…and on another (sort of sissy) note.…

…and on another (sort of sissy) note.…

I was at the gym today, strug­gling to make/retake some progress on my chest, when a cou­ple of guys came in. They were prob­a­bly late twen­ties or ear­ly thir­ties – a cou­ple (clear­ly), and cute.

Yeah. I know. But I couldn’t help it. And you’re wrong.

It wasn’t about being a lech­er or any­thing like that. It was about the fact that I knew, just by look­ing at them, that these two boys had nev­er, ever, lived through the process of grow­ing up, and com­ing out, that I did, and that every­one in my gen­er­a­tion did.

You could just tell.

I mean, these were boys, GAY boys, mind you, that had nev­er, ever, had the wind knocked out of their sails. Nev­er wor­ried about who they were. Nev­er doubt­ed that they were ok. Nev­er wor­ried about the fact that every­thing about their lives might even remote­ly be con­sid­ered unac­cept­able to the vast major­i­ty of the pub­lic.

These boys had nev­er learned and/or nev­er need­ed to learn to hide, or be ashamed, or be afraid.

And on the one hand, I was glad for them. I mean, after all, isn’t that what we all want­ed?!? Didn’t we want a world where that could begin to hap­pen? Where boys like these boys could exist and pros­per?

I know that! Believe(d) it. And yet, I also envied them. And I almost, just the least bit, found myself feel­ing jeal­ous of them. In fact, for more than a minute or two, I even found myself look­ing for rea­sons not to like them. Not in a mean way, but in a green way, and not on pur­pose, or even on a pure­ly per­son­al lev­el. Instead (I tell myself), I was actu­al­ly feel­ing envious/jealous, and even a wee bit angry with them, on behalf of all the gay men and women who nev­er had (and nev­er would have/will have) the chance to be like them – live like them – look like them.

I was mad for all the sis­sy boys (like me), and all the drag queens, and all the bull dykes, and all the trans­sex­u­als, and the silent, invis­i­ble men and women who hid inside them­selves (or, worse, inside het­ero­sex­u­al rela­tion­ships) because, who they knew they were, was not accept­able, or even in some cas­es under­stand­able.

I guess it must be a lit­tle like the Jew­ish peo­ple who lived through the holo­caust felt – what blacks who lived through slav­ery and seg­re­ga­tion felt — thrilled that their chil­dren and grand­chil­dren would nev­er know what they knew or feel what they felt – but at the same time