INTRODUCTION
The experience of being a gay man in the twenty-first century is different from that of any other minority, sexual orientation, gender, or culture grouping. We are different from, on the one hand, women, and on the other hand, straight men. Our lives are a unique blending of testosterone and gentleness, hypersexuality and delicate sensuality, rugged masculinity and refined gentility. There is no other group quite like that of gay men. We are a culture of our own.
It is upon this important and undeniable cornerstone that this book was written. Understanding our differences, loving ourselves without judgment, and at the same time noticing what makes us fulfilled, empowered, and loving men are the forces that converged in the conceiving, planning, writing, and publishing of this book.
While we are different, we are at the same time very similar to all others. We want to be loved and to love. We want to find some joy in life. We hope to fall asleep at night fulfilled from our day’s endeavors. In these aspirations and appetites we are like all men and women. The problem is, our path to fulfilling these basic human needs has proven to be fundamentally different from the well-worn paths of straight humanity.
Some have said that we must blaze our own trail and not be lured into the ways of the straight man. We must be brave enough to honor rather than hide our differences. We must stand up and fight for the right to be gay and all that it means.
In this book, you will find an honest and more complete picture of what it is to be a gay man in today’s world. Yes, we have more sexual partners in a lifetime than any other grouping of people. And at the same time, we also have among the highest rates of depression and suicide, not to mention sexually transmitted diseases. As a group we tend to be more emotionally expressive than other men, and yet our relationships are far shorter on average than those of straight men. We have more expendable income, more expensive houses, and more fashionable cars, clothes, and furniture than just about any other cultural group. But are we truly happier?
The disturbing truth is that we aren’t any happier, by virtually any index measured today. Much the opposite is true. Psychotherapy offices the world over are frequented by gay men struggling to find some joy and fulfillment in life. Substance abuse clinics across the country—from The Betty Ford Center in California to The Menninger Clinic in Texas to Beth Israel Medical Center in New York City—are filled with far more gay men than would be indicated by our proportions in the general population. It’s safe to estimate that virtually every gay man has wondered on more than a few occasions if it is truly possible to be consistently happy and a gay man.
When you look around it becomes somewhat undeniable that we are a wounded lot. Somehow, the life we are living isn’t leading us to a better, more fulfilled psychological and emotional place. Instead, we seem to struggle more, suffer more, and want more. The gay life isn’t cutting it for most of us.
Some ill-informed, closed-minded people would say that it is our sexual appetite for man-on-man sex that has made lasting happiness illusive. If we would just be “normal,” find a good woman and settle down, then we’d discover what life is all about.
That’s just crazy. Our struggles have nothing to do with loving men per se. Substance abuse, hypersexuality, short-lived relationships, depression, sexually transmitted diseases, the insatiable hunger for more and better, and the need to decorate our worlds to cover up seamy truths—these are our torments. Becoming a fulfilled gay man is not about trying to become “not gay,” but has everything to do with finding a way through this world that affords us our share of joy, happiness, fulfillment, and love.
In my practice as a psychologist, this is my goal: to help gay men be gay and fulfilled. The lessons I’ve learned from the profound teachers in my life—my gay male patients—are collected in this book. Their struggles, disappointments, and ultimate achievements are chronicled here. While names, identities, and geographic locations have all been changed to protect their rightful anonymity, I have made every possible attempt to be faithful to the relevant facts.
The book is arranged into a simple three-stage model that describes the journey of virtually all gay men with whom I have worked. I suspect that this model, or some modified version of it, is likely to be universal to all gay men in the western world and perhaps across the globe.
The stages are arranged by the primary manner in which the gay man handles shame. The first stage is “Overwhelmed by Shame” and includes that period of time when he remained “in the closet” and fearful of his own sexuality. The second stage is “Compensating for Shame” and describes the gay man’s attempt to neutralize his shame by being more successful, outrageous, fabulous, beautiful, or masculine. During this stage he may take on many sexual partners in his attempt to make himself feel attractive, sexy, and loved—in short, less shameful.
