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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Every last person, whether they realise it or not, who comes here is imperfect. That includes me. We all have troubles. We're often appalling at expressing them to others.
Often our actions are the only things that betray the fact that we have problems, issues, things to resolve. As an example, I have been known to be waspish!
My own problems and issues I wear on my sleeve. I do that on purpose, partly because it helps me, and partly because it helps others. Quite often folk here are unable to express their issues and needs. We are, after all, a rag tag bag of weird folk.
What I was wondering is whether anyone wants to join me in living through their issues in pubic?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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... I know that I am.
Whilst I have never claimed to have had the difficulties coping with my sexuality as others here, and elsewhere, certainly have, I do, and likely continue to, have issues that have needed "airing" one time or another, if only in my mind in order that I might cope better, day-to-day, with them.
1) My family, and in particular my father's alcoholism and his simply ghastly and abusive behaviour whilst under it's influence; and of course the trauma of my parents multiple divorces and remarriages directly a result of that paradigm, and its' enduring legacy which manifested itself in my teen-aged years as anti-sociability and near uncontrollable rage which necessitated my being placed in psychiatric care, and in later years in that of my brother's own miserable life choices.
2) HIV/AIDS and its' enduring legacy and my being the only survivor of a wide coterie of friends and acquaintances; and the loneliness I feel everyday because there have been no others to have filled the void left by their passing; especially given my own licentious and lascivious conduct before, and if being truthful during, the height of the epidemic; granted this conduct was neither driven nor fueled by either drugs or alcohol, but it was incautious to say the least of it; and the questions I repeat over and over and over again in my head every night laying down to sleep, "Why me?" and "Why did I alone of so many others close to me, survive and not they?", many of whom were far more worthy individuals than I, and who should have lived to reach their full potential and likely have contributed more to society than I ever will.
3) The absence of any life-partner, save but the one more than 30-years ago, and the ever increasing prospect that in all likelihood I'll die alone, and simply forgotten.
I have always believed (and cautioned often those charmed by the fashionablility of it) that being "GAY" is largely a young persons travail; I have come to believe this to be truer, with each and every passing day as I near the end of my own journey; this probably accounts for why throughout my lifetime I've always been more considerate (and hopefully compassionate) of all the "tired, old queens" I've encounterd (and very likely what I myself have become as I've aged), than I have been of my then own generation and the other young people that I may have surrounded myself with.
The latter two of aforementioned issues, to the best of my knowledge, I've never spoken of here in any substantive detail if at all, whereas the former has received wide coverage in one thread or another; this makes them neither less pertinent, nor inconsequential, regarding my presence and rather more that the occasion has never arisen for me to share them.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Mon, 12 July 2010 17:13]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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Warren C. E. Austin wrote:
> ... I know that I am.
I know you are. I'm hoping more will.
> 3) The absence of any life-partner, save but the one more than 30-years ago, and the ever increasing prospect that in all likelihood I'll die alone, and simply forgotten.
Now this is important. It affects all who are partnerless, not simply homosexuals, but the youthful search for the better orgasm seems to have created so many older gay men who have either outlived or who have never had a regular partner.
Those who argue that a partner is not necessary to enjoying life are correct. But mutual comfort in advancing years is an important thing, even if it is just companionship being offered.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Oh, I think my issues are pretty transparent.
Although I'm professionally self-confident, my personal self-confidence is shit (not self-esteem: I have a pretty fair opinion of myself - it's in social situations where I often feel that others are playing by rules that I don't quite understand).
Other than that, the battle against bouts of severe depression when the pain from my damaged back passes a certain level. Oh, and the joys and problems that my "honorary foster son" has brought in to my life ... life is in many ways less stress-free than I'm used to, and the scheduling conflicts between "family" responsibilities to the lad and my obligations to myself and my job are often wearisome.
None of which has anything to do with being gay - I suspect that I'd have the same things if I were straight.
