A-LISTS not halfway doneby walter meyer UNCONDITIONAL
fter my last column about relationships, I got emails and com- ments about different aspects of the piece. Some of my readers —a shout-out to them—questioned whether men are even capable of long-term relationships. I recently saw an interview, in which Dan Savage said teenag- ers should give their parents a year to come to terms with the
gay thing, and he suggested some steps the child could take to educate Mom and Dad: parenting the parent. I listened in horror while thinking about these kids trying to grow up during such a crucial, trying time without full access to a parent. The more I thought about it though, the more I realized, sadly I don’t think Savage was wrong. This is a neces- sary and unfortunate stage for many people at whatever age they come out. How many other kids have to deal with this? Yeah, your parents may stop speaking to you or be seriously angry for a few months if they find drugs in your room or you wreck the car, but these kids have to deal with a much deeper sort of abandonment fear and cope with daily rejec- tion for something much more intrinsic, per- sonal and immutable than a dented fender or stash of weed. That’s not to say that you can’t learn to love
Love
unconditionally, but I think it’s difficult and adult relationships suffer for it. Certain forms of congenital blindness can’t be cured by eye transplants because if the brain never learned to process visual information in the right stages of development it never will. Likewise, I think if a person doesn’t learn unconditional love at the right time of life, he/she will always have a difficult time giving or receiving love freely. Having never learned love, they’ll have difficulty distinguishing lust from love, or mistake mutual exploitation or codependence for love. If the people who are supposed to love a child the most either withhold that love entirely or set limits on it, it may irreparably damage that vital part. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell among parents is common: they may suspect, or even know, but don’t want to talk about it—EVER. If someone’s introduction to love comes from a place of fear; like if you knew
everything about me, you wouldn’t love me anymore, it’s kind of hard to trust. And if you keep expecting your partner to stop loving you, you’re setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy. Keep doubting his/her love and they’ll end up giving you a reason to doubt. Couples whom I know have solid, long-term relationships, tend to (but not always)
come from solid, loving family backgrounds, where their gayness was met with unflinching love. Friends who recently celebrated their 20th anniversary fall into that group. They really can’t relate to my and other friends’ travails of coming out. They never had to come out to their parents or anyone else. They just were. I think by coming out earlier, young people seem much healthier in this
regard. They deal with much less rejection and just as importantly, fear of rejec- tion. Not that life is easy for every young person—far from it, as the recent wave of teen suicides attests. But the typical young person would have to be living in a cave to not see that there is a happy gay life somewhere beyond their end of the rainbow. They may doubt their ability to survive the trek across the barren desert of loneliness, bullying and isolation, but at least they know that an oasis exists. For those of us who came out pre-Ellen, Will & Grace, Queer as Folk (QAF), and the mul- titude of helpful gay web sites now available, we had no idea there was even an oasis to
aim for. Some of us from small towns wondered if we were the only gay person on the planet—we never knew that there were fellow travelers who might guide us on this perilous trek. A few weeks ago, I mentioned QAF to a young person who had never even heard of the series—it made me feel suddenly old that such a “recent” gay milestone was such ancient history and unknown to him. It was even more difficult to convey the importance of that series for myself and a lot of other people because it normalized and validated our lives in a way that our families never had. I hope those who are young enough to not have needed QAF are able to find long-term, healthy relationships. And maybe some of us older, doubting queer folk will as well.
Walter G. Meyer is the author of Rounding Third, the critically-acclaimed novel about bullied teens and unconditional love.
32 RAGE monthly | MAY 2011
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