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Prostate Cancer Rant
November 7, 2009
Comments: 18

Caveat: I’m not a doctor, and I don’t even play one on TV. This is all my opinion.

When that phone rang one dreary gray morning back in 2001, and it was my urologist calling with test results, I fully expected to be exonerated once again from a medical malady, as I’d always slipped by before, no matter what the test, usually with passing grades and a smile.

Not this time. The news as cloudy as the weather, the apologetic voice said that the biopsy results were positive for prostate cancer, and we needed to make an appointment to discuss what to do next.

I was in shock. Only 46 that year, my lucky personal experience with disease was limited to increasingly infrequent colds and flus, a broken collarbone at 6, and a nasty bout with Hep A. For me, the gold standard around which all health issues revolved was the yearly HIV test, and as long as I could keep passing that, nothing else would even come close.

As I did my research and discussed the options with the doctors, the more it occurred to me that prostate cancer (PC) was a numbers game. There was a number for the PSA (prostate specific antigen), a blood test you take, which when elevated, can be an indicator of PC. There was your age, also a number, a higher number (say, 75 vs. 46) being indicative of both the kind of treatment that would be recommended and the likelihood of surviving PC and dying of something else. Finally, there was the Gleason score, which was a numbering system indicating the aggressiveness of the cancer cells, a higher number being worse than a lower number.

There are also a number of treatment options recommended as a result of this cancer math. These range from watchful waiting, which means what it says, do nothing and see how the cancer progresses, to radical prostatectomy (RP, the surgical removal of the prostate gland and surrounding tissue) to a couple of different types of radiation, i.e., external beam radiation or brachytherapy (which is a method of implanting radioactive “seeds” in the prostate to kill the cancer).

In the years since I had my RP, a robotic prostatectomy procedure has become quite common, drastically reducing recovery times, though recent media reports cast some doubt on its being any more effective than RP for long-term incontinence or impotence issues.

My cancer was somewhat aggressive, and because of my relatively young age, all three urologists I consulted with recommended radical prostatectomy, with the option to undergo further treatment with radiation if there was still some cancer left over. I had my radical prostatectomy, and yes, there was cancer left over, and I underwent two months of external beam radiation a few months later.

One truth about all this is… Breasts Rule. Compared to the prostate cancer’s female equivalent, breast cancer, with its well-established foundations, fundraisers, celebrity spokeswomen, movies of the week, etc., PC keeps a low profile.

Increasingly, however, some well-known men have talked about their illness, including, as I write this, General Petraeus, Senator Christopher Dodd, composer Andrew Lloyd Weber and actor Dennis Hopper.

Prior to my diagnosis, whenever I read about PC, what I remembered most was that it was an extremely slow-growing cancer, and that it usually struck men who were much older than me.

In other words, no reason to worry.

Then there was that part about being gay, and that nothing could possibly be as bad as a positive HIV test.

Then there was the part about the side effects of PC treatment. No matter how you look at this, it’s not pretty. The statistics vary, again being a numbers game (which depends a lot on age), but the likelihood of some degree of impotence (or its more politically correct term, erectile dysfunction or ED) and urinary incontinence are side effects of both the prostatectomy and/or the radiation treatments.

My urologist told me that there were many ways to treat erectile dysfunction, from wonder drugs Viagra, Levitra and Cialis to penile injections to vacuum pumps, “but you have to be breathing for us to get you hard” – hence the medical community’s emphasis on cancer eradication first. Most, but not all, prostatectomy patients experience some degree of short-term urinary incontinence after the operation. Some are not so lucky and have permanent or intermittent problems with incontinence (which have their own surgical fixes).

Glaringly absent were the stories of gay men surviving PC, which is one of the reasons I’ve decided to tell that story in my novel “Benediction” (available on amazon.com) a darkly humorous fictional narrative based on the real life experience of having prostate cancer.

First of all, everyone in the medical establishment will assume you are heterosexual unless you tell them otherwise. Second, there’s very little support specifically targeted to gay men (though there are exceptions).

One man I talked to had checked out Us Too!, a national prostate cancer support organization, and found, like I had, that the group made the tacit assumption that every man was straight. After finding nothing in the way of gay support groups, he decided to organize his own group, which met once a month at his apartment.

He found out there were other gay men going through the same things, that he wasn’t isolated. Someone in the group encouraged him to go to the baths, to connect again with sensuality and sexuality – probably not the kind of advice to come out of a straight support group.

There are similarities between PC patients and HIV-positive men, in the sense that both have to overcome the feeling of being “damaged goods” – “there is personal information about yourself that could have sexual ramifications. Some men will act differently when they know…so how to act, what to say, is a big question.

But I think what gay men in particular really want to know, when you finally get past those questions of mortality, is exactly what’s going to happen with those nasty side effects and how are they going to affect my cock, what’s anal sex like without a prostate, and for pete’s sake, this incontinence stuff?

These are things your urologist won’t tell you, even if you ask, because they really don’t know – because for the most part, the patients they deal with are older straight men, who, in my experience, don’t talk about this sort of thing anyway.

Your 81-year-old uncle in Cincy is probably not going to ask the doctor about the pros/cons of getting fucked by his college-aged hustler “friend” post-op while your aunt wrings her hands out in the waiting room.

(I did ask that question. Luckily I was a patient in San Francisco, where all my straight urologist said was “it’s OK, just don’t go hog wild” – really, he said that.)

I can tell you that I thought I was lucky to not be a straight man, where the sexual imperative is vaginal intercourse, and the focus for the man is always on his cock. I could experiment more with being a bottom, with using my mouth, my ass – we gay men have so many options when it comes to sex.

And it still feels great getting fucked, even without a prostate gland. I’m never sure how much of that originates in my ass or how much of it comes from my head and my heart, but it doesn’t matter.

Funny thing: Because of that added openness (so to speak), I have a broader range of sexuality now than before I had prostate cancer.

Now about the cock: The facts about ED – and I refuse to call it impotence because that makes you sound like you have no power, that you’re not a force to be reckoned with anymore, and I just don’t buy that – are really glossed over.

You’re most likely to hear something on the order of, “you will get your erections back, but it will be gradual over a couple of years.”