The final stage is “Cultivating Authenticity.” Not all gay men progress out of the previous two stages, but those who do begin to build a life that is based upon their own passions and values rather than proving to themselves that they are desirable and lovable.
The goal of this book is to help gay men achieve this third stage of authenticity. It is my experience that gay men who are not ready or willing to work toward this goal have a difficult time acknowledging their shame and the radical effects of it on their lives. Until a gay man is ready to reexamine his life, he may not be able to realize the undercurrent of shame that has carried him into a life that often isn’t very fulfilling.
My own trek from shame to authenticity as a gay man has mirrored that of many of my clients’ stories that I share with you throughout the book. Having grown up in a Christian fundamentalist home in Louisiana, I entered my adult years struggling with my own sexuality. After being married for several years and spending even more years in therapy, I began to accept myself for the man that I am, not the one that I or my family had wished for.
When I came out of the closet, I stepped right into the middle of the gay explosion in San Francisco during the 1980s. It was an exciting and horrible time—there were more men than I’d ever seen before and so many of them were dying from AIDS. Since then, I’ve lived in some of the gayest cities in the country: New York City, New Orleans, Key West, and Fort Lauderdale. There’s not much that I haven’t seen and tried.
Early in my career, I abandoned clinical psychology to become an executive at Hewlett Packard. It was the go-go ’80s, and everyone, including me, was hoping to strike it rich in Silicone Valley. Part of my own journey toward authenticity forced me to confront my career choices and return to my real passion: clinical psychology. So I did, and it turned out to be one of the best decisions of my life. My life and my work have taken on a depth of meaning and fulfillment that I would have never known otherwise. I spend my days, among other things, helping gay men to heal the wounds of being gay in a straight world, and in so doing, realize their own authenticity and fulfillment. They have been my teachers and mentors, reminding me daily of the importance of staying true to myself regardless of how others may view me. It is their stories, not mine, that fill these pages. What wisdom is contained between these covers is theirs, and anything less is more than likely my doing.
It must be noted that what is written here is in many ways applicable to lesbian women, too. While I do work with many lesbian women and find their journey to be similar, the ways in which it is explored are often very different. For example, lesbian women aren’t known to frequent bathhouses, sex clubs, or driven to decorate their lives like gay men. They express their struggle with shame differently and in a uniquely female way. So it is out of respect for lesbian women that this book is written about gay men only. To be more inclusive of the lesbian experience would undoubtedly result in a book that does the lesbian experience an injustice. The stages of their lives are the same; however, the way in which they unfold is often very different.
Finally, a word about the differences between straight and gay men should be included. Often people will ask me, “Isn’t the struggle with shame similar for straight men?” To this, I would also answer yes, but not in the same way. Straight men struggle with their own authenticity and intimate relationships. And yes, they do struggle with shame that is created by a culture that has taught them to hold a masculine ideal that is unachievable, if not downright cruel. But as with lesbian women—and to a far greater degree—their struggles look very different. For example, straight men may fight shame by always having a cute, young, blonde bombshell of a woman on their arm (as some gay men do with a cute, young, blond bombshell of a man), but the constraints of living in a straight culture and mores cause their experience to be quite different than that of gay men. One should not conclude from these pages that straight men are even one fraction healthier than gay men. What is being said is that the trauma of growing up gay in a world that is run primarily by straight men is deeply wounding in a unique and profound way. Straight men have other issues and struggles that are no less wounding but are quite different from those of gay men.
I have written this book as a heart-to-heart talk with gay men that I invite you, the straight reader, to participate in. It seemed the most compassionate and useful voice given the difficulty of the material I present. After all, much of what I write about is the darker, more unseemly side of gay life to which our straight friends and family are not often exposed and, truth be told, which we’d rather that they didn’t know about. So I have written it as a gay man who has experienced all of this and more, writing to an audience of gay men who know of what I speak. To adopt a more clinical, third person voice would, in many ways, bring an unnecessary coldness to an otherwise close and intimate exploration of our lives.