And at times I did reach out. I parked once in a parking lot rumoured to be a cruising spot. Someone opened my passenger door and got inside. I recognized him from the bar and didn’t find him attractive. He kept laughing nervously. It was so awkward. How do you tell someone to get out of your car? (That was another reason I wasn’t a good cruiser—I was too polite and overly concerned about hurting someone’s feelings.) I eventually told him I had exams to study for, which could have led him to logically ask why, then, was I sitting in my car in a parking lot at midnight? But he just laughed and got out. I drove off, vowing never to do something like that again.
I had also walked home from the bar in the wee hours of a Sunday morning, drunk and purposely putting myself in a situation for something to happen. Nothing ever did. Even when I went out of my way to find sex, it usually went wrong. Some of my friends picked up sex like burrs. But I never had the knack for it.
Whether I was placing a personal ad or trying to get a laughing stranger out of my car, I rarely stopped to consider my personal safety. I never contemplated the risk of meeting complete strangers. Of going back to the home—and bedroom—of someone I had just met. Of walking through a park late at night without so much as a bread knife to protect myself. Not that the city where I lived was particularly violent. But there’s an undertow to every city, regardless of its size, especially at night. And who knows who I might have run into, gay or otherwise? I wouldn’t have been able to defend myself.
Like many young people, I didn’t think something bad could actually happen to me. Or, if it did, I assumed I’d find a way out. I was smart, after all.
I knew how to handle myself.
* * *
—
“The bar is no place to meet anyone,” a friend once told me.
By the time I decided to place my personal ad, I had come to the same conclusion. I’d been going to the bar for about eight months by then, and I had bounced around an assortment of social circles, trying to find a group of people I fit in with. I’d hook up with one person, they’d introduce me to their circle of friends, and I’d hang out with them until the next hookup, and then I’d be introduced to a new group. At times, it felt like I wasn’t dating guys so much as their friends. Yet at every turn, I failed to find the connection and community I was searching for. Coming out hadn’t erased my loneliness. Imagine how disappointing it was, to spend all those years so deeply locked inside the closet, only to finally emerge and find myself still in darkness.
Sure, the bar could be fun, but it was hard to form any meaningful relationships there. How could you, when the dance music made it impossible to hear what the other person was saying? The bar could also be competitive, a beauty pageant of sorts, with people vying for attention, making snide comments, judging others.
I don’t mean to paint the bar scene in an entirely negative light. Some people I met there were kind and sincere—but they didn’t have a way of standing out in the crowd. And, to be honest, I wasn’t really drawn to those people anyway. Not at twenty-one. I was attracted more to people who were destructive, self-centred, and dismissive of my affections. I suppose that made perfect sense, when I consider how rejection and poor self-esteem had become second nature to me. Why would those issues suddenly disappear the moment I stepped inside a gay bar? I was the same person dealing with the same issues I had when I was in the closet.
I was still struggling to accept myself.
* * *
—
A few months after I placed my personal ad, I started to notice a change. The romantic in me hadn’t completely died, but he’d faded somewhat. I was tired of trying, of putting myself out there and never finding anyone. My failed attempts at love, the chatter of the people around me, the empty feeling of being in a crowded bar after I had exhausted every option—all of this fostered a kind of reckless cynicism. Things I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing a few months prior were now real possibilities. My unhappiness fuelled my decisions. I wouldn’t have called myself self-destructive, although I know that’s a very real issue for many queer people. But it was self-deterioration. I stepped into situations that I knew I shouldn’t. And this was new for me.
I stopped being careful.
There was a man who frequented the bar who I thought was attractive. He was older, but not out-of-the-question older. Someone I knew had briefly dated him and said he was strange, that he had seemed a bit off.
In what way? I asked.
Just weird, he said. He didn’t get a good vibe. I was told to stay away.
And while most people would have heeded this advice, I didn’t. This warning only intrigued me more. The man became a sort of challenge. I was attracted to the potential danger of him. I wanted to see if I could handle myself—which, of course, I believed I could.
I was playing games, Brett. Games.
One February night, I was at the bar and so was he. I struck up a conversation. He told me how cute I was and said that I had a great mouth. (If anyone ever comments on your mouth, warning bells should start clanging.) At the end of the night, the bar lights flickered on—always a sobering moment—illuminating the cigarette smoke that hung like fog and the determined faces of people who didn’t want to go home alone. He invited me back to his place and I accepted. I can’t remember if I told anyone I was leaving with the man, but I would have likely laughed off whatever warnings I received. I would have told them not to be stupid. I could handle myself.
The man lived in a small apartment in a low-rise building. It was tidy, and dimly lit. A single lamp was on, but nothing more. I waited on his couch while he got us beers. I don’t remember what we talked about, but at one point, we were reclined on either end of the sofa, our legs crisscrossed. I was wearing a pair of wool work socks. He took one off and started rubbing my foot. I didn’t think this was particularly strange, but it did seem a bit odd. Seeing my pale, naked foot look so vulnerable in his hand brought the gravity of the situation into focus. I had made a mistake. I didn’t want to be there anymore. I wanted to leave.
