by Timothy Beushausen
I recently contacted an ex-classmate from high school on Facebook (who had amazingly wished me a happy 60th birthday), and chatted with him for a few minutes, more than we ever talked to each other in four years of school. He had hit dotage a few months before I did, and wanted to know if I still look as young as my avatar from 15 years ago. Not. Like Alice and the Walrus, we spoke of many things, and at one point he mentioned his musical talent, which in me is merely a passion rather than a talent. He plays the viol, quite beautifully, which caused me to have one of the very few, full-blown aesthetic reactions I have ever had in my life. He brought up that he was persecuted in high school by the perceived association of piano talent with being gay, which brought back painful memories of being called such names since long before I had any idea what they mean. If that was the genesis of my becoming a commie-pinko-fag {in fact, my true sexual identity is that of a young, black lesbian stuck in an old, white man’s body (you don’t believe me? Then prove I am lying!)}, then it was basically the best thing that could have happened to me. I wouldn’t trade my life experiences for those of anyone else in the world.
Something troubled me, however, about the way he brought up his own homosexuality. He discovered it through painful memories brought out under hypnosis. He has been talking to a psychoanalyst (the dialectical opposite of a psychopath). Oh, my God! That means he has only a 15% probability of having talked to an effective therapist, because that is the average percentage of people who actually help in any of the helping professions. In scientific research, a null-hypothesis with a 15% probability is inconclusive, so it would be necessary for me to conduct more research to determine what happened in this case. However, the imputed association with piano talent, as well as the association with early childhood sexual abuse, seems to indicate that in this case, the probability is in fact lower than average. You cannot come out of therapy with that many wrong answers without triggering the suspicion that your cognition may have been further damaged by the therapeutic process. Perhaps, rather than therapy, all that my former childhood colleague really needed was a little loving from his piano teacher! My mother has always claimed that was what turned my uncle into a gay blade. Since the first time I heard that story, at the age of 16, I have suspected that was what brought Uncle Jim out of the closet, and turned him into a pianist (the keyboard bumps and grinds, that is!) as well. For that matter, I may still take up piano. Does that mean I am really a fag rather than a dyke? As one of the greatest ticklers of all-time, Fats Waller, used to shake his head and say, “One never knows, do one?”
Certainly, the feminine has played a large role in my life ever since puberty, when I left polymorphous perversity behind forever. I originally learned feminism from Hugh Hefner, reading monthly installments of the Playboy philosophy as they hit the stands. In 1966, I had to steal them, because the morons behind the counter would not accept my 75 cents for a so-called men’s magazine. Later, I learned about Hefner’s hypocrisy from Gloria Steinem. I seem to have met a lot of ex-Playboy bunnies in the past 40 years, to the extent that her experiences are universal. If we have learned nothing else from feminism, we certainly should have gotten it (even from Hef, in his pajamas) that what two or more consenting adults do in private is their own business. While I was playing with feminine fire, the women of my generation were playing with masculinity. Good for all of us, because in that way we have all become more human. As a humanist, my goal is to have an equal balance of yin and yang, which is perhaps an unattainable ideal. All the fun is in the journey, anyway! However, this leaves no room for pederasts, who should be locked up indefinitely until effective therapy (other than behavioral modification, which even rats know how to circumvent) can be developed.
Now we can take a look at our hypnotized homosexual through new eyes. Many more women than men were molested as children, in my straw poll. To say the least, the ones I have met did not become lesbians, although many women share a seething anger against men for the way they have been treated in the past. In my wife’s case, her basic mistrust ultimately derives from childhood beatings with an ironing cord from her mother. I suspect the lack of warmth between the two goes all the way back to infancy. However, she has no reason to trust men, who have tried to fondle her since she was five years old. She always managed to evade such advances, although most women were not so lucky. I suspect that being sexually traumatized as a child leads to many aberrations in psychosexual development, but I doubt that it is the royal road to homosexuality. From well-known cultural and genetic studies, homosexuality seems to have all of the above components, although perhaps we are merely looking at the spectrum of human sexuality, rather than some specific form of behavior.
The macho male seems to derive from our proto-chimpanzee ancestors, which makes it rather a negative archetype for expressing our humanity, which is still in development. The myth that we really need to transcend is the Adam/Eve dichotomy, along with the missionary position. According to Thomas Szasz, the myth of original sin was invented by Adam and Steve, who discovered in the medieval Christian monasteries that having sex was even more fun if it were forbidden! They taught this lie to their congregations with a straight face, hoping to increase the quotidian of human pleasure by making sinners out of everyone. The full blown fetishization of this myth later led to witch-burning inquisitors, who even as they incinerated independent women were buggering each other with flaming faggots in the cloisters of their magnificent cathedrals. The stigmatization of human sexuality started out as a joke!
I would never identify myself as “straight,” or heterosexual, which is neither the norm nor the archetype. Having only recently arrived in an era when population control rather than increase is the ultimate human priority, it is time for us to realize that the myth of hetero- is exactly that: an aberration, something that needs to be explained, perhaps removed through psychoanalysis. Bisexuality is most probably the true human norm, with homosexuality resulting from various extremities of reaction to the hetero- false norm, whether manifested as “butch,” “macho,” cross dressing, or any other exhibition within the gay community. This is especially transparent in the anxiety exhibited by macho hetero males about their sexual identity.
Thank God for psychiatric hypnosis if it can bring some of us out of the closet, and no one would say that early childhood molestation is what makes us gay. I think that being human is what makes us gay, and in that sense I am as gay as any blade at Marti Gras. Being seriously repressed is what makes us worried about our identity as heterosexuals, even though I will never be aroused by the sight of a tumescent male. I love the beauty of women, and am passionate about them in every way. That is what makes me such a great dyke! I can poke fun at a woman, and never have to ask, “Are we having fun yet?” Wearing my disguise as Clark Kent, they never know they have been buggered by a dyke! The sad part of the story is that I have never been able to get past the bouncer in dyke bars. Back to the homos. No, I don’t want to go to bed with you. That does not mean we cannot be friends, or engage in discussion about what it means to be human. I don’t think any of us have the answer to that one, yet, if only because our mutual humanity is itself a product of culture. We have yet to create a truly human society. When we do, no one will have the right to tell us what is or is not human sexuality, provided it is between consenting adults, and no one is seriously injured.
Tags: LGBT, psychoanalysis, social issues
