An excerpt from my book..."THAT CERTAIN PAUSE"

Nathan was silent as he looked back to his own reflection in the mirror. He combed his hair and checked the clotting wound and watched Edward standing silent, his words invisible yet their truth glowing around him. Stubbornly yet unconvinced to what Edward had charged, Nathan walked into the bedroom and sat on the bed, his lips still silent with a rebuttal as he casually tailored a more comfortable fit by rolling up the cuffs of the shirt into which he had changed. Edward stood peering out the glass doors to the patio and halfway opened the exit to the room and the conversation.
“If I asked you a question, would you be honest with me?” Nathan eventually presented before Edward opened the patio door fully.
“If your question is honest,” Edward answered, closing the door. He leaned against its glass barrier.
“Does one have to be gay to love another man?” Nathan asked, eyes focused to the floor slowly looking up as he listened to Edward’s paused reply.
“Not if you are a straight woman,” he joked, the comedy a bit off subject for Nathan’s serious question. “Bad time for wit, I imagine. Can I pose a question to you then?”
“Ask away,” Nathan replied immediately and sat down onto the corner of the bed.
“Honest answer?”
“Scouts honor,” Nathan replied, not knowing the proper gesture but sufficing a raised thumb as acceptable in such an instance.
Edward settled on the arm of a large club chair in the corner of the room and slid down onto the thick cushion, one long leg stretched to the floor and the other dangling over the chair’s arm, his toe tracing the pile of the carpet. He crossed his arms over his chest and laid his head against the back of the chair as he thought about how to propose the question racing through his mind.
“Do you think a gay man can love you? If you are trying to find some shortcut through all of this, some way of having the prize without clearing every hurdle of the race, do you actually think it possible to consider what you are asking? What happens when the moment arises between you and Gregory?” Edward asked, fingers tossing back his bangs, his expression intriguingly anticipating another quick answer.
To Edward, it seemed as if Nathan had ignored the question by his immediate retreat to the bathroom. Checking the healing of his injury, Nathan’s eyes watched the empty doorway behind his reflection. Edward soon appeared, a tiny drop of blood clung to a still open wound.
“I guess I’ve hit a nerve, haven’t I,” Edward called. “But I do think it is a situation you need to prepare for, unless it’s already reared its little head…”
“Pun intended, right,” Nathan interjected. “No need to apologize,” he said and squeezed his way between Edward and the door.
Nathan returned to the bedroom and stopped at the patio door, the glass partitioning him between Edward’s question and the reality of the party outside. He looked at Gregory who chatted with Dills and Charlie while constantly watching Nathan’s shadow from the corner of his eye.
“I know I have no business in the matter, but I am quite the curious one nonetheless. If you cannot answer me honestly, then tell me so. Your silence is not a denial,” Edward perpetuated.
“You know exactly what hasn’t happened, Edward. If Gregory and I had been together, you would have no questions. What’s eating your curiosity is why, right?” Nathan smiled, the white of his teeth hidden by the swelling of Edward’s punch upon his lip. “If we had slept together in DC, or last night…whenever, you would be jealous, but not to the point you are right now. What’s killing you is fear,” he added and looked again out to Gregory.
“I am the one afraid, is that what your lob is implying?”
“The possibility scares you to death, doesn’t it,” Nathan retorted.
“No, dear boy, but it does scare you,” Edward retaliated. “Are you in love with him?” Edward boldly grilled, posture relaxed yet anxiety boiling as he looked onto the glass door blackened by the night sky; his ghostly reflection cowered in the corner while Nathan and Gregory stood seemingly shoulder-to-shoulder in the darkness of the glass.
“Tell me what you love about him,” Nathan asked from beneath a lowered head as he turned to face Edward directly.
“Shouldn’t we be in pajamas and taking turns braiding each other’s hair?” Edward quipped. “Are we taking notes on our little school girl crushes?”
“I’m being serious, and I want you to be the same. Just honest answers from here on out, no more…no less,” Nathan pleaded. “What is it about Gregory that you fell for?”
Edward closed his eyes with a long blink as if to wash away the moment and clear the memory. As he looked back into the light of the room, Nathan was still looking at him, anxiously waiting for an answer. Edward again hid his eyes, but this time behind a screen of long fingers and a spurted exhaustive moan. He shifted deeper into the seat and propped his head onto the other arm of the chair.
“How much is this therapy session costing me?”
“Just honesty…that’s all,” Nathan coaxed. “What is the first thing that you noticed about Gregory?”
“I’m not getting out of this, am I,” Edward sighed to no’s rocking Nathan’s head side to side.