I excused myself to go to the bathroom in an effort to clear my thoughts. On the way there, I passed his bedroom. The door was half-open and I saw his bed. The top corner of the sheet had been turned down, and what might have been a welcoming sign to someone else now struck me as foreboding and sinister. I couldn’t imagine getting into that bed with him. In the bathroom I tried to calm myself. It was the first time that I’d ever felt fear around a one-night stand. Actual fear. I tried to remind myself that the man hadn’t done anything to cause that fear. I had seen no bodies in the bathtub. Smelled no peculiar smells. I hadn’t spotted a mummified corpse in the bedroom. But I was in a stranger’s apartment in the middle of the night, and no one knew where I was. And I couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right.
The bathroom window was too small to squeeze myself through, and I imagined pulling a Shelley Duvall in The Shining and getting stuck—that was one way to get your legs cut off. So I had no choice but to return to the living room, where the man was waiting. We made more small talk and then I said the only thing I could say.
“I should get going.”
I can only imagine how confusing it must have been for him. I had come on so hot and strong at the bar not even an hour earlier, and now I’d suddenly gone cold. He dismissed my comment, maybe assuming I was joking, but I told him no, I really had to go. The more he prodded, the more he asked why, the more fearful I became. Then he started to get angry, which only made me more afraid. He told me I was ignorant. I told him he’d judged me too quickly. (Why on earth was I even debating with this man?)
“You’re all the same,” he spat at one point.
He could have pinned me. Pulled out a baseball bat from behind the couch. Spiked my beer. And then what would I have done? How were my smarts going to prevent me from getting killed?
I’m not saying this man would hav
e done anything to hurt me. But I didn’t know anything about him. And that was precisely the point. You can play all the games you want, but sometimes, the games play you.
He told me to get out. And this is the part that has stupefied me to this day: before I left, I gave him my number. I was afraid of this man and yet I gave him the opportunity to contact me again. Why? Was it politeness? An attempt to defuse the situation?
Or was it simply that I always felt compelled to apologize for being the person I was?
I hurried home as fast as I could, in the early hours of that freezing February morning, the city, my roommates, my parents back home, everyone I knew asleep and unaware.
He called the house a few hours later. I was sleeping, so one of my roommates took the call. I ended up calling him back and apologizing, saying I wasn’t looking to date anyone. He never called back. I saw him out at the bar again a few weeks later.
I’d like to say this was the first and last time I got myself into a situation like that, but there would be other encounters to come, when I willingly rolled the dice and hoped for the best. And every time, after I was safely back at home, with the door locked, I would ask myself, “What is wrong with you?”
What was wrong with me, Brett, is I had grown up in a world that told me I was nothing, that I was worthless, a freak. I walked home alone late at night, looking not for sex but for a punishment I felt I deserved. No thumping dance track could drown out that noise inside my head. It would take me years to untangle those beliefs, even though the knot is still there today. Years to learn that I had worth. Years to learn the necessity of self-care. Years to learn that the only person I needed to trust was myself.
And years to learn that I was never, ever as smart as I thought I was.
Sincerely,
October 1 1992
To Whom It May Concern,
I am also a university student and currently in my third year. I enjoy philosophy and current affairs as subjects of intellect. I am 22 years old.
My hobbies are eclectic and diverse. I enjoy a variety of sports. I like most types of music, travelling, meeting interesting people and trying new exotic foods.
I am searching for someone who, like me, is in need of companionship. It is very easy to dwell on the negatives in life, but I have always been someone who chooses to look at the positive.
If this interests you, call or write me back. It is not easy describing yourself in a letter.
I wait to hear from you.
Yours sincerely,
Glen
Dear Glen,
Philosophy. Current affairs. New exotic foods. You certainly were the renaissance man. Especially at the ripe old age of twenty-two! The city we lived in wouldn’t have been able to satiate a bon vivant like you. Not with its shopping mall food courts, its mini skyscrapers, its Mark’s Work Wearhouses. The view would have been too confining, too predictable, for someone like yourself. You likely fled as soon as you graduated.
Our university town was practically buzzing with WASPs at that time, even by Southern Ontario standards. There was an abundance of old money, Ralph Lauren polo shirts (with upturned collars), Jeep Soft Tops, and a sense of entitlement as hardened as the mortar between the granite blocks of the university buildings. I don’t remember much visible diversity on campus, or anywhere else in the city. Not that I would have thought to take much notice. I also never stopped to consider how homogeneous the crowd was at the gay bar on a Saturday night.
Call it a hunch, but I bet the thirteen men I’m replying to now were white. Sure, names and physical descriptions provide some indicators, but I’d put money on it. And while I didn’t mention that I was white in my ad, I did say “seeks same.” At the time, I’m sure I meant age. Or another student. Or gay. I know I didn’t mean same as in white. That, after all, was pretty much a given.
