“If you hate a person, you hate something in him that is part of yourself. What isn’t part of ourselves doesn’t disturb us.”

---Herman Hesse

“Ah, I'd love to wear a rainbow every day,
And tell the world that everything's OK,
But I'll try to carry off a little darkness on my back,
'Till things are brighter, I'm the Man In Black,”

---Johnny Cash, “Man In Black”

A Personal Explanation for “More Cock, Please”

I first saw “The Boys in the Band” around the time I was coming out of the closet. The film’s head-on examination of the self-loathing that percolates in a group of seemingly happy gay men quite frankly bowled me over, and articulated a feeling inside of me that I barely knew existed.

Doing some research on the internet the next day, I was surprised to learn that it was considered, at least by some critics, to be an outmoded picture of gay life. In these more enlightened times, when homosexuals are more visible and accepted than ever, gay men are supposed to be out and unequivocally proud, without any feelings of shame about their sexuality. But if this was the case, why did the movie hit me like a punch to the gut?

Fast-forward about seven years. I’m in a mental state where I’m incredibly self-destructive and alone (and shunning any attempts that people make to get close to me). I’m having somewhat dangerous, mostly anonymous sexual encounters in bathrooms and parks. I’m smoking weed on a daily basis to get myself by.

A series of events conspire to make me realize just how deeply depressed I am, and I decide to seek the help of a therapist. Her name is Shari, and she has a mission. She wants me to acknowledge the self-hatred that she sees in me, to expose it for the self-defeating monster that it is and learn to love myself unconditionally, on a moment-to-moment basis. I take this information in slowly, making small changes in my lifestyle and mindset that eventually add up to something like a revelation. I bawl like a baby in front of her, fully aware of the cliché and not giving two shits.

Then, one night, I’m lying in my bed mulling over an assignment I want to take on for a local magazine. The theme of the issue is “greed,” and for some reason the phrase “more cock, please” springs to mind, quickly followed by the first sentence: “It’s important that you help me maintain the stereotype of the sexually-obsessed gay man who is unable to love…”

Why is it important? I’m not sure but I start to write. A quarter of the way into it, I’m literally shaking.

“More Cock, Please” is about giving a voice to the shame and self-hatred I had carried around like dead weight for the majority of my life, a shame that affected everything around me—my relationships, my writing, my jobs, and my drug use. It was also about taking back all of the negative messages I had assimilated from my culture from when I was very young, and shoving them back in to its face. Once I saw all of these ideas for the bunk that they were, I could shed them like so much dead skin.

Fast-forward again to today: I’m in a long-term relationship with a guy who I love, my writing has never been better, I have a full-time job (with benefits, thanks), and I haven’t smoked weed in almost two years.

I still struggle with my self-hatred on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Sometimes I question “More Cock, Please,” and I wonder if I presented its message in the best way I could have. But there is nothing I can change. It is what it is.

It is also the best thing I’ve ever written. I felt those words in my bones.

I am, however, writing this on the occasion of receiving my first hate mail in response to the piece. I have to admit it is kind of exciting to elicit that sort of reaction. But in addition to this, the story was recently rejected by an editor who said, in the nicest way possible, that he found it “homophobic.” (This from a web zine that bills itself as ‘dangerous queer fiction’). It bums me out to think that my story could be so categorically misunderstood.

So for the simple folk out there who have difficulty wrapping their craws around an idea if it isn’t presented to them on a silver fucking platter with a pat of butter on top:

If you truly believe I meant the ideas I put forth in that essay, you’re crazy. And may God bless you and keep you if, in some dark corner of your brain, you believe them yourself.

Na tty So l tes z, October 2005