National Coming Out Day 2011

“...I’m coming out. I want the world to know, got to let it show...”

"I'm Comin' Out" video:

I don’t mean to steal anybody’s thunder...or to diminish the social pressures facing gay, bi-sexual & transgendered people. However, it’s generally considered unacceptable to be naked most places, and often illegal. And when you appear naked, other people there—even casual passersby— know right away.

I know some may argue about people “becoming” gay, when that happens, etc. But, I can confidently proclaim that I was born this way. And I challenge anyone to say I wasn’t.

"Born This Way' video

So, I hope I’m not stepping on anybody’s toes here, but I’m going to embrace National Coming Out day on a more personal level than usual and post this blog a little wider today on the facebook. Don’t worry: I’m still not gonna post to minors and a few other folks.

Anyway...

I’m straight.

I’m naked.

Whoo-hoo!

Sadly, it’s damp & cool today, or I might be sitting outside typing this.

Anyway, I’m just gonna copy (& edit) & paste a couple of things I wrote last year on National Coming Out Day. It may be a little long. 

A couple of years ago I worked for one semester at a private Baptist University, where the head of my department asked me to not tell the students that I was not a Christian.

... As the semester dragged on, I found it harder and harder to not talk about my lack of faith. Only one person, other than the head of the department, ever asked me directly about what I believed. I told her the truth. I’m agnostic. But there were so many other times when I could tell that people were assuming that I was like them, that I shared their faith... I was in the faith “closet”. There was something about me that was rather significant, and I knew that most everyone else around me was not “that way”, and they assumed that I was just like them and not “that way” either.

... My being asked to not reveal that I wasn’t a Christian was a symptom of the larger problem of a focus on the appearance of things at the expense of the substance... That attitude is in direct opposition to my feeling about life, how people should communicate with each other, and... teachers and schools ought to be encouraging students to examine things and explore the truth, even when it’s uncomfortable. I think this is a general problem in “the church” and the reason behind so many church/minister scandals. They’re busy working on the appearance of right-ness or righteousness and not dealing with the substance or truth of things.

... Before that experience, I knew that I considered it important to tell the truth. It’s something that I value. But I now know that it’s also very important for me to not not tell the truth. Not telling the truth about something feels just like lying, which I hate.

... The whole experience of feeling “closeted” in that way was just dreadful. And I didn’t even feel any shame about being agnostic. How horrible would it have been if I thought it was bad or evil or sinful or unnatural or just plain wrong to be the way I was.

It’s not wrong or evil to be agnostic. Sometimes it can be difficult. But there are people out there who are like you and others who aren’t but will support you and love you and not think that you’re bad because of it.

And it’s not wrong or evil to be gay. Sometimes it can be difficult. But there are people out there who are like you and others who aren’t but will support you and love you and not think that you’re bad because of it.

In college, after a friend of mine came out, I decided to do an “experiment”.

I went around to lots of people I knew and did the whole spiel: “There’s something I want to tell you; my family and some friends already know, but I feel I’m ready to let everybody know; it’s not anything that has to change our relationship, I’m still the same person, but I just wanted you to know that I am a heterosexual.”... With most people there was a moment mid-spiel when they realized what (they thought) I was going to say.

... I remember one guy—and he was the type you might expect to come out one day (I once described that type as the north-Alabama youth pastor type: a bit flamboyant with no overt sexual interests and very much in love with God/Jesus and his mamma)—who just seemed to be listening, not reacting, until I got to the end, “heterosexual”, and he exclaimed “Chris, no!” Like many people, he picked up on the context clues and his brain heard me say “homosexual”. I just remember his reaction in particular, because his voice got high-pitched ... and he seems so upset that I could be gay. It went against his Southern, religious upbringing.

... I would like the moral of this story to be something else, something like “support your friends and loved ones and strangers who come out because we’re all just people who need love”. But I realize the story doesn’t really support that. I guess the actual moral is that “most if not all of us make assumptions and judgments that may not be true”.

