Are You Guys Brothers?

     Today is my younger brother’s birthday and my gift to him is not to make contact – no call, no card, and no-email message. His birthday will ultimately be far happier as a result, I think. Sometimes, the kindest thing we can do to a person is to leave them alone.

     When my father was alive, my brother Tom and I would often comment on how hard it was to find a Father’s Day card that didn’t express sentiments we didn’t have. Dad could be difficult to like sometimes. Not sending a card to him did not feel like an option. He wouldn’t have understood, and the family drama that would have been sparked would have been far-reaching and long-lasting. A good looking card with a blank space for writing “Happy Father’s Day, Dad, Love Brian and Ray” was sufficient.

     My brother and I are both at the same point in our lives with each other today. Once very close, we are now estranged, and the fear of family drama is no longer sufficient incentive to send a card that expresses a sentiment I don’t feel. In fact, it is the fear of stimulating family drama that prompts me to leave well-enough alone. My brother is happy in his life without a relationship with me. Why remind him, especially on his birthday, with guarded words on a blank card, that we are no longer close friends?

     Loose ends tend to bother me more than they do Ray, which is why I’m even writing about this now. I don’t like unfinished business in my life. I want to feel free to move forward without the thought that there is someone from my life who has been hurt or angry because of our relationship in the past. I tried, for instance, to locate on-line the male freshman from my college days in the late 1960s to apologize for fumbling through our first, and regrettably only, sexual experience. I wanted to make sure that he was not permanently scarred by my confusion, but I can’t find him. I also once wrote a letter to the Episcopal priest who was my first romantic partner. I have wanted assurance that he was okay and had forgiven me for breaking up with him and coming out publicly, thereby alerting his parishioners to Fr. Dan’s sexual orientation. He has never responded.

     But the freshman from Marquette University might now be heterosexually married and not want reminders of his homosexuality. Hearing from me might scar him in a way that I never did in the past. Fr. Dan might well have found a niche for himself that has helped soothe whatever anger he felt in the past. Hearing from me might be irritating, thus having an effect opposite to that intended.

     As I get older, I have learned better how to live with loose ends. I am coming to accept that when I die I might not be on the best possible terms with everyone whom I met in my life. With good input from Ray and from the Tao te Ching, I am learning that sometimes the most loving thing to do for others is to let them be.

     It makes me happy to hear from mutual friends how content my younger brother is with his life. I have never wished him anything but joy. Though we both share warm thoughts about sharing a bedroom and friends throughout our childhood, and though we both, while watching Brothers and Sisters on television, may have romanticized longings for a close family relationship, the truth is we push each other’s buttons, and we’re both far more at peace in our lives apart than we would be if we tried to maintain contact.

     This can be true not only with our family members but also with formerly close friends. The other night as we were walking through Provincetown on our way to dinner with our best friends, Tom and David, we ran into our former best friends. We haven’t seen each other since feelings were hurt on all sides at the time of their wedding a few years ago, and I have dreaded the moment when our paths might cross. I’m still hurt and angry about how I feel Ray and I were treated, and I don’t want to be friends again. But I also hate those loose ends, and I sincerely want them to know how much I enjoyed them and our friendship when it was good. But re-engaging them in a letter or on the street will only, I believe, create more pain, so the loving thing to do for them and for me is to wave, smile, ask how they’re doing, and keep walking.

     We’re all on the same life journey – me, Tom, Ray, my first sex partner, Fr. Dan, and our former best friends — facing the same obstacles to self-realization and actualization. An enormous part of living is negotiating relationships and managing feelings. For me, what seems to work best is to send loving thoughts to everyone, even those whom have hurt me, and especially those who I fear I may have hurt, but to keep walking forward without looking back and without distracting others with my need for closure. Our truth may set us free, but expressing it to others might well have the opposite effect.

     Right now, I hope my brother’s computer is filled with e-mail messages of love, his phone is overflowing with recorded renditions of “Happy Birthday,” and he is surrounded by dear friends who make him feel safe and valued. My gift to him is to think loving thoughts about him and to smile in silence.

