Top 5 Good List: Number One, My Fashionable Sunday Best...

I think I’ve always had a hard time coping with the fact that LDS women can wear darn near anything to Church so long as it’s in decent shape and is modest. So, as my coping mechanism, I’ve tried my hardest to wear the most dapper outfits that I can possibly put together from my wardrobe. And sometimes, I’m not going to lie, they get a bit… loud. For instance, I have two accent pieces (there’s no pretending to be straight with a vocabulary like that) which I like to wear every now and again. The first is what is commonly referred to as my Mr. Rodgers sweater. Personally, I don’t think it looks like anything that guy would have worn, but I can see the vague parallel. The second accent piece is a pink tie that I wear. And by pink, I mean PINK! I wore it to General Conference once and I was told that my friend, who was sitting up in the balcony, could pick me out of the crowd. And that’s saying something!

But to be fair, when you can only have so many variations of the same outfit, you need to get creative with your get up…

Top 5 Bad List: Number One, Not Fitting In...

It has come to my attention that I seem to not always blend it with the Mormon guys. Whether it’s sports, or in conversation, or even how I talk, I tend to stick out. And it isn’t as though I’m not trying. I’ll go to the occasional sporting event, though with the exception of kick ball, I’ll rarely ever play. I’ll talk about the same things straight guys talk about, and I’ll only add in my real opinion when their’s finally gets too ridiculous to make sense anymore. And despite all my attempts for playing the chameleon, I get the distinct impression that it’s all in vain.

Paranoia? Hardly. It’s more like observation. I feel like the proverbial wolf in sheep’s clothing. You might be out there thinking, “Yeah, but wasn’t the wolf undetected under that wool disguise?”

I guess it’s kind of true. The wolf might look like a sheep, but you can be darn sure it wouldn’t act like one. It can’t! It’s not a sheep! For example, sheep don’t eat other sheep. That, and you’ve got to know that the minute the wolf opens his mouth, all the other sheep are going to know something’s up.

It’s a little frustrating - no. It’s more than a little frustrating to feel like I’m in an episode of Sesame Street. You know the one? “One of these things are not like the other…” Except, I’m that thing that isn’t the same! And as obvious as it was for those six year olds who watched Sesame Street, I’m pretty sure that my slightly more mature peers can see me and think, “Hmm. You know, that boy never goes on dates. He never talks about girls and never hangs out with boys. He doesn’t play sports or even follow them on TV. And whenever the topic of marriage comes up, his lips turn white and he gets all quiet. There is definitely something peculiar about that Michael Liberty fella.” And that's fair. I probably don’t disguise myself nearly as well as I’d like think that I do.

My Top 5 Lists...

Okay, so I was just doodling the other day and I started making this list of the top five reasons why being a gay Mormon just sucks sometimes. And then, just to be fair, I made a list of the top five reasons why being a gay Mormon is pretty rad! (Yes, I said rad.) Just to give you a polite warning, the art work isn't what it normally is. Let's just say that I couldn't find any pictures that 100% described the situation I am trying to convey, and so I decided to draw the pictures myself... on Paint. What I'm trying to say is, I'm no artist. Heh!

So I'll be posting one reason from each top five list, alternating back and forth from the bad list to the good. That way, I'll end on a happy note! Because that's what this blog is all about! Ending on a happy note...

So, let me kindly introduce my avatar. Oh, and if you have trouble identifying which one is me (which I seriously doubt is going to be a problem) my hair color is always the same.

Give Me Liberty!

Prior to baptism, and before I told the missionaries that I was gay, I knew that I was going to have to change my life a lot. “That’s fine,” I told himself. “After I’m baptized, it’ll happen. “I’ll be straight, or at least will be closer to becoming so, and I’ll have it easy.” I was told, after all, that baptism would cleanse me of all my past. So why couldn’t it erase any lingering habits, too? (I’m actually still a little confused about that one…) Needless to say, I was one unhappy camper when I realized this just wasn’t so.

