Cultural Conversation 6 - Sex

Assignment 6: Your Experience of Conflict Involving Sexual Practice

Robert Heinlein used to say that everybody lies about sex. Well, I certainly have, and I know that I believe others have lied to me about sex, so it’s difficult for me say anything that doesn’t stink of deception in one way or another.

I’ll give you an example. I was around nine or ten when I first started approaching other boys for sex. Since I was attracted to women (girls, really) as well, I assumed that I was some sort of pervert; I didn’t have the language to adequately express what I was feeling sexually.

I would like to point out that if the thought of a nine or ten year old boy approaching others for sex doesn’t strike terror into you, it should. Those I approached were interested in experimenting, but I remember clearly being frustrated that they would not go as far as I wanted to go. I was very lucky not to fall into the hands of a pedophile.

This behavior continued into Jr. High School, when I ran into someone who was not interested at all in my advances. After that, it got around that I was a fag, (though I didn’t actually suffer any consequences from these rumors until later in high school), and I stopped approaching others for sexual contact until after high school.

There was a young man in our class, who I had a passing acquaintance with (he was a fellow cub scout in earlier years), whose behavior and speech were what we would call today flaming, or to use the more accurate but somehow more pejorative term, effeminate.

I never thought of approaching him; that would have made me a fag (or so my reasoning went, flawed as it was). I remember clearly that he tried out for the cheerleading squad in 7th grade, and I remember being in the stands of the auditorium where the tryouts took place (the student body being required to vote for whom the cheerleaders would be).

I also remember, with a clarity undiminished by time, of how much I made fun of him, along with the others around me in the stands.

How much braver he was than I, I still can’t adequately express.

Cultural Conversation 5 - Spirituality

Assignment 5: Your Experience of Religion/Spirituality

About seven years ago I got the Really Good Job. It was Oilfield Industry work, and it paid well. Very well. I had more disposable income than at any other point in my life. And I disposed of it.

One of the many vices I practiced was excessive eating, even when I wasn’t hungry. As a result, I went from about 250/275 to nearly 400 pounds at my high point. Now, I had worked in retail for many years before that, and by the time I got the Really Good Job, I had worked over my knees like you wouldn’t believe. As a consequence, I was having problems getting up steps, much less anything remotely strenuous. After I lost the Really Good Job I had decided that I would use my COBRA health benefits to get knee surgery. But my Orthopedist said that at my weight, this was probably a very bad idea. So I had to lose weight in a hurry. Then I went to the Gastric surgeon. He said he could help me lose weight; all I needed to do was to get clearance from a psychologist, to make sure I wouldn’t gain back all the weight and kill myself after the surgery.

I showed up at the psychologist’s office with a milkshake in my hand. Needless to say, he didn’t sign the paper giving me his approval, but instead recommended therapy.

I was in therapy for a year, trying my best to get that approval. My therapist would ask me, “Do you want to stop overeating?” and I would reply, “I’m here to save my knee.” and she would reply, “That means you’ll have to change, and stop overeating.” Like I said, this went on for a year.

About this time, my Dad had to go under the knife for 90% blockage in his arteries. I was so very worried about him, even though it seems like our strongest emotions for each other were anger, frankly. Right after the surgery I went on one of the more serious binges I have ever had. I made myself sick, I ate so much.

So there I was, in the car of the parking lot, scared to death to see my dad so scared and helpless. I desperately wanted to pray.

This wasn’t a new desire for me. I remember vividly, when I was maybe eight or younger, staying up all night, praying to God to reveal himself to me, desperate for any sensation, any emotion that might be called contact with God. By daybreak I had worked myself up into a frenzy of crying, but I felt nothing, absolutely nothing. From that time I realized that God hadn’t come to me for a reason. Whether the reason was that I was sinful (I certainly thought I was), or because God didn’t really exist, or because I lacked something which other people had, some faculty that allowed one to believe, was irrelevant. God didn’t exist for me. So, after a certain point, any discussion about the nature of the divine was irrelevant.

But in that car, on that night, I was lonely and scared and I thought to myself, “How can I pray, and it not be a lie?” Then it came to me, in a brief moment of inspiration, or epiphany, or intuition, or providence, or synchronicity, or pure chance.

I would have to want to change, to be different than what I was, in order to be honest, and actually, genuinely pray to God. I wasn’t so much concerned about whether God existed or not. I just wanted to be honest and speak to something outside of myself. So I repeated to myself, “OK. I am going to have to change.”

And I was able to pray.

I had never realized before that night how much pain and loneliness I really felt. But I felt better after I prayed, then before.

I went to my therapist, and I asked her how I could change, because I really wanted to be able to continue to pray. She said, “That’s what I have been waiting for.” and she signed the approval papers for my gastric surgery, that day. Nine months later I got the knee surgery, just before my COBRA coverage ran out.

