What is Asked of Whom

I recently returned from another incursion into what felt to me to be a segregated heterosexual world. I cannot know if my impression is at all accurate, I can only report what a life-long training and highly attuned sensor for potential danger told me. The veracity of the signals- the “vibe,” if you will- that I interpreted is impossible to verify. But I can report that I have never, so far, been the target of violence on account of being perceived to be homosexual in orientation. Like so many of us, I am an expert code-switcher.

This visit into the world of the Prevalent left me appreciating just how much is asked of so many people, and how much is never asked of others. The first group are the people who, for one reason or another, cannot really line up under the totem of the Prevalent. Or, to use a term I revile, but that so many find comfort in, the “normal.” I would argue strongly that such a category is a fiction. That it is, instead, a pernicious term that provides implicit motivation for unknowable amounts and degrees of violence. And there resides the term’s power and the comfort the term affords its users: both for those who feel they fit easily within its boundaries and for those who cannot. It is deeply organizing and useful. It is dynamic, instantly constituting a social environment. Within its boundaries is belonging, and beyond its boundaries is another kind of belonging, the belonging of the ones who never belong. One side of the boundary is easy street. Or so the term would have us believe. On the other is a world that may be harder- it takes work to make it through a day feeling one doesn’t belong- but the benefits accruing to those who can’t live anywhere else are manifold. While at first glance it may be a life no one would choose, but I wouldn’t trade it even if I could. We survive by becoming attuned. This is a good thing.

The boundaries we so faithfully work to enforce are dependent on a story we all create. Each immersion in a predominantly heterosexual world moves me to try to expose the contingent quality of this story’s emergence and utility.

Code switching is work. The work begins with the realization that one’s presence has an effect on others in the environment. Apparently we provoke. This often puts us in danger. What a luxury it would be not to operate like that. And of course this is a kind of work that the most privileged of us never have to undertake. On my most recent visit it dawned on me that all my efforts to maintain an allegiance to the prevailing culture in order to promote a “pleasant family visit” were perfectly executed because they remained invisible. Yes, we have nothing, really, in common except the accident of our birth. So it could never even be a part of the awareness of those I was with that such a process is required of me, or of anyone. It appears as if some are never required even to notice that they may not be part of, not be particularly welcome in, the environment. As a dear friend put it, “straight white men don’t have to notice anything. Ever.” Exactly.

This assertion will be disputed. I argue, though, that we may now be living through the enraged response of those who refuse to notice anything. Whose resentment is so great over the hint of a request that they notice anything at all about the effect of their presence on others that they will kill. Note that the intimated request is not to notice that they themselves might ever be at risk. It is rather that they notice that the effect of their presence is to alert others of the danger they embody and enact.

I’m certain that this is an insufficient conclusion. If it were necessary to notice the effect their presence has on others, the lucky Normal Ones would have to comprehend that such a state as vulnerability exists. And that is the step too far. It lands too close to the vulnerability we all share: born premature, poorly adapted to the natural environment, dependent. Vulnerability must be eradicated.

Human history is replete with examples of the effects of Power maintaining itself. To make a list is now an exercise in repeating clichés. In my lifetime I’ve seen moments when vulnerability was acknowledged, even celebrated, and then transformed into something the powerful could exploit: the burgeoning counter-culture of the 60’s was reduced to a marketing ploy. I’ve seen the moments when the vulnerability of marginalized groups was accounted for and attempts to ameliorate at least some legal inequalities led to benefits of broadening equal rights for people of color, for women, and for sexual and gender minorities. These advances appear now to be undergoing systematic undoing. Science provided life-changing interventions for previously rampant infectious diseases. But to imply that we are all vulnerable and need help is simply too insulting. Narcissistic rage demands to be known as invincible and uncontainable.

And so the inflexion point arrives. We are to know just how intolerable it is to be asked to notice anything at all about the effect of the category “Normal” and the presence of its enforcers. The request to notice is to be annihilated in every way possible.

I am now 70 years old. I’ve lived long enough to have survived many things. I won’t have to live through too much more of this perverse paroxysm. I look toward my death coming sooner rather than later. I look toward it with some relief. Not least is the relief of regrets. I’m introspective enough to know how futile it is to regret anything. My minute-to-minute experience is one of reminding myself to let go. Really. Minute-to-minute. So as not to drown in regret and resentment.

And even as I type those words I want to report that I wish I had been able to make a radically different choice for myself at a time when it could have made a real difference. It is most easily conveyed in a sort of Arcadian fantasy.

I wish I could have been a Benedictine monk. The Benedictine part is a gesture toward making it more practicable. I would have had to believe in a religious dogma for that, which was impossible. But now wonderful to have been able to do so sufficiently to have been a member of an all-male community isolated in self-sufficiency as they make things that are useful, that cultivate skill and a relation to the world that is active but not exploitive. Where love is found among the men gathered together there based on respect for what we all are given. It is a crucial part of my fantasy that in Benedictine orders passionately sexual loving attachments flourish among the pastures and dairies and orchards and vineyards. I wish I had been part of a world apart devoted to putting into practice things that are important and letting go of what is not.

My wised-up self replies, “Yeah. Dream on.” And so I let go. And let go. And let go.

It is not that I feel that I’ve not made a contribution that is useful. I understand why I could not have made such a choice. I will die a very privileged man, happy in having been able to fulfill so many of my wishes. Mourning the loss of so many friends and lovers over the years. Aghast at the fallen, depraved world we leave for the young.

Perhaps the sharpest stab of mourning comes when I must know again, over and over, that I never felt as if I belonged anywhere, never felt adequately part of a community that could understand me. That might even wish to understand me. Yes, we are all alone. But I wish I might have known moments when I felt a little less alone, held close in the capacious compass of manly arms.