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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Dear Warren,
Timmy says we are all imperfect and I think everyone would be wise to accept that. (My daughters bought me two badges about twenty-five years ago when we were on holiday. Badge 1 read "Nobody is perfect": badge 2 read "I am Nobody"!)
I think I *did* have problems dealing with my sexuality although, looking back, I think they were less worrying than the things I wrote at the time seem to imply. But my family were 'respectable' middle class and didn't have problems with drink or drugs or religion. The skeletons in the cupboard (a grandfather of mine having children by three sisters etc) were so unmentionable that I didn't learn about it till I was sixteen or seventeen and even then I wasn't traumatised but rather amazed at the antics of the 'grown-ups'.
Neither my parents nor anyone in my immediate family (up to first cousins) was ever divorced or was caught in an extra-marital relationship so the basis of stability made life easy for me.
I was lucky to be a 'little bit bi' and decided I would try to extricate myself from the web of homosexual acquaintance I had got into at Oxford after three years at university and two years working there. I was able to go 'home' and live in my parents' house and get a fairly well-paid job working for British European Airways and see if I could break into the heterosexual world. And I did.
And so I got married in 1963 and Sylvia had children in 1965 and 1966 and I was completely wrapped up in them and scarcely tempted to explore sex outside marriage. And, of course, the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the early 80s was something I read about in newspapers. I can't easily imagine what effect it would have had on me to have close friends dying around me. Among my friends at college at least two died from AIDS and several others committed suicide - but I was so naive that I didn't know they were gay until I learned their cause of death.
And I would have jumped at the chance of committing myself in civil partnership with David or with Peter but that would have been 45 years before it became possible! Both chose to get married. Peter didn't claim to be 'straight'. But I committed to Sylvia and furthermore promised to be faithful and have kept that promise so far for 47 years and have to say that I haven't found it difficult. I couldn't have found a better life partner! And on here I have discovered other people who are predominantly gay and yet have female partners they would not change.
You wrote: "I have always believed (and cautioned often those charmed by the fashionablility of it) that being "GAY" is largely a young persons travail; I have come to believe this to be truer, with each and every passing day as I near the end of my own journey;"
but I don't think I can agree completely. When I was young I got a huge frisson from buying exotic clothes in Carnaby Street. I was delighted, on leaving home, to be able to give up conventional underwear and take to see-through briefs or jockstraps. And, of course, I've always liked to swim and sunbathe nude and have often done so even when it was not permissible if I could get away with it.
If it were true that being GAY was a travail only for young people why would I, at 75, be coming to this place? Why would I feel the need to read and delight in the stories on this and other websites? Why would I attempt to scandalise the neighbourhood by wearing tights instead of trousers? I suspect I'm more naive at 75 that the rest of you were at 20!
I admire you, Warren, going on nothing but what you have posted here. I would really welcome the chance to meet and talk.
I guess the truth is that not one of us really understands ourself thoroughly and that we are stimulated to think about ourselves by places such as this and people such as you and Timmy and NW and Nigel and Macky ... and ... and ...
Love,
Anthony
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I have a big issue with anyone who tries to force me into any kind of mould, or who assumes that I "ought" to be or do whatever it is.
It dates back to childhood, or course: my father was incapable of understanding that I could be a perfectly "normal" boy because I was bookish and somewhat intellectually precocious, rather than the extremely sporting and outgoing kid he himself had been. It was reinforced when I first came out in the late 1970s, when so many gay activists told me that I wasn't a proper gay because I happened to like exclusive ("monogamous") long-term relationships, rather than casual fucks. It still crops up all the time - even my partner / foster-son seemed startled when he learned that I was as good at plumbing, or re-building a vintage car engine, as I am at baking cakes.