The truth is, there is so much trauma done down there with either the RP or the radiation that the nature of erectile response is changed forever.

The old reliable head-cock connection, say, when you saw something hot walking down the street or a scene in a video that got to you and sprouted your wood – is pretty much gone. Manual stroking is needed most of the time, and with that little bit of help, and those great ED drugs, it’s pretty much like old times.

And there’s no semen any more. The prostate makes almost all the fluid that transports the sperm out of the body so without it nothing comes out, nothing. I spoke to a guy recently who’s about to undergo a RP and this little fact hadn’t been communicated to him by his doctor.

Despite the fact that there is no jizz, the orgasm feels the same as it always did. In fact, if I didn’t see my cock actually not shooting out white stuff, I would believe that it had – because that’s what it feels like and I’m grateful for it.

The doctors will also tell you that depression over these changes followed by sexual inactivity will just make matters worse. In other words, “use it or lose it” applies here. My own doctor told me to masturbate daily, even if there was no erection at first. I didn’t realize that an orgasm was possible without an erection – but it is.

After the operation, I had to wear incontinence “shields” for about six months until I stopped leaking, and now that is pretty much a thing of the past, except during a few strenuous activities – sometimes in the weight room, sometimes when dancing – which is called stress incontinence and it’s helpful to wear something additional down there.

Also, curiously, there can be some incontinence during sex, which is usually solved (for me, anyway) by convincing my partner to lie down, as it’s affected by body position. Either that, or to just join me in the shower!

My advice? For any man facing PC I’d say go to support groups, gay, if available, and straight as well. Also, in getting additional medical opinions, to talk to radiologists as well as surgeons, to get their take on treatment. The more you know, the less scared you will be.

As there are no current universally accepted screening guidelines (and they’ve become controversial yet again), my doctor recommended checking the PSA level and having a digital rectal examination once per year for most men over 50, but to start at age 40 for men of African-American descent (who have a higher risk of prostate cancer, for unknown reasons) or for men with first-order relatives (a father or brother) with a history of prostate cancer.

What to tell your sex partners? I still struggle with this, but I have found out that it’s always been more a concern for me than for anybody I’ve had sex with in the years since PC. Most of the time, guys don’t notice anything (are we all that self-centered?) and if they do, you can always have the “conversation” – but I’ve discovered that nothing puts the damper on sexual desire quite as fast as a discussion about cancer does. So beware.

Every year when the holidays roll around I’m reminded to make my appointment for my annual PSA test – which in my case would indicate if the cancer was active again. So far so good, and they tell me the longer it goes on like this the less likely it will be for it to come back.

I’m cautiously optimistic, both about my future with cancer and as a sexual being – and grateful for the opportunity in my life to define what it is that really makes a man.

Gay Liberation
October 24, 2009
Comments: 5

I read in the NY Times magazine section today about how increasingly middle-school students as young as 11 and 12 are declaring their sexual-affectional identities to friends, family, and teachers. This is a welcome evolution of gay liberation that has resulted from decades of gay activism and the gradual inclusion of more accurate images of LGBT people in media. It is significant that young people with no sexual experience recognize their sexual-affectional identities at such young ages because being gay is more about whom and how we love and how this colors our experience of the world than about sex only. The article points out that parents never question their children when they admit to opposite-sex attractions at a young age, but they nearly always do with same-sex attractions. The common question, ”How can you know for sure at your age?“ is just another form of denial of their gay child’s reality that they would never think to impose on non-gay children. The article goes on to describe some support programs for gay youth, but it also reports what we all assume, that anti-gay bullying and harassment is still pervasive in schools and almost never challenged by teachers or administrators even in relatively liberal school districts.

Although it is tempting to jump to the conclusion that the work of gay liberation is nearly complete when we learn of such openness in the young, the passage of Proposition 8 in California last year provided a stunning wake-up call to young people who grew up watching ”Will & Grace“ and ”Queer as Folk“ who mostly assumed equal rights once granted could never be taken away. I marched with some of these young people in protests in Los Angeles this past fall as I did with Harvey Milk in the gay pride parade in San Francisco in 1978 when I was all of twenty-five years old. We, too, thought full equality was just around the corner back then, and then Harvey was murdered, and AIDS struck just as Reagan’s reign of silence and studied indifference to our suffering delayed research and multiplied deaths. Although we showed the world how we could love and care for one another as even our biological families often did not, by the time Bill Clinton came into office promising to end discrimination in the military and then passed Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and DOMA, we were too exhausted, it seemed, to do much but weakly protest. Who needed military service or marriage equality anyway? We were just glad we survived.

What is absolutely clear to me looking back over the history of gay liberation is that our work will not be finished until every person in every country in the world can live openly and proudly as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, without fear of ridicule, discrimination, violence, prosecution, and death just for being different. Toby Johnson in his book Gay Spirituality makes the point that the validity of any religion can be judged in part by how it treats us. We are the litmus test for churches, synagogues, mosques, temples, and also for governments and social institutions to be judged how valid they truly are. If they treat us with anything less than full equality and respect, they must be judged as lacking. And we must never rest satisfied with limited success in one or another state or country for marriage equality, military service, or hate-crimes laws until it is simply unacceptable everywhere at all times to treat us as less-than other members of the human family.

It is unacceptable that gay youth are bullied and beaten every day in schools across this country with little support from teachers, administrators, or even their own families. It is unacceptable that rich, powerful churches can pour tens of millions of tax-exempt dollars into an election to enable a slim majority to deny equal marriage rights to a minority. It is unacceptable that church and government officials can stand up and say openly that we do not deserve equal rights or even of basic human dignity, to treat us as if we do not have the right even to exist. It is unacceptable that gay men are literally hunted and killed every day in Iraq and our leaders say nothing. It is unacceptable that gay men are killed by members of their own families in so-called “honor killings” in Turkey, Syria, Jordan, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and other countries. It is unacceptable that Islamic Republic of Iran executes gay men while funding sex-reassignment surgery for those who are transgender or who are merely effeminate. It is unacceptable for the Pope to stand up and declare to the world that we must remain celibate to be acceptable in the eyes of God. It is unacceptable for China to deny there are any gay people in China. It is unacceptable for homophobes to be given equal time in media to express “opposing views” when no one would dream of giving Neo-Nazis or other racists equal time to express an opposing view to Jews or racial minorities.

