The Beauty In Me

I was told from early on that men in love with men was disgusting. 

When I first learned that it was even a thing, the knowledge was imparted by those around me with condemnation. I was very young. Eight maybe. When adults or older kids tell you anything, you believe it. No questions.

I learned it was disgusting and wrong the minute I learned it existed. That's a taught hatred. And it takes a long time to unlearn. Especially when reinforced and inflated by religion. The religious shame surrounding sexuality is already so damaging. It teaches us that a natural part of us is evil, and this leads to a very unhealthy relationship with our sexuality, which is something we can't escape. Whether gay, straight, asexual, or otherwise. It's part of us, and religion trains us to be ashamed of it.

Add the extra layer of having a sexuality that is considered unnatural by religion. Abomination: somehow even worse than simple sin. So, even as a sexual awakening tried to occur, I clamped the lid down on it. I ignored it. I turned a blind eye. Because I liked things I wasn't supposed to like. It's impossible to consider at ten years old that you like Anakin Skywalker. Like that. 

Eventually the truth sets in. And the shame grows ever stronger. 

But I want to talk about after that. After the shame. 

I want to talk about healing. I want to talk about the things that made me see that men loving men could be beautiful. That it wasn't just carnality and a slippery slope to deep depravity. I want to talk about Lady Gaga and Björk and serpentwithfeet and Perfume Genius. I want to talk about putting a broken image of love back together. 

Even when I still thought that gay was gross, Gaga said gays were ok. And I loved Gaga. I listened to her constantly from the moment she hit the airwaves with Just Dance in 2008. I was Thirteen. So even as I resisted her message that we are Born this Way in 2011, I tolerated it. 

And then Björk. I found her back catalogue in 2015 or 16. Weird, wonderful, and wild. Two robots in her likeness make sapphic love in the music video for All Is Full of Love. It was art--and hard to dismiss as "vile homosexuality." She featured trans artist Anohni in two songs. She worked with producer Arca, who was gay and later came out as trans. Arca's own music--full of dark brooding chaos--spoke to the pain shut up inside me. And through Björk I also found serpentwithfeet, whose undulating choral and brass love songs were too beautiful to be dismissed simply because they were gay. I listened to them anyway. So what if he was singing hymns to another man? Guiltily, I let it sweep me away.

And Perfume Genius. I'd had brief contact with his song Queen, but revisited him because of my Björk obsession. Several of Björk's most glorious music videos were directed by Andrew Thomas Huang (who is also gay) and he directed a new music video for Slip Away by Perfume Genius. The visuals were rife with nods to my favorite 80s fantasy movies.

I only listened to that one Perfume Genius album at first. The others had songs with titles like "Gay Angels" and I couldn't ignore the themes. But slowly, I got over that and dove into his haunting discography that talked about his personal experiences as a gay man.

And Music saved me. Music taught me that being gay could be lovely. 

The year I finally started to relinquish my fear and forgive myself--2020--Perfume Genius released a new album: Set My Heart on Fire Immediately. What a thunderous rupture and a healing balm. A damning and an absolution. It was the soundtrack of my coming out. Songs that spoke of conflicted desire but also of joy and letting go. Of forgiveness. I could finally embrace the beauty of same-sex love. Of my love. 

I also bought a book that summer. "Loving: a Photographic History of Men in Love 1850s-1950s" A collection of old photos, showing men in love going back through history. Proof we've always been here and always been beautiful and pure. I paged through it the other day and cried again because of how long it took me to see gayness as lovely. That I am lovely. And it still hurts to think about how long I was in pain, thinking this was disgusting. But I can see now. I can love and let love and admire the gorgeousness of men loving men.

I wish we could collectively stop seeing differences as negatives. I wish we would stop teaching that "differences" exist. If we didn't bat an eye at gay relationships then they would just be--If they were just normal--we wouldn't be teaching children about gays, either positive or negative. Because whatever you think--we are teaching them about gays all the time. Some people complain 'why do children have to learn about this?' but they already are. They're learning it's 'different' and 'wrong.' They pick up on the unspoken--the hushed. The silence teaches them that these things are unspeakable. The 'different' things become jokes and subjects for ridicule. Kids hear things they don't understand and internalize the tone and the implications of the silence. And they learn about gays.

Those people who don't want to 'teach kids about gays' don't want it to be normal. They want to teach their kids that gay is wrong. And that's an entire conversation on its own.

I want it to be normal.

Because there's nothing wrong or sinful about it. It doesn't hurt anyone. And I don't want to hear another word about Hell. Because it was Hell on earth when I drove home listening to Prayer of the Heart and praying for God to make me better. I'm sorry but Heaven isn't worth that pain. How can God hate gays for the way He made them? How can God hate the beautiful art that gays bring into the world? How can the transcendental sounds that Björk makes be worthless because they are 'secular?' There's too much beauty in humans for human nature to be base and sinful.

We're normal. Or rather, there is no one normal among us, not one.

And only a cruel, imagination-less god would demand we change to become so bland.

So I mourn the years I spent in dark abhorrence and wish that they could have been filled rather with brightness and self acceptance and appreciation of beauty. But I celebrate it now. And hold up the beauty in me and in others.

Amen