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   Things Change, Like It Or Not

     Thirty-some years ago, the comedienne Lily Tomlin had a very popular character named Ernestine who was a bossy, snoopy, disrespectful, and cranky telephone operator. When dealing with unhappy customers, she would snort with derision and remind them that they were dealing with the phone company, an institution that didn’t care about the customer’s complaint because AT&T was “omnipotent.” Though she pops up from time to time in Lily’s work today, Ernestine retired from her switchboard “duty desk,” hopefully before her once powerful employer was no longer considered to be omnipotent. Today, it’s simply not the same AT&T. It’s been broken up, sold, changed, and must now compete with other communication giants. Things change, even those things like AT&T that we believed never would. That has certainly been true in my life.

  (To finish reading this offering, please go to http://glbtatwork.blog.com)

     A young gay man, recently out of college, and a middle-aged gay Catholic priest, both wrote to me in the past couple of weeks asking for guidance on how to find love.

     The young man wrote, “I struggle with feelings that maybe I don’t really want a relationship and that monogamy is not for me.  And I guess I realize that if I spend my whole life trying to attain ‘happiness,’ I will fail to realize the joy I have in the moment.  ugh… So what do I strive for, or, what is a reasonable level of satisfaction with life that I should seek?”

     The priest wrote: “These days, I seem to be living my life by just accepting the fact that this is the way things will be for me. It’s hard for me to understand why I can’t find what I need.” 

     What do you think it is that they really want or need? Are they searching for where to find love or what to look for in love? And when they find it, will it be enough? Is it ever enough?

     In the film Elegy,  a middle-aged professor and a co-ed thirty years his junior initially come together in a blissful relationship that satisfies them both emotionally and sexually. Then it doesn’t and they lose everything. Ben Kingsley portrays a culturally-sophisticated fifty-something divorcee whose sexual needs have been met with bimonthly romps with a friend of 20 years who is equally insistent upon no entanglements. He then spots in his college classroom the stunningly beautiful Penelope Cruz who is as drawn to his wisdom as he is to her youthful grace. They flirt, seduce one another, and joyfully end up in bed. But after a short time, they each want more. He complains to his best friend that he wants his student lover to lust for his body, and to make an exclusive emotional commitment to him. When she makes the commitment and then asks him to meet her family, he panics and pulls back. They break-up, though not without extraordinary pain and regret. They both reluctantly give up what worked well for them but find nothing to replace what they shared.

     If you asked people to name a married couple they felt had everything one could want in a relationship, and offered as an example Mel and Robyn Gibson, the multi-millionaire, handsome, famous, conservatively Catholic pair with a family of seven children and twenty-eight years together, they would have been voted as the ideal by many people. But all of that was not enough for the Gibsons. Robyn filed for divorce after pictures appeared in the press of her 53-year-old husband with his arms around a 24-year-old Russian pop singer. Were Mel and Robyn never in love? No, that’s very unlikely. Did one or the other change his or her mind about what love should look like and feel like? Probably, but we don’t know for sure because we’re not them. Each relationship is unique. But what the make-believe couple in the film Elegy, and the real movie couple, the Gibsons, remind us of is that knowing what you want is more important than knowing where to find it, and also, what you think you want today may change tomorrow.

          It’s not hard for us to advise others where to find potential life mates. The Internet has turned out to be a wonderful means of making connections for many people I know. Ray and I met 33 years ago through Dignity, the gay Catholic organization. Participating in groups in which you’ll find people who share your interests and values is a terrific way to meet a life companion. If you want a spouse and don’t meet him or her in high school or in college, as many people do, there are social events such as cruises, dinner parties, fundraisers, film festivals, wilderness adventures, and similar outings that provide safe environments in which to get to know another person. Bars have been the birthplace of some of the romances with which I’m familiar, but I’m not sure how you have a decent conversation with someone in a dark and noisy place. Yet, it can happen.