“Okay,” I said, bouncing back. “That’s okay. Maybe when I get the Spirit. Yeah! That’ll do it for sure!” And again, I disappointed.

“No problem,” I told himself, trying to comfort my (at this point) fragile expectations. “When I get the Aaronic Priesthood, for sure I’ll be rid of this struggle.” That time came and went and I still found myself struggling.

“What gives?!” I was a little frustrated at this point. But I knew of something that might help. The Melchizedek Priesthood! “Just one more hurdle and I’ll be there!” This hurdle wasn’t reached until a year after my baptism and even then, I was still attracted to men. “Freak! When will I ever be straight?!” I knew that I could still go through the Temple and receive my endowments, but at this point, I wasn’t sure anything was going to relieve this burden.

I received dozens of priesthood blessings, all on this one topic. I prayed and cried and fasted… And through it all, I never heard anything that led me to believe that my faithfulness would ever lead me to becoming straight. In fact, in my blessing, I was even told that I would struggle with this for the rest of my mortal life. Oh, sure. I could have thought, “Well, at least I won’t have to deal with this in the life after this one.” But no. It was something more like, “Are you kidding me?! How am I supposed to do all the things I’m supposed to AND be gay at the same time?”

This was such a down time in my spiritual progression. I felt as though there was no reason to follow any of the commandments since no matter how obedient I might be, at the end of the day I’d still be gay. So I began to break the commandments. And of course, I got depressed. And then I lost hope altogether.

Now, try to imagine how dangerous a situation this was. On the one hand, I saw no purpose in continuing with the gospel. I didn’t see it as being of any use to me seeing as I could never get married, have children, and all of those types of things that I’d been told NEED to be done. And all of this was in comparison to the ‘happy’ feelings I had prior to being in the Church where I was pretty much ‘free’ to do whatever I wanted. While on the other hand, I knew that wickedness never was happiness. I couldn’t return to my old life and it be the same as it was before. I knew too much now. And besides, I knew the Church was true.

I was caught in limbo. How could I stay in the Church when I could only feasibly progress so far? But how could I leave the Church when I knew that they were right? In the end, I realized that if I was ever to get to where I was going, I was going to have to stick it out. Sure, life was definitely going to get more challenging, and I still didn’t see how I would ever get married, but I would deal with that when it came. Trouble is, how do you deal with something you’re trying to avoid? If I never allow myself to be in the position of getting married, how can I deal with the situation of getting married? Does that even make sense?

And this pretty much brings us up to date with where I am today. It’s a constant tug-of-war with the colorful world of Gayland on the left and the painfully true world of the Mormons on the right. (And, in case you are wondering, Gayland is a lot like candy land. People wear the same clothes, the objective is pretty much the same, and if you stay there too long, you’ll probably die of tooth decay, a diabetic coma, or extreme mood swings.)

California Dreamin'

I had a pretty sweet dream last night…

So you know how your brain supplies you with a complete history of events when you’re dreaming? That’s what happened with me. I knew that I had fallen in love and was living happily ever after. My dream didn’t last very long though before my real life dog decided to pounce on me. However, I remember being in my dream bed (it was white and soft) and I realized there was someone sleeping next to me. Suddenly, a rush of memories flooded my mind. With each memory, I found myself absolutely overcome with happiness. I felt them stir in the bed and I turned to look at them. I could tell they were smiling even though I couldn't see their face. Right before I saw who it was, my dog quite possibly ruined my life forever.

“Oh, Michael,” I try to tell myself. “The dog was just trying to tell me that he loved me.” Yeah well he should have known I was about to know who the heck made me so freakin’ happy! When my dog is dreaming merry little dreams of catching unsuspecting bunnies, I know better than to wake him up.

