If I could wave my magic wand . . .

[Zapped]

. . . I'd do something to make things better for these guys.

 

"Jason" is 18, a senior at the local high school. I met him through my daughter, who graduated last year.

 

He grew up in an alcoholic home, and was kicked out by his mother (his father having disappeared years before) about two and half years ago for being gay and liking to go to church (interesting combination). He moved in with his aunt and uncle, super Catholics. "Vatican II didn't happen in my house," Jason says. He prays the Rosary daily, doesn't eat meat on Fridays, and goes to confession and mass weekly. (He says the priest asks him why he comes to confession so often.)

 

Tall and pointedly effeminate and outrageous (which seems to keep him safe), he's out. Very out. At school, but not at home or church. How he manages that in a small town I don't quite understand. Lots of looking the other way and not mentioning certain things, I guess.

 

And he's celibate.

 

Not just because it's a small town and there's no one to be uncelibate with, but by conviction. He had dinner at my house last night. He baked me a cake; I cooked him a steak. We talked about sexuality and religion. He told me he considers himself "intrinsically disordered," as Catholic dogma holds, and at this point is planning never to have sex. He'll just jerk off (although he can't actually use the phrase) when absolutely necessary, and then go to confession, truly repent, and if it happens again, repeat the process.

 

Jason is a complex kid. Well, what teenager isn't?. He's just so wonderfully and openly complex. He and a friend are working with a counselor to get a GSA started at their school. He wore his grandmother's wedding dress to the homecoming pep rally and carried a sign that said, "I love the football team and want to marry them!" ("The entire football team is scared of me," he proudly exclaims.)

 

But no sex, ever! (I know, he'll grow and change. I'm telling him about liberal Catholics and LGBT Catholics to try and facilitate that process.)

 

The there's "Gabrie.l" In his mid-twenties and after some hard episodes in his own life, has started college once again as a freshman. He's out. I don't know how sexually active he is, but he is certainly not celibate (he's complained to me about the lack of sexual opportunities at our college and wants me to find a way to recruit more gay students).

 

He hasn't met Jason but knows about him, although not his name. Gabriel wrote a lengthy piece on our class blog discussing, among other things, getting kicked out of Bible college earlier in life for having sex with a guy. After class this morning we were talking about his post, and I told him how Jason considers himself intrinsically disordered.

 

"That's how I feel about myself, too," he said.

 

My heart wanted to break; I also felt angry.

 

I don't know about Gabriel, but Jason says he has never tried to change. Which is interesting to me. When I was a teenager horrified (and also excited) by my sexual attraction to other guys, I worked incredibly hard to change my thinking, discipline myself, think more masculine thoughts, etc.

 

Jason accepts his sexual orientation as what it is, but regards it as an incurable condition. Gabriel is more like I was once I came out; accepting of his same-sex attraction, self-identifying publicly as gay, yet still living with that feeling that something is wrong with him, gnawing at his core. But I find myself wondering if Jason has a head start on me in a way; at least he's not trying to change who he's attracted to, even if he does feel guilty about it.

 

I eventually discovered I was kind of bisexual, decided that my opposite-sex attraction was "healthier" than my same-sex attraction, got married and then later in life finally got therapy and an amicable divorce. Now I don't think being gay is something wrong with me, and I hardly ever feel that, either. (The intellectual reasoning process can work itself out long before the emotions heal.)

 

Meanwhile . . .

 

"Sam," a guy who goes (very occasionally) to my church and whose wife taught my children, invited me over for drinks and dinner last week. He came out to me (no surprise, actually), told me about some sexual experiences he'd had with a masseur that I'd also had massages from (nothing sexual in my case, which he found hard to believe, since the masseur in question had shared with Sam that I have a big dick, at least according to the masseur), and then was pretty insistent about wanting me to let him give me a blow job. When I told him I didn't mess with married guys, and after all I know his wife, he was incredulous. "You have more scruples than I thought," he said. "Come on, a blow job is just a blow job. We're not going to tell her."

 

Right. Because we're not going to do anything.

 

I choose to believe they've each come into my life for a reason. With Jason and Gabriel in particular, talking to them is like talking to parts of myself. It helps me continue to heal. I hope that by being accepting and role-modeling self-acceptance to them, I can be of some help. With Sam, I don't know what I can do, or if he'll feel comfortable talking to me again. I did tell him about escorts and how to find them. The masseur he had known before the sexual stuff happened; hiring someone off the net scares him.

 

I wanted to write about this somewhere. Can't put it on my myname.com blog, because people would recognize not just themselves but who I was writing about. This seems like a pretty safe and anonymous place for it.

[Guy Fawkes]

I choose to believe they've each come into my life for a reason. With Jason and Gabriel in particular, talking to them is like talking to parts of myself. It helps me continue to heal. I hope that by being accepting and role-modeling self-acceptance to them, I can be of some help. With Sam, I don't know what I can do, or if he'll feel comfortable talking to me again. I did tell him about escorts and how to find them. The masseur he had known before the sexual stuff happened; hiring someone off the net scares him.

 

Bingo! Your the one the God decided to use to wave the magic wand. The good news is that you don't need to do anything else. Simply be yourself and give the others an example of how they can be. Be the shoulder they can cry on if needed and the calm, measured voice of experience that can enrich their life and in turn enrich your own.

[Boston Guy]

+1

 

BG

 

ps to the OP: VERY nice post.

[MsGuy]

Zapped, thanks for giving us a glimpse of your world.

 

For those who, like me, have no clue what "intrinsically disordered" means to a Catholic, the Bishops defined it as follows:

 

"Homosexual acts are never morally acceptable. Such acts never lead to happiness," he said, because they are "intrinsically disordered," meaning they are not directed to the bonds of marriage and the goal of procreation that are "part of God's design. But having an inclination that is disordered does not in any way diminish human worth."

[Guest zipperzone]

I think this is another example of the Catholic Church and their homophobia screwing up yet another young life. Very depressing indeed.