“What drives you to love him?” Nathan repeated. “I know it’s not merely my being in the picture…it’s deeper. What have you learned about him to make you love him more and more each day?”
“His complexity…don’t laugh!” Edward sputtered, himself laughing a bit at the bitchy wit of his implication. “It’s not meant to be a wise-crack to the past few weeks scenario,” he added, the sputters slowing as he thought deeply for the first time. Words coughed out through the dust clinging to the honesty trunked in the attics of his heart.
“Gregory’s very different once you get to know him, once you get out from behind all of the simplicity people see when they meet him,” Edward continued while fingers stood counting off the traits to which he spoke. “He’s a creature of habit, almost maniacally OCD, but within those habits you yourself find solace. Once he finds such sooth, it is very difficult to get him to investigate any other direction or any other avenue. Gregory thinks people don’t notice that trait of his, but it was the first thing I noticed when I came across him in that park ages ago.”
“You met in a park?” Nathan interrupted.
“Yup! One sunny Sunday morning…no chickadees warbling or any of that farce, just happenstance as I was passing through on my way to Soho,” Edward detailed. “He sat there in the middle of a bench, off the beaten path, the sun behind him for perfect illumination as he read the Times. It was evidently a well-chosen vantage and one probably derived after having investigated a plethora of other benches throughout the park during as many different times of day.”
“Go on,” Nathan invited. “You’re doing a great job.”
“Thank you, Dr. Freud,” Edward joked. “Okay…Gregory Palmer. He goes to art galleries, but some of his most cherished finds come from flea markets. He has no political affiliation, he’s maniacally OCD…point already catalogued, and I say that again only to impress my point to the fact and not allude to any semblance of my own lurking senility,” Edward giggled and crossed his arms over his chest as he thought deeply about his friend.
“He loves Liza and Judy, and really doesn’t care for Babs, unless some drag queen is dizzying himself by lipping a cross-eyed rendition of ‘On a Clear Day’. Our beloved Mr. Palmer loves those matriarchs of our little society…not the ladies themselves particularly, but the confused chaps who make it their life’s duty to transform themselves as some way of venerating the deified dames both present and past,” Edward explained. “Gregory views drag queens as an art form, and he can sit and watch a performance like that for hours. Whether it’s a performance of Titian reality by a true diva or a more cubist interpretation by some old bloke in a dress, Gregory loves them the same.” Nathan lay belly down on the bed and giggled, a pillow cuddled beneath his chest.
“Drag queens?” Nathan laughed.
“You find this entertaining?” Edward asked as he broke the flow of his thoughts.
“Intriguing,” Nathan mumbled, chin buried into the pillow. “What else?”
“Gregory loves garishly ugly pillows strewn upon over-priced Italian leather sofas…the more gaudy the better. Although he doesn’t understand a damn thing about what they are intrinsically saying, Gregory loves artsy films, Warhol’s acid theater, per say…he watches them only to memorize the palette of the film. He hates gossip, but he’d rather read the Star than the Times…the Journal, though is biblical to him,” Edward detailed, his words ending in deep retrospect and humming silence.
“Is that it?” Nathan asked.
“Too lofty a description? What?” Edward defended his explanation.
“Not one word you spoke had anything to do with sexual attraction, so why the interrogation of my intentions?”
“Oh, you’re a slick little bitch, aren’t you,” Edward laughed with a devilishly mellifluous drone.
“You accuse me of having only one motive, and of Gregory having the same tunnel vision to me, but everything you described was about a person. Why can I not see him the same way and be falling for that?” Nathan petitioned. “Why can he not see me the same?”
“It’s taken me years to derive those traits about him, and you have only known Gregory for a few months…a couple to be more precise in timing. There’s no way in hell that what you or he are feeling is anything but simple lust, and I refuse to believe anything to the contrary,” Edward antagonized though his attack remained quite guarded.
“Gregory is a man of talent, but a boy sometimes afraid to express what he knows. He is a man rooted in tradition, a man deeply devoted to his mother and one equally reverent to a father he knows only through the dreams he fabricated within his mind,” Nathan versed.
Edward listened attentively as Nathan wielded his own assessment of Gregory. Hypnotically, Edward lulled his defenses as he heard his own description of his friend slip into superficiality as Nathan continued.
“Gregory signs his name with a fluidity of pen; the ‘G’ bold in introduction…architectural…the rest of the letters as liquid as the ocean he, too, loves. His voice is like a song, the words lyrics giving you what you want to hear…your mind recording them securely into your psyche. Over and over again you replay the score and inevitably convince yourself everything you imagine is true. He doesn’t do this purposefully, but it’s just the way he masters his audience,” Nathan preached as he watched Gregory’s nervous pacing along the deck. “He cares about people, and though some loathe what he stands for or what he does, he would fight for their right to believe as he would for his right to live his own life. He’s shy, but never bashful…able to speak and masterful at listening.