When will we stop tearing down those among us who stand up as leaders and unite for the benefit of our worldwide family? When will we finally speak out with one voice to say, “Enough!”?

Gay liberation begins with the personal awakening of each individual to his or her sexual-affectional identity. It grows every time we refuse to hide or lie about who we are to friends, family, coworkers, etc. But our liberation as a people only ends when gay or queer persons everywhere enjoy life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness equally with all other members of the human race.

Many Ways to Skin a Cat: The Dark Side and Light Side of Gay Gym Culture
October 8, 2009
Comments: 16

John Fitzgerald Kennedy said, "Physical fitness is not only one of the most important keys to a healthy body, it is the basis of dynamic and creative intellectual activity."  Though not Jack's most eloquent moment (perhaps he had Marilyn or missiles on the brain), I know exactly what he means.  After I modeled for the new Daddyhunt campaign, they asked me if I would be interested in writing a health and fitness blog.  I accepted with a self-imposed mandate to approach writing about fitness in a JFK-approved fashion:  from a cerebral and not a body-centric perspective, from a scientific and not superficial one.  Thinking such a task might prove painless at worst (I have countless bylines in all of the major fitness publications) I set to reviewing the blog entries and member comments that had come before me, and discovered painless it was not.

 

One entry ("Daddy, You're Gonna Carry That Weight") seemed at first as innocuous as a leather studded harness in the Castro, but when I investigated the consequent member discourse, I discovered evidence that a great schism of Episcopalian proportions may exist in the gay community: on one side are those who view our inextricable and communal body-consciousness as harmless, on the other, those to whom gay gym-going is narcissistic, culturally irresponsible and akin to "slavery."  Now, my mom always said to my two brothers and me, "there are enough rooms in this house for each of you."  I never quite got what she meant (who the hell wants to hang out in a room alone?), but to the gentlemen who find dedication to physical development deleterious, and to those who regard religious exercise as a requirement for living well, I say:  there are enough rooms in this house for all of us.

Thus, I hold fast to my Kennedian mandate and to maternal wisdom when I submit that both groups are right, and both groups are wrong.  It's merely a matter of perspective, and we would all do well to consider the view from the other's eyes. To give voice to John-John again: "It takes two to make peace."

Those that decry the body absorption, which does indeed permeate gay culture, see it as a harmful preoccupation with tight asses, taught abs and towering arms.  Since studies indicate regularly that gay men suffer from body image issues in far greater numbers than straight men, and since similar studies evidence an exponentially larger perceived value of muscle and masculinity among gays, the gymnophobes do have a case.  Commercial interest and queer stereotypes conspire to create an Adonis complex in the shadow of which every gay man falls short.

At the same time, however, a recent APA study found that 17.1-percent of gay men are clinically depressed -- more than four times the national average -- but the rate of depression among gays who exercised regularly was far lower.  A recent poll of almost one million gay males demonstrates that a lack of communal congregation ("togetherness") is a principal sociological shortcoming perceived within our culture; but another study conducted by the National Institute of Health found that 52-percent of gay men believe the gym is the second best place (behind only clubs and bars) to socialize comfortably with other gay men.  Thus it seems the gymophiles have a case, too.

Most importantly, let's not forget from where the gay masculine ideal and muscle culture stem:  As HIV ravaged our community in the 80s, many gay men were "wasting." In an effort to curb this weight loss, physicians prescribed steroids, testosterone and human growth hormones. Weight training in combination with these drugs made it possible for men who had once been gaunt to become "hunks," and muscular physiques became not merely a symbol of fitness or discipline, but a revolution of what was then thought to be impending death.

Thus, we return to my proposition that this debate is a holographic one -- a quarrel among gays that only exists in the absence of perspective.  As a personal trainer (and I'm told, a "Baby Daddy," or a gay man who straddles the Hunter-Daddy demarcation), I have had the pleasure of working extensively with both older and younger gays, Daddies and Hunters. Unconditionally, my older clients have long since shed the craving for carved and massive bodies; instead, they recognize that fitness is an investment, and engage my services so that years from now, when they are seventy-eighty-ninety, their condition is such that they do not have to depend on the care of children they are unlikely to have (statistically speaking), or watch each other "waste" once again in slowly deteriorating health. 

 

The perspective of the Daddy is a forward-looking one constructed with the stones of experience and the mortar of history.

 

My younger clients seem categorically concerned with getting big, getting ripped, getting hot, getting laid.  They engage my services so that in their teens-twenties-thirties, their condition is such that they can live comfortably now, and like the stag whose oversized antlers become a detriment to survival but a necessity to mating, that they may enjoy sexual selection with other gay men on a quest for a fuller and more enjoyable future life.  And who taught these young men that they could only be men, only be desired, as long as their bodies agreed with unattainable masculine and muscular ideals?  The Daddies did.  The ones that run the gay magazines, the porn studios, the television shows, and who sought the same physical ideals yesteryear.  As a professional model, I am responsible for this too! 

 

The perspective of the Hunter is an immediate one constructed with the stones the Daddies handed them and the mortar of a desire for belongingness.

 

What I've written is meant to be neither an indictment, nor an exaltation of either group.  And though this discourse may weigh a bit heavy (and long) for a fitness column, I want to establish from the first post that, in gay culture, fitness is much more than a hobby.  It holds a powerful, wonderful, bountiful and dangerous position among us.  I also want to establish that I view fitness with a scientific, intellectual and sociological gaze.  And lastly, it is my duty to establish that fitness is of ineffable importance, regardless of our various reasons for desiring it.  Health, confidence, community and consideration are things we all need, despite our age, and perhaps by digesting one another's perspectives, we can find a way to take the best of our inextricable gym culture, and leave the worst behind, in order to grow fitter, healthier and happier. 

 

Precisely how to go about this, I will leave to you (and I look forward to hearing your thoughts), for as my mom also said, "There are too many ways to skin a cat."

 

 

-------------------------

 

Duke Greenhill is a certified personal trainer, professional fitness model and widely published health and fitness author in New York.  He is available for private training sessions in Manhattan, or for remote consultations and program design across the globe.  To learn more about his training or modeling services, feel free to visit http://FitCreator.blogspot.com or http://www.DukeGreenhill.com.  