And the worst part is, I had an idea of who that dream person could have been and it makes me a ridiculously giggly and a wee bit nervous because, to the best of my knowledge, that guy is totally straight. Oh yeah. Did I mention it was a guy? *sigh* I live for my dreams…

Old Friends...

Before August 27^th, 2006, I had a lot of friends. Sure, I have friends now, but let’s just say that these friends were of another variety. Not better. Not worse. Just different. After August 27^th, they were all gone. Imagine that friendships are really just kites, each one flying through the air. Now, imagine a huge pair of scissors. We’ll call them social scissors, because sometimes a friendship will go awry and you’ll need to cut that string loose. Now, imagine that on a large scale, that all of your friends are all flying high in the sky, totally unaware, and then you suddenly and without warning, cut them all loose. That’s exactly what I did.

I’ll admit that if I heard that one of my friends ever did this, I’m pretty sure my internal response would be something like, “What a jerk!” And more than likely, there would have been a few more expletives as well.

But nevertheless, that’s what I did. Why did I commit social holocaust? And why on August 27^th? Because August 27^th was the day I was baptized. Before I joined the Church, I didn’t know a whole heck of a lot, but I knew that if I was ever going to make this new life work, I was going to have to make some tough decisions. I was going to have to cut a lot of strings. And just like that, my old life was gone. But not really…

Unlike normal kites, my friends didn’t just get carried off in the wind. I think I had expected them to. I had thought, “If I just stop calling them and stop returning their phone calls, surely they’ll just move along.” That was the plan, anyways. And, for a while, it worked.

I wasn’t alone though. I had a lot of new friends. The Wanderlys were probably my biggest supporters at the time. They treated me like their own family and actually let me live with them for a year and a half. I think, though, that if it wasn’t for the missionaries and for my constant interaction with them, I probably wouldn’t have lasted very long.

It wasn’t until a little past the first year that I discovered the wonders of Facebook. Through it, I was able to keep in better contact with all of the YSA in the area, as well as those missionaries who had gone home by this point.

What I didn’t expect was that other people were also looking for me. Old friends from Texas, from Southern California, from Northern California… They all began adding me as their friends. Unprepared as I was, I didn’t know what to do. At this point, I had been in the Church long enough to know that just because I was LDS didn’t mean that I couldn’t have non-LDS friends. But how could I possibly mingle those two worlds together? It wasn’t just people who knew me prior to becoming LDS. Oh no! This was so much more. Half of these friends I’d had sexual relationships with. The other half were supportive of those sexual relationships. It wasn’t just a matter of going into the garden and mingling the vegetables in with the fruits (no pun intended). It was more like Winnie the Pooh meets the Borg. (I’m not sure which is which, but that’s not the point.) They both wanted such different things, how could they possibly coexist? So, I ignored those old friends. But there was one person who I could not ignore…

Side Story: Nick Pine…

The last relationship I had before joining the Church was a guy I had met on Myspace. I believe that I’ve made mention to him in previous posts. He was the one who shared the same nickname as me and who knew I wanted to be Mormon before I did. Nick Pine was a boyfriend of mine for about five or six months before I broke it off suddenly. And in case you are wondering, it had nothing to do with me joining the Church. It was just me being immature and scared of my feelings.

One day three years ago, Nick found me on Facebook. When we first began speaking, things were a little tense. I had broken his heart and he had no problem with telling me so. But he was willing to be friends again. Not boyfriends, just friends.

This interaction happened right around the same time that Prop 8 was going on. I’m not sure if Prop 8 was as big of a deal in other states as it was in California, but it was flipping crazy out here, let me tell you! At that time, I was living in the Bay Area and with San Francisco just on the other side of the Bay, you can probably imagine how heated an area this was during the debate over same sex marriage.