Edward was discomfited in both word and thought by Nathan’s soliloquy. His eyes stared blank, lifeless, as if he was a perfect assemblage of himself in wax, and sitting there in the chair in some perpetual expression of catatonic introspection. He sat silent, his head tilting back slowly as if his neck was melting under the heat of the night, if not under the weight of Nathan’s observations. A quivering shut of his eyes opened to a gaze as if peering through the vaulted sky of the ceiling in search of a star upon which to make a wish.
“He’s at his best when he tries to explain something he believes in. If he is passionate about an idea, a thought, a belief, his mind whirls…thoughts flying so fast his words cannot speak quick enough or keep up with what he is thinking. He rambles, flooding his sentences to obscurity, but if you can look into his eyes just once during that fever of thought you see the perfection about which he speaks,” Nathan added.
“Have you ever truly looked into his eyes?” Edward asked through a throat stiffened with emotion. His chest rose slowly as a breath filled his frozen recline.
“Every chance I get,” Nathan said as he flopped down onto the bed and imagined the sky Edward surveyed.
“When he looks at you all you see is yourself…the unadulterated reflection of who you are, devoid of who you imagine to be or desire to become. From his eyes you can know what he envisions you to be. You need no pretext and you need no defense,” Edward sighed.
“That’s why I know I’m right in what I am thinking, and answering what I have come to question, and…and that’s why it is all so damn confusing now,” Nathan growled. “I’ve never felt this way about anyone. Is that weird?”
“Enamoring someone is never weird, and falling for Gregory is a curse he innocently casts upon those he meets. The weirdness consuming you…and myself is that neither you nor I will never know if we do the same for him,” Edward answered, slowly tilting his head to address Nathan directly.
“Maybe I’ve convinced myself he could love me, but what if I am wrong? Or if I’m right, what happens if I don’t try? It may have been only a mere second’s time within his whole life that I have known him and that he has known me, but Edward, but I do know him…and all I want to do is learn more.”
“What is it you want to learn?” Edward asked. “Or are those missing bits of info the parts you fear?”
“That’s not the point here, Edward. I’m not questioning a physical attraction, but maybe you can’t understand that,” Nathan said as he snapped up to a squat on the mattress. “I’ve gotten beyond the taboo of us being the same…man and man, but there is something more to people than the superficial; more than the physical, something more than a body, more than a face…something more ethereal, more surreal. Is that possible?”
“You mean like bisexual?” Edward asked and crooked his head forward as he considered the distant possibility. “Some have left those options open as well, although I personally subscribe to it being one way or the other.”
“No…I mean is it possible to never confine yourself to a label one way or the other and simply fall in love with the person, maybe only their soul…gender never coming into the attraction?” Nathan asked, his mind bewildered as he searched the invisible air.
“My…you are dealing with some voracious demons. Let’s see…a new expression of love on the horizon…try-sexuality,” Edward chortled as he mocked an attempt to understand Nathan’s notion. “Whatever the wind blows in, our Nathan will try it! I must have knocked your libido clear out of your ass!”
“Can you cut the sarcasm for maybe two or three minutes?” Nathan asked.
“Point taken. My apologies…again,” Edward digressed. “So what you are asking is if there exists a possibility that you, the straight boy could love Gregory, the gay man…that one could love another without regard to a sexual attraction, right?”
“Yes…in a way,” Nathan replied, the excitement in his voice eager to hear Edward’s final decree. No quick answer being given, Nathan decided to add a bit more detail from his own life’s experiences.
“I have other close male friends, Garrett namely, but I never felt any desire to ‘be with him’. And the other night with Ayden…I mean he’s an awesome looking guy, but I wasn’t interested in following him home.”
“He asked you to go home with him?”
“Oops! Sorry…” Nathan said as the secret he held died in its cocoon.
Out of respect for the dead, Nathan divulged no more of the little secret he held since that night. Edward was not runner up; to Nathan’s recollection, third actually on the list of prospects. If any consolation were to be offered, though, the invitation to Nathan and Gregory could be considered as a single entry on Ayden’s roster.
“That little tramp! I should have assumed I was wooed out of desperation,” Edward quipped, scooting quickly to a position sitting on the edge of the chair’s frame.
“Edward, you are an amazing looking man, too,” Nathan commented, feeling a quick massage of a crippled ego to be the best remedy if he was going to get any answers out of the conversation. “Stop being so hard on yourself.”
