen to gay men, especially young gay men, talk about relationships, and you hear a lot of extremely prudish cant about slutty fags who give us all a bad name. All these young New Victorians want something better, or so they imagine: a husband, a tasteful home, and two BMWs in the driveway.

And yet. . . the bars and clubs are packed at 2AM. A lot of people are leaving together. The bathhouses draw huge crowds all weekend. I can only imagine what portion of Internet traffic is driven by �hook-ups�. Gay men have a lot of sex. It�s just that we�ve all decided to deny it. You�re not supposed to talk to tricks, you keep it nice and simple. You don�t get too friendly with trade. You don�t fuck your friends. And it�s all just an interim measure until Mr. Perfect comes along with a wedding proposal.

I don�t want to use strangers for sexual relief. I�d like to be able to become friends with my sexual partners, and be sexual partners with some of my friends. I�d like to live in a spectrum of care and affection without owning someone or being owned. I�m not looking for a white picket fence and all the codependency and isolation that comes with it.

I�m beginning to think that true friendship is the most valuable thing in the world...that true friendship is where love thrives. I�m beginning to think that romance is the enemy of friendship. And friendship is what I want: a love between men that builds communities, networks, circles of care. I want to be able to touch the people I care about, and care about the people I touch. I�m not sure what that would look like. But it�s what I dream of: a world build of care, where desire and community meet in the vanishing space between bodies.

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