     It’s been my experience, though, that many people who hunger for love have too long a list of what it needs to look like and feel like. Perhaps their criteria are based upon a romantic novel they once read, a 1950s television program they watched, or a movie they saw that ends happily ever after.

     Every couple I know, gay and straight, who have successful relationships, have to work really, really hard to keep the love alive, growth inducing, and rewarding. When I say “successful,” I’m not talking about staying together for a long time. Lots of people stay together for a long time out of fear. That’s not love. That’s endurance. No, I’m talking about the incomparable experience of having the sum of the parts be better than the pieces apart, the awareness of symbiotic joy, the acceptance of sacrifice for the sake of what takes you to more emotional and spiritual high mountains than it does to deep valleys of fear and regret.

     The really hard part, for all of us regardless of our sexual orientation, is deciding whether we would rather live alone or with another person. The college graduate and the priest need to ask themselves what and how they really want their love experience to look like and operate. These choices, among other considerations, include monogamy or non-monogamy, living together or living apart, and being sexually attracted or not. Does the other person need to be the same race, hold the same religious beliefs, be in good physical shape, be rich, sober, tobacco-free, nice, communicative, funny, eager to travel, know a second language, and share political views? Do they need to be quiet in the morning, must they allow you to drive, allow you to cook, allow you to have pets, embrace your family, be your same age, be older, be younger, have hair on their head, be well-built, go to the gym, have good taste, dress smartly, be willing to move, be generous, be sexually versatile, or be famous?

     Do we want a sex partner more than we want someone with whom we can go to the movies, or a bridge partner more than someone who will accompany us to church, or a Sugar Daddy more than a traveling companion?

     These questions, and the many more that can impact satisfaction or disappointment in a relationship, aren’t always apparent to us in the initial stages of courtship. Our age, religion, occupation, gender, values, life goals, and hundreds of other factors can impact what we want from another person in relationship. The young college student and the middle-age priest, though they’re both gay men, would probably have very different lists of wants and needs. But to find and maintain love in a relationship, they both must to be aware of what they want and why they want it, and be prepared for that to change not only with themselves but also with their fantasy lover.

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Why We’re All the “Frumpy” Angel’s Biggest Fans

          Why has Susan Boyle, the 47-year-old Scottish lass, so completely captured our attention and our hearts?

(To read more, please go to http://glbtatwork.blog.com)

     As Ray and I excitedly, and a bit sadly, prepare to head back to Provincetown for six months, we begin the process of letting go of the comfortable and getting ready for change. We say “good-bye” to our familiar surroundings and friends in Florida, and think about seeing our home and friends in Massachusetts again. Each time we do so, regardless of the direction in which we’re headed, we verbalize to each other our desire to do things a little differently this time around. Not only do we want to start fresh with the garden and avoid any mistakes we may have made last year, but we also want to start fresh with our relationships, changing or acknowledging our expectations, altering our behavior when possible, and avoiding the same errors in judgment we feel we repeatedly make. (Our friends are probably making the same resolutions.)

     Once I actually arrive in the “other” house, it takes me about two weeks to settle in. There’s an eagerness on both Ray’s and my part to have everything feel secure and comfortably familiar as quickly as possible. In the two-weeks time that is required to do so, regrettably I often forget the resolutions I have made about doing things differently and about engaging with our friends more authentically.

     In an interview with Jane Fonda in the May issue of Vanity Fair, the 62-year-old actress was asked, “On what occasion do you lie?” She responded, “When the truth will serve no purpose and only hurt.” And yet, when asked, “What do you most value in your friends?” she answered, “Honesty.”

     Honesty in a primary love relationship is essential if the partnership has any chance of remaining vital. It breaks my heart to watch couples who withhold information from, or play games with, each other for the sake of peace or of dominance. Honesty is also essential for any friendship that Ray or I enter or maintain with others. As soon as we feel the person is incapable of honesty, we back away. But we also back away from couples whom we feel are mean to each other, and from individuals who are mean to us. Not being completely honest is okay when the absolute truth will serve no purpose and only hurt. But meanness isn’t only a matter of speaking the harsh truth. It’s also a matter of withholding loving truth and kindness.

