The Velvet Rage (6 page)

What both Josh and Marc experienced were
inhibited emotions
. Inhibited emotions are those feelings that we successfully avoid and therefore don't feel. Josh hadn't felt shame for years, and if you had asked him prior to losing the promotion if shame was a problem for him, he'd probably have laughed at the idea. Marc hadn't experienced the intense phobic anxiety in years, too, since he had carefully avoided flying. Despite the fact that both of these men hadn't felt the emotion they were avoiding regularly, their lives were still significantly shaped by them. Sometimes inhibited emotions influence our lives more than emotions we feel.

Inhibited emotions, especially rage and shame, are a major problem for gay men. We don't
feel
the shame and rage, so we aren't aware how significantly these emotions are affecting and influencing our lives. The truth is that the
avoidance
of shame and rage, as much as the actual experiencing of these emotions, troubles us.

If we don't
feel
shame and rage, how do we know that we are avoiding them? First, on the occasions that we do feel the shame and rage, we feel them with an intensity that is beyond what the
circumstance merits. In other words, we tend to overreact. Secondly, we haven't developed the skills to tolerate these emotions when they do occur—strongly suggesting that we have been avoiding shame and rage for quite some time. The end result is that they can have debilitating effects.

In our everyday lives, we may be aware of occasional anger resulting from the ordinary frustrations, but it's not obvious that this anger is truly rage. However, a closer look shows the evidence of rage all around us. To begin with, gay men are known for a cynical and biting sense of humor. We often use humor as a channel for our rage. No one can write a searing commentary on the latest fashion faux pas of a celebrity like a gay man. Society has come to recognize and appreciate the sharp-tongued, “bitchy” humor of gay men.

Another sign of our rage is the speed and intensity with which our anger is sometimes ignited. Gay men have often been known to become furious over the smallest issue. It can be some off-hand comment or insignificant detail that triggers our anger at lightning speed. I often hear it said among psychotherapists who treat gay men that one of the primary problems troubling gay male relationships seeking couple's therapy is this hypersensitivity to invalidation and the ensuing flight into anger.

I once heard this called the crash and lash syndrome, a phrase that I've adopted because it really captures the expression of a gay man's rage. A verbal slight, an off-hand insult, a glimpse of a
disapproving face—any of these things have been known to trigger the crash and lash syndrome of rage. The crash occurs when we are overwhelmed with rage, and all rational thought comes to an abrupt halt. The emotion seems to erupt within us, consuming us and overloading our brains with thoughts steeped in shame and anger. Then, in a matter of seconds, we lash out at the person who triggered the rage within us. Sometimes, when we are able to stop ourselves from lashing out, we simply retreat, mulling over the distress and sinking deeper into the emotion.

The crash and lash of rage became clear to Josh as we worked together in therapy. Although at first he clung to the idea that he had been the perfect supervisor, over time he began to talk about the ways in which he had been extraordinarily quick to criticize others. Sometimes he would hold back his anger. At other times, he would descend on his employees with the full power of his position of authority and correct them publicly.

The more Josh became aware of his rage, the more he learned about himself and his behavior. He began to notice the connection between periods when he felt especially invalidated and his temper flares. Often, he discovered, the anger he expressed at employees was in fact misdirected. The employees learned early on to always validate Josh, but they quickly became the target for the rage caused by an invalidation Josh experienced elsewhere.

Rage as an emotion has an identifying characteristic: like anger, it always seeks a target. Very often the target for rage isn't the real source of the invalidation but some other convenient person within our environment. The slow checker at the grocery store or the person who accidentally cuts us off on the freeway becomes the undeserved recipient of the fury of our anger.

While rage can certainly have many forms, all take aim at two kinds of targets. The first target is those around us. The second is
ourselves, by internalizing the rage through self-hatred and depression. These two outcomes of rage affect our lives immeasurably.

When we target our rage on those around us, we inevitably push them away, creating an environment of mistrust and confusion in our relationships. Over time, we find our inner circle of friendship is always in a state of flux, with most close relationships lasting only a few years, at best. Other people can tolerate our rage for only so long before they are forced to walk away to protect their own self-esteem. In the event that the relationship involves another gay man who also strikes out in rage, the relationship is almost immediately volatile and unstable.

On the other hand, when we focus our rage internally, we do even greater damage. Internalized rage manifests in self-defeating patterns of behavior: substance abuse, reckless disregard for safe sex and HIV, financial irresponsibility, career dropout, and repeatedly destroying the opportunities for success that come our way.

Rage is the mortal enemy of gay men everywhere. It can arrive under a cloak of secrecy, and with amazing speed it consumes our lives. Because we often don't recognize it for what it truly is, we invite it into our lives, feed it, nurture it, and give ourselves wholly over to it. Not until we've paid a great price, do most of us begin to see it for the dark enemy that it is.

MARCUS TULLIUS CICERO
(106BC–43BC)

I
t was Mitch's mother who first came to see me. She was distraught. Before she sat down in my office, the tears were welling in her eyes. “I just don't know what to do anymore. No matter what I do or say, he just gets so
angry
.”

