"This is my gay blog. It seems funny to put it like that. This is my blog where I post about myself: the emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay. An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being... Most of all, the gay blog is a statement to myself: I'm gay. I like being gay."
It's amazing how inspiring nostalgia can often be. Like when you (read: I) haven't blogged in more than a month, either because you/I haven't got any time or because there doesn't seem anything worthwhile to say, and then it takes a stroll through memory lane to get you/me all fired up. If I were any good with machine-stuff, I'd use a mechanic-car-engine quip here but since I'm not, I'll skip that. Getting back on track, though, four years of the closetspace hence, I wanted to kickstart this blog again, and so there's a new template and a read of my very first post.
Voila!
Regular visitors would know that my favorite screwed-up apple has been around here for donkey's ears - almost since the first day the blog started, I've had the apple template, despite loads of entreaties to remove it or modify the template. I've resisted that because I always felt that the apple was so frikkin' perfect in this space: it explained all the "emotional, ethical, sexual, spiritual, hilarious parts of being gay" that the first blog post talks about. But, as anyone will tell you, four years is a helluva long time - hell, that's way more than most gay relationships last! So, I guess it was about time the apple got dumped. :( And the rainbow-jumping boy leapt to take its place.
Yesterday, in a phone conversation with SnowWhite's Stepmum, he told me, "You know, there are other kinds of activism, not just gay activism!" and of course he was totally correct. On one level... On one level, it seems silly that when there's so much screwed-up in the world, with hunger and poverty and child abuse and war and destruction, with all of this going on, that the world should sit up and listen to a bunch of people who're quite well-satisfied in other respects, who want to be gay openly. Is the closet really such a big deal? Why does gay activism have to make it into this weird do-or-die situation, where being out of the closet is absolutely essential to being free? Even I, in an earlier post, bitched about gay activists and activism, saying I absolutely did not want to have anything to do with it. Instead, my mantra has been: I'm gay and I like being gay, so let's just blog and bitch and rant and rave about the fun stuff, the cheesy stuff, the emotional stuff, the weird stuff that being queer entails. Just because there's a brain in the closet, doesn't mean that it has to be worn on the sleeve: Prada and LV are still much more pleasant to ogle at, than a mass of pink jelly.
So then, why does it feel so frikkin' great to hear about the California Supreme Court's judgment on the unconstitutionality of banning gay marriages? Why does it feel sad to hear that Sexy Old Thing has broken up with his boyfriend of fifteen years? Why is my work suddenly so important to me, where I talk to gay Americans and ask them about their coming-out experiences and how it felt to be marginalized and silenced while growing up? Why should I care for any of this, really? As I keep telling Irish Coffee, I'm not American, and I'm really in no hurry to become one...? So then, why does all this touch me so deep?
The California case is, of course, making news across the world. They say, what California does today, the US does tomorrow. Sort of something like they used to say about Bengal earlier: what Bengal does today, India does tomorrow. I'm not too sure about that, though. As I've said so many times before, the US seems a highly religious-ized society (yes, I invented a new word), and the polarization between sex and religion seems too great to bring about gay rights for Americans any time soon. It's strange to think that while the "original" (if I may say so) gay movement started in the States, so many other countries have beaten the US in this regard... But again, getting back to the topic: why does it matter to me?
The answer is really in that part I quoted from my first blog post, and I guess I never really recognized it as such. "An overall experience that is so intrinsicaly not just a matter of sexual preference, but so much a type of being." And there you have it. That's the part which really calls for all those "standard" arguments that activists offer for gay rights. That's the part which really ensures that a fight for gay rights in California or Massachusetts is also a fight for gay people and their allies everywhere across the world - Bombay or Lahore or wherever. That is immediately obvious when you consider how many of the strategies of gay activists around the world are interconnected. When I talk to some of the people here, and hear their stories about being in the closet, I can't help but remember my own experiences - of not one of "the boys" playing football or cricket during lunch break in school, or not being able to tell my mum about Irish Coffee when she asks me over the phone whether I've met any cute girls here - and I know that even the teeniest amount of work I can do, to help young people understand their sexuality and realize it's nothing to be ashamed of, will somehow find its application somewhere in my backyard. And I also know it's about love - something that is quite universal. News of a 15 year old relationship gone sour saddens me - it would, even if it were hetero love. Hell, if the anti-gay brigade can get up on their damned soapbox and screech so incessantly, I can do the same!
For me, nostalgia is important because it inspires and reminds me of the things that are really important. Which is not to say that Prada shades don't require their fair share of spotlight, but what I really mean is this... a blog is supposed to be personal. My tiny little closetspace in cyberworld was always supposed to be about the real and the personal. Four years down the line, I guess it's important to reaffirm that to myself. So, welcome... welcome to a brand new closet. Where the boy jumps over his rainbow, and he spills his soul, and he writes words that he hopes will mean something. Something important.
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