It’s National Coming Out Day, and that’s my coming out story. I know the day isn’t about doing informal social experiments on your friends. So let me say this: stop the hate; stop the condemnation. Those attitudes are based in fear. But you don’t need to be afraid of homosexual people. The “gays” are not out to get us “straights”. Sure there may be the occasional individual who threatens you somehow and happens to be gay, but there are scary straight individuals too. Straight guys out there, if some gay man really wants to have sex with you, then you should feel flattered that someone finds you attractive even if you don’t reciprocate. Or, if he’s really making unwanted, inappropriate advances, now you have some idea of (the beginning of) what a woman might feel when men make those advances toward her. You can feel better about yourself, &/or learn something. Isn’t that a win-win? Well, maybe not.

Anyway... If you have a religious objection to homosexuality, here’s something for Christians: stop focusing so much on a few passages in the Old Testament and the letters of Paul, etc; look instead at what Jesus supposedly said, you know, the “red-letter” words in some of those Bibles. He was not all about hate, and hell-fire and damnation. He was not all about “don’t”. he was really quite radically about “do” love people and “do” help people and “do” forgive people...even the ones you don’t like or maybe who you don’t think deserve it. Now, if you’re Muslim or Hindu or something, I can’t help much. I just don’t have much background there. Sorry.

In conclusion...love and support your people, no matter their gender preference/identity. 

Yeah, that's still the conclusion. 

Also, your naked friends need love and support too, not fear and avoidance.

The Neighbor's Friend

This was yesterday:

posted on the facebook at 2:19pm

Dear neighbor and neighbor's friend with the distinctive & annoying voice:
If you're consenting adults, capable of making responsible adult decisions, then I don't really care what you do, as long as no one is getting hurt.
But(!) whatever is going on that elicits the loud "Oooowwww" response that I keep hearing while I'm in the adjoining kitchen, or even further away in my living room...does it really need to be happening? It's not a cute, sexy "ow...stop (giggle)". It's a loud painful "Ow" that happens frequently. Also, there's the "I know you can hear me" refrain from outside that oft accompanies ongoing knocking and assorted child-like whining.
Stop it.

2:22pm

On the plus side, it has been a little while since the last time I heard all this. I guess those flowers that the annoying-voiced friend left outside the door must've worked...for now.

5:28pm

Ug...the whining again... The neighbor's friend sounds like a child. It's so annoying.

This is today:

Dear Neighbor's Friend (same neighbor, same friend):

Why do you have to yell? Why did you have to yell at 8am? Some people (i.e., me) we not up yet. I was in my bed, which is in the furthest corner away from wherever you were inside or more likely outside at the door to my neighbor's apartment.

And, being basically deaf in one ear, I was sleeping on my good ear. Still I heard your chainsaw voice cutting through the walls, yelling. I don't always understand the words, but the tone & the cadence are unmistakably you wanting something and being denied and yelling to get it.

And just at the moment when I couldn't take it anymore, and had actually gotten out of bed to go say something, you stopped. My guess is that the neighbor couldn't take it anymore either, and she said something to you. So I got back in bed and stewed a minute before I started to relax.

And then came the whining. The childlike whining. Followed by crying. There usually isn’t crying, not that I hear. Maybe there’s usually whimpering or sniffling or something that’s too soft to carry through the walls. But this was not soft. This was “Whäääääää-häää-häääää-hääää!”

Yeah, those were umlauts. I wasn’t sure how to spell the sound she was making with normal English vowels. Just imagine a child crying in a way to be sure he or she knows you can hear it...crying for you to hear it and do something about it. I’m convinced that’s what this sound was.

Must this continue? Please say it mustn't.

So, I’m not exactly sure what the deal is with my neighbor. She’s odd. She’s not retarded. But—and this was never a real area of interest for me when I studied psychology in college—I would guess that she’s on the low end of normal intelligence. She lives by herself; she can feed & clothe herself, and interact with people with no problem. She doesn’t drive, but she’s got people who will drive her places when she needs it. I’ve never had a lengthy conversation with her, but I’ve hear parts of conversations she’s had with people on a (rather loud) speaker phone (so I know she wasn’t talking to herself).