Diversity is a very real and meaningful thing:
"O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beautious mankind is!"
as Miranda puts it in The Tempest ... it was the ironic spin that Huxley put on the next lines ("Oh, Brave New World / that has such people in't) that rendered the lines almost unquotable!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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As someone who was told he was not really gay because he likes teenagers best, married a woman and is staying that way, I agree with you.
I am also a mechanic and a damned fine cook. I can solder gas pipe, do plumbing, have no design skills, and loathe shopping.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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I think perhaps I should clarify:
"I have always believed (and cautioned often those charmed by the fashionablility of it) that being "GAY" is largely a young persons travail; I have come to believe this to be truer, with each and every passing day as I near the end of my own journey;"
It's not that I believe being "GAY" is a choice we all have the opportunity of making when the first inclination of homosexuality manifests itself in our lives; because of course we don't. WE ARE ALL GOING TO BE AS WE ARE, regardless of how we choose to live that life.
It's that the choice to "LIVE" the gay-lifestyle, or the "travail", is ours to make; and in my youth it became all too often "fashionable" to adopt the travail, or the appearance of it, in order to be a part of the in crowd back in the day. Frankly, I found it all rather abysmal, and prohibitively expensive, and all too, too, pretentious to my taste; this from the fellow who's avocation at the time was to shill, both on the runway and in advertising, for one Atelier or the other whose wares in of themselves were "prohibitively expensive, and all too, too, pretentious", not-with-standing my sporting them at each and every turn afforded to me; but, then again I didn't have to pay the exorbitant prices either for a pair one-of-a-kind "private label" Calvin Klein slacks, which then cost $1000 or more, which Calvin's hands actually had cut the cloth, and likely sewn the fabric together too in his store-front on Sixth Avenue (this in the days before it became Avenue of the Americas), not some sweat-shop in South-east Asia, and mass-produced to meet the corporate demands of franchising and licensing, and retailing in shops just about everywhere for less than $150; they being gifts-in-kind, once warn which couldn't be sold, with it being not likely they would find another body whose dynamics matched my own, and therefore rendering them unsaleable anyway. This having been true of Houses of Cardin, Dior, Balencçíga, Rochas, Hèrmes and Pucci; all before Klein, Lauren and Perry Ellis, each of whom had I worked for in the 1960's and early 70's before retiring in 1975.
To put not too fine a point on it, to be "fashionable" would have cost me a great deal of money, and far too much time and energy, all of which I was loath to expend, and then there was Jon to consider. Whilst he was apparently enamoured of the image he presumed me to be from the well-worn, and thumbed, pages of Argosy or Field & Stream (or whichever it was ... I can't remember now, and it doesn't matter much anyway) in his parent's Iowa farm-house late at night, in practice once we'd been living together a number of years, he didn't care too much for either my avocation or "the people" I had to rub shoulders with and stridently encouraged me to abandon it in favour of something a tad less unsavory.
Other than the mass-marketing, I really don't see much difference today; it still costs far too much (both in money and human terms) to live the "Gay" travail and Lord knows there is no surfeit of willing candidates to fill the void; and likely never will be. It is only as we age we come to realize the futility of it all, and the true extent (and cost therein) of the lack of respect for our elders that we acquired on that journey.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Tue, 13 July 2010 00:32]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Yes, Warren, I think I begin to understand. Would it be going too far to say that as you were in the fashion business you were making a statement?
I never was or felt I was fashionable. Nor did I ever try to be. And while I was very happy to play with other undergraduates, after I left university I became gradually less and less happy with the homosexual milieu. I sometimes wonder if it wasn't that I met more and more people much older than me and, on the whole, found them and their lifestyles unsavoury.
I certainly never had the courage to make a statement of it and though I admired the strength of character of those who did (such as Jeremy Wolfenden) I never wanted to join them.
But without people who are ready to stand up and be counted the world wouldn't have changed; nowadays tolerance is widespread - at least where I live.
