The Absurd Hellishness of My First Semi-Disgrace, Pt. I

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

She will probably read this somehow, eventually, and it hardly matters—she knows, and has for some forty-eight hours.

I slept in my car last night. I had been offered plenty of beds, but fell asleep drunkenly slouched all the way down in the front seat of my car, and never bothered to respond to my benefactor’s text message inviting me in.

The library computer has a sixty minute time limit for personal use, and I don’t even have a membership card. My tremulous fingers retard the fever pitch of my thoughts and it’s hard to sit upright on this wooden stool on account of my hummingbird heart.

She has known for some forty-eight hours, but the corporeality of my semi-disgrace only emerged yesterday with the text message that broke her stony silence after locking herself in her room and slinking around in the background while I entertained friends in my home for

brunch:

“You may as well have reaped out my heart & then spit on me.”

There’s an odd inversion process when a child moves out of the home, whence the child’s parents graduate from abstractions and turn into real human beings, for all their successes and failures and malaise and turpentine gradations of consciousness and abject depravity.

Preceding this transformation a parent is merely a vessel of self-service, an artificial processing mechanism whom you love unequivocally and who serves you French toast before high school,

even waking up hours before their own work day to do so.

I had hoped for a reciprocal process, but the text message tells me better: I am still mere progeny, reflecting upon my mother the triumphs and inadequacies of her own imparted will on my being. Though it was she who insidiously found her way into my gmail account and read long, stream-of-consciousness messages forming the rough draft of my imminent Bildungsroman, and multitudinous uncensored anecdotes of my sexual experiences over the course of the last year, I am the aggressor here, thrusting her headfirst into her own naiveté and veritable nightmare, manifested in the candid prose of her devilish creation of four-limbed fleshfulness.

“Only God can forgive you for what are doing (sic).”

This couldn’t have happened two years ago, I wouldn’t have written about it. “I hope you are able to be proud of me again, though I can’t stake my happiness in that possibility,” was my SMS response. I can’t, and I can no longer deign to placate her in a guise of superreligious contrition. God cannot forgive me, nor do I desire forgiveness.

My instinct is rationality without succumbing to condescension; I dismissed the thought and replaced the word ‘rational’ with ‘calm’ in my text message, “I love you and can talk to you calmly when you’re ready.”

Rationality is secularism-cum-treachery in her universe and, despite having studied contemporary Hebrew Bible literary critique and history in my past semester at Duke, I should spare my insistent earnestness about the nature of the Bible—how its divine infallibility is a farce, how it’s teachings of worth—if any—are excluded from its grossly antiquated moralizing; how its social artifice is cruel and unbecoming of modern humanity in ways no lesser than it’s haughtily dismissed distant cousin Islam; how it has no conception of sexuality and speaks in only discrete terms of sex.

No of these ruminations will pass from my lips into her ear, even were I to scream them vociferously and hand her a bold-faced transcription replete with dictionary definitions of terms.

Having finished brunch in the highest of spirits, I sprighted up the staircase into my bedroom to retrieve my laptop and show my friends pictures from a recent vocation. The laptop was gone, in its place a Bible in a black slipcase with the acronym “WWJD” emblazoned in rubber pressed letters.

The last time this happened, condoms had been discovered from their hiding place in my bookcase. They had been used for women, then. I was sixteen.

“I can’t even bring myself to tell your father, who is so proud of you. “

The third and final line of her text message, and sum total of communication with me in the past forty-eight hours, is the only line without a grammatical error, and for my ESL-mother, this means she has pondered it most heavily.

And yet, it is nearly immaterial for me. I had divorced myself from my father’s approval in middle school, when I decided that I would retreat to a false projected identity in his presence—a typical response I feel, for those of us deeply wounded by our father’s inabilities to emote.

The timing is unfortunate, if inevitable—I had first desired economic solvency, a pragmatic consideration that could not be exaggerated; though my present hellishness is unexpected it is concretely unsurprising—twelve years ago my eldest sister revealed her nascent lesbianism. I want gather my courage, and resist effrontery, and be graceful. I want to articulate that, unlike my sister, I will not internalize feelings of self-loathing and “conviction” and become purged in a penitent religious catharsis that has maimed my sister’s soul and leaves her at impossible odds with her own identity.

I sat in a brew house last night celebrating a friend’s birthday, in the presence of at least four men whom I love dearly. No amount of rhetorical self-esteem-instilling-therapy can replace their investment and confidence and love for me, and the solidarity of their faithfulness —in no uncertain terms—presents to me a reality far more palpable and esteemed than even the foulest lapses of the (supposedly unconditional) parent-child contract my parents can possibly impart.

