To Right The Unrightable Wrong

Tears. Rolling down the landscape of my face and right off of the fleshy precipice, landing on denim stretched over muscular thigh, where they left dark, wet spots: a steady stream of tears. They've been building up for a long time but trapped inside a man that has sworn to feel nothing, to be cold and hard--as cold and hard as steel, so as to prevent any more heartbreak.

It's not really bad heartbreak that I have felt in my life. Compared to many, the pain I have felt has been miniscule. It doesn't make it any less real. The reasons are inconsequential, superfluous, unimportant--they are just things that have hurt me, have broken my heart, have made me cry. Except today nothing has happened to make me cry. It's been a standard Sunday; a little work, a little play, some fresh air, a talk on the phone with mom.. A normal Sunday. Yet, as dusk sets on Manhattan, I found myself sitting on the chair in which I sit to perform my personal type of prayer: Buddhist chant. I was sitting, not in front of my altar, but in the middle of the living room and weeping.

I am weeping because there is just no reason for all the mess.

I cannot understand all the mess.

Earlier this week, an actor I have admired for a very long time went on television to talk to Ellen Degeneres about having been called a faggot by one of his co-workers, forcing him to become publically "out" to stacks of fans who, previously, had been privvy to none of his personal life. I think what TR Knight said about having Isaiah Washington call him a faggot was greatly understated and well delivered: " ...it's such a .... GREAT word...". He handled the task of having to discuss this unfortunate and uncomfortable happening (in front of the world!) with grace and graciousness. I have the utmost respect for him as an actor and as a man; as I admire Ellen for her person and her work. I loved it when, in the interview, Ellen made a remark about how nice it would be if we could all just stop saying such mean things about each other.

That's why I was crying.

I want to know why we are all so dang nab mean to one another. I want to know why there is so much conflict. I hear of people fighting with their friends, their siblings, their parents. I hold friends' hands while they break up with boyfriends, girlfriends, just friends and I listen to the stories of crimes committed against people who, at one time, loved one another. And then, after the break up, grudges are held. Actually, I've seen grudges held for silly comments made, as well as deep betrayals. I've held grudges and ended friendships because a person repeatedly offended or hurt me. I'm only human. I've lost friends who chose sides over other friendships ended. I've watched people I love commit crimes against one another, all the while commiting crimes of my own. And that is a tough fact to face.

I read books like THE WAY OF THE PEACEFUL WARRIOR and TAO TE CHING and I chant and I pray and I meditate on what I can do to be a better man--the man that God wants me to be and the best I can come up with is this heartache over mistakes made in the past. I want to be enlightened and to be able to forgive and forget, and so I focus on it and I make attempts and, still, relationships that have ended stay ended. I ask myself why did I say that? Why did I do that? Why do any of us say and do the things that we do? Many times we commit these crimes against our loved ones in a heated moment, without thinking, but (usually) with the intent of hurting them. Maybe during an argument or to strike back when we, ourselves, have been hurt.
There are times when the pain inflicted is so calcuted that one would think there were charts and graphs in the other room, mapping out maximum pain inflicted. But why? Why are we so mean to one another?

On MySpace, last week, my friend Ricky posted a bulletin that urged people (in honour of Martin Luther King Jr. day) to uphold peace and to reach out to someone with whom they were estranged or against whom they carried a grudge. It as a beautiful bulletin and a beautiful thought. And I took it to heart.

I called our son, our adopted son, Pat Juniour. He found us a few years ago and declared we were his dads and that was that. But, as with my father and me, we hurt each other. We made demands on each other and we chipped away at our relationship until there was no relationship anymore. Pat and I miss him, terribly, every day and we talk about him almost every day. A photo of the three of us hangs over my desk. He is prominently featured in my will. He will live in my heart, forever, even after the terrible things that have transpired. I don't know what I was hoping for when I called him but what I got was a friendly but guarded aloofness and a farewell with finality. It's ok. It didn't break my heart. It isn't why I was crying. I can go on with my days knowing that I reached out, knowing that I said "we think of you often and speak of you often and send good thoughts your way, wherever you may be." I have said the words and he has heard them, whether they registered or not. I just don't understand it, though; there was so much love. We meant the world to each other. And now we do not speak. We do not touch. We are not a part of each others' lives. To me that is just wrong.

This situation sits on my mind and brings to my memory estrangements from people in my past, people I loved. If those friends, if those family members and I can have conflict and hurt each other and then hold grudges, it must be doubly easy for strangers to hate each other and hurt each other. In our world, we seem to be given permission to hate on sight. You're a faggot. You're a nigger. You're a raghead. You're a bum. You're a kike. You're a chink. You're a dago. There are more offensive words, enough bigoted epithets to make an individual book. Believe me, I've heard them all; I'm a gay man and gay men have raised judgement to an artform that is catalogues in the Museum of Modern Art. The men of the gay community hate each other for being the wrong age, the wrong race, the wrong height, the wrong weight; they hate each other for sporting bad haircuts, donning bad fashions, residing in bad neighbourhoods, for being too pretty, for being to plain, for being too gay, for being too butch. It may be a sweeping generalization but it is based on fact--and fact that I have witnessed. I hate you, you hate me. Let's get a gun and shoot Barney.

Why, though? Why do we hate each other? I guess it is just easier than loving each other. Or maybe we have ALL been hurt so badly that the best way to keep from getting hurt again is to hate them before they hate you. I do not have an answer to the questions I ponder. I hardly have the questions, themselves. All I have is my personal quest and on certain days that quest makes me the man who is friendly to all and on others, the man who hates everyone. I will say this, though: on the bad days, I hate everyone with equal disdain. I don't need to know the details of their heritage, their church going, their sex life or their bank account. Those days, I hate the world because I hate me. Prejudice begins at home: hating yourself, first, makes it easier to hate them.

Maybe that's the key to stopping the hate. Maybe if we loved ourselves a little more, we would have the security to not be hurt when someone insults us. We might have the security to not resent our less talented friend for becoming famous, while we are still struggling. We might have the security to love the person next to us, romantically, spiritually, humanely, without analyzing it or worrying about it being reciprocal. I guess the best I can do is keep reading, keep searching, keep chanting and keep striving to become that better man--the one that God intended for me to be.

And keep buying Kleenex.


please note: the photo above was shot by Pat and used by my website designer, Theo Bill, to create what you are looking at--the back cover of a cd I recorded for the occasion of my 40th birthday. I may have shown it before but I think it best sums up my personal quest.. So I am using it again.