The film started with a man with a black beard in a blonde wig, a basque and fishnet tights, lip-syncing onstage to a strangulated falsetto version of The Star Spangled Banner. He slowly bent over, and with a latex-gloved hand, reached inside his butt-crack and gingerly teased out the American flag from his evidently roomy ass, to cheers from the night club audiences, onscreen and off. At the end of the anthem, the flag is dropped on the floor, and a pair of size 12 stiletto heels walks over it and exits, stage left.
Another Saturday night in a gay bar. Even the guest MC for the night, Heklina, the burly high-gloss starlet of Filthy Gorgeous, a film about San Francisco’s legendary drag bar Trannyshack, commented on the oddity of showing a documentary in a night club, albeit one like The George in a city like Dublin, where the drag subculture is so sophisticated. Truth be told, it emptied the place, when the bravura opening sequence wasn’t followed through in the rest of the film with equally offensive/amusing MTV-style vignettes. It became more of a gentle enquiry into the thoughtful, handsome, and sometimes troubled men who make irreverence a performance art form, and, as such, I enjoyed it, but at 90 minutes it was far too long for the venue and the night. Heklina’s brassiness was about as in-your-face as you could imagine, with repeated appeals to the audience that, if there was anyone who got off on being rimmed by a gorgeous tranny, would they make themselves known after the show?
The oddness of the evening was compounded by the fact that it was a charity event, the money raised at the door going to support the High Court challenge to allow same-sex couples to marry. One cannot imagine two more contrasting icons: Heklina, the epitome of transgressive queer anarchic hedonism, and Ann Louise Gilligan and Katherine Zappone, the dyadic symbol of decades-long fidelity and commitment. They represent, in a sense, an extreme polarity of masculinity and femininity: the rapacious single priapic male, the fool, the jester, intent on disrupting the social order and offending as many as possible, and the domestic unruffled contentment of the lesbian couple. Of course, not having met any of these three, I can’t comment on the sort of people they are, but I think it’s safe to hazard a guess that neither of the good doctors have ever pulled a flag from their nether regions in public or advertised their desire to lick a stranger’s ass, nor has Heklina, or any of the other trannies featured on the documentary, had a monogamous relationship of any equivalent quality or duration to that which was placed in evidence at the High Court by Gilligan and Zappone.
I’ve been interested for a long time in exploring the shadow, the unconscious, of any given culture, person or belief system. To this end, my sexual explorations and adventures in London were part of this voyage of discovery; no stone was left unturned as I found different ways of rooting around in the barrel-bottom of my psyche, and those of other men. And I know I’m not alone in this journey, it’s something that many gay men do, going to a big world city and reinventing ourselves, using anonymity to explore the many facets of desire. For me, it was definitely connected to an inner struggle to overturn bourgeois notions of conformity, Catholic notions of shame, and to allow myself to enjoy being sexual for its own sake. I succeeded in this – but, paradoxically, I believe I am coming full circle. Coming back to Ireland, I find that a sexually confident and playful younger generation is highlighting how much of what I was struggling with is history now. It’s old baggage, and it’s time to dump it.
Notions of modesty and chastity and sexual continence and fidelity used to be enormously distorted in Ireland, because they were all associated with one extraordinarily dominant archetype, the Virgin Mary, to the exclusion of all else. Her impossible example was used by the Catholic church in Ireland to batter the sexuality out of many generations of women and men, and that affected all areas of Irish life. In a similar way, notions of modesty are also dominant in Islam, and, as in Catholic Ireland, it is women that are bearing the brunt of the distortion. Recently, a Muslim cleric has suggested that an uncovered, unveiled woman is as responsible for the advances she gets from men as a piece of uncovered meat on the street is, when cats come and eat it. It’s the Madonna/whore polarity all over again, rigid and uncompromising, with no middle ground. Whenever that sort of cultural imperative is in force, balance and wholeness is extremely difficult to achieve on a personal level.
I’m beginning to see that, of course, the values of the Catholic Madonna or the archetypal modest Muslim woman are not inherently bad and oppressive, they are important qualities in themselves. It is only in a truly post-Catholic or secular society that one can begin seriously to reclaim them, not from a sense of sin or bourgeois conformity or social pressure, but because they are of worth in themselves. The tranny tart offering to lick the arse of any man who wants it has, somewhere inside him, as a counterpoint, a part that would value contentment and security in a stable relationship, to enjoy sex not only as an act of pleasure, but as an expression of love. The lifelong committed female couple must, if only at seven-year-itch intervals, seek some liberation from the safe and the known, and risk something vital in pursuit of pleasure.
We are all creatures of duality, we all contain our opposites within.