But she has referred to going to “group”. I can only assume that’s group therapy, as it came in the same chat as her mentioning she has borderline personality disorder and “they” think maybe some other issues. I would assume that she’s not only in group, but also individual therapy. Again, this wasn’t a big interest for me, but the only thing I really remember from college about borderline personality disorder is that there wasn’t a single distinctive trait that I could latch onto as the major characteristic, the way you can with bipolar or obsessive-compulsive or paranoid disorders, etc. If anybody reading this knows more about it, feel free to chime in.

Anyway, I think the neighbor’s friend may also be in “group” with her. She said something once about going to the funeral of the mother of her friend from group. And I thought she meant this annoying –voiced friend. This friend is rather short and round, and has a slightly “mongoloid” appearance like someone with down syndrome. But whatever her situation is, she seems highly functional. Well, except for the child-like behavior: the yelling and banging on the door and whining and crying. I’m sure there are “normal” adults who do some or all of those things at times, but this woman truly sounds like a child when she does it. I’ve seen her. She’s not a child. I’m not so great with guessing people’s ages, but I would say she’s 50 or older...or perhaps a very rough 40.

As annoyed as I get, I don’t want to just open the door and tell her to shut the fuck up and act like a grown-up. Because she may not be capable of acting like a grown-up. This is the same “friend” of my neighbor who, this past summer, had an ambulance come for her, and then the police were called to take her away a few days later. I’m not even really friends with the neighbor. So, I don’t want to get involved with whatever their relationship is. Yes, my life is boring, but I don’t think that’s the sort of excitement I need.

Nude-face

I kind like nude-faced women.

(face made of nudes)

http://rwsphoto.blogspot.com/2008/07/photo-illustration-nude-face-of-cathy.html

No, that's pretty awesome. But I mean this:

(yeah, yeah, they’re models, but...)

http://www.kissandmakeup.tv/2007/11/nars_makeup_you.html

I understand what makeup does—evens out skin tone, hides reduces the appearance of blemishes, it emphasizes the redness of lips & cheeks and makes eyes look stand out—things that are signs of youth & health and qualities which are considered sexually attractive.

But I have to ask (because it’s the way my brain works) what is the price?

When I was a freshman in college I wrote a paper about make-up for my English class. The assignment was something that included statistics. So I looked it all up. I don’t have that paper available to me at the moment, and I’m sure the numbers have changed.

So I haven’t done any hard research lately, but a couple of references I’ve found online...

this one . . . and that one

...say 7 or 8 billion dollars spent in the US annually. That just seems like a crazy amount to me. Couldn’t some of that money go to something more productive...basic health care or clean water...I don’t know, whatever...OH! I know! Supporting the arts.

But there’s another price. Self-esteem. I simply cannot imagine how it would feel if I thought I needed to “put my face on” daily before leaving the house. The idea that no one is supposed to see me without this veneer of paints and tints. That I’m not attractive enough as is for everyday normal contact with everyday normal people. That just can’t be good for the psyche.

I’m not saying that women should never wear makeup. It probably wouldn’t bother me all that much if they didn’t. But I am asking is it really necessary to wear makeup daily? If you always or usually wear makeup then, sure, with no makeup you’ll look washed out. But most men go about their daily routine with no make at all, and their skin looks okay.

(look...am I not be-yoo-ti-ful?)

Sure there are arguments that beauty & appearance are more important to a woman’s success (& how she is viewed by men) than they are to men’s success. Maybe that’s true, but if so, I think that’s unfortunate.

(Yeah, yeah, no penis in this “a penis a day...” entry. If that’s all you’re here for, feel free to browse other entries.)

Hi, Mom

I’ve been “sharing” these blog posts on the facebook with most of my friends. But I’ve been not sharing with a fair number of people...including my relatives, most anyone who knows them, anyone that’s a minor, and anyone I’m currently working with. Mostly that last group is to avoid awkwardness.