I can’t end this post with any modicum of resolution, because I have still yet to converse with or look upon my mother or father in the flesh, and am currently cherishing my self-imposed defection from home and hearth and the reverie of being “on the road.”

—tbc ,

Eric Fürst

Eric Fürst

[In addition to all of our awesome visible and identifying columnists, we also have some awesome anonymous columnists that for one reason or another must use a pseudonym (and pseudopic?). Details on anonymous columnists here.]

I tend to squirm uncomfortably in my seat when someone inquires point blank about my sexuality, and not because I’m bashful. It’s just that I have to make a quick decision, and it usually depends on: how drunk I am, how long I want the conversation to last, and the hotness of the person asking. In some cases I’d rather be seen than heard. So yes I can be a Big Fucking Hypocrite. But beyond it all I’m trying to avoid using a word I find most unsavory—bisexual. Primarily, it wrongly supposes two standards of sexual expression apart from this intermediary. And then there’s that annoying idiom, that bisexuality is merely a way station for gayness. I heard a friend (entirely oblivious to my recent sexplorations) parrot this belief, and made a mental note to postpone any divulgence of the kind. And in my flirtations with the periphery of Duke’s LGBT community, I’ve been surprised to observe the wariness with which the “B” is tolerated; I sometimes feel that it’s given obligatory lip service for the sake of community but not necessarily true solidarity. I guess it’s difficult to embrace a sexual category comprised of participants who embrace categorical uncertainty.

This perception of bisexuals can be expressed in mainstream terms: straight people think they’re hiding something and gay people view them skeptically for not fully fulfilling (or maybe half-rejecting?) their gayness. If a straight man has sex with a man he is commonly considered gay, closeted, or bisexual. If a gay man has sex with a woman, is his sexuality questioned so?

I’m going to take some stabs at deconstructing this rationale. Kinsey may be an easier starting point but I think it’s a misunderstanding of the more complex social construction theories that lost popularity in the last two decades, as the gay rights movement surged and activism was badly needed as the AIDS crisis emerged. The threat that these views posed was misinterpreting sexual orientation as mere “preference.” If this was the case, the conservative opposition could dub homosexuality a choice. Then, what’s wrong with asking someone to choose different, especially if this gay option is so strongly correlated with the frightening emergence of a new disease? This idea of preference can be especially pungent when applied to bisexuality. One might assume that most bisexual men would rather—if their sexuality really was so subjective—spend their lives in a monogamous heterosexual relationship—the kind that allows identity conformity, minimized discrimination, greater sexual health, and of course, the possibility of natural procreation.

With subversion a more enlightening (or at least more daring) end than conformity, I’d probably be interested in a sexual regimen more strictly homosexual than heterosexual. But as it is, I’m happy to traipse through the nebulous grays, confusing some and delighting my own ADD tendencies. Still, it’s easy to envision adopting some monogamous gay lifestyle characteristics. I can think of several male friends with whom I wouldn’t mind signing a lease, and—perhaps unsurprisingly—I don’t exactly subscribe to the notion of heterosexual couples as the gold standard of child rearing. Yet, the thought of homosexual monogamy, from my point of view, is more restrictive than heterosexual monogamy is boring.

Anyway, construction theory doesn’t really discredit the validity of these singularly-oriented referents insofar as individuals derive personal meaning and community from them; it merely challenges the notion that this language actually defines something intrinsic in the way that physical characteristics are thought to be an expression of alleles coded intrinsically in one’s DNA. To me, sexuality hardly makes sense as a phenotype. Sexuality in its essence must account not only for intrinsic desires and orientations but also choices made on the basis of free will, which ultimately has a large stake in the gender of partners whom we seek to bed.

I would further counter that by discrediting this theory, you are not only embracing the mainstream gay rights movement, but also the rote categorization by which people dismiss, abuse, and misunderstand the deeds of others. It may be contrary to the simplicity of mantras like, “We’re here, we’re queer!”, but I think there’s an importance to understanding unconventional sexualities and resisting the compulsion to categorize. Even if one’s experience isn’t specifically covered by the LGBTQAI (etc) umbrella, in the end, it’s going to be phobias regarding otherness that drive policy and retard progress more than any pragmatic concern for the individual, or disease, or equality. For me, it’s an important exercise in unlearning the illusory differences and embracing a more dynamic conception of “self”—an exhilarating and exhausting work-in-progress with no foreseeable end.

So forgive me if, the next time I’m sitting with you in a bar, I try to avoid the word vomit above by just saying “I’m not straight”...it might mean that I think you’re cute.