Bi-curious? Ri-diculous!
October 1, 2009
Comments: 149

Recently new hunky Hollywood it-man Gerard Butler was quoted as saying that he had dated men, as well as women, in the past, supposedly from a 1994 interview with Movieline magazine.  It turned out the quote was bogus, and while there is something interesting in the fact that it happened to come out RIGHT while he was promoting his new romantic comedy, what really interested me was the reactions on gay blogs when the news broke.  Peppered within typical variations of “I’d hit that” and musing about the “300” hottie’s body was something I hadn’t really thought existed… true bisexual bigotry.
What started as a standard dialogue regarding the questionable heterosexuality of Hollywood’s leading men (a common gay man’s pastime) quickly turned into a pretty heated, and nasty, debate on the truth of bisexuality in general.  From the old thought that bisexuality is just a layover on the way to gay-town, to rage-full rants on the convenience of the life of the bisexual.  That they get all the dick they want on the side, but when it comes to public fronts, they get to play straight and be part of “regular” society.  And then a very emotional response, which really got the words flying, from a bisexual man who rarely “outs” himself as bisexual as he had been completely abandoned by all of his gay friends when he started dating a woman after a years-long relationship with a man ended.  All of this got me thinking… do I really believe in bisexuality?

I, like most homosexuals, tried unsuccessfully to convince myself I was straight when I was young.  I never seemed to find the right girl, blah blah blah… but when I finally dealt with being gay myself… well, there was no turning back.  Women, at least as sexual objects, no longer existed.  So, when I would run into some questionably straight guys, some of which I hooked up with, my thought was simple… these dudes were just starting their own coming out.  And of course, it became a pastime of mine to gossip about these “straight” boys and their flirty, if not outwardly sexual, ways with my gay pals.  And more often than not, there was always a bent to these conversations, a touch of negativity in which we, the “oppressed” gay men, would dissect their actions amongst eye rolls and that ridiculous rationale… ‘I was so drunk.”

So are these guys bisexual?  Maybe… and maybe not.  I think of a “real” bisexual as someone that has sex and full on-dates members of both sexes.  So what does that say about the men, some on this site, that label themselves “bisexual” or “curious” while they live lives with women?  Well it seems there are many gay men out that just can’t stomach this.  While we continue to fight for the legal right to get married, while we continue pray for a day when homosexuals need not worry about being bashed, beaten, or killed just because of it… a married man or guy with a girlfriend can have the face of the “regular” life while he can now and then go out to the bar, bookstore, rest stop, etc. to get himself plowed or suck a little dick.  I do see the cop-out in this type of lifestyle.  I faced my family, I faced my friends, and in coming out I really ultimately faced ME.  And the strength I get from overcoming that personal difficulty is truly remarkable.  But that’s me.

When I hear that some truly bisexual men identify publicly as gay because THEY will not be truly accepted into a gay “fold” as they are questioned, dismissed, and treated with malice I pause.  Is that how I feel?  Didn’t I ask all my family and friends to accept me as I am?  I really like to think that I am a “live and let live” kind of guy as I myself have been sidelined because of who I want to have sex with.  Is my sexuality somehow more deserving of respect because I “picked a side?” And really, wouldn’t the ultimate sexual utopia have a ‘so what” attitude to sexuality of all sorts, as long as it’s not hurting anyone?  One in which straight men can share a hug, a kiss, or even hang out shirtless with gay pals at the homo sports bar and not be questioned?  Maybe that guy doesn’t give a shit.  And what would be really awful about another guy going out and hooking up with guys one night and then having a date with a woman another night? And if you believe in the Kinsey scale, wouldn’t it make sense that everyone has their own unique balance of their chick to dick interest?  With the debate really stemming from our complicated sexual oppression?

It’s curious… for sure.  And frankly, regardless of Butler’s real sexuality, wouldn’t it be nice to have a few top Hollywood hunks that actually could be open publicly about their homosexual and heterosexual lives so that WE could dream about them in that way.  (Not that we don’t anyhow… )  But all kidding aside, Gerard if you’re reading this, you can have all the pussy you want on the side… I don’t’ care.  But call me… because I’d totally hit that.
 

Taking Online Connections on the Road
September 9, 2009
Comments: 29

I’ve been recently chatting with a very nice guy in another city who is eager to meet someone available, honest and into the same things that he is. I understand all too well the process of weeding out potentials from online, especially when you have a huge  desire to be with someone.

During one of our chats, he mentioned how he was going to be traveling to meet someone he had been chatting with online, and that the fella had offered to "buy" him a flight back if he could get himself out there. Just the whole idea of it, put me on edge (maybe its the Daddy in me coming out...) but I began to think about what are good boundaries to have when traveling to meet a man in a different city. Questions like: Who pays? Where to stay?  And how to stay safe.

A few thoughts to consider before you hop on that plane;

1)    Make your own arrangements. If you can’t afford the entire  airfare or travel money to get to him and stay on your own (with friends or a hotel) the first time – then it might not be a good time to go.

2)    Money is power and who has it, often controls the situation. It’s great to be “invited” out for a “come meet” but even if your potential partner is paying half the expenses, there is no guarantee he will follow through with his commitments. This is especially true if the chemistry isn't right. In other words, you could be left on your own in a strange city, no place to stay and no way to get home.

3)    Have a back-up plan.  Are your plane tickets refundable? Can they be changed? If things aren't going well, can the hotel reservation be cancelled or can you get an early check out?

4)    Who knows you are going out to meet him? Make sure you share  his profile name, the site you met him on, his “real” name, phone, etc. with a friend before you go. Plan a “phone” check-in during your visits – don’t announce to your new pal when they have to happen – just let him know you will need to be in touch with a friend at home a few times during your visit.

I've spent 20 years of working in the public health system and unfortunately have seen how even the best of intentions can go awry. Just remember, we all want to find love but protecting yourself first when meeting men is your first priority.