But I do question those words and their implications now. What would a queer person of colour have thought reading my ad? Would they have felt welcome to respond? And would I have responded back to them? It’s easy for me to say yes, and I honestly believe I would have, if their letter had piqued my interest. But my response would not have been instinctive.
It would have been something for me to consider.
* * *
—
I could be wrong about you, Glen. Maybe you decided to stay in the city after graduation, as I did. Most of my university friends either moved back to their hometowns or went to Toronto to begin their postgraduate working lives. But I wasn’t interested in either option. Returning to Sarnia would have felt like taking a step backwards. And although Toronto, especially gay Toronto, had more clubs, more job opportunities, more men, the idea of relocating there was too intimidating for a small-city boy like myself. I was afraid I’d be swallowed up by the shadows of all those office towers, drowned out by the car horns and sirens, overwhelmed by the chaos. I’d become another anonymous face in the crowd. Given the upheaval of my university years, I wanted nothing more than to bob along in safe, comfortable waters. So I decided to stay where I was. Besides, I reasoned, I could be a writer from anywhere, couldn’t I?
I had dabbled in writing throughout high school, but it wasn’t until I came out that writing took on a new urgency and necessity. Up until that point, my writing had remained behind a protective wall, heavily coded and rife with subtext. Now, I was coming from a place of truth and I wanted to write about my own lived experiences as a young gay man in the mid-nineties. I dismissed the notion that those experiences were insignificant and unimportant, as I’d been led to believe for years. I told myself that my words were cumulatively filling a void.
I was aware that achieving any measure of success as a gay writer would be difficult. I knew that I couldn’t simply sashay into a publisher’s office, hand over my manuscript, and expect people to scramble to offer me a contract. (Although it was a nice fantasy.) I believed that I had talent. I just needed the rest of the world to believe it, too.
It was easy to get discouraged. I started stories, but rarely finished them. And the odd time I did complete a story, what then? Send it off to a slush pile at a literary magazine? Share it with friends who might not be all that interested? Most of the time, I tucked my stories—all those beginnings—in a leather folder with a brass tab on the cover engraved with my initials. At least this gave them an air of importance.
I was also struck by a feeling of pointlessness. In the real world, outside of those university classrooms where I had sat for four years, writers didn’t seem to have much value. And while there was a certain prestige and romanticism in saying that I was a “writer,” the hard truth was that most people I knew didn’t buy books. And, of those who did, only a small fraction read the work of gay writers.
But my convictions kept me going. My anger, too. I was frustrated by having to filter my gay experiences through the lens of the straight world.
After an editor read a draft of my first novel, she told me, “I don’t know who the audience for this book is.”
“Me,” I wanted to say. “And many others like me.”
But what good was trying to convince a person that you had something of value to offer an audience when that audience wasn’t even on her radar?
I knew of other gay writers who had had similar conversations with editors and agents. Who was the audience? Where was the appetite for the work? And, when a gay writer did manage to break through to commercial success, it was usually because straight characters factored heavily in the work.
“What can I say?” I remember one gay writer telling me after receiving more recognition for his latest book than he had for his previous novels. “It’s my straight story.”
Too often, I felt I had to chase after the permission of straight people to write stories about gay characters, because that was where all the power resided—within the realm of heterosexual gatekeepers. All I had to do
was take inventory of the books I’d read during my four years as an English major to see that the literary path behind me was lined with the pages of straight narratives.
And this bias wasn’t confined to the world of books. The film Philadelphia was released around that time, and even though it was the story of a gay lawyer with AIDS, the film was clearly made for straight audiences. Any film that casts straight actors in gay leading roles sends a signal that the film is meant for straight people. Imagine, Glen, if Brokeback Mountain had starred two gay men. It would never have achieved the commercial and critical success it did. Instead, it would have been labelled as a “gay” film and swept into a “special interest” category, if it had been made at all. But casting well-known straight actors in gay roles eliminates the discomfort for straight audiences. As if to say, no need to squirm in your seats—those gay characters, their emotions and their sexuality, they aren’t “real.” There’s no threat if gay lives are seen to reside only in the land of make-believe.
I hungrily sought out gay books and films in an effort to validate my emotions and to see my own life mirrored back to me. I remember buying anthologies of gay fiction and poetry, and while it was exciting to plunge into this material, it didn’t always fill the need within me. It was gay writing, but it wasn’t always good writing. And that is what I was searching for more than anything.
Too much of the gay literature and film I had read or watched stopped at being gay. That was all they had to offer. Just another predictable story with the same paper cut-out characters, the same tropes. I wanted to write complex characters who were fully realized, complicated and messy, and who didn’t conform to prescribed clichés and stereotypes. And no, I didn’t need every gay lead in a film to be hot in order for me to enjoy it. Were there no stories worth telling about average-looking gay people with tummies?
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