Parallels, Narratives and Exquisite Agonies..

Yesterday, the eleventh, dear reader, marks the annual celebration of my birthday. Twenty four years of banal existence, eight years since I was first introduced/initiated into the magical world of the "gay brethren", and a month since I experienced an episode of ecstatic awkwardness...
And like my usual self, I decided I shall leave it to the work of fate to lead me through. And experiences are revealing just as they are educating. I could not think of a more revealing experience as a birthday party. Rarely do people get the chance to show/evince how much they care, as with a birthday. A perfect context.
And a party, any party, is ripe, almost burdened with parallels and narratives... and in my case, dear reader exquisite agonies... agonies that borderlines the "sublime"..

A little note about the setting, little or no lights, little candles scattered here and there. Gay people’s tendency for the comfort of darkness? Or the classical metaphor of light being harsh? For glaring lights ruin a perfect face and buttress the imperfections of a plain one.

And the music of course. The cement of the party. The thing that holds the entire setting together. Without which people will start realizing their frivolity and insecurities. Music adds purpose, and conceals a lot of personal awkwardness. It almost gives purpose to a host of people who have little in common, and who would like to establish a meaningful connection in notoriously small time frame.

Music also provides the perfect pretext for all sorts of human interactions. And inhuman ones as well. Its liberating when one has to respond just to sound and nothing else. The dictate of reason is replaced by the dictates of sound. And sound can take you places. In many instances the wrong ones.

ON the pedestal I got to witness numerous parallels and multiple narratives… where there are people there are stories… stories behind the people…

I was exalted, exalted and sanctified by my "self-control", by my restraint, by my meek demeanor,I was canonized as an object of benediction, people touch in piety, stand before and admire, then move on to enjoy "their" party... for you can't really posses a relic or a sanctified artifact.. its there to be placed on a pedestal, to be displayed and admired... but nothing more...

And on my pedestal I got to see from afar, I got to see things and details no one gets to see, no one whose too involved, too self-absorbed.. in the grand narrative around him..

One narrative is:  The Narrative of Intoxication

The intoxication that releases you from any moral obligation. Intoxication becomes the justification to perhaps absolve/free oneself from any moral inhibition or culpability.

I can invade your privacy, compromise your personal space, and abuse the sanctity of your feelings because I am intoxicated. I will betray your trust and use your fragility for a passing moment of self-indulgent sensuality.

Betrayal. One narrative is betrayal.

Another narrative is Agony

Sever, consuming pain that endures over time, whose existence hinges on the presence of the subject of transgression. This too, unfortunately, involves a Taurus "gentleman". A staunch proponent of earthy, unadulterated masculinity. The kind of archaic masculinity that is powerful enough, brutal enough, to dilute the "camp, pseudo-masculinities" of a gay party.

This grisly, ghastly, boorish, brutish masculinity had something to teach for everyone in the party.

Me especially. The sanctified object. Neutered. Neutral.

I had a history with that "gentleman". Someone who indulged my quirks despite serious personal difficulties in dealing with them…

I had the privilege, although I don’t think the exclusive privilege!, of taking long walks with that "gentleman" at such odd hours of the night… it was such a simple, uncomplicated pleasure.

Few of the uncomplicated pleasures left in this world.

But as with the fate of all the Taurus men in my life, this one being no different from his predecessors or successors, it ended “dramatically”.

I distrusted too much, and when I did it was too late. Or the other way round. I trusted too much and they did not. It’s a “timing” problem. I don’t know.

I know the Taurus gentleman whom I was enamored by was indecently involved with someone in a room, behind a closed door.

And I had to watch my dear reader. I had to indulge my voyeuristic tendencies. Or the lack thereof. I had to cultivate them. Bring them to life and disassociate myself from the context and the people. The people involved in my context.

A tendency worth indulging in, in that particular situation. If not a lonely indulgence though.

With lots of cigarettes and a thesaurus dictionary (a timely and unexpected and much appreciated and loved birthday gift) I swallowed the shreds of my remaining pride and started looking for synonyms for such words like: agony, misery, venom, loneliness,...

The dramatic turn, and climax, of this narrative is a kiss on the forehead, along with good wishes.

Another benediction if you might.

But here is the problem, this kiss was not sacred, despite all the attempts to make it so, and I am not a canonized saint despite all attempts to make me so.

The last narrative is the Narrative of Odd Expressions of Love

 And odd expressions of love take a whole range of meaning. For there are as many kinds of love, as there are many kinds of hearts (to quote Tolstoy). And just as there are so many hearts, their expression of affection varies. Varies dramatically. In very significant ways.

In this instance, my thoughtful comforter, my Pisces firiend,  indulged a wild, strange fantasy of mine to have an entire banquet, if you may call it so, of aubergines and nothing else! Almost. They were fried, cooked, stewed, stirred, boiled, in all shapes and sizes. There was even an aubergine dessert!

I could not be more grateful for this unique expression of devotion. For seldom does one come across someone who indulges such wild and strange fantasy. But my thoughtful comforter did. And it thematized the party in such a way. It was the aubergine party of an eccentric, morbid queen. 

Yet I was consumed by all these narratives happening at the same time. Too consumed to give enough credit, to show enough gratitude and to be thankful for all the efforts so selflessly exerted for my sake.

Consumed by the narratives that are always parallel to each other almost never intersecting.