     Obvious examples of unnecessary honesty between couples might include “I slept with your brother (or sister),” “Your mother is a witch and I hate her,” “I’m embarrassed by your father’s behavior when we’re with others,” “You’re getting really fat,” “You look so old,” and “I’m bored listening to your stories. You tell them over and over again.” Less obvious examples of meanness could be not saying “I hope that you’re as proud of yourself as I am of you,” “I’m happy that you get so much attention from other men (women),” and “Thank you for taking such good care of me. I feel spoiled.”

     Obvious examples of unnecessary honesty between friends might include “I don’t like your spouse/partner,” “Don’t you think it’s time to put your dog (cat, bird, mother) to sleep?” “Are you sure you want to put that much butter on your baked potato?” and “Take a pill. Your depression is really wearing me down.” Less obvious examples of meanness might be not saying “You are so generous and thoughtful. I feel embarrassed by how much you do for me,” “I compete with you and, as a result, am often not very nice to you,” and “You’re the best friend I’ve ever had.”

     Life is shorter than we acknowledge and accept it to be. Why not fill the minds and hearts of those we love with kindness rather than assume that sometime in the future we’ll get the opportunity to apologize or tell them how much they mean to us?

     The Desiderata, the much-beloved and quoted (“You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here,”) wise reflections on living by Max Ehrmann in the 1920s, advises that we “As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons. Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even to the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story. Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexations to the spirit.”

     The Tao te Ching also suggests that we “Express yourself completely, but then keep quiet.”

     Speaking your truth quietly, clearly, and completely doesn’t mean without wisdom or goodness. Listening to others, even the dull and the ignorant, doesn’t mean you have to be friends. Avoiding people who are vexations to the spirit is a sign of wisdom not meanness.

     When asked, “What is it that you most dislike?” Jane Fonda said, “A lack of compassion.”

     To the question, “What is the trait you most deplore in others?” she replied, “Cynicism.”

     When asked “What is your greatest regret?” she answered, “Regrets are a waste of time except as things to learn from.”

     Jane Fonda is not my mentor, but I admire the journey she has made. She seems to be at peace, or at least, far more peace than she has experienced in the past. It’s the result of hard work, tough decisions, and an eagerness to grow. Her motto is “It’s better to be interested than interesting.”

     As Ray and I head back to Provincetown, it is not with regrets about the past. The garden has been beautiful and our relationships with others have been rewarding. But I plan to make the garden a little different and a little more beautiful, and we, hopefully like our friends, plan to make our relationships a little more honest and the sources of a lot more growth and peace.

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  Let Go of the Monkey’s Hand!

     “Monkey Mind” is a term in meditative practice that refers to our tendencies to allow our mind to race from one issue to the next, like a monkey jumping from one tree to another, or from one window in the cage to the many others, getting very excited or agitated by what it sees.

     My Monkey Mind races today from the window in which I see Out magazine’s inane listing of the 50 most powerful gay people in America, including people who refuse to publicly acknowledge that they’re gay, like Barry Diller, Matt Drudge, and Anderson Cooper, and excluding real movers and shakers in my gay life such as …..  

   (To read more of this offering (and you should) please go to http://glbtatwork.blog.com)

     “You wouldn’t believe how many people came in asking for ‘Sarah Palin glasses’,” confided my optician.

     “Women want to look like Sarah Palin?” I asked. “Why?”

     “They lack originality,” she surmised.

     As Ray and I walked past the several five star hotels along the beach that morning, we spotted a man having breakfast at the Ritz Carlton who had a tattoo around his bicep that had what, I believe, is the Greek Key pattern that I see on most men who get tattoos on their arms. Does some famous person have this special artificial marking, or does the tattoo have secret meaning to those who hope to appear “masculine”? Why do men across the country, gay and straight, seem to have the same tattoo? Is it also a matter of lacking originality?