Love,
Anthony
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13800
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The fashion business is not equivalent to homosexuality, though. Search for Charles Guislain. I have no idea what this androgynous lad's sexuality is, but I do know what his fashion sense is. He's unusual, yes, but homosexual? Who knows?
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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... to malign either the many individuals working within it, or the industry itself; but, more to illustrate that whether it be the 1960's, 70's or the current decade, just as I'm certain it was in those well before, that it cost then a great deal in both financial and human terms in order to be "fabulous"; and that I suspect, those costs haven't diminished one iota in the interval, granted of course that the typical homosexual, without the husband/wife, the requisite 2.5 kids and the mortgage on that bungalow in the suburbs, usually would, and does, have a disproportionately larger disposable income than that of his/her heterosexual counterpart, and likely the potential where-with-all to support, to one degree or another, this burgeoning "fabulousness".
I would expect demographically, that the fashion industry is not much different from that of the widespread population in the totality of its' numbers being homosexual; well, LOL, not that much different, this regardless of any preconceived notions we may have to the contrary.
The whole 7-day-a-week clubbing scene, the dance palaces, partying from dusk to dawn (and then crawling into work to earn the money to finance it all); the "shop-'til-you drop" buying frenzies and "need to be seen" culture; the drug and alcohol fueled excesses in the furtherance of the next great "Big-O"; the whole "if they're not talking about you you're dead" mentality; yes, the "right" cliche is alive and well and continues to live on as surely today as it did back in the day, the difference being now, that it is glorified by the media, although to do them credit, not when that same media reports the ever growing "Pride" events from around the World.
In Halifax, Toronto, Montréal, Winnipeg, Calgary or Vancouver (just as I'm certain it would be no different in any large metropolis Worldwide), the names and faces may have changed, but the culture of excess underlying the survival of the numerous venues and events hasn't; nor, I suspect is it ever likely to; this despite the reality that probably less than 10 per-cent of homosexuals subscribe, now or ever did, to a lifestyle of being "fabulous"; the greater majority of whom are still those same suburban or rural youth (though they may be middle-aged adults now) searching for, and wanting, an identity to call their own; the self-same individuals (I reiterate here a "concept" I've expressed elsewhere recently) thumbing through the magazines, that shudder and look over their shoulder's with each and every gust of wind as the front-door of the Adult Book-store opens admitting another soul just like them who, too, may be searching for the answers to just who they are.
We're all like "moths drawn to a flame"; wherein being "fabulous" is that flame.
Warren C. E. Austin
The Gay Deceiver
Toronto, Canada
[Updated on: Tue, 13 July 2010 21:32]
"... comme recherché qu'un délice callipygian"
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Dear Warren,
How would calling the fashion business 'homosexual' malign it?
There have always been callings where homosexuals can be more comfortable and surely the stage, hairdressers, dress designers, artists and maybe some others have been known to be such.
I hope this is not to malign them.
Love,
Anthony
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I think, Timmy, that it is quite well established that people with partners live longer. I suspect that the margin of difference is more than would be accounted for by someone at hand who would call an ambulance in a crisis.
---or of course not. My father died (I think) because my mother didn't call an ambulance until he was too far gone to be resuscitated.
But what I see all around me is people in long-established partnerships, mostly heterosexual, throwing caution to the winds and splitting up and going out on the tiles looking for someone better.
And everything depends on choosing right in the first case and it is very difficult indeed to do that, especially if you start young. The younger one is susceptible to sexual attraction the less experience one has of choosing and trying partners out. There is a lot to be said for being a late developer.
But, of course, there should be room for the contrary view that the couple is not the best model for gay men and close-knit groups of friends or communes are more likely to be stable and survive.
Where, Timmy, in your model for a satisfactory old age do you put children? Nowadays a gay couple can adopt and bring up a family. I'm sure If I had had a gay partnership that I would have wanted to do that. The stories I read about such families seem to me to have an air of unreality about them. I wonder if it is just me thinking it would be too good to be true.
Love,
Anthony
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