On an individual level, I was struggling a lot from the proposition. Sure, I agreed with my Church leaders, that wasn’t the problem. The difficulty arose when other members began saying not-so friendly things about people who dealt with same gender attraction. It was getting to me. I knew that if they knew I was gay, they wouldn’t say those things around me. But I also knew that me telling them would probably only stop them saying it to my face, and if nothing else, they’d still be thinking it. Even so, the YSA were asked to be active participants in the campaign in favor of Prop 8.

My Facebook page reflected that participation. And when Nick spotted that, our conversation suddenly changed from renewing our old friendships to instant anger. He was actually more angry at me for supporting the proposition than he was for me braking his heart two years before. In his mind, I was abandoning who I was along with all of the gay people I had ever known and loved. I was even abandoning him. In his eyes, it was as though I was erasing him from my life, despite how willing I was to rekindle our friendship.

To make this whole thing a little more clear, I’ve only loved two guys. Sure, I crushed and messed around a lot, but there have only been two guys who can ever claim that I have told them that I love them. The first was a guy from Southern California. The second was Nick Pine. Yes, I broke up with him two years earlier, but really, it was because I was afraid that I loved him too much, not too little. Like I said, I was immature.

So when Nick told me that I was erasing our relationship as if it never happened, I was devastated. Even so, I tried telling him about the Church’s stance on same sex marriage. I tried telling him why I believed what I believed. I tried and I tried… and he hated me for every word that I told him. By the time we had finished talking, I was in tears. I went to my apartment, locked the door, and hid in the shower for an hour until the hot water ran out. And through my tears, a little voice whispered to me, “My, how your testimony has grown.”

Amazing how the Spirit works, huh? I was so wrapped up in worrying about my old friendship with Nick that I hadn’t realized that I had stood my ground, despite the cost. I didn’t budge, nor did I buckle and say things like, “Well that’s only what the Church says. I don’t think they know how things really are,” or, “I’m not sure if I agree with their decisions,” or, “I’m just doing what they told me to do.”

I’m not trying to toot my own horn , but I realized two things about my other relationships of old. Thing one: I can stand firm in the face of opposition, even when that person means a great deal to me. So, if my worry was them corrupting what I believe, I guess I didn’t have to worry about that as much. Thing two, sometimes people won’t accept this “new me” and they’ll choose to not be my friend. I can’t help that. I don’t know if this would warrant being called ironic, but I find it interesting that I was quite alright with cutting them loose just a little while before, but the idea that they could return the favor and reject me scares the crap out of me. I think the difference is, they’re would not be rejecting me for some weird personality quirk or even some negative attribute (which I’ll admit that I have plenty of both). They would be rejecting me for my religion, my beliefs.

These realizations have not made befriending my old friends any easier, and even now, I’m not exactly sure what to do. I don’t know if I told anyone this, but a few months ago, I wrote Nick a message on Facebook. It was pretty lengthy because, as you know, I like to write and write… and write. Don’t judge! Heh! But in that message, I told him that even though I was still an active member of the Church, I would still like to be his friend. I told him how I felt, though it made me very uncomfortable being so totally honest. I asked for his forgiveness and told him that I forgave anything he may have done as well.

In reply, he told me to eff off.

And I suppose he had every right to. Agency hurts sometimes.


Old Friends (resumed)…

The worry I have, though, is everyone else’s agency. I’m not good at laying my heart on the line and putting myself in exposed situations. I can’t control their reactions, good or bad, and that whole ‘not knowing’ is like Russian Roulette where the gun has five bullets, not one.

As I’ve been writing this, I keep asking myself, “Why do you care? That was your old life, let it go. You let them go once before, you can do it again.” And that’s true. So why don’t I take my own advice? The answer is one that has taken me a long time to realize. Even in writing this blog, I had to take several days to dig deep and come up with the answer. I think the reason why it is so hard to let my old friends go completely is that I want so badly to belong with them. Let me clarify. In a very real way, I DO belong with them. They could sympathize in ways that my straight friends simply can not. I need people who understand what it is I’m going through and can just be a shoulder to cry on.