     Our friends all know that Ray and I value originality. We are very disappointed when we see something different that we own show up in their house too. For us, it makes what we searched out and found as a great expression of our life experience feel less meaningful.

     What prompts people to copy other people’s eye glasses, tattoos, haircuts, clothes, lamps, dogs, watches, cars, and verbal expressions? The magazine Entertainment Weekly even has a feature in which, at the request of readers, they track down apparel worn by a television star, such as the fanny pack the character Fiona wears on Burn Notice. They’ll tell you where to find it and how much it costs. One bride-to-be wanted her bridesmaids in the exact same dresses worn by the bridesmaids in the film I Love You, Man. Now they can be.

     Imagine, if you will, how the young man who one day started wearing his pants at mid-ass level felt when he eventually saw all of his friends with their pants hanging at the mid-ass level too. It would make me want to pull my pants up or take them off completely.

      In the book that I’m reading, a main character is said to have the mantra for life – “Loving, Learning, and Legacy.” Those three things guide his day-to-day decisions. Because all three categories can represent very, very different choices of expression, we could all copy his life mantra and have very different life experiences. We know that each of us has different ways of loving and of learning. Some of us love others as we hug others, without much personal contact. For some people, love means having no boundaries at all, like a full body hug. Some of us learn best by reading and others learn best by experience. Like loving and learning, our legacies take very different forms, in fact far more diverse forms than one could come up with for “loving” and for “learning.”

     For some people, their legacy is the family they raised. For others, it might be the book they wrote, the film they made, the invention they patented, the cure they discovered, or the painting they created. Legacies include the influence a teacher had on his or her students, the enlightenment enabled by a mentor, the beauty of the park that was designed or maintained.

     Some legacies are judged as being good, such as the joy we brought through our life to the lives of others. Walt Disney, Pope John XXIII, and Gandhi come to mind here. Some legacies are judged as bad, such as the pain we might have created in the lives of others. Adolph Eichmann, Idi Amin, and Benedict XVI might come to mind here. And some legacies are mixed, such as that of Jesus. His life and teachings have created joy for many people, but the twisting of his life’s message by many of his followers has created great pain for many, many more. We often can’t control the impact of our legacies.     

      I have trouble understanding how someone who wants to look like Sarah Palin by buying her glasses or who wants to look like all other muscle men by buying the same permanent tattoo can expect to leave a legacy that will be original and good. It would seem to me that such people would be too afraid to be different from the crowd to make a positive difference that lasted very long. Daring to make a difference usually requires the courage to step outside the box, to say and do things that are unique and challenging.

     Perhaps it’s worth asking ourselves, “If I were to die today, what would my legacy be?” “What would I like my life’s legacy to be?” and “Do I have the courage and fortitude to make that unique contribution?”

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     Did you hear the one about the Scientologist, the Mormon, and the Pakistani Shia, who stood with their Roman Catholic colleague at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) having “several friendly conversations with un-offended co-workers” regarding their beliefs?

     The Scientologist was explaining his Church’s belief that seventy-five million years ago the galactic ruler Xenu brought billions of people to earth, stacked them around volcanoes and blew them up with hydrogen bombs. He also said that his Church disapproved of homosexuality and has fought gay marriage…

     (To finish reading this offering, please go to http://glbtatwork.blog.com)

      As the credits for the film Sunshine Cleaning began to roll down the old spotted screen in the very musty-smelling but much-beloved Gateway movie theater on Sunrise Blvd. in Ft. Lauderdale, Ray and I excitedly saw the name of our friend Dan Genetti at the top of the list. “Associate Producer …. Dan Genetti” it said before it gave the names of the stars Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, and Alan Arkin. We clapped and looked around at the handful of other mostly gay faces attending the 3:30 matinee. “We know him,” I wanted to say. “He grew up in the house next to my grandmother in Bedford, Massachusetts. I take him water skiing in Provincetown. He’s gay.”