“Maybe ‘hard on’ is the part of me that gave me away,” Edward chided himself with more typical comments. The seriousness of their talk to that point took a brief refuge within more cursory chatter.
“You and he did hook up…right? How was that?” Nathan asked, his intent purely casual.
“Sparing you the meaningless details of sex between two men, it was ravenous, actually. I guess I was one of those fucking idiots you spoke of on the plane the day we all met,” Edward said, slowly breaking into an infectious laugh. “In spite of his perfect exterior, he’s just a gay Happy Meal…boys made of cheap meat and stale buns but with a bit of steam they look quite appetizing. All packaged up in a cute little box, handle and all, the only fun things about them are the toy surprises they hide.”
“Edward, I love your wit,” Nathan giggled. “I think you are awesome,” he added with due sincerity.
“Thank you, Nathan,” Edward said with a slow bow of his eyelids, accepting the accolades undeservedly yet with humbled gratitude.
“So now I gather it’s back to Mr. Right and his dowry amassed by $2.99-for-the-first-minute-and-$1.99-each-minute-thereafter,” Edward sighed. “Sometimes I wonder whether it would probably be cheaper to whack off in the back of a cab during rush hour.”
“Anyone would be lucky to have you in their life,” Nathan boasted.
“Well…what about us? All’s copacetic…no hard feelings?”
“Is that a proposition?” Nathan flirtatiously ogled. “Seriously, I am fine, and whatever happens or has happened, we’ve become friends…you and I. I am already the better for whatever is yet to come. You are a friend.”
Edward smiled and slanted his head low, a slight nod to affirm his similar feelings to making Nathan a friend. Despite having punched through the wall his own jealousy had built between he and Nathan, there still remained a chord of angst clutching Edward’s sensibility; he could not fully bless the pairing his mind still wanted to divide. He sat relaxed and looped his auburn locks around long fingers like a child lulling himself to sleep. Eyes heavy, muscles jumping with aftershock as raging anger fled from his every sinew, Edward’s mind fought to stay alert, fed by intrigue to the honesty of Nathan’s answers. He mustered enough consciousness to re-open the original conversation and ask a final bold question.
“What do you want to happen?” Edward mumbled, his eyes speaking clear in their question of Nathan’s intentions.
“I want the swelling on my lip to go down so I can have another beer tonight,” Nathan replied, the casualness of his answer hiding what he truly understood the question to be asking.
“Don’t be daft. You know what I mean,” Edward sleepily recanted pulling a long finger curl taut to awaken his mind. “What do you want to happen with Gregory?” Nathan’s eyes stared blankly to the floor.
“I want to be happy, and I want Gregory to love again,” he said purposefully avoiding the innuendo Edward proposed. He pulled the door open to the terrace.
“That’s two separate things,” Edward called. “What if you could only have one?” Nathan closed the door and slowly sat upon the bed.
“I want Gregory to love again,” Nathan answered with little secondary thought.
“And I am assuming you would be the one he loves, thus granting your own happiness?” Edward assessed.
“I don’t know if I would truly he happy if Gregory didn’t hold the main responsibility for that sense of fulfillment in my life,” Nathan answered.
“Is there no end to you wanting everything in life to be given to you?” Edward badgered.
“I work for things, and the most successful achievements I’ve made have been of my own hand,” Nathan rallied to his own defense. “I cannot help what lot I was born into in life, but despite who my parents are, where I live…I don’t expect favors. No one gave me a talent for design or a passion for architecture…that came from me. No one put me into this apprenticeship but me, and my success is going to come from no one but me. I resent anyone thinking differently.” Nathan daggered a scowl at Edward’s suggestion and flopped onto the bed, punching a pillow against the headboard. He propped his back against the loft of down and stared to Edward, daring him to test his redoubtable self-belief.
“What I was implying…if I may qualify myself without you firing up again…is that making another person responsible for you being happy is a rather tall order to put upon anyone…quite selfish on your part, don’t you agree?” Edward redirected. “Do you think Gregory would accept the duty to make you happy? Moreover, do you really believe you could offer that same responsibility you are asking of him?”
“You’re right…my life is my responsibility, but another person can indeed help you get there,” Nathan replied.
“Do you think Gregory would be happy with you?” Edward reiterated. “For Christ’s sake, Nathan…Gregory is a gay man. Sex in his world may not be used perpetuate the species, but…dear lad…there is the recreational aspect of it all. Even for you breeders, sex is a part of the equation. There’s more to love than love. Gregory is human, too.”
“I know he is, and…” Nathan replied immediately, his chest pigeoned forth with determination, but the final answer falling back into his throat.