So when other people talk about God, or argue about God, or complain about God, or kill each other over God I suspect they are actually talking about institutions, or their parents, or themselves. None of that has anything to do with me. Oh it matters how they treat each other, but God? No. All I know about God is that I need him (or her, or it).

I read a pithy little quote about God once, along the lines of, “The theist says that there is a God. The atheist say there is no God. The mystic says that there is nothing but God.”

I like that, but I have no idea if it’s true or not.

Cultural Conversation 4 - Class

Assignment 4: Your Experience of Socio-Economic Class

I live in a garage apartment in the back of my parent’s house. I have always lived with my parents, except for a year in Austin when I was 19 and a year when I was 36 had a very well paying job in the oilfield industry. When I moved back into my parent’s home after I lost my well-paying job (long story) my parents thought it best that I move into the garage apartment, which I also believed to be very prudent, considering we get along as well as you might expect in such a situation.

After I moved in, my parents then started using a maid service, and also had my place cleaned up once a month.

Now, I don’t know about where you live, but in south Texas, a maid service means that several illegal immigrants from South or Central America come to your house, and you pay them about as half as much as you would pay a white person.

I use the term white person speculatively; I don’t actually know any white people you would be able to pay to clean your house. Don’t know any African-Americans who would do it, either. There are Mexican–Americans who will do it, but they probably don’t talk about it much (I would hazard to guess), and they are forced to accept the prevailing rate. If one of them said to my family, “Goddamnit, I am a citizen, you have to pay me a fair wage.”, I would expect that we (the family) would never, ever speak to this person again, and not because we would resent paying them the extra money, but because we would be far too ashamed by the exchange to ever want to speak about it.

I should point out here that my family consists of my Mom and Aunt, who are assimilated Mexican-Americans, my father, who is an Anglo, and me, who calls himself not-white. What does all this mean? I have no idea.

On a practical basis, it means that we act in an entirely schizophrenic manner about the cleaning people. When they come to my place, I try to clean up as much of my mess as possible. I clean the toilet and the counter of my bathroom, because I can’t stand the thought that I am paying someone to clean up my shitty toilet and filthy vanity area.

I don’t hang out at the main house when they are cleaning there, unless I am cooking for them or making them something to drink or putting on some music they like.

It means my family usually gives them packages of old cloths, toys for their kids or sometimes holiday food or bonus money that doesn’t get a cut taken out by their Mexican-American boss. It also means that my Aunt continually grouses about things missing that she assumes they have taken, or that my mother complains about something they have did wrong or broken to their Mexican-American boss.

It’s never just a job that they do, like we do, and it’s never just about them, it’s always about us, as well.

That’s about as close to a class conflict that I have been involved with, as about as close as I want to come, either.

It seems to me that the awareness of class is just not an awareness of difference; it’s also the awareness that you are exploiting someone else for you own benefit. I suspect that’s why it is nearly impossible to admit that class differences exist in this country. If we ever did, we would also have to face up to the fact that our power allowed us to exploit others who have less power. Such awareness probably makes one really schizophrenic, after a while.

Cultural Conversation 3 - Gender & Conflict

Cultural Conversation 3: Your Experience of Gender and Conflict

It was about ten years ago that I came to the conclusion that I wasn’t a man. This was not an altogether surprising epiphany, considering that I had never performed according to the expectations of what a man should be. But before that moment I had always assumed that I was simply bad at being a man, rather than not a man at all. It wasn’t until I realized that my actions fell so far outside the norm of what a man was that I didn’t really qualify anymore.

To utter such statements, especially in front of others who are fond of you, is disconcerting to them, to say the least. There is usually a gasp, and a determined refutation that, darn it, I am so a man, along with the unstated assumption that I am being dangerously self-deprecating.

The truth is I’m just trying to be honest.

The moment came when I realized that for some I chose to be honest with my sexuality about would never accept my behavior; they would always assume a betrayal of that standard of behavior which they assumed to be absolute. For these, I would never be a man, and circumstances forced me to admit that their interpretations, if not an accurate description of reality, were a least far closer to the social norm than I would ever accept. And if it was their interpretation, then why was it necessary to subscribe to it at all?

Funny thing was, it was about five years ago that I realized that I was a man.

I had been thinking about my first girlfriend. I was only 20, she was a thoroughly fucked up 30. So it was a recipe for a disaster. We fought quite a bit, and once I go so angry that I saw her cringe.

It threw me, and I immediately stopped fighting with her. The argument had been entirely verbal, and I honestly don’t remember either wanting to hit her or even making any sort of physical movement that could be construed as threatening. I think it was entirely a response to my intensity of emotion, combined with the fact of her history of relationships, which included dating physically abusive men. Once I got angry enough, she expected me to strike her.

So about five years ago I started thinking about that moment, and I realized that I occasionally performed in the world as a man, even if I didn’t always realize it.

To drift in and out of gender roles as if they were a set of clothes, or more accurately a set of behaviors that one could assume as one wishes, posits a single unanswerable question; what am I right now?