     “It must be fun for Dan,” I thought, as we headed to share delicious Chinese food with our friends Kath and Kim, “to help create a story that potentially will have a positive impact on the lives of some people.” Sunshine Cleaning tells the story of a beautiful former high school cheerleader who raises her eight-year-old son on the small amount of money she makes cleaning houses, and who stumbles into a more lucrative career of cleaning up after crime scenes. Throughout the film, I thought about my younger sister, Maureen, also a high school beauty, a single mom who raised two boys on the money she made cleaning houses and working the late shift in a hotel, and who has just passed her test to drive semi-trucks at age 55 — another good story, and more meaningful to me because it is real. I did think I should suggest that Maureen see the film. Perhaps it would give her comfort or inspire her to hang in there. At the very least, it might remind her that she’s not alone.

     A day or two before we saw wonderful Amy Adams play a struggling but hard working mother so convincingly, Ray and I talked about the influence of fictional and real stories on our lives. During our five mile morning trek down to the beach and back, I brought up the story line of the book I’m currently reading, Cutting for Stone, about identical twins born to a nun, and how from childhood we have either distracted ourselves with, or grown from, other people’s stories. The lives of others fill our brains, whether we’re aware of it or not, as well as dominate our time. And I remember those stories better than I remember the many things I was forced to memorize in school so that I could have a productive life. I’ve forgotten almost everything I learned about geometry and biology, but I can tell you clear details of Hardy Boy adventures, Tom Swift experiments, Three Stooges antics, Popeye and Bluto fights, the convent at which the Flying Nun was stationed, Beaver Cleaver’s best friend, what ailed Grandpa McCoy, why Ben Hur ended up on a slave ship, the letter sent by Jane and Michael Banks in search of a nanny like Mary Poppins, who killed Mitch Rapp’s wife, and how the elephant killed the abusive ringmaster in the recent best seller Water for Elephants.

     From hours of television programs watched every day of my life since I was old enough to change the channel, from all of the movies I have seen (and there have been hundreds), from all of the books I have been required or chosen to read, and from all of the articles in People, The Advocate, and Entertainment Weekly that I have scanned, my life has been filled to the brim with other people’s stories, fiction and fact, and my mind and emotions have been molded by the experiences of others.

    Is it good or is it bad that I have spent so much time in front of a screen or a book? My mother used to interrupt my television viewing by saying “Go outside and get some fresh air. Play with the other kids. You’re watching too much television.” And yet, I learned a lot about right versus wrong, world history and other religions, other families, other cultures, other kids my age, the world outside of Flint, Michigan, and most importantly about other gay people from watching and listening to other people’s stories. Ray thinks we have learned important lessons about how to respond to life from all these dramas, mysteries, horrors, and comedies, not by modeling the behavior of the main characters but by recalling our reactions to the choices they made. I don’t disagree, but as I recline on the sofa each night watching program after program that we have recorded, I wonder if I shouldn’t be off on some adventure of my own, like rebuilding an old home in Italy like the lady in Under the Tuscan Sun, or going to Alaska with my dog (I’ll buy one) like Wendy and Lucy, or maybe going to Ethiopia to work in a mission hospital like the nun who had the twins.

     Are even our fantasies our own? At the end of my life, I wonder, will I reflect with joy on the small delightful details of my journey, as did my friend Kate this week when she reminisced about the fun she had as a child with her family breaking open peanut shells at a baseball game. Or, will I have been unaware of many of those moments because I was preoccupied with how handsome The Mentalist was and whether Dr. Brennan and Special Agent Booth ever get together on Bones.

     Rest assured that I will probably always fill my mind with the details from the stories of others on television, films, and books, but I hope to do so aware that every moment I’m involved in someone else’s drama, I’m missing my own. I loved the story, produced by my friend, of the hardworking former cheerleader who keeps struggling to give her life meaning, but I’m more taken by the plot of my younger sister’s real life adventure.

      The big question, though, is, at the end of my life, when the credits roll, will I be listed at the top as the associate producer?