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I resurrected this topic because I find myself thinking more and more about my (purported) bisexuality of late. Of course, as I've yet to engage in any behavior that can qualify me as such; I guess at the moment I can only be referred to as biamorous, so as always, grains of salt and all that. Sorry if this is a tired topic for some, but not for me.
Over the past year I have been exposed, from time to time, most recently within the past week, to an utterly beautiful creature, a friend of a friend, completely radiant in appearance and demeanor, and to whom I find myself very, very, very attracted. And yeah, it's a guy. This guy, however, is so wonderfully androgynous (and yeah, he did have the hair, though it's shorter now), so gentle and confident that any cockiness he ever displays is ridiculously ironic. I don't know that I've ever been quite so consciously and unabashedly crushing on a guy as I am with him.
And on New Years Eve, he kissed me. It was a friendly kiss, a surprise to be sure, and if memory serves I may have seen him kiss other mutual male friends who I know to be unflinchingly het. But it absolutely took my breath away, sent a bolt of electricity up my spine, and I hoped that just maybe it meant something else than, "Hi, good to see you, Happy New Years."
In college I did have the long hair (but, like, who didn't?), though it was an ex-girlfriend who prompted me to shave it off. I am, to most appearances, pretty het in my appearance; I'm sure "Queer Eye" would find just as much to be bitchy about in my lifestyle as anyone else. Despite a thin appearance I've got a gut I've got to work on, among other physical lapses, I've got fairly furry facial hair (to say nothing of that on the rest of me), and I've got a voice that's refined yet masculine (though, as an excellent mimic, either or both adjectives can change on a dime). While I don't consider myself unattractive, my features are those which I doubt would ever been mistaken for anything but male. Yes, I'm citing solely stereotypical characteristics or behavior, but that is in part what this discussion was about, yesno?
Yet. This is not how I see myself in my mind's eye. This persona I present to you all on here, while in many ways that of my own, is also of that someone else I'd like to be. And part of that vision is quite androgynous, or at least far more glam than I typically am. Despite my better, more intellectual nature, I do want to be desired on sight, much in the way that many attractive women know they are attractive and flaunt it for their own gain, and I do want that poise or mystique or glamour that a rare few, men or women, can pull off so well.
Vladimir J. Baptiste, Jr., is a phosphorescent seraphim, possessing filament hair, compact disc eyes, porcelain skin and bubble gum lips. His brow is uncreased by worry or doubt; the only wrinkles he might acquire are laugh lines. His clothes are a flatscreen television, cuffed and collared by Simon games, tailored to a lithe frame, yet he walks barefoot an inch above the ground, silent save for the distant sound of windchimes. He steals the children of the conservative right without saying a word; simply his existence is enough to tear open a picture window onto a far more immense and strange world than they've ever been allowed to see. When he does speak, it is on strawberry-scented winds, in ten voices at once, and never the same ten from moment to moment, yet always in exquisite harmony. His works enchant, bewitch, stimulate and evoke; in the face of them, some people laugh with joy, still others weep as they've never allowed themselves to. There's something more Warhol than Warhol about him, something more Dali than Dali, more Burroughs than Burroughs. He is distilled thought made flesh, the purity of which is that which inspired early Christians to simulated cannibalism. Oh, he'll be villified. They'll burn him in effigy, maybe they'll even burn him. But it won't matter, because he'll have grabbed the brass ring, and fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.
But you understand the basic semantical problem here, don't you? I refer to him in the third person. I know him to be me, but I don't yet know myself to be him. I've not yet stepped into that text up there yet. I look at myself in the mirror, and while this is not a bad self as far as selves go, it isn't who I know I'm supposed to be. I once wrote a flip line, describing my wardrobe at an event, wherein I said, "I'd fuck me, but I'm just freaky like that." There's also the problem of what you give up when you shed a skin; friends may go with it, and if the transformation was as physical as I'd have it be, viable employment might as well. (Then again, I seem to have stumbled into a job where half the male employees are gay, but I'm not terribly interested in any of them, and I'd like to not encourage the one I sense is interested in me. My point being that I don't think I'd be quite so immediately ostracized here as I might elsewhere, but then again, gay men are often threatened by avowedly bisexual men.) And I realize I am creating an ideal that I may not possibly be able to achieve, but what else are ideals for than proposed goals? What, have I seen Velvet Goldmine one too many times? Or maybe Interview With The Vampire? Does anyone have any thoughts?
Until potential translates into reality, I feel trapped as this little person with limited options and limited ways in which to say, come, I bring you love.
VJB2 |
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