“You don’t know, do you?” Edward assigned. “And because you don’t know, you are scared.”
“That’s why there has been nothing beyond a kiss…a simple kiss defining a moment when words can no longer express how you feel. It wasn’t a lead into something more physical, and it wasn’t passed off as an accident. When I know he can trust me to give him…to help him become as happy as I know I would be, the rest will follow…without hesitation, and without regret. It wouldn’t be a gamble, because it is something we both would know to be truth.”
“I refuse to believe…or perhaps I’m too gay to comprehend…that there be any way a straight boy would wait for…quote unquote ‘love’ from another man…OK…another person before he would try the saddle as it were,” Edward blasted and violently plowed his fingers through his hair trying to impregnate the notions Nathan so stubbornly held onto. “There’s no level of pseudo-gay or arbitrarily heterosexual. It’s one way or another!” Edward exclaimed as he fought with understanding Nathan’s dilemma.
“I’m not naïve nor inexperienced, Edward…and although it may seem as I live in some glass bubble, I know what goes on between two people. I’ve imagined things…like I said…with Gregory, but that is not the reason I am feeling as I do.”
“I cannot believe I am proposing this,” Edward argued with himself. “Fuck him! Let him fuck you! Find it remarkable or find it repulsive. Do something to be certain…do something to test your imagination against the truth of reality. Just bloody do something!”
Nathan squatted onto the floor in order for Edward to understand the truth he was ready to deliver. He leaned over his folded legs and looked directly into Edward’s near insane expression.
“I can’t…and I won’t,” Nathan whispered.
“Why? Explain it to me please!” Edward begged. “Is there no curiosity as to what it is like to be with another man…all of this spirituality aside? Everything you’ve spoken of sounds so lovely and sincere, but Nathan think of the reality for a minute.”
“You actually expect me to believe that you are without any iota of curiosity to what it’s like to be with another man?” Edward inquired. “I may act as if I belong on the special bus, but I still have a very firm grasp of real life. There are padded walls in my flat, but only to add decorative element…not to keep me from hurting myself as I whirl about the room,” he continued, spinning around for effect as he discovered the mobility hidden within his chair.
“If you are asking if I’ve banged one out thinking about him, the answer is…well…no,” Nathan replied, his stumbled words lessened the credibility of his own defense.
“You have…I knew it!” Edward yelped. Applauding his insight, he chuckled his delight and again twirled in his chair, the glee fleeing once he slowed and confronted Nathan’s embarrassed frown.
“Of course there are curiosities, Edward. For God’s sake!” Nathan blurted as he paced the path between the bed and the door. “I’ve watched from behind the sheers in the guest room while he swam his morning laps. I hid in the dark corner of the balcony off my room in DC and watched him sleep. I faked being asleep myself that night after Blue Bar and felt him breathing over me, hoping he’d do something. Once he left I came so close to opening the door between our rooms, but I couldn’t do it. I’m human, too, and of course feelings have come over me, but I held back knowing there has to be more and knowing that there is more. I’ve wondered why I stopped, yet every next morning I never regretted having waited. I have thought this whole thing through over and over again, and probably thought so much into it that I’m confusing myself into thinking there could be more. Jesus, maybe I’m the one with the problem.”
“Why does there have to be more?” Edward drilled. “OK…you’re not a virgin, but did you fall in love with every lass you were with? No you didn’t, so why the need to back into this thing with Gregory? Pardon the innuendo…”
“Because I don’t want to be trapped into something I’m not convinced I could share with anyone else,” Nathan yelled.
“That’s what I’ve wanted you to say all night long,” Edward gloated and applauded a single clap of his hands to triumphantly reaching the root of Nathan’s guise.
“I don’t know if I am gay, and I don’t know why I’ve reached some stage in my life when I’m being forced to answer the question,” Nathan acknowledged.
“Let me shed some light to this darkness from which you are trying to free yourself,” Edward said. “Being gay doesn’t just happen. It’s engrained in you from birth. It’s no disease you catch and no illness from which you can be cured. It’s a color you cannot bleach out, a rhythm to your life you cannot change. If you love Gregory, accept it…embrace it…nurture it. If what you feel is simply infatuation…get over it, otherwise you will blame him or yourself for what is not meant to happen happening. You both will be left worse for wear. Is that what you want?”