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DAMAGING EFFECTS OF THE CLOSET
It seems to me that in the wake of so many men in high profile positions, even including very conservative members of the clergy that have been “outed” as of late, that condemning homosexuality does not work. It obviously will never work in preventing or stopping homosexual behavior given the fact that the clergy themselves can’t resolve the issue within themselves. For this reason I believe it is high time that the phenomenon of “the closet” needs to be addressed and understood. I believe it is essential to discuss “the closet” to provide the necessary context from which to view this issue and the scandals. The closet, meaning the emotional place where people hide their true sexual orientation from others, whether one is a man or woman. Particularly now however I am speaking of men at this time. The reason being is because I believe men use the closet even more often than woman because of societies more narrow view and expectations of what behaviors are considered acceptable and “normal” for men. This discussion needs to be civilized, our knee jerk reactions and judgments held in check. We need to discuss this subject with compassion because there is a lot of emotional pain involved in living in the closet. We have to discuss this with a very sincere desire to try and understand why so many men are seemingly suddenly becoming gay. Of course this is an impression to some but far from the truth. These men have been living extremely lonely double lives, riddled with guilt in “the closet”. Woman can be tomboys much easier than men can be sissies. Of course not all gay men are effeminate by a long shot but that is a stereotypical image of gay men and therefore many men attempt to cover up any behaviors they may have and believe may bring unwanted suspicion onto them. Therefore men, whether they be gay or straight, will practice stereotypical masculine behaviors to thwart any suspicion out of fear and/or necessity. This is especially true if they feel pressure to do so to protect their careers, career advancement, fear of social denunciation or they have difficulties reconciling their religious views with their natural inner feelings and same sex attractions etc. These are however the most common reasons for men to join the astounding numbers of other men that are also hiding in the closet.
The fear of being discovered can be enormous and absolutely terrifying. These men will often then do whatever they believe society expects from them. They will marry and have children out of desperation in an always unsuccessful attempt at suppressing these natural longings and hoping that they will eventually go away. Since we have very conservative members of the clergy who are also unable to control these powerful inner urgings we perhaps need to at least try and understand these powerful feelings of attraction that we all know very well and have all experienced ourselves whether toward the same sex or the opposite sex, it’s all still the same. To Gays these attractions feel perfectly normal and are. Would we rather they try and unsuccessfully continue to hide by getting married and have homosexual secret liaisons with men and feel terrible guilt in doing so. They will do their very best to compartmentalize their lives the best that they can. However I believe and have found while researching my book that the longer one stays in the closet the more damage is done. It is generally very difficult to compartmentalize ones life for long without some emotional problems begin developing in varying degrees and manifesting in a variety of ways. Many closeted men develop coping mechanisms such as addictive behaviors of all sorts whether they are alcoholism, prescription or non prescription drug abuse. They may develop addictions to pornography, sexual addiction or other self-destructive ways of acting out. Once again unfortunately the longer one stays in the closet there will then also generally be more victims because of their closeted lifestyle choice. This is the only place where the word choice can be used correctly within the context of this subject. They can either “choose” to live in the closet or “choose” to live out their truth of who they really are. The victims may be their wives and children, their friends, parents and siblings. All feeling like they have been betrayed and deceived when the closeted individuals true nature is discovered as it was for ex-governor of New Jersey, Mr. McGreevy, ex-congressmen Foley and now the president of the Evangelicals, to name just a few of the staggering number of men that have also been hiding their true selves. I feel very sad for the victims as well as I very much understand the humiliation, despair, and profound depression that the closeted individual feels that soon follows once that door to the closet is flung open. For some, the shame and fear is just too unbearable and suicide seems like the only alternative to ending their unbearable pain and shame.
Society needs to take some responsibility with this matter of the closet by being more accepting of alternative lifestyles. Without the closet, try and imagine how much less pain many people and families would have to endure. Not only the ones that feel that living in the closet is their only alternative, but for the victims that find themselves feeling betrayed and the breaking up of families that soon follows. We as a culture have some soul searching to do on this matter and not be so self-righteous. There are a variety of ways of loving and living. We need to accept the fact, that which seems to be normal for some is not necessarily normal for all. However, as I said the closet can cause deep and very troubling emotional problems that can eventually manifest in abhorrent behaviors. However, because there is still such a stigma surrounding issues of sexuality yet in this day and age in our rather hypocritical puritanical society, cause many gays not to seek help concerning issues they may be struggling with from the appropriate professionals. I generally do not recommend clergy because it can cause further damage due to their religious agendas which can deepen one’s guilt, shame and depression. This is a very complicated issue that society has to become more compassionate about or we will continue to shame many people with same sex attractions enough that will continue to inhibit many from being true to themselves from the beginning or it may prevent them from seeking the appropriate help for any specific personal issues in which they may be struggling with.
Thank you, Aaron Fennville, Mi 49408 http://www.aaronjasonsilver.com
Just dropping by to say I discovered your blog recently and quite enjoy reading it. I hope you don’t mind me linking you from my own (newish) site.
Thanks GWA! I must say I prefer your polite approach to those who just cut and paste tracts of their own writing and think that it is appropriate to hijack other blogs to try and sell a book. Aaron – please get your own blog, and learn about blogging etiquette. I don’t think you are doing your book sales any favours by doing what you are doing.
Dearmod – fair play to you for actually publishing that comment from the book pusher…I think it’s a candidate for deletion myself – or at least deleting the hyperlink to his site. Last time I looked that kind of contribution was called “spam”.
Great entry btw!
Thanks Annette!
Well there was another voluminous tract posted here as a comment that I did delete, because it was so unrelated. But in Aaron’s case the subject matter is related to what I generally write about, so it’s not spamming willy-nilly. And I am sure that not one person going to his site will buy his book – because he himself is absent from the picture. Blogging is personal, after all.
lovely post and great responses to the comments – always a pleasure absorbing your take on gay societal mores and I often agree wholeheartedly
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