Spiritual Humanism & Gay Community: A Manifesto for Gay Liberation
August 26, 2009
Comments: 37

In this article I invite the reader to a depth and breadth of philosophical reflection than is unusual for this forum. I hope that readers who accept the challenge of this invitation will be stimulated to think about themselves both as individuals and as a community in possibly new and transformative ways and thus be rewarded for the effort.

“For our own liberation and for the benefit of the world.”

We are all familiar with the term secular humanism, but far fewer people are familiar with spiritual humanism, a philosophy that acknowledges the common interests of human beings as important guidelines for understanding how we can best live together in this world (humanism), but at the same time affirms transpersonal levels of collective being and interconnectedness that provide a deeper rationale for ethical behavior. Spiritual humanism relies not on faith or doctrine but on direct spiritual experience as an important dimension of human potential. Spiritual humanism can open up transcendental possibilities for human development that can be generally termed enlightenment, liberation, or Self-realization.   

So many in the gay community understandably reject religious authority. But in that context,  what rationale remains for ethical behavior, for caring for one another rather than merely acquiring anything we desire by any means necessary?  Why shouldn’t we fuck everyone we can, both literally and metaphorically, if we all just end up as dead meat anyway?  Secular humanism and existentialism leave ethics up to individual choice, resulting in at best moral relativism that can easily devolve into rationalizing whatever we may want, consequences be damned.

Spiritual humanism, by contrast, provides a rationale for ethical behavior that secular humanism and existentialism do not. The metaphysical basis for mutual caring and morality is spiritual or essential Oneness that can be experienced directly as a fact through effective spiritual training. 

Out of this revelation naturally flow the following two moral imperatives: 

  1. Non-injury— the commitment to avoid intentional harm to anyone; 
  2. Truthfulness—adherence to truth in thought, word, and deed as much as possible except when truthfulness violates the imperative of non-injury. 

To injure another intentionally is ultimately is to injure oneself, which is an irrational choice that denies the deep reality of Oneness. Living truthfully means being grounded in reality. Truth=Beauty=God (or the Good) is an equation found in both South Asian and Greek philosophies, for Truth is the foundation of everything humans hold dear. Truthfulness is especially challenging for gay people because we often feel a need to hide our true gay identities to protect ourselves from derision and abuse by homophobes. A habit of hiding or lying about ourselves easily becomes a habit of lying to one another about HIV status or promising to call someone without ever meaning to do so. The virtues of truthfulness and non-injury are not achieved instantly, merely by willing them, but over time through self-discipline and practice, by making promises to ourselves and to others then actually keeping them. Sometimes the false personae we create to survive in a hostile world become so habitual, a person may require long-term psychotherapy or other deeply focused soul-searching to uncover the authentic self.

And equally important:  What rationale do we gay-identified people have for forming or operating as a community?  What specifically makes us a community? There are certainly those who deny that there is any such thing as a gay community except in name only, and I believe there is ample evidence that this is largely true. I think to answer these questions we have to consider more than just what being gay means, although this is an important consideration.  We have to be ready to question the assumptions that underlie our entire civilization, the Protestant Puritan vision of human culture organized to encourage individuals to achieve as much financial success as possible while leaving others to fend for themselves. We need to question the assumptions about the role of individuals in society within a political system that has allowed millions in one of the richest nations in the world to suffer for want of adequate health care. We need to sensitize ourselves to the horrendous suffering powerful nation-states inflict on less powerful groups of people in the name of “freedom” and “democracy.” We need to consider not only our rights as individuals but also our responsibilities as members of a community.

I would like to suggest a rationale for gay community that encompasses the transnational, non-biological, spiritual nature of our kinship. Although being perceived as outsiders by mainstream society has disadvantages with which we are all aware to one degree or another, our outsider’s perspective confers some distinct advantages as well, enabling us more easily to think outside the box and challenge limiting assumptions that our het peers may not as easily perceive. Some have suggested that our outsider perspective accounts in part for our disproportional representation in creative and helping professions. Harry Hay, founder of the Mattachine Society and the Radical Faeries, suggested that we belong to a “third gender,” not-man-not-woman but a bridge between the other two genders, possessing characteristics of both plus something that partakes of the qualities of both and thus remains distinct. We exist in two worlds, one the world of hets and the other our uniquely gay world, and we can move effortlessly between these worlds. If we embrace the mystery of our special ability to bridge different worlds, we can realize and appreciate that gay consciousness is an expanded consciousness, more encompassing and therefore more liberated than het consciousness that sees the world in stark, black-and-white dualities of “this or that, male or female, het or gay.” Our gay consciousness reveals the more accurate perception of a rainbow spectrum of human potential, “het, gay, bisexual, pansexual, and transgender; male, female, and intersex; this, that, and that, too.” Homophobia hurts everyone by suppressing through shame natural, healthy expressions of affection between men especially, het or gay. I suggest that the work of expanding consciousness, in ourselves and in society, and thus becoming increasingly liberated from limitations both intrapsychic and social, is a worthy rationale for us to form and operate as a worldwide community. Gay liberation in a larger sense can mean liberation of humanity, too.

As active, conscious members of this community, therefore, we have two main responsibilities. One is to develop our own spiritual and ethical natures to the highest degree possible because these form the foundation of strength of character. We need consciously to develop ever-deeper awareness of who and what we are, and simultaneously cultivate and practice the virtues of non-injury and truthfulness. For many of us this process is impeded by internalized homophobia that keeps us convinced that we are less-than our het peers. We need to employ effective means to overcome these false, negative self-messages and embrace the fullness of our gay being. The means to accomplish this include gay-centered psychotherapy, support groups, spiritual gatherings of gay folk, artistic expressions, scholarly studies, political activism, and spiritual practices such as meditation, mindfulness, etc.  Our other main responsibility is to serve our community, to use whatever talents or abilities we possess to help alleviate suffering and promote the spiritual and material well being of our fellow beings. In particular we have a responsibility to work for greater self-acceptance and human rights for our worldwide gay family. If there is any message in our experience of being a despised minority it is to realize that we must overcome our own racism, sexism, ageism, and homophobia so that we do not inflict on others the same abuse we have suffered. Our attitude in service should be to see self in the other, to make the whole world our own in accord with our own expanding consciousness that enables us to see common interests where the less enlightened see only ”others.“ Developing compassion is a natural product of expanding consciousness that grows organically from the deepest experiences of humankind, the experience of Oneness in diversity that prompts us to work to manifest the inner experience of Oneness in the outer world through the way we treat one another with respect, equality, and justice. I propose our motto to be, “For our own liberation and for the benefit of the world.”