“I believe in what I am feeling, and at this point only I know the answer to my questions,” Nathan responded, his tone assuaged from any defense as his heart mollified Edward’s accusatory remarks. “I don’t want to live in a perpetual question, asking to be loved and never knowing if I will be answered. I want to come to a point in my life when I have all I need. I want to hold my breath during that certain pause in life when someone says ‘I love you’ and looking into their eyes to see the sentiment echo in the silence of a pause. I want to hear the hum and feel the pulse as my heart pounds because I know those words were said only to me. I don’t want to live each day hanging on to a thin string of wonderful yesterdays hoping some tomorrow will come when I get the chance to experience what it’s like to be loved in return,” Nathan answered.
He leaned over onto his knees in front of Edward’s glazed face. Edward heard every word of Nathan’s reply, but his mind could only envision his life as lacking everything Nathan wanted for himself. Nathan pulled Edward’s hands from their clenched hold of disbelief and cuddled them closely to his chest.
“I have no curiosities about what it’s like to be with another person, but I do wonder what it is like to be with a person I love…and one who loves me the same. I have to do this my way, and I know in my heart it is the right way,” Nathan assured. “Love comes first, and everything after that just makes that love stronger. I need words, not just a touch.”
“Careful…remember words always have a way of disappearing, but a touch lingers…the longer you live with the memory of it, the deeper the ache is to feel it again,” Edward advised as he turned in his seat readying himself to stand.
“So you do understand what I am saying,” Nathan whispered and knelt on the floor, his head rested upon Edward’s knee.
“I have a feeling I am not going to like where this is leading,” Edward foreshadowed, initiating a pause to the conclusion revving upon Nathan’s tongue. Nathan did not heed the stall.
“I don’t want to remember a touch without love and live each day wondering when it will go to the next level, even if it will ever happen again,” Nathan conveyed. “I don’t want to live each day becoming more jaded and self-imprisoned within a cell of what I feel as neglect. I don’t want to wait for an answer and spend years…a decade…using every opportunity afforded to me to bounce between people hoping one of them will give me the reply I search for or out of jealousy bring the one I want to me. I don’t want to trip into a one-sided love knowing the heart of my affection holds no room for me and that the answer I await will never fall from their mouth. I don’t want to lose my own identity because my life is so focused on one unattainable moment, traveling a barren avenue and stalling at some vacant intersection waiting for a green light when the signal holds only red. I don’t want to be bitter and selfish because I cannot accept the part of a friend’s life they are willing to give me.”
Edward reached a finger and gently stroked Nathan’s wound. The spoken essay was revealing, but the subject of his prose still hovered high above Edward’s blinded introspection. Closing his eyes, Edward listened to the final sentence Nathan spoke.
“My way is just that…my way. Edward, I don’t want to lose who I am if Gregory doesn’t share what I feel. For all the acceptance you’ve had of who you are, for all of feelings you have embraced for Gregory, and for all of the nurturing you’ve tried to get him to love you…where has it ended?” Nathan asked editing Edward’s own advice.
“Don’t go there, Nathan,” Edward warned, his voice crackling with fear.
“How worse are you for the wear you’ve lived over the past ten years?” Nathan asked, his intent not on nullifying Edward’s quest, but solely to validate his own journey. “I’ve got to do this my way,” Nathan concluded. “I don’t want to be you.”
Edward’s face sank into a lost, blank expression; his innocent attack earlier in the evening was no match for the pummel of Nathan’s last words. Equally potent, Nathan blinked a consoling wink, its warmth melting Edwards frozen stare as a single tear fell to his lips. Nathan stood up and walked to the patio door.
“It’s a two way street, Edward, otherwise you hit a dead end. Unless I’m more crazy than I realize, I think I am on the right road,” Nathan concluded and slid the door closed behind his exit.
Edward’s envy for Nathan heightened, but more for the wisdom his friend parlayed. He remained stilled in his chair, moving only to salute a lazy concession to his future as Nathan walked to the railing along the deck and stood next to Gregory.

Is there a "gay" movie genre?

Is it really that easy to pick top gay movies? Is it not like trying to pick a favorite child? As a gay man, it is difficult, especially since, until recently, there have been very few truly “gay” movies. There have been gay characters slipped into mainstream films, but “gay” movies still have this mystique that they are meant to be watched a quarter at a time.

What is a “gay” movie? Is it a comedy of errors wherein all the characters are drag queens screaming their way across the screen? Is it the proverbial AIDS movie? Is it a genuine effort empathetic to gay life and the trials and tribulations of people seeking understanding while sinking deeper into society’s distrust? Or perhaps is it a movie all gays rush to see? Are the movies studios touting as “gay” ones rampant with prejudicial propaganda or overt grandstanding of gay rights where a premise of telling the truth actually yields throwing homosexuality into the audience’s face with little or no subtext and reason? Maybe the answer is simply that there is no one genre uniquely labeling “gay cinema” and, for all intents and purposes, the need for such an appellation being a moot subject. Perhaps movies should be movies plain and simple.