—Eric Fürst

P.S. Please disagree with me. I’ve assumed an annoyingly didactic tone that I wouldn’t typically use in real life, in an effort to stoke some dissent.

Anonymous Post #7

[Ed. Note: For the sake of formatting, I'm putting this superlong entry in a separate post.]

I’m frequently disgusted by my own arrogance, and little seems more egotistical than the self-masturbatory experience of a blog post. But I finally gave in in response to Summer Puente’s challenge that the boys “step up their game.” Here it goes.

In the last two weeks I’ve been coming to terms with the reality that I’m really, probably, most likely not gay. And that’s a tough fate for me to accept.

Then again, I never have been gay, or at least never commoditized myself as such—other people may have, and I don’t really mind. This has mostly been fine. It was only problematic once, when a guy I was hooking up with sort of vindictively told my girlfriend I was gay. I was shocked, only because I’d never used that referent, or attached it to him. In this context, it felt ugly to me. It was an accusation.

When I came to Duke, something peculiar happened; I started to garner aggressive interest from men. It happened first when I visited as a prospective student, then at a few parties during first semester, and during fraternity rush—by a T.A. for one of my classes, no less. At first, I spurned the would-be trysts, but they were never less than titillating. They inflated my ego in a maladapted way, as it wasn’t something I could actually talk about. Now, my original reason for abstaining straddled between misplaced homophobia and indifference toward the person proffering these potential interactions—a pretty standard model: drunk male in a fraternity with some kind of social cache and a reputation for misogynism and homophobia. If I was going to do this, it wasn’t going to be with a guy quaking in his Sperry Topsiders for fear of being caught, a guy who needed to blackout scapegoats in case he had to explain himself—I was hoping to find a “man.” I understand that this statement is predicated on exhaustively singular notions, but then so is my sexuality; I’m here, I’m “queer”, and I’m going to ask that you try to tolerate my postmodern flippancy for the rest of this post...

The summer before my sophomore year, I was suddenly enamored of an old friend. We discussed feelings of love and reciprocity over cheap vodka sodas. Days before my return to Duke, we kissed. It was good. It was just what I needed: a summer romance to initiate a whole new world of bisexual morphism and male lust that I could apply as I saw fit. I returned to Duke thrilled. I was officially not straight, and suddenly a categorically more fascinating individual. I managed to avoid the phenomenon (and ostensible rite of passage) of “the closet,” by basically exercising my sexuality (to the chagrin of my religious parents), but rarely even considering it in objective terms. So now I’m stoked—I have the capacity for romance, for finally saying “yes,” and for Gay—Fucking—Sex. Yes yes yes. And I’d heard that guys give better head.

So, I did something new recently. I had sex with a real gay. It was good. Sure, the sex act was purely carnal but (I thought) if I could apply my sexuality in dynamic ways, I could certainly cultivate or conjure romantic feelings more in line with the heterosexual archetypes I’d brought to bear in my formal relationships with women in the past. I went past third base. The rumors were true. I topped a few times, let myself be fingered, learned the correct order for oral and anal sex. And then I started going through the motions—willful social conditioning. I started hanging out with more gay men, visited Legends in Raleigh, Stir in Chapel Hill, Ty’s in New York, earning myself free drinks and attention. I would purposefully reference my interest in men among near-strangers just to provoke a reaction. It was fun and prurient. (I’m kind of a jerk sometimes.) I blasted “When My Boy Walks Down the Street” in my room at night, hoping that—oh boy!—one day I might just find ‘the one.’ And then...I got tired. The sex game lost its lusty allure.

Some of my the thrill of “late-nighting” in frat sections was gone, as I was offered more drugs, less sex. I became disgusted with myself, and not as a self-loathing for promiscuity—I can still count my male hookups on one hand—but because I began to objectify men in a way I never would have done with women. And so in response to this fear, I began to redirect my attention back to the “fairer sex.” I went to Shooters. I got kicked out (no, I wasn’t too drunk, that’s just how I dance). It was awful. As quickly as I’d entered, I wanted an escape. My R.A. recently solicited sex with me and—in ways completely unconnected to the person’s looks and personality—I freaked the fuck out. I’m on edge again, and realizing how precarious the mechanisms of sexuality really are, no matter how liberated my discourse might be. Sure, I can interpret or thematize the experiential phenomena in my life as I wish (ahem) but I remain nevertheless subjugated to my own sexual capriciousness, which is becoming frighteningly more material to me the more I think about it...and the more I write about it. Damnit BDU Blog. But no, really: thanks for deigning me this scintillating, pseudo-anonymous diary entry. I really need to visit Chris Purcell soon.

—Eric Fürst.