Instead of thinking of ourselves as a despised minority, we can cultivate the awareness of the blessings of gay identity and discover that we can offer our het peers help in overcoming their own limited ways of understanding themselves and others. In other words, we can help them develop a gay consciousness, and in doing so we, too, grow in compassion and wisdom. But first we have to heal and strengthen our own community and ourselves.

What I have written here is merely an outline of what I call spiritual humanism applied to gay identity and gay community. The means to build such a community already exist, but what has been lacking is an overarching, unifying rationale, a purpose worthy of our highest aspirations and embracing our amazing diversity. We are not yet truly and fully a community, but we can become one and a powerful one at that, if we are willing to shoulder our responsibilities and keep expanding our awareness of who we are and of what is possible for humankind.
 

Love is a Battlefield
August 19, 2009
Comments: 22

Dear Kirk,

My Name is Larry and I'm 19. I have been with my boyfriend for over 2 years now and he is 37. Like most relationships we've had our ups and downs. We've argued and we've made up. He can be really sweet sometimes, leaving me little notes everywhere...he likes to surprise me with little gifts, no matter how small. But he also can be a complete ass. He has this amazing gift of saying the wrong thing at the absolute worst time for it. Like "I don't understand why you're stressing over exams...they're not important."

I've also just realized how controlling he is, when he'd ask me every day to go upstairs and get his laptop for him, or get him a drink etc. If i ask anything of him he tells me to "get it myself and stop being so lazy.”

We'll be in bed, having a nice hug when he grabs my cock. So I'm guessing it wouldn't be wrong for me to assume he wants sex. So I try and start something and he slaps my hand away and tells me to go to sleep, leaving me with a huge hard-on and a damaged ego. He does this a lot. He'll grab my nipples because he knows it gets me hard...then if I try and start anything he'll slap my hand away and say later. We hardly ever have sex and sometimes it's months before I get any.

I find it difficult to talk to him about anything...because he always takes things the wrong way, and if it starts getting personal (which it obviously is) he just shuts himself off and doesn’t want to talk about it.

So a few months ago we moved in together, and it was happy at first. But when I realized I wasn't happy living there, and wasn't sure how I felt about him anymore, I told him I wasn't ready to move out in the first place...and came back home. I don’t know if I want to be with him anymore.

Larry

 

 

Dear Larry,

       It sounds like a mostly miserable relationship and I’m wondering what is working for you that keeps you there. The communication seems really challenging and unsafe. One of the fringe benefits of dating an older man is that (hopefully) his emotional skills are a little more developed. This guy sounds mean, and some of the things you describe are emotionally abusive. I should say that Daddyhunt edits down letters for length, so we haven’t printed the entire letter, but trust me that it is a doozy and painful to read.

       The sexual games he’s playing with you are really ugly. It’s bad enough when a partner withholds sex as punishment, but it seems like he’s knowingly using your sexual desire against you as a way of controlling you and driving you crazy. At 19, it’s understandable that your sex drive and limited experience would allow you to get a hardon for this man. It’s a game I’ve seen men play with younger men before — the younger guy doesn’t have a frame of reference for what a relationship can be or how someone should treat him, so the abusive partner gets away with all sorts of bad behavior. You deserve someone who treats you better.

       What do you like about him? What, if anything, about the sex you have is a turnon? Are you at all turned on by the dynamic of taking care of his needs? These are important questions for you to answer so that you don’t recreate the pattern with future partners. If, for instance, you are the kind of person who enjoys doting on a partner, there are plenty of men who would meet you halfway and give you appreciation and love in return. I would suggest making a pros and cons list. Write out all the things you like about him, happy memories, things you enjoy like the little notes he leaves you. On the other side, write down irritations, pains he’s caused you, behaviors that are unacceptable to you. Having it all on paper in one place can be a great way of seeing the big picture. Otherwise, our brains are swirling with hundreds of moments, chaotic bursts of emotion and questions about what to do. Make it a list.

       Since you have a place to live and it doesn’t sound like you’re financially dependent on him, I wonder what it would be like to cut ties to him. Many of us have rough early relationships, so you’re not alone. My guess is that when you describe this situation to the next man you date, he’ll share one of his war stories with you. And hopefully, you’ll both resolve to treat each other with the tenderness and compassion that your previous partners lacked.

 

Kirk 

Uncut and Undone
July 30, 2009
Comments: 28

Dear Kirk,

The guy I fell for this summer turned out to be an absolute disaster. For starters he is uncut and due to horrific past experiences of gay men who did not value cleanliness or had a fear of water, I vowed NEVER to be with someone who is uncut. This guy turns out to be one of the cleanest guys I have been with - cut or uncut for that matter. I kept forgetting how sensitive uncut men are and how fragile the loose skin can be. I am not sure if he felt I was being rough intentially or insensative to his needs. Not only did I feel like his trick every single time, but he made sure I did not perform any sensual acts of affection thus stating that he hates being tickled and that he finds it irritating. I was afraid to touch him let alone attempt to give him a blow job.

When I massaged him for the first time he lectured me on how to give a proper massage (I massage for a living). At times I made the mistake of asking him if he was ready for me to top him and his response would be, "Don't ask me - JUST TAKE IT !”

Needless to say we argued incessantly in the brief 2 months we were together that seemed like 5 years. I took care of him fiscally and he had the luxury of getting high, sleeping a lot, and being miserable. One of the main arguments is that he never felt the need to respond to any of my text messages or voice mails. He sucked at communication. I valued communication and he valued sex and porn. We partied hard with Tina and GHB.

I guess my question to you is when does one know when to get out of a relationship when things are not going so well? When the two people are psychologically dependent upon each other in terms of companionship and when I become so lonely and miserable with him and without him. I am trying to put closure to this relationship. I feel in my heart that we'll always be friends but this was such a bad experience for me. He is also the only man who has cried to me on so many occasions during our battles. It breaks my heart because he may seem like a monster but he still remains one of the nicest guys I have ever met.