Gay themed films perpetuate the stereotypes from which we as a group try to emerge. Frequently teetering on soft porn, many of the “gay” movies distributed today further tunnel the vision of society as “straight” being the norm leaving our minority to be viewed as over-sexed, often perverted deviants. If I am too bold in my assumption, that vision is far from being true, as most of us probably know very few people who exhibit the typical “gay boy” or “lesbian girl” portrayed in “gay genre” films. Perhaps one should make a movie about people and their lives, the facts of particular characters being gay more adjectival nuances clarifying the role rather than the full premise to the movie. First and foremost, people are people and the stories their lives tell are what we as the public need to capture. Thankfully, there have been ballsy producers and directors willing to take a gamble and deliver extraordinary movies in which being gay was not the main topic but a trait that made the characters more developed and believable…more charismatic as real people. Of course there are enjoyable “gay” flicks, but the best transcend above such a theme.

My most favorite “gay movie"? "Torch Song Trilogy” by the inimitable Harvey Fierstein. Adapted from Fierstein’s Broadway role of the same title, this is a series of vignettes individual in importance but intertwined masterfully to tell the story of a man’s life and how the one love we seek to find may actually never exist in one human being. “Albert” (also familiarly known to his friends as “Virginia Ham”) is Fierstein’s main character, the role capturing on the surface and a stereotypical gay man; the effeminate cross-dresser whose lifestyle is shunned by his domineering mother (Anne Bancroft). Add in dashes of dialogue bitchy in comical wit and strong supporting characters, the story evolves as a tale needing to be told, but one top which the main character forever fears no one will listen. In “Torch” (as I will refer) the story is love…the story is finding who we are as a person…and the story is how we as people can mix all the trouble and happiness of life in to a situation we can live with and within which find our own solidarity, how from the valleys we find out who we are and once on the peak we find out who we can be (to quote the great words from Mary J. Blige’s Grammy acceptance speech…go girl!). Show me a straight person who ain’t moved by the film and I’ll show you’s a person who ain’t gonna find good in anything! Harvey is amazing and a credit to all of humanity, and the work he does becomes indelible to all of society. He tells a story about life to which both “gay” and “straight” can assimilate. I love you Fierstein!

Another movie termed “gay”? Hmmmm…might one agree that “Philadelphia” is a “gay” movie? It deals with a topic unfortunately shared by millions of people who are as far from being homosexual as one can get, those being the unfortunate many afflicted with the disease of AIDS. But in this superb film, the fact of the main character being gay is hidden beneath the true grit of the story. It wasn’t a film set out to condemn gay people, in fact it came through as a story condemning mainstream society for their prejudicial views upon a person suffering from a disease few understand. When the “gay” stereotypes were depicted or discussed, (flash backs to the main character soliciting sex in a pornographic theatre or scenes where fleshy middle-aged men volley dull locker room “gay” jokes) those scenes did nothing to perpetuate “gay” intolerance. In fact. he truth is that such typical prejudicial practices emerged as society’s Achilles heel; the arrows they shot to bring down the main character in turn became their own demise. “Gay” was matter-of-fact for the character; the power being the plight he…a family-loving, highly intellectual and revered man and friend…was forced to endure as a “human”.

While not a well-known film and totally on the other end of the gamut to “Torch Song Trilogy” and “Philadelphia”, “Unconditional Love” is another movie in which supporting characters are “gay”. Rupert Everett (incredible) and Kathy Bates star in the film in which the strength of a gay love partnership helps a straight couple learn the true meaning of love …to love the person…to love without condition. Comical to a point, the plot involves a Tom-Jones-Engelbert-Humperdink-Elvis-Presley genre singer, adored by women the world over, is killed by a wayward serial killer. Bates (a typical devoted wife) is subjected to divorce when her husband, Dan Akroyd, feels the need to emerge from a conservative mold to find some element of danger to give his life meaning. Wanting desperately to attend an exclusive taping of the main character’s singing appearance, she misses out on winning a ticket to the event. Luck prevails and a customer service agent mails her one extra ticket, but when she gets to the studio she learns of the singer’s murder. Intent herself on facing danger to prove her worth to her husband, Bates travels to England to attend the singer’s funeral where she meets his “valet” (Everett) who reveals he had actually been the singer’s life partner for ten years. Together they embark on proving Everett’s rights to the estate as promised by the singer. Farcical, to an acceptable level, the overlying story deals with finding oneself amidst the turmoil of life and society. There are moments that deal with certain “gay” stereotypes: cross-dressing, philandering…”perversions of the worst kind” to quote a line from the movie. However, the end of the film triumphs at finding out that we are individuals…again “gay” being matter-of-fact.