But…

I don’t feel completely comfortable telling all my woes to my old gay friends either. They would probably just try to persuade me to abandon the Church and rejoin their merry crew. I mean, I wanted to be able to let my hair down once in a while, but they’d want me to have it down permanently, and if I did that, my forehead would break out. I need something in between.

As I’ve said in the past, I have yet to meet an active LDS guy who was also gay. Actually, that’s a bit of a lie. As of a few days ago, I can not longer say that. I’d like to give a nod to Calvin Thompson, nothing less than a beacon of hope for me. Even so, and most unfortunately, Cal isn’t here.

So what is my solution? How do I solve this problem? I haven’t figured that out yet and I’m open to suggestion. Shed some light on how I can bring these worlds of mine together.

Flirting with the Idea of Dating...

I’m struggling right now. I don’t know exactly what it is I want to do about a situation. Okay, here it is…

This New Years, I wrote a little note on Facebook briefly going over my goals for the new year. One of them was that I would go on at least one date with a girl every month. Now, last month I cheated and dated a girl who already knew I was gay. She claims it counts, but I have my doubts. Nevertheless, it’s almost February, and I don’t want to cheat again.

Okay, I realize that one date a month isn’t so bad. It means that out of the whole stinking year, I’ll have gone on a date a whopping total of twelve times. I get that, really I do. But it’s twelve opportunities for me to really make a fool of myself, too. And from my perspective, a lot of problems can go wrong with this whole thing. For one, I have a serious problem with lying and with people who lie. For reasons I’ve already gone over, trust is a dodgy concept for me and I try to preserve what I can of it. But, when I, being gay, ask a girl, being not-gay, out on a date, isn’t that kind of dishonest?

“But, Michael! It’s only a date! You’re not proposing to her!”

Yeah, I know. But that may not be what’s going through her head! She may be like, “Michael is asking me out! He likes me!” And rightfully so. If one person asks another out, there should be some kind of interest in that person. It isn’t a stupid conclusion.

Something else is, what happens if Miss February enjoys it, gets flattered, and wants a little kiss as we’re saying goodbye? What should I do? Kiss her? Yuck! Heh! No, seriously; yuck! I don’t want to be mean, but I’m gay for a reason. I like guys. It isn’t that girls utterly repulse me… always. But I just kind of prefer, oh I don’t know, lips with stubble on them.

No, but I’m serious. What happens if the girl actually likes the date and wants to go on another? I can’t very well say, “Sorry chick. My quota for February is full, and since I can’t date the same girl twice in a year seeing as I don’t really like you in the first place but was only dating you to…” Do you see where I’m going with this? I can’t do that. It’d kill her and then she’d kill me. And then who would write these awful blogs which, as of late, seem to be nothing more than exasperated rants? Who, I ask you?

So, some of you may be asking, “Then why did you set that goal for yourself in the first place?” And I confess! I don’t know! I regret it! No, I don’t regret making the goal. I make goals all the time. (I also break goals all the time.) I regret being so stinking vocal about it, because now I’m being held accountable by my friends who know about that goal. Stupid Facebook…

And to top if off, Carol Wanderly, my best friend, suggested that I keep a log detailing how those dates go. I mean, on the one hand, I’m already changing everyone’s names in an effort to avoid hurt feelings and hungry lawyers, so I don’t think it too horrible of myself for posting how it goes. On the other hand, it means that now I’m accountable to all of you as well. Stupid Blogspot…

To be completely honest, the real reason I have decided to do this dating thing is that I felt as though, in response to my prayers, the Spirit told me that this would help me. As such, I should be doing it with a willing heart, but it doesn’t take away from the fact that I’m still freaking out about it. It’s a major leap of faith for me. Yeah, I’d like help with my struggles, but I feel like I’m being asked to ride into the enemy’s camp, like Jonah was. It makes me feel a deeper understanding for his reluctance to get off his A and do it.