Warmest Regards,

Gentle Ben

Dear Ben,

Thanks for your honest letter. At first it seemed like a simple issue of technique with uncircumcised dicks, but then you reveal that you both partied a lot with crystal meth and GHB. The relationship sounds like a sketchy gay warzone. Yes, this guy seems like a snarling beast when it comes to sexual issues, but you seem to have your own issues as well.

To recap: you were supporting him financially for two months while you guys did drugs and argued. He never answered your voice mails and text messages. Your sexual chemistry was fraught with judgment and conflict. All that sounds really unpleasant. How did this get past the first few encounters? Was it the drugs?

I hear that you are disgusted by this guy’s drug abuse, but what about your own? I don’t know if your drug use was something you started doing with this guy or whether it’s something you’ve been doing for a while. Drug addicts make for troublesome bedmates, ultimately. It might be time to seek professional help around your own substance use. What part of you gravitated toward this guy and what would stop it from happening again with another man?

As a massage practitioner, you’re accustomed to taking care of other people. It’s your job. This instinct can make you a magnet for people who will suck you dry. A lot of men in your situation would walk away with this story: I was in a relationship with a younger man who was a drug addict and took advantage of me. Even the way you sign your letter, “Gentle Ben,” has the ring of victimhood. But I wonder, given that you knowingly wallowed in this toxic mess of a relationship, if you have a distorted sense of your own capacity to take care of others. Something is amiss, both in your partner selection or your ability to do self-care, let alone take care of another human being. I’ve heard tales of woe from a lot of older men — about younger lovers who used them, took advantage of them or treated them in a reckless manner. While I completely sympathize with these men and have spent countless hours listening to their stories, I often find myself realizing that the problem is not just that these kind souls were unlucky in love. Part of the problem is that these men have poor boundaries and lack the confidence to tell younger partners how they want to be treated. They’re so intoxicated by the youth of their partners that they’ll put up with damn near anything.

ALANON meetings might be a fit for you. There are tons of gentle people out there who get treated like shit until they realize they are shaping their own relationships.

Kirk

See Kirk Read do live storytelling and performance in New York during Dixon Place's HOT Festival on August 1 and 2! The show will feature storytelling about getting stung on the dick by a sea urchin, evangelical lip synch and a photo show of a very restrained sex work client. https://www.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/671235

The “New” Masculinity
July 15, 2009
Comments: 62

I partly blame it on being naïve and only being exposed to what the media had fed me at the time, but growing up I thought that all gay men were queeny.  That was just the way it was.  I soon realized this wasn’t true but there is a school of thought, even within gay men, that the “new” masculinity that has penetrated itself into gay culture over the past couple years is false, that part of being “gay” is to accept the fact that we are not masculine… and therefore all the facial hair and “straight acting” just cover up for… well basically acting girly, sipping Cosmo’s, and learning the latest Madonna choreography. 

Well, for the most part, I find this absolutely ridiculous.  Mostly because I don’t swish into a room, enjoy shopping, or enjoy acting “bitchy.” But there are also two sides of the coin.  And besides, the latest round of homo “new masculinity” is just that… another round.  If you counted all the mustaches in the West Village from 1974 to 1979… my point would be made.  So while you may (or may not) roll your eyes when someone quotes “Sex and the City,” calls you “giiiiiirllllll,” or does a finger snap un-ironically, I may (or may not) roll my eyes when you grow that full beard, re-discover flannel like it’s 1991, or think ripe pits are hot.  See the dichotomy?  And also, hasn’t it all been done?

Is being gay about being a man?  Is it about being not-straight?  Is it even about a dick in your mouth?  It is, like a lot of things on earth, about all of that and none of that.  Individuality is awesome… but being gay (I think initially) is all about fitting in… for once.  And so much of our personal psychology is tied to that.  If there is one thing that every gay person goes through, it’s figuring out you’re “different” and therefore not fitting in while growing up.  There is something intrinsically human about wanting to be part of something, to feel like you belong.  Therefore, I think the homosexual that specifically scoffs at what he thinks is faux-masculinity is in fact the type of gay that most non-gays are used to seeing, and therefore questions his relevance in a world where gay men are free to be completely masculine, poor dancers, and think thermal underwear are a fashion option.  He’s just afraid that his basking in “fitting in” and personal (and cultural) identity are dying out. Wouldn’t you? 

But while we tear down old stereotypes, we also start new cliques. Originally, Bear Culture sprouted up in San Francisco in the 80’s from guys being fed up with the mainstream public thinking that gay = feminine.  The Broadway, the drag queens, disco, it wasn’t ALL what the community was about.  And I believe this resurgence of the movement is a response to gay characters on TV and movies, from Jack McFarland to “The Birdcage,” who were not exactly the model of machismo.  “Where are the homos like ME?!?!” I often hear.  Sure I understand that, but those work boots you have on are just heels of another color.  No?  I was recently pretty dumfounded when at a bear-ish beer blast my Kelly Clarkson selection on the jukebox was actually openly scoffed at by a dude in full bear drag, (Facial hair, blue-collar boots, Budweiser.) He literally screamed at the jukebox and made sure his Sabbath was played next.  Really dude?  Is that necessary?  I’m not asking you to like pop music, but I gander that you think there is some correlation between rock music and masculinity.  Sorry dude, but not liking Cher didn’t give me this hair on my chest.

We are continuously fighting within ourselves as to what gay should look like, based on what WE personally like.  I’m not suggesting that we all need to be attracted or even friends with every “type” in the book, but shouldn’t our rainbow include everyone?

See… I like a Cosmo every once in a while, and I also like that muscle bear over there with the bulging waistline… I like watching guys smoke, and hate smelling it. Sure I know my way around the Velvet Underground discography, but I also love the new Britney record.  I can dig you rubbing your face in my armpit… but yeah I’ll also own up to doing little man-scaping too.  I’m not going to poke fun at that guy in the homo “sports” bar with a “pitcher” and/or “catcher” t-shirt on (what, were they out of G-Star?) because despite how three-years-ago I might think that is, I bet he thinks he looks really cute in that shirt, and that makes me smile.  Yeah I started to grow a beard after I discovered Bear Culture, and yeah I have a very specific way I trim it.  I got an A in Shop in high school, and a B in Home Ec… this doesn’t mean I’m going to build a house to prove something to myself, nor does it mean I won’t make you breakfast in the morning. (I'm just not responsible for the quality.)