Yet another “gay” film? I’m finding there are so many now that I have time to sit and think. Well…I guess I should go for it despite the subject having been beaten into the ground by media and critics alike. “Brokeback Mountain” is the “gay” movie du jour. As a gay man, I found this film to be as far from a “gay” movie as William Hung is to being a serious artist. Infamy brought them both falsely to the limelight, but with “Brokeback Mountain” there is an indisputable value that would have garnered it the same success had it been promoted simply as an example of superb cinematography and direction…not to mention amazing storyline where love is found in the most remote regions of plausibility. Plain and simple, had the movie been made where a cowboy meets ranch owner’s daughter, the underlying story of love would have still been remarkably told and adapted to screen. Being that the characters were both men…cowboys at that…gave the film the initial notoriety it had to suffer. Exceptional storyline and unparalleled direction aside, the media’s bastardization of the fact that two men fell in love brought people to the theater, and to Ang Lee’s success, both gay and straight were touched by the human sentiments prevailing throughout the film. Those in areas where the film was black-listed suffered at having been excluded. I, myself, felt my rights were removed when only two theaters in the area showed the film. Well thanks to the theater guilds that acclaimed the film for its true worth, many more people were ale to see the movie and make their own assessment. Thankfully the theaters banning the product lost out on positive revenue.

So there’s a few movies termed “gay” that I find to be remarkable feats of film making and story telling. There are numerous other films of this ilk, but without going into six, seven, eight…twenty others, the fact remains that those best films canopied under the “gay” moniker are truly superb cinematic productions about people. Terming things “gay” or “lesbian” keeps us, a minority already, trapped in the backrooms and dark clubs hidden in the decaying parts of the big cities. We are people…black or white…gay or straight. Let films speak for themselves and keep “gay” or “lesbian” out of the picture. Let the characters be who they are and the messages in the films will become more powerful; hopefully, our own lives will continue to give more meaning to all of society. Don’t label a film “gay” or “lesbian” and hinder it being viewed for the work of art it is intended to be. Enjoy the films for what they are…works of art fashioned from painstaking hours of thought, each testaments to unique talents from directing, to editing, costuming and acting. If the story tells a tale of men loving men or women loving women, a gay man fighting for his own rights or a lesbian mother trying to raise a child on her own, look deeper to the plot and realize each character is a person. Who they love is not as important as the depth of the love they offer, and what they fight for is not as powerful as the heights of what they achieve in the end. If we stop labeling our efforts, not the least ourselves, maybe the rest of the world will stop labeling us.

SUPERSIZING the American Dream

Venture anywhere in America these days and through the clouds of dust and rumble of earth movers our eyes search to find the flat horizons of cornfields and the lacy canopies of age-old forests. The exhaust of diesel engines suffocates the soft perfume of rich soil; bitter asphalt supplants the sweet smell of fresh. Land defiled by gluttonous human appetite lies in decay. From the decrepit soil rise new crops of brick and faux stone, from the leveled forests emerge full-bellied beasts skinned in hand-hewn clapboards. The amber waves of grain yield motionless goliaths of brick and faux stone while cragged horizons of rooftops crowd the spacious skies and purple mountains of majesty. We crown our good with neighborhoods.
History has seen the inherent need for shelter transform from basic necessity to overt displays of aggrandized self-worth. The new genre of housing style afflicting the American standard, colloquially termed by satirists as the McMansion, is intrinsically a testament to that very human condition by which it was created. A name coined by combining the familiar term for some of the huge behemoths erected by “robber barons” of the Industrial Age with the contemporary market standard for fast production, the name McMansion could not have been more aptly applied. Created in record time using often inferior materials, the American manses of today exemplify an inefficient use of space, obtuse traffic flow, and unimaginative design aesthetics. The only need satiated by this style of home is our need to brag about what we have accomplished, however secure or worthless those accomplishments may be financially; the toils of our volatile economy often resting on our own penchant to live beyond our imaginations, often beyond our means.
Perhaps our society could learn a lesson if our ears are indeed eager to listen. Homes need to be designed for the family, the basic unit to which our life on earth was originally subscribed. The thirty-foot ceilings of our “family rooms” need be saved for museums where silent contemplation is revered. Cherish our earth and plant gardens rather than six and seven-car garages to teach children potatoes come from rich soil and not greasy red cardboard boxes. Temper the need for more; life might just give you all you could ever truly desire.