A few people have posted comments pertaining to this blog on my facebook page. When they do, one of my first thoughts has been “Who can see this?” I think the answer is “friends and friends of friends”...which includes all those people I’m not sharing. The thing is, I wouldn’t care if they saw this blog, but they would care.

Minors... I don’t really need to explain that, right?

People I work with.... Well, I work in a generally liberal environment, but there are some who aren’t so free-minded.

Relatives... I don’t think my siblings and other relatives would care all that much, but you never know. They might think it fun to tell my parents.

My mom would use that same tone of voice she has when we talk about religion. That tone that’s full of disappointment and tinged with shock. My dad’s generally quiet, but he’d probably be on the same page as mom. I used to think that she was in charge and he didn’t make a lot of decisions or care much...until he surprised me a few times by actually saying what he thought.

It’s not as if this blog is hidden. It’s pretty easy to access. If there were somebody trying to find info on me, I suppose they could find this blog easily enough. So, while this blog has been a sort of “coming out”, it’s been only mostly public. And I suppose I may have to “come out” some time to my family about being naked.

A few years back, I asked my mom what her reaction would be if one of her kids were gay. My parents have dealt with various issues with us kids, but that’s not one of them. She surprised me a little. I’m not sure exactly what I expected, but what she said was that of course she would love them, although she wouldn’t wish that life on anyone, as it’s full of difficulty. It’s very much like her attitude about mixed race relationships...her main concern is that the children would have difficulty.

Of course, the main difficulties come from other people, society’s disapproval, etc.

Anyway, I imagine mom’s reaction in this case—my being naked and being naked online— would be more like her attitude toward my lack of faith: don’t I want to do the right thing? (She would put it that way.) & wouldn’t I be happier if I just played along with everyone else? (She wouldn’t put it that way.)

Maybe I’m wrong, and maybe I’ll find out sooner or later. Mostly it’s just another issue in my general difference with my family.

Towel, please

There’s a pending ordinance in San Francisco about public nudity. It’s okay to be nude in public there. Lewd conduct (clothed or not) is not okay, but just not having clothes on is fine. (No pants-less erections allowed.)

The ordinance calls for people to place a towel or something between their bottoms and public seating. It also bans nudity in restaurants.

Here’s an article about it:

LA Times article

I’m not so sure about the restaurant issue. My first thought is, sure let the naked people in. But... if you're out at a decent restaurant (all carefully clothed) and some naked folk come in and sit near you, you can't simply leave (without paying the bill) or get up and move. 

So I guess it should be left to individual restaurant owners to decide if they want naked people. I guess they could put up a sign. Of course that would probably lead to a whole civil rights kinda of thing. And I don't think nudity really hurts anyone. In fact, it's probably healthy.

But the towel thing...yeah, that’s just completely reasonable. And if it’s seen as an issue, then sure, pass that law.

I’ve never been to a nudist resort or retreat or whatever they call it, but I’ve read a little about it. And it seems that carrying a towel to sit on is not just common practice, it’s one of the rules.

I’ve probably mentioned that before—that I’ve not been— but I’d be up for it.

(Not up... You know what I mean).

Yom Kippur

So, I missed Yom Kippur.

It was yesterday. I’m not Jewish. I’m not a believer in much of anything religious. I’m sort of a Cynic.

And I’m certainly a Skeptic.

But, I was thinking about forgiveness this morning. Maybe I’m not thinking hard enough here, but I’m not sure whose forgiveness I would ask, if I felt obliged. Who have I offended in the past year? There’s one person who comes to mind, but I’m pretty-sure I apologized for that, right away. Well, the next day or so.

There’s a girl who I needed to apologize to for something from the previous year, but I did that this year.

What are you supposed to do when you feel a certain righteous indignation? Are you supposed to apologize for being angry at someone else’s wrong-doing? I definitely have one of those this year. And a couple from the previous year.

And then I have a friend with whom things have just been weird. I’m not sure I need to apologize. Maybe we just need to talk.

. . .

You can’t really tell, but I took a few minutes there. I just thought of someone I should apologize to. I made a snarky comment on a facebook post of hers, and she wrote me that it hurt her feelings. I did respond, but I didn’t actually apologize. So, I just did that real quick-like.
In doing so I wrote:

“I suppose I don't realize how often my bitter humor hurts people. I suppose I expect people to expect such comments from me.”

