I am Not Like You Even If I am Like You

[dalumat]

A chunk of their young lives, their nights, was spent in gay chatrooms looking for the next big hook-up. To me, it seems like a way of growing up. They addressed, managed, satisfied their sexuality by joining a community, night after night, meeting people, making friends, finding sex. They got themselves out there. Maybe if they did it at 35, I'd

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[7dragon_zodiac]

Back in high school, I had my own gay barkada, and we were the loud type, parading our homosexuality through and through. The straight people around us joked about it, but it was okay with us because it's really who we are and we know that that's the way they accept us. We were the machismis kind, always talking, always sharing information, always on the top of who's who stories.

Now, however, I left the group and I've never wanted to go back. Not that I'm parading my being a loner, but because I believe that my being gay is not the center of my life, and I don't seem to grow as a person around the gay group. Nowadays, it does feel lonely at times to have no other gay people to platonically share your homosexuality with, no one else who understands what it's like to be gay. The straight people around me are very welcoming, but they don't understand my psyche as much as I don't understand theirs, even the girls. However, it's not a sad thing, but more of lonely, and I believe my being used to this loneliness is the source of my courage to tell my crushes that I like them. Not because they can hurt me, but because they can do me no harm when I tell them. It's a near invincible feeling. But most of them have been very gracious about my openly admiring them, but that's a whole other story.

Haha, ang daldal ko. One time, in the far future, I hope to meet the gay people behind the LJ entries I read just to really know them in person, see who else they are apart from being gay. It's my Christmas wish.

[dalumat]

i guess i'll never know what it feels like to be a loud gay boy parading his sexuality in high school. i envy you in a way.

but i guess you're right. not having peers with whom to check the kind of homosexual i could become perhaps forced me to find myself on my own, to grow up as an individual, if you will, and maybe i'm stronger for it, or not, or just weirder. i became my own kind of gay.

why do you say you didn't grow up as a person with your gay barkada?

[7dragon_zodiac]

Well, it's just my opinion of my experience. Parang all that hanging out with my gay group fostered was the growth toward the gay scene. True, I was learning how to play volleyball, how to immense myself in the arts, how to stay on top of the chismis how to trick straight men into submission, but my other aspects as a person weren't being catered, to the point that developing them were shunned.

Eventually, I decided that I didn't need them. I can still be gay without them, and I can be more of who I am without them. When I left the group, I felt more alive (and ironically more gay) than ever before. So now, when I meet gay groups, I find that I can more easily slip into different gay roles than they do, and I love to believe that I'm in a sense more disciplined, but then again, that could be the hubris talking.

[dalumat]

why oh why did you cross out "how to trick straight men into submission"? that's the best lesson there is! haha.

[lategreat]

true