Oh you're not homophobic huh?

You know what is totally infuriating about people who consistently claim they are not homophobic?  How utterly homophobic that makes them!

I mean, on some surface level I understand.  You rationalize, confuse, inundate a person with the truckload of bullshit you've told yourself about it so long you now believe.  But since oppression is a kind of continuum, I kind of look at it like this:

They say they're not homophobic to me.  But we live amidst a blatantly heterosexist society.  We don't even just live in it; we were born into it.  I had a hard time coming out in large part due to my own internalized homophobia, and that is despite being totally confounded over the expectation that some guy would ever honestly make me weak in the knees.

So I try to empathize.  I think of racism.  I am a college-educated urban liberal raised by other college-educated urban liberals.  I was never taught to in any way regard any other skin color as inherently better or worse than me.  And I can never imagine the occasion where I'd feel it necessary to announce that wasn't racist.  Just the other day, I'm driving up my own block and I realized I'd just done a double take at a dark skinned teenager walking by.  There is no defending that move.  It wasn't conscious but I recognized in seconds that it was tremendously problematic.  I didn't offer up excuses to myself and I won't pretend them here.  To be perfectly honest, it's only now dawned on me to really feel bad for the kid on the off chance that he saw and recognized me make that move in my car.

Why then - how then am I to accept this shallow apology from an insult bandaged with a "this is not homophobic" title?  How do you know it's not?  Why would you care?  How little must you think of my social location and what I've been through to muddle through it's complexities, that you feel comfortable in the amount of time and energy you've devoted to this analysis?  How can you possibly separate your experience from the thousands of years of oppression that paved the way for our current locality?  Why do you care what I think of it anyway?  

Could it be that in some way you know it is?  It's the most homophobic people that turn out to be gay you know.  Yet the more you tell me you don't care?  The more I know you do.  Perhaps you really can't see it.  And believe it or not, I forgive you. The unique perspective - that internal understanding is the reason why I know God made me gay.  It was so that I could truly know His message.  - Not that "He" was the only way, or that "God" is this or that, but love.  I know love.  I see it.  I feel it.  I'm in it.  I know it and I follow it.  And as much as I know and love you?  I know your announcement doesn't come from it.  Niether does this: Shut the fuck up.

But it's okay.  You'll learn.  We both will.

Is 40 a new adolescence?

I hated being a teenager.  I pretty much hated everything passed the ripe-old thinking/reasoned 7.  I just hated to watch as life chipped away at the illusion of invincibility all around me.  People died.  I realized I was going to die.  I watched others disintegrate in the wakes, and still others day in and day out trudged their way off to jobs I couldn't imagine any of them wanting when they were children.

   I mean on one hand, being a teenager was great in that it has a certain euphoria.  First love, first kiss, coming out, first time away in your own - all very potent, horrifying but intense feelings!  Life somehow becomes worth living when you add a little dash of high drama.

   Things changed pretty drastically from 19 to 20.  Maybe it's the embrace of a new decade in life but I remember marveling in the almost overnight perspective shift.  I stopped doing things other people's way and while I don't currently subscribe to every philosophy I embraced then, just the declaration of independence was enough.  

   Maybe that same shift will occur at 50?  I imagine I'll be looking ahead to retirement by then.  The true duration of a decade will be apparent and it would be nice to be done with the banal.  If I make it that is.

   But 40 is an age where I hear about people dying a bit more often ...and with a little less hoopla about it.  I don't think even 50 is so common as at 40 the complications seem more severe.  By the time you've made it to 50, I think your constitution has been adequately tested.  Even a heart attack is less likely to be fatal.  It's just hard that once I sort of came to terms with the reality that I've lived this long, I have to face that statistically dwindling positivity.

   So there it is.  Feels like 40 is a new adolescence.  I'm scared and emotional again, more appreciative than I ever have been in my life as well as more in control (or just more aware of what isn't in my control).  Looks to me like another 10 years of high drama are in store.  Hopefully, there will be more high than low (but not that kind because who needs the headaches!)  I do have little bit more faith and wisdom now than I did before embarking on my teen years.  Well, a very little bit.