So while I might personally find myself identifying with the “new” homo masculinity…  I will also defend any queer that wants to be as flashy, fashion conscious, and/or “queeny” as they want.   I’ll never say that I’m “straight-acting” as a definitive statement, because in the end… a dick in your mouth isn’t straight at all, it’s like… totally gay. But gay is a lot of things… so lets celebrate them all.  Shall we?

First Love
June 26, 2009
Comments: 15

….And when I thought how my dear friend my lover was
    on his way coming,  O then I was happy,
O then each breath tasted sweeter, and all that day my food
    nourish’d me more, and the beautiful day pass’d well,
And the next came with equal joy, and with the
    next at evening came my friend,
And that night while all was still I heard the waters roll
    slowly continually up the shores,
I heard the hissing rustle of the liquid and sands as
    directed to me whispering to congratulate me,
For the one I love most lay sleeping by me under the same
    cover in the cool night,
In the stillness in the autumn moonbeams his face was
    inclined toward me,
And his arm lay lightly around my breast—and that night
    I was happy.    —Walt Whitman

Excerpt from “When I Heard at the Close of Day” from Leaves of Grass
 

I met my first lover the day I arrived in New Delhi in 1972. I had just turned nineteen, and I had come to India alone on pilgrimage, having been a student of traditional Hindu Tantra for nearly four years by that time. He was standing in a small group of fellow monks, all of them clad in ochre robes, but he stood out from the others, built solid like a wrestler with a boxer’s flattened nose and fierce gaze. When our eyes met briefly, a spark seemed to jump between us.

He was probably nearly 40, though I never knew for sure, but he could have passed easily for a man in his early 30s. He was a celibate Hindu monk, and I was in training to join the same Order, so the last thing on my mind in that brief exchange of electricity was becoming anyone’s lover ever. It is really only as I look back after all that passed between us that I can trace what we would become to each other to that first, brief, charged glance.

He was the ashram manager, second-in-command to an elderly monk who had spent fifteen years as an assistant minister of the Vedanta Society in Hollywood where I had been studying. I went to India to have more personal access to monks of the Order, to learn what I could of meditation and the traditions of the Order sitting at their feet, and to visit places of pilgrimage I had read about.

If you are thinking that this is just another story of a monk violating his vows with a vulnerable youth, you are wrong. The vow of celibacy that my monk took did not require him to foreswear love, and he demonstrated his love for me tangibly from that first day until the end of his life.

He quizzed me pointedly about my purpose in visiting India at the first opportunity, and as he became convinced of my sincerity, he relaxed and smiled. I didn’t know it then, but he would take charge of all my travel arrangements from that moment on. 
During my ten-week visit he took me to visit the holiest man he knew, a kindly, austere, elderly monk who lived in quiet obscurity in a small ashram in the holy city of Vrindaban, and when my monk couldn’t accompany me personally in my travels around North India, he arranged for another monk to do so.

My feelings for him developed naturally over the next year-and-a-half. At first I simply revered him for his status in the Order and for his superior knowledge of spiritual matters. Later, encouraged by his informality with me, I began thinking of him as my friend. He used to teach me his views on philosophy, and if I disagreed with anything he said, I argued with him, sometimes passionately. One day unexpectedly he asked me if I was gay, and though I feared how he might react, I told him I am, but quickly added that I didn’t consider myself sexual at all since I had decided to become a monk. He told me he was not surprised, that the abbot had told him there were many gay people in Hollywood. I had to smile at that partly because of the stereotype and partly because it was true. It was only during my second visit to India a year later, when I had returned as a student for a full year, that he began urging me to start loving him.

I can’t remember his exact words, just the feeling that he was knocking at the door of my heart, asking me to let him in. I didn’t understand why he was doing that. I thought that becoming a monk meant I never had to love anyone. Being the son of an alcoholic father, I had learned early in life to bury my feelings to survive in an emotionally chaotic household. I took Mr. Spock as my ideal. I would be logical. I had no need for messy emotions. Ask me what I thought, and I could tell you in great detail. Ask me what I felt, and there was only a gray, blank, nothingness. I felt nothing.

But he kept knocking at the door of my heart, and so I visited the old monk in Vrindaban and told him I was growing attached to my monk. He looked serious and said in his low voice, “That’s not good.” Triumphantly, I took this message back to my monk, but he just laughed at me and kept patiently knocking at the door of my heart. I was scared what might happen if I actually opened that door. I refused and resisted a while longer, but finally I made the conscious choice to open my heart to let him in.

I could not have predicted what happened next. A rush of feeling like a mighty wind swept through me, shaking me to my core. When he was near me, I felt intense joy, like I was soaring high in the air. For the first time I thought I understood a little the meaning of ecstatic love I had read about that saints feel in the vision of God. When he had to leave me to do his work, I felt crushed, as if all the air had left my lungs. I would lie gasping on my cot alone in my room, and my heart felt like it was being wrung and twisted painfully like a wet towel. For the first time I felt I understood a little about the pangs of separation saints feel when the vision of God is withdrawn. But then my monk would come to see me again, and I was soaring high again.

It is a wonder that other monks didn’t seem to notice the change that had come over me. I couldn’t imagine that the intense feelings pulsing through me weren’t plainly visible to all. Perhaps the others did notice, but as I later began to understand, they considered a sincere young man fortunate to win the love an older monk. For then he would get the guidance he needed to develop fully as a monk and as a man. Then he would learn what it meant to be loved and to love.

This relationship became my model for the intimacy that is possible between men, a relationship with a spiritual purpose that engaged my intellect, feelings, and only last of all physical expressions of affection. It was no less passionate for being non-sexual. A few years later, when I decided celibate monastic life had fulfilled its purpose for me, I moved to San Francisco looking to find a partner with whom to cultivate such a relationship without the need for celibacy. That was the summer of 1977, the peak of the party in the heaven of hedonism. Although I have experienced different kinds of relationships with different men, I have yet to find a partner as capable of sharing on so many levels as my first love.