An Open Letter to Dramatic Kweens with Self-Esteem Issues, Part Two

This week, Ya Brista FINALLY gets around to responding to Luis, who wrote last fall about how he doesn’t want to be gay anymore.

Last fall, Luis Pabon, writing for Thought Catalog, lamented that he didn’t want to be gay anymore. He said that he “…came to this community searching for love, intimacy and brotherhood. In return, I got shade, infidelity, loneliness and disunity.” When he first came out, he says he felt good to be a part of “…something greater than myself, a movement of men who loved other men and who were unafraid to show it. Our love was supposed to be a revolutionary act.” Later, he goes on to lament how “Men also used to be men and approached you with a modicum of chivalrous courage.”Luis concludes by saying,

…this life makes you miss what it meant to be gay. It makes you long for the times when a guy would greet you and offer you a drink as opposed to his cock size and sexual stats. The middleman of courtesy has been eliminated and replaced with an immoral devil who chaperons your destruction daily. It just isn’t worth it anymore. And while I recognize my attractions to men, I choose to no longer associate myself with a life that lives outside of morality and goodness. The gay life is like the love of a bad boy whose attention and love you initially covet but eventually outgrow. It’s just not where I see myself anymore.

Sooooo… let’s get into it…

Dear Luis,

I don’t know what magical gay community to which you are referring, but I feel like you have watched too many romantic gay movies from TLA Releasing. Anysnooch… You will get no argument from Ya Brista that dealing with homos is hard. They can be everything you stated in the article: self-destructive, hurtful, cruel, and vindictive, and much more. They live out the hurt that has been visited upon them, acting out in counter-productive ways.

You know whom else that describes? Women! Now, Ya Brista is certainly not part of the He-Man Women-Haters Club, but I have heard more than one straight (and straight-ish) man say that women can be all the things you describe, but you never hear them saying that they have had enough and are leaving the straight community. Well, I guess you do. Those men are called “in the closet”. This also describes straight men. Who among us hasn’t had to listen to the women in their lives complain about the men in their lives, and yet, you never hear these women say they are giving up on men. Well, actually, they DO say it, but you and I both know they don’t actually mean it.

The point is, people (men and women, straight and gay) are crazy. They are full of all the foolishness that you describe. We are all self-destructive, hurtful, cruel, and vindictive to greater or lesser degrees. It’s called being human. As we discussed with Stevie a couple of weeks ago, you need to choose a better group of homos with whom to hang out, a group of men who share your values. It’s unfortunate that you felt the need to drink, do drugs, and have casual anonymous sex in order to fit into the gay community. Don’t feel obligated to get high. If you don’t like casual sex, don’t fuck around, and don’t hang out with people who do. You’re throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Perhaps worst of all, you referred to certain activities and attitudes as immoral. Drinking, doing drugs, and casual/anonymous sex are not inherently immoral or wrong, and increasingly, not even illegal. The freewheeling, hedonistic attitude of the gay community can be a breath of fresh air to a closeted teen that has been brought up to feel bad about his gayness. Your immorality is another person’s damn good time. Don’t be so quick to judge what others do and instead, find those who like to do what you do.

I’m also not sure where you are getting this romantic notion of gay life. By your own admission, you have only been involved in the community for seven years. Men were not chivalrous in the 80s and 90s, they just didn’t have Grindr or Jack’d to facilitate the quick selection of dick or ass for the evening. They were just as avaricious and made the same bad choices, and there were plenty of men back then who felt as out of place as you do now.

Ya Brista is one of those men. About 15 years ago, I changed the homos with whom I associated. At the time, it seemed liked all we ever talked about was who we had fucked and who we wanted to fuck. We went to the same bars every weekend, had the same conversations, met the same fucked up individuals, and one day, I was just over it. I made a conscious decision to cultivate a circle of friends with whom I had more in common than being black and gay. It took some time, but eventually, my life changes and I became much happier with my place in the gay community.

Luis, you paint with too broad a brush when you say that the “…gay life is like the love of a bad boy whose attention and love you initially covet but eventually outgrow.” There are many different ways to be gay; you just haven’t found the right one.