This is tearing at me.
For all my life I've been pretty much convinced, due to various things, that sex is bad all by itself -- something filthy, disgusting, unmentionable, basically wrong. That went nicely with my longtime, very successful effort at believing I wasn't sexual. Two sides of the same coin, those fed off each other: if sex was bad, I couldn't possibly be sexual, or I was bad; if I ever broke and got sexual, that just proved I was bad, and I didn't want to be bad, so I'd better not be sexual, and 'round and 'round and 'round.
Worse than merely being sexual, of course, were the "naughty things" a person could do, such as despicable oral sex or barbarous "doggy style". Sex was for making babies, nothing else; those who bragged of it were more animal than human, and those who indulged in those unspeakably crude alternate forms were hardly to be regarded as sentient.
Lowest of low, lower than low, came the hell-spawned, dark, perverted form of sex, something from the foulest regions of unclean and immoral possibilities, invented for dooming mankind to eternal fire, certainly a reason for God to look down and destroy cities and nations: sex between men. No one who did such a thing was acceptable in the race; those who even THOUGHT of it had to be purged from civilized society.
I don't remember hearing any of this said, ever, in such words. But if in eighth grade I could have caught my mental picture of what was the proper destiny of a boy who liked "doing things" with other boys, it would have been burning at the stake. Sex itself was evil, but could be tolerated because it made new humans, but this other, this abomination, served... nothing at all. It could not be excused, could not be overlooked.
All of this was engraved in painful, unavoidable script deep in my being.
Then a number of years ago I met a guy at college, younger than I, who actually talked openly and calmly about sex -- not in the old smutty, snickering way that turned it into dirty talk, but no different than he talked about a class project or working on his car. It was refreshing... it was unsettling. I got to talk of things I'd never imagined -- and invariably went away with the thrill fading before an onslaught of guilt. But I kept thinking how freeing it had been to be able to speak of getting an RHO (random hard-on) or being (gasp!) checked out by other guys in the showers. The tension level from this internal conflict wasn't too great at all, so I let it simmer.
Only a few years ago I was forced by circumstances to face the fact that I was in fact sexual. I think sometimes that if I hadn't met Aaron before and been able to talk with him so freely, the forced admission might have destroyed me. As it was... it came close, anyway. I couldn't stop myself from thinking I was evil, wicked, foul, "icky"... And if it hadn't been for my best buddy, Eric, who took all of my ridiculousness from my awakening sexuality with good humor and a grin, I might not have made it.
Last came the worst revelation of all: I like dudes. I agonized over it, tried to make it go away, prayed, fasted, prayed AND fasted, got prayed for -- with hands layed on, with anointing oil. It didn't change, it was just there. Whatever made things that way was lodged in me deeply. I wondered about demon possession, I read about all the theories of why men went "wrong". Nothing changed; I was just evil, an abomination, and that was that.
Well, not to Eric, it wasn't. I broke down one day and admitted it -- I don't even remember why. He just said he'd known for a long time, longer even than I'd admitted to myself I was sexual, and gave me a hug, and said he still loved me. No lightning came from heaven, no demons cackled in glee, I was still just the same me, no sudden change.
And since then I've struggled with it, arguing with the voices in my head, the echoes of old lessons, and of my own self-condemnation.
The easiest way to fight something like that is to turn some off your mind off. I can't give any clues how to do it; my own advice is DON'T.
It goes like this: I went months without much of a qualm at all about doing things my history and upbringing said were evil and doomed me forever. It was quite nice, except for an uneasy feeling that there was a piece missing from somewhere I couldn't pin down -- because in those moments when before I would have gone depressed, suicidal, hating myself, there was... nothing, just silence. Sure, silence is better than all that negative input, but the silence doesn't mean none of that is happening, it just means it's getting locked away, to appear at some future date.
Then came JUB. At first it was a relief, a treasure I couldn't believe, and continue to wish I'd found my first month out. But every now and then someone mentioned God....
I've had a fairly religious upbringing -- Sunday School, youth group, retreats, church camp -- as well as a fair theological education. So God has been a big part of my life, and thinking about Him used a fair portion of my mental energy. When that mental self-censorship fell, all uninvited, all my mental and spiritual conversation went, too.
Oops.
Those mentions of God on JUB brought it back. With it came all the baggage... and all the scripture. And now, trying to rethink it all, I'm facing again the feelings of being foul and gross and sick and evil. With them now, though, come wonderings: am I just changing what the Bible says to fit what my feelings say? Am I forcing what *I* want upon what's really there? *AM* I doomed? Worse, am I a traitor, for trying to make the words say something different?
So... it's tearing at me. There's nothing much I can do but press on, but Oh! God! I wish for just one buddy I could collapse on and cry out the stress, so I could stop feeling, for at least that little while, like I'm going to explode.
Please, God?
