But my beloved had turned away and was gone.The Song of Solomon
My heart leaped up when he spoke.
I sought him, but I could not find him;
I called him, but he gave no answer.
The watchmen who went about the city found me.
They struck me, they wounded me;
The keepers of the walls
Took my veil away from me
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem,
If you find my beloved,
That you tell him I am lovesick
It's hard to begin writing this. In many ways coming to terms with who I am and how I love is a process I'm still in the middle of. I'm not who I was ten years ago, or even five...but I guess the salient thing is that I've never been who other people wanted me to be.
Shulamite. The Receiver of Peace. I don't know that that's an apt name for who I am now, but it's what I'm looking for. This book has always spoken to me, and these lines remind me of my condition. My parents are the watchmen. I grew up in a literate family, one highly involved in the church, and one convinced they belonged to a class of people chosen by God to guard "The Family" and teach the world the right - the righteous - way to live and love together. They've always felt more like police than teachers to me...but I speak their language, and in some ways my mind still runs in the ways they set for me.
That said, I think I'm incredibly lucky to have largely escaped guilt about my love. I could say "who I love", but I honestly believe the difference is more than the gender at which it's directed. My experience with sexuality isn't defined as much by the male bodies of the people I love, though I love them as well, but there's a sort of unique psycho-spiritual intimacy which I simply don't feel with a woman. I think in a lot of ways that may be a result of the conditioning I received as a child. Women are Different. Women are Other. Their difference was always the point emphasized, not their sameness. Female incomprehensibility was the butt of dozens of tired jokes. We're not even supposed to be from the same planet. The love I was taught men shared, on the other hand, was one of mutual understanding, shared perspective, and deep trust. Volumes have been written on the subject of objectification, how this "othering" of women leads to their abuse and marginalization, and Harry Hay has already written about how one of the truly radical things about same-sex love is that it cuts right past the subject-object dynamic implicit in "othering" and instead allows "subject-subject" relationships. Gay men certainly still objectify one another, but one of the few nice things about the taboo nature of the subject was that it allowed me to grow up without anyone attempting to civilize my heart of hearts. The tragedy of normalized sexuality is that everyone thinks it's their business to systematically prune and cultivate exactly how you relate to potential partners. Both the blessing and the curse of being raised with the assumption I was going to love women rather than men is that I was relatively free to fantasize and desire naturally, rather than having my lusts and longings clipped into some sort of monstrous socially-constructed topiary.