Mitch's mother was no stranger to suffering. She'd been married and widowed in her forties, lost one child who was only two years old, and had just recently been given the “complete remission” prognosis from her doctor after a ten-year battle with ovarian cancer. Despite all the trauma and suffering, she wasn't self-pitying or bitter. Suffering seems to make some people ever so victimized, and others, like Mitch's mom, it makes them softer, more compassionate. She said that all she wanted was for her sons to be happy, and she said it with such conviction that I couldn't help but believe her. She was the mother of three sons, two of whom were identical twins, Mitch and Martin. Martin was gay and had been out of the closet for three years, since his twenty-fifth birthday. Mitch, on the other hand, had a girlfriend.

For many years, Mitch had been unable to keep a job for more than a year or two. Time and again, he had become explosively
angry and quit in a rage or was fired. His relationships, too, had been stormy. Not all that long ago, his current girlfriend had actually acquired a restraining order against him because of his volatile behavior.

During the past year, Mitch had become impossible with his family. All it took was the slightest comment or criticism, and he stormed out of the house. Or worse, he'd slam the door to his garage apartment (it was attached to his mother's house) and drink himself into a stupor. Mitch's mother didn't know what to do. Life with Mitch had become so miserable that she was seriously considering kicking him out of the apartment. Everyone in the family, including Martin, thought it was past time that she do it.

In the year that followed, I saw Mitch's mother occasionally as she needed to talk over her concerns about the family. During that year, Mitch continued to spin out of control. When he lost his job at one of the local high-tech plants, he drove his car to the Bay Bridge that connects Oakland with San Francisco and jumped off. Inside the car, he left a note that read, in part, “I'd rather be dead than be gay.”

Mitch's story is so tragic, and yet it's probably fair to say that most gay men have had similar feelings at some point early in their lives. It would be better not to be alive than to be gay. Of course, most of us didn't act on that feeling, but nonetheless, we are no stranger to that lonely desperation.

Even though we may not have been suicidal, most—if not all—gay men start at this place of being overwhelmed with the shame of being gay in a world that worships masculine power. This begins the first of three stages in a gay man's life, and it is the stage that is characterized by being
overwhelmed by shame
. This is the start of his journey as a gay man, and it is by far the most difficult and
damaging. He'd do anything not to be gay. He suffers immensely the pain of knowing that he can't change the one thing that makes him so different from other men. He imagines that being gay will ruin his life completely, and
there is nothing he can do to change it
.

During stage one, the shame over being gay reaches a loud crescendo. He knows there is something horribly wrong with himself and is helpless to change it. No amount of dating girls, playing straight, or even wishing changes it. Like Mitch, he is faced with the undeniable reality that he is irreversibly gay.

Coping in stage one means finding a way—
any way
—to lessen the feeling of shame. Very soon he discovers that shame is manageable if he learns to avoid the cues in his world that trigger the intolerable feeling. In no time, he is about the business of avoiding all manner of situations, people, and feelings that trigger his sense of shame.

In stage one, there are many ways to avoid experiencing the toxic shame of being gay. One of the more drastic methods of avoidance, as Mitch chose, is suicide. Suicide among gay men in stage one is shockingly common. One study found that homosexual (whether out or not) males account for more than half of male youth suicide attempts. Another study of ninety-five gay and bisexual men between the ages of fifteen and twenty-six found that fifty-four percent of these men had seriously considered suicide compared to only thirteen percent of men in the general population.

These and many other research statistics bear out a similar story—young gay men struggle desperately with their sexuality
during the early years of their adult lives. These are the years when stage one is most acute, and we haven't yet learned more functional ways to avoid the devastating aspects of shame. We are slammed head-on with shame, and it feels overwhelming, and to many, mortally unbearable.

Most of us, however, found a less drastic way than suicide to avoid shame. The first, and undoubtedly the most common way we avoided shame, was to deny our sexuality. We simply acted as if we weren't gay. After all, our logic went, if we didn't act gay, maybe we weren't.

While denying our sexuality, we may have become hypersexual with women, needing to always have the most beautiful, sexy woman we could find on our arm. We denied our attraction to men and attempted to convince ourselves and everyone else that we were really straight—or at a minimum bisexual.

Gay men who actively deny their sexuality, even for a brief period of time, also usually distance themselves from anything that appeared remotely gay. During my own stage one, I got married to a woman in what I can now see was a desperate effort to deny my true sexuality. During that time in my life, I avoided my wife's brother, who was quite obviously gay. It seemed to me at the time that if I hung around my wife's brother, others would see the similarities between us and discover my secret.

Many gay men who are in denial of their sexuality gravitate to strong, anti-gay activities and organizations. Venture into any church that preaches a strong anti-gay message, and you're guaranteed to find more than a small sample of gay men who are
actively in denial of their sexuality. Or visit just about any firehouse where the firemen are regularly throwing around words like “faggot” and “homo” to insult their buddies, and you might well find a gay fireman who is desperately struggling to deny his homoerotic feelings.

When a gay man is in denial of his sexuality, it is often very perplexing to those around him. Whether or not his family and friends have figured out that he is gay, they are confused, even dumbfounded, by the odd inconsistencies in his behavior. He may become suddenly depressed and sullen, and speak momentarily of “dark secrets” that haunt him, without revealing the content of those secrets. He may become explosively angry at the least provocation. Should anyone come close to suggesting he is gay, he is likely to become enraged and strike out at the person who had the misfortune of uncovering his sexual feelings.