Birth of an obsession

Photo: Whirligig beetles on the Eramosa River, Sept. 29.

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When I stand on the bank of the Eramosa and look down I can see Old Man Willow lying there in a dream, branches afire. If I look even further I can see conflagration only eight minutes away, Brünnhilde singing the song of our mortality. Looking even further I see the darkness beyond, and space reaching back to the deafening sound, a hiss not a bang at the birth of the universe.

Standing over the shallows, I can see myself in a room overlooking the black spruce beside my parents' house. I spent a whole summer in my room, afraid to go out in case Mom would give me something to do. I spent months at my drafting table creating a whole language and alphabet, the world of Derna and all its islands. I imagined a king who was lonely, and spent his energy longing for a lost queen and child—who didn't want to rule his kingdom.

Looking down into that room I see my own loneliness reaching out and finding nothing to hold. I felt apart. A place inside of me longed to be truly known and accepted for what it was, a chamber in my heart called my inner darkness. It was depression and homosexuality wrapped into one. I could feel the longing that grew, to touch and be touched, to be wanted in the same secret way that I wanted.

One of the first times I went out at night with a car alone, I drove along the lake road to the area where my friend D lived and drove in circles around thinking of him lying there, sleeping. Thinking of being near him. It was a teenage obsessions that went everywhere and nowhere at once.

It turned into a feeling that would seize me while I was driving, the need to see a naked man. Then I started stopping at variety stores far from home and buying Playgirl, later gay porn. I didn't want to see anyone in that store who might ever see me again. I would pay and run for the car. Sometimes my shame was so deep I would ditch the mag at the first opportunity, in a garbage can; never even made it home.

The first time I bought a Playboy, too, just to persuade myself, whoever was watching, that I wasn't really gay, that it was somehow legitimate. The woman in the centrefold was beautiful, but I couldn't bear to think of the wet, pink place between her legs. I pulled out that centrefold and a few pages from the Playgirl, filed them away in a remote secret part of my filing cabinet. After that I never bothered with Playboy. But it went on, that fight, for years and years. Sitting along in my room at night I would suddenly be seized with the desperate need, and drive to the store. Eventually I gave up driving far, just went to the Short Stop at the corner. It happens to be the same variety store I live near now, but we're talking about 1986. Those desperate trips continued into my marriage, when I kept a stash of photographs in a bag at the back of the closet in my office.

That's what she found. It wasn't a huge secret. She had known all along about the struggle. I never hid it from anyone close to me after I was 20. She found that stash and decided it was time for everything to blow up, and it did, like the conflagration at the beginning and end of all time.

Later, when I had resigned myself to the truth, I continued buying them without so much shame. The guilt gradually drained away. And then the internet took away the necessity of spending money on anything so vacuous.

Still, what do I see in it? The fantasy has carried through my whole life. Still my sexuality is flavoured with voyeurism, the desire to see. It sometimes prevails over the desire to be held. What am I looking for?

Passion, desire, intensity, fulfilment. I no longer feel that prickling grab, the way it seizes my heart and pulls me away. No longer a terrible secret haunting my nights, and I can choose my ways. But looking deep within the water, to the heart of everything where stories begin, I still see the lonely teenager at his desk.

Phone scam artist targeting gay community

This particularly effects delegates to the GALA Festival in Montreal. A phone scam artist has been calling members of the queer community, organizations and churches, claiming to have been gay bashed and asking for a transfer of money. He is highly organized, and has gathered enough detailed information about activists and other community leaders to make his calls sound legitimate. He is known to have a list of more than 5,000 delegates to the GALA Festival. He seems to have started in Guelph, where a prominent counsellor and activitist was scammed out of $60, but numerous people across Ontario have received calls since then. It has spread into the States, where he has persuaded people to send him bank transfers of up to $400. If you receive a call from this person, do not send any money. Report it to phone busters at 1-888-495-8501 or email wafl@phonebusters.com. Please pass this information to your community, particularly GLBT choruses that attended Montreal.

September ecology article

Newly posted at Suite101:

Nature versus nurture in honeybees