The Velvet Rage (13 page)

The truth is, Sergio makes a great living. The other, hidden truth is that he spends everything he makes and then some shopping.
He buys only the best-quality and finest collectibles. At every store in San Francisco and New York he has huge charge accounts and items on layaway. He shops and shops and shops. And the more stressed he becomes, the more he shops.

Sergio's lover is also in his mid-sixties, but neither Sergio nor his lover will be able to retire soon—or perhaps ever. The truth is that Sergio even convinced his lover to cash in his retirement account to fund the purchase of extremely rare antique rugs that he “just had to have.”

Sergio is addicted to shopping. Whenever he needs to change his mood, he shops. While he doesn't acknowledge his shopping as a problem, it doesn't take much analysis to see that he and his lover have paid a high price for his addiction. After years of such behavior, their lives are driven by the need to buy and pay for what Sergio has already purchased. They have become slaves to his endless hunger to shop.

Not every gay man in stages one and two develops a process addiction, but more than a few do. Ultimately, these additions are a small, leaky lifeboat in the high tide of shame. They protect, if only for the moment, the gay man from drowning in the shame that threatens to consume his life and soul. The gay man who floats in this tide must have his lifeboat to survive. Without it, life truly isn't worth living.

If you've had a process addiction or known someone close who has, imagine this: At the height of the addiction, would life be worth living if you couldn't have sex? Couldn't party? Couldn't get high? Couldn't shop?

As with any true addiction, life is unimaginable without it. Hopelessness and shame begin to rise higher and higher, and the addict secretly wonders if it's worth going on without the addiction.

Not until the gay man develops another way to manage his emotions can he leave his addictions behind. When he learns how to authentically connect with his world and achieve the contentment that he craves, he can relinquish those old behaviors and break free from their suffocation. Here lies the boundary between stages two and three. The gay man begins to leave behind the inauthenticity of his past, and moves into a place of becoming himself—a true self that is shown to all the world for the flawed beauty therein. But first, he must pass through another ring of fire: the crisis of meaning.

S
tage two culminates in a desperate search for meaning in life. Are “white” parties and beautiful men, elegant houses, and chic dinner parties really all there is to life? Years of compensating for shame in a myriad of ways brings him to his knees, exhausted and confused. The one thing he had fought so hard to earn—acceptance of his sexuality—has led him into a life that has been difficult, often lonely, and far less fulfilling than he had imagined.

When Jerome finally accepted his sexuality, he left the priesthood. Not that he was forced out, but he left of his own desire for freedom to really discover who he was. He had been a respected diocesan Catholic priest since his early twenties, and before that he had always been committed to becoming a priest. Now in his mid-thirties, he was questioning all of those commitments. Yes, he was gay, and he began to wonder if he entered the priesthood only to hide his sexuality.

After almost ten years of life post-priesthood, Jerome found himself struggling with the real meaning of life. Although he left
the priesthood, he had never truly left the faith that had been his since childhood. He had walked away from his vocation and burned a few bridges in the leaving. Now he was looking back and wondering if it was the right decision.

Jerome's crisis of meaning reached a peak, and attempting to resolve it, he approached the archbishop about returning to active ministry. Nothing he had done as an “out” gay man had given him contentment, and now he was looking back at the priesthood wondering if he hadn't given up the one thing that held real promise for him. Maybe it had been a mistake to leave.

Jerome wasn't questioning his sexuality. He knew he was gay through and through. He had had a few lovers and many sexual partners during his break from the ministry and had thoroughly explored his sexual appetites. While it had been great fun at times and satisfied a burning curiosity within him, it didn't give him the contented feeling that he had imagined it would. Perhaps he could live as a gay man and return to the one sure calling he had felt in life.

Gay men in their forties and fifties often enter the crisis of meaning. What's happiness really all about? How will I find lasting love and contentment? Can I find it in a relationship with a man? Is there such a thing as a healthy relationship between two men? How can I find real purpose and passion in my life?

Like the crisis of identity, the crisis of meaning can either be foreclosed or resolved. Foreclosure is what it always is—nothing more than a quick fix to a distressing emotional state. In the crisis of meaning, it usually means throwing yourself into another relationship, buying yet another vacation home, traveling around the
world, or pushing yourself to create the perfect body. Foreclosure in the crisis of meaning almost always sounds something like this: “I'll find contentment if I just try harder at what I've been doing.” More men. More sex. More workouts. More parties. More high achievement. More money. More Botox. More, bigger, better.

Chris's partner died five years ago from a quick but acute case of hepatitis C. Chris was left grieving, with a house that was midway in an extensive remodeling job, and in a city where he hadn't really wanted to live. For the past fifteen years, Chris had built his life primarily around his partner's life. Now he was alone with a life he didn't want.

A year and a half went by and Chris finished the house and sold it. In fact, he sold everything except a few small pieces of furniture, a car, and his clothes. He took the money and went on an around-the-world trip. That, he imagined, would give some direction in his life.

On a three-week stop in Australia, he met a fine young man who was ten years his junior. He was a handsome guy, to say the least, and loved to party. Soon, he and Chris were out at the clubs nightly until dawn. The excitement of new love and reinvigorated libido gave Chris the hope that he had found what he was looking for.

