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Why Don't You Have A Girlfriend?
“Why don’t you have a girlfriend? Everyone thinks your gay.”
That’s what my younger brother Stephen said to me back in 1977.
And I’m thinking, “I’m 13 years old and my fucking younger brother is dating girls and I’m not. If he’s thinking why don’t I have a girlfriend, then everyone must be thinking that!”
I brushed off his comment, from the outside that is, but on the inside I panicked and my survival instinct kicked in and I began a tactical approach to survive this social disorder. My goal, to get a girlfriend. To fit in. To be like the other teenage boys. To hide behind a façade that was acceptable. To become another. To shrink my urge to emerge my true self. To escape the feelings of inadequacies based on a gay landscape unfamiliar to me and to others, to loose my soul, myself. To do just that, and I did.
That was 30 years ago when being gay was something that was happening somewhere else, to somebody else, and certainly not to me. Following my survival instincts, I found myself dating a girl few years younger than me. Her name was Lisa and she and 1 had a rocky relationship laced with drugs, alcohol, adolescent sex and rock and roll. That fortitude turned into a relationship that lasted four years until I graduated high school in 1983. We smoked enormous amounts of pot, drank cases of Lowenbrau, experimented with acid, cocaine and partied to the sounds of Journey, Phil Collins and Run DMC.
Lisa was my beard and she played the part of a temporary band-aid for the slow unpeeling of my true identity that would eventually reveal itself. The years of hiding behind her, and being with her had a lot of great memories and high times, and allowed me to fit in, to be like other teenage boys, and mostly it saved me from being pushed around, beat-up and humiliated by other schoolmates.
But underneath the façade of playing it straight and taking on a different identity was a troubled young kid tormented with identity issues and pain. Even though the physical and emotional abuse from others, outside of me, subsided because I took on another identity, the internal abuse of shame, guilt, anger and self-hatred started to emerge within me.
My unique queer energy was repressed, based on a society unwilling to accept life on life’s terms. Choosing to go undercover as a teenager, under the guise of being straight was a survival technique for the times and it worked to some degree, but hiding my light under a bushel - literally and figuratively – has had consequences.
The power it took to hide, conceal and lie about my true self had to come out some way, and it did. From cruising for sex at a very young age, to compulsive masturbating in the school’s restroom, to lighting fires in neighboring fields – all these acting out behaviors were the result of society telling me ‘no, you can not be who you are.’ Gratefully I lived through it all.
In conversations with Lisa years later she felt I wasn’t completely present with her, especially when having sex. She was right. Often I was fantasizing about her hunk of an older brother who was on the football team.
Does the memory of your childhood keep you revisiting the yearbook of yesterday, of day’s gone bye, keeping you stuck in a vortex of histrionics – paralyzing you from moving forward into the uncharted waters of the future? What unique energy are you repressing? What talent, quality, uniqueness are you bottling up and hiding?
Answering these questions gives us a compass, individually and as a community of gay men and woman, to live beyond our sexual identities and tap into our pure essence that can lift us up beyond any label. It’s about unearthing our talents, qualities and uniqueness beyond our sexually tendencies. It’s a charge I have found to be ongoing in my life. To reveal my splendor, without labels, without an agenda, without trying to get something, or to get someone to do something.
As we come to understand that our real identity, beyond our sexual appetites, titles, and professional labels, is a Divine Presence that has a plan for us, we can begin to give ourselves the permission to relax into the presence that breathes us and wakes us up in the morning. A presence that has the intelligence to carry us through all of our hardships that we humanly go through. Whether you’re coming out, exploring new parts of yourself, sexually, spiritually, or whatever, there is enough room for you to be who and what you are to the fullest.
Can we live in complete trust in allowing the guidance system of our life to be in complete control? Are we free to be free from what people want us to be like, or to behave like, to fit in to a role they assigned us to be. Can we begin each morning surrendering to a power and presence that created us to do through us what it created us for?
It’s insane to think we can’t. The peace of mind I continually seek for is not in the world, it is within me. And vice versa, the world that we experience is not out there, it is within us. When we begin to cultivate an interior awareness that life happens from the inside, we’ll begin to take inventory on what we’re entertaining in consciousness. As we’re moving through the channels of our mind, turning from fear to love, lack to abundance, anger to joy – we get to have a first hand approach to the truth that sets us free – we get to choose our perception, removing the facades, the beards, and the lies is a step in finding our true self, allowing ourselves to produce the kind of experience we want.
We each have a path to walk that is uniquely ours. Be true to yourself. Whatever labels you attach to yourself, know that it is not your real Self. Whether you label yourself Bi, Straight, Gay, Lesbian, a V.I.P, Artist, Entrepreneur, know that all these labels fade away and what remains is your true essence and spiritual identity. Our innate ability to become more of our true self is really why we are here. As we relinquish our attachment to labels, and status, we enlarge and expand our territory to create and to love, knowing we don’t have to behind anyone or anything.
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Published: Jan 11,2009 13:57
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Andy Cowan
Andy Cowan, an award-winning writer, whose credits include Cheers and Seinfeld, regularly contributes humor pieces to the Los Angeles Times and the CBS Jack FM Radio Network.
Paul M. J. Suchecki
Paul M. J. Suchecki has more than 30 years of experience as an award winning writer, producer, and cameraman. He's written numerous newspaper and magazine articles. Currently he writes, produces and shoots for LA CityView Channel 35 and his more than 250 articles for Ehow.com are approaching half a million readers.
Coby Kindles
Coby Kindles is a freelance journalist, screenplay writer and essayist. She has been a staff writer at Knight Ridder and a regular contributor to The Associated Press.
Debbie Milam
Debbie Milam is a syndicated columnist for United Press International, an occupational therapist, family success consultant, and motivational speaker with more than 20 years experience. Her work on stress management, spirituality, parenting, and special-needs children has been featured in over 300 media outlets including First for Women, The Miami Herald, Elle, Ladies Home Journal, The Hallmark Channel, PBS and WebMD.
Dan Rafter
Dan Rafter has covered the residential real estate industry for more than 15 years. He has contributed real estate stories to the Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, Business 2.0 Magazine, Home Magazine, Smart HomeOwner Magazine and many others.
Jack Nargundkar
Jack Nargundkar has been repeatedly published in Business Week, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and The New York Times. He is also an author of "The Bush Diaries" published in July 2005.
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