So, if there are other recipients of my snarkiness out there who feel hurt, please get in touch and say so. Sometimes I just say what I say, and then, to me, it’s gone. And maybe you’ve held on to it.

There was a girl who was dating a roommate of mine 10 or 12 years ago. One night I came home and they were watching some video I think. Apparently I made some comment toward her that hurt her feelings. I’ve no idea what the comment was, but I remember because the next morning the roommate talked to me about it. He said that most people will see or hear something that leads them to some understanding, then another thing leads them a step further, then another and another and another which eventually leads to some major core issue. (He called that leap-frogging.) I, however, he suggested, seemed able to fly right to the heart of the matter right away.

People aren’t generally prepared for that, so it’s surprising or, when combined with my snarkiness, hurtful. He also suggested that I should use my power for good instead of evil.

Anyway, that girl (now woman...when does that happen exactly? hmm...that’s a different blog) may very well read this, as she & I are still friends, and I’ve not communicated with the former-roommate since probably just after I moved out. Hey “that girl (now woman)” –if you know I’m talking about you, and if you remember that night, and if I never said it before, sorry.

Here I am apologizing for shit I don’t even quite recall from 10 years ago.

Anyway, now I feel this needs a conclusion. So...what have we learned from this blog?
Chris hasn’t changed much in 10 or 12 years, and he doesn’t recall half of how he may’ve offended people.

Chris kinda sucks. No wonder people don’t make much effort to spend time with him.

Wow, that just turned into a pathetic little “poor Chris, pay attention to him” thing. Fuck, I’ve gotta fix myself.

Nude vs. Naked

Words, words, words.

For most of this blog I’ve used the word “naked”. I have written about “nudity”, but I don’t think I’ve written about being “nude”, always “naked”. That hasn’t been the case.

In the past I’ve certainly talked or written about being “nude”.  

But what’s the difference?

I’ve heard people—the common folk— who, trying to be funny or cute or whatever, describe the difference between nude & naked as: nude means you’re not wearing clothes; naked (or “nekkid”) means you’re not wearing any clothes AND you’re up to no good.

There’s a more “art school” type difference. Someone is naked if they know they are being watched, and they’re nude if they don’t. John Berger in Ways of Seeing puts it this way: “To be naked is to be oneself. To be nude is to be seen naked by others and yet not recognized for oneself. A naked body has to be seen as an object in order to become a nude.” He also says that nudity is a form of dress, a type of display.

That sort of feels like the opposite of the common folk definition.

I think often people in defending their lack of clothing embrace the words “nude” &”nudity” as a way of saying it’s not a sexual thing. It’s a similar distinction as using “sensual” instead of “sexual”. I’ve certainly made that distinction in the past. But the more I think on it, the more it feels like pretension.

To say “sensual” as a way to say “it’s not sexual” suggests that sex is one thing and it’s not good, or at least not something that should be a part of most interactions.

The trouble is, sex is a part of many interactions. If you get a massage and say “it was sensual, but not sexual” I feel like that’s just sort of bullshit. I would say, rather, that of course it’s “sensual” in that the senses and sensations are involved, but there is also a sexual aspect to it. If you look up the definition of the word “sensual” somewhere in there you’ll probably find relating to or suggesting sexuality.

In the same way, I think to use “nude” as a way of saying there’s no sex involved is probably bullshit as well. Sex is part of it, but sex is part of everything. As my friend Bob commented, “Sometimes a person’s genitalia is referred to as his or her ‘sex’.” So why not just admit that and deal with it? And deal with the idea that sex isn’t always SEX!!!!

So...my naked nude-ness here on this blog... Yes, it is me being without clothing. And yes, it’s a sort of display. (Duh, I’m taking pictures and posting them online.)

I suppose my “nudity” is an attempt to represent my “nakedness”. That’s using the art-definition.

But since most folks aren’t art-students...vice versa.