Six months later, Chris returned to the apartment in Sydney that he had bought a month after meeting his new boyfriend to find that he wasn't the only man his boyfriend was sleeping with. He packed a few bags, and less than a week later was back in the United States, not really sure where he was ultimately headed. Maybe L.A.? Maybe Palm Springs? Maybe New York City?

Chris bounced around from boyfriend to boyfriend for a few years, growing more depressed and cynical. Men were dogs, and he was hopelessly attracted to them. He'd swear off men for
good, only to find himself back at the kennel looking for another one to relieve his grinding boredom with life.

Chris foreclosed on his crisis of meaning time and again. As far as I know, he still hasn't resolved it. Last I heard, he was living in Palm Springs and working as a real estate agent.

Resolving the crisis of meaning is all about reaching the place of honest and radical authenticity. It's about no longer needing to compensate for shame and living your life without needing to gild it with the extraordinary. Growing older, day by day and year by year, without the need to make it all seem better than it really is. It's life, and it's just fine without the embellishments.

The one and only skill that resolves the crisis of meaning is that of acceptance. Learning to accept the things in life as they are in the present moment. You're growing older, your boyfriend's getting fatter, your job isn't totally amazing, and where you live can often be boring. To repeat a cliché that I often breathe to myself: “It is what it is.”

When you drop the struggle with shame and accept life as it is without judgment, you find great freedom on the other side. It is freedom to be who you are, exactly as you are. The only real meaning in life is found in being who you are right now, without apologies.

You don't need to be more spiritual, richer, friendlier, better looking, younger, or living on a beach. In this moment, all you need to be is you. Only in that space will you find lasting contentment.

The journey into authenticity and acceptance is the beginning of stage three in the gay man's life. It is the final stage in life, no matter at what age it is entered. Stage three is the final good-bye to toxic shame and the beginning of a life that is truly worth living.

GEORGE ORWELL
c. 1949

MAYA ANGELOU
from
A Song Flung Up to Heaven

O
nce the gay man emerges from the shame that has defined so much of his life in stages one and two, he is now faced with the task of deconstructing what was once predicated on the tenants of shame. The parts of his life that are rooted in the practices of avoiding shame, splitting, and achieving inauthentic validation no longer work for him. He moves through life as if he were the rusty tin man, awkward and clumsy, slowed by the excessive weight of leaden limbs.

But how does one function in the world without the familiar ways of being? If he is no longer driven by the desire to taste and touch the newest model of man on the street, how shall he spend his evenings? If his craving for money and success are no longer his favorite, drunken obsession, how will he entertain himself? If he is no longer in the elusive race for the ultimate fashion, where will he spend his energy?

Deconstructing the effects of a life built on the avoidance of and overcompensation for shame is the central process of stage
three. Now that shame is no longer the driving force in his life, the structures he so carefully built to avoid shame are no longer needed.

Stage three begins for most gay men with a vague sense of freedom and vacillating awareness of confusion. Everything that is familiar feels somewhat foreign, and there is a growing awareness that life must be slowly redefined in all aspects. It is a time of shuffling that, much like a line of dominos falling, starts with a small change and ends with a radical difference.

Living in Santa Fe, New Mexico, I see more than a few gay men who come to our small town as part of their journey through stage three. They've often lived in the metropolitan “gay ghettos,” having lived the life of the urban gay man. Now they are questioning everything, and somehow they are drawn to this dusty New Mexico town where the houses are built of mud and straw at the foot of a mountain. Perhaps, they have wondered, this small town is the antithesis to the pulsating urban gay life of the city and will hold the answers. For some, it does. For others, it does not. Nevertheless, every year a new group of gay men arrives in town, seeking the answers to lives that are no longer based on shame.

Many of these men wander into my psychotherapy office in Santa Fe. I see them often, as they begin to entrust me with the unburdening of their hearts. Each inevitably thinks that his journey from shame to the ambiguity of stage three is unique. And why wouldn't he? His father had no knowledge of this journey, nor did any of his likely role models. How would he know that so many gay men have been this way before?

What always fascinates me is that once a gay man enters into stage three, his visibility in the gay community often diminishes. He is no longer a regular at the gay clubs, nor is he an active player
in high gay society. He may, in fact, no longer feel the need to visit the gay ghetto. You may see him on occasion at the gym or at a political fund-raiser, but he is not a regular on the gay scene. This is unfortunate for young men, for they are unable to see the healthy progression from shame to freedom. Many younger gay men just assume that once you get older, you hide out in your house or move away out of embarrassment from having aged. It isn't conceivable to them that many of the gay men who “disappear” do so because they have outgrown the need for the avoidance of shame and acquisition of validation that is at the core of so much of mainstream gay culture.

Stage three is akin to the archetype of the wanderer—the man who journeys from his home seeking something better but not certain of what it is he might find. There are many stories down through history of the wanderer, including Homer in the
Iliad
and Moses in the desert. The essence of these stories is also the experience of the gay man in stage three: He embarks on a journey away from a familiar life and seeks a better life for himself. He isn't certain what that better life is, nor is he at all certain that he will ever find it. It is a quest without a defined endpoint.

This is a period of life that is best described as a time of ongoing ambiguity. Nothing is very clear or certain, except that the ways of avoiding shame no longer interest him. Bathhouses, dance clubs, one-night stands, and anonymous sex hold only passing interest for him now. Achieving great financial and career success may still be his goal; but it is a goal that has lost much of its luster and seduction. It now becomes a place to go simply because he hasn't any other attractive alternatives.