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From: rob@ptsfa.UUCP (Rob Bernardo)
Newsgroups: net.motss
Subject: Gay-related issues in my daily life
Message-ID: <811@ptsfa.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 15-Aug-85 14:06:30 EDT
Article-I.D.: ptsfa.811
Posted: Thu Aug 15 14:06:30 1985
Date-Received: Mon, 19-Aug-85 21:28:12 EDT
Organization: Pacific Bell, San Francisco
Lines: 104

In a previous article, on@hpda.UUCP (Owen Rowley) mentioned a lack  of
on-going  discussion  in  net.motss,  and in a follow-up, I agreed and
said I would post an article about personal issues in my life as a gay
man.  This is it.

After thinking,	I came up with three major personal issues  that  have
to do with my being a gay man on a daily basis.

   - feeling disenfranchised

   - AIDS

   - forming a home with someone

I feel incredibly vulnerable about what	I wrote	below,	but  what  the
hell.	I  feel	 most vulnerable in front of those people at work that
will read this but who I do not	know well  enough  to  talk  about  my
feelings with.


DISENFRANCHISEMENT

I  feel	 disenfranchised   as	a   result   of	  heterosexism.	   (By
'heterosexism'	I  mean	 an  unwitting	or  unconscious	 assumption on
someone's part that everyone  is  heterosexual	and  perhaps  leads  a
certain	type of	life, e.g.  marriage, family.)

The disenfranchisement	I  feel	 does  not  come  from	individuals  I
personally  deal  with,	 but  more  from  people at a distance or from
institutions.  For example, the	people at work who  I  talk  with  are
basically  not	heterosexist.	But the	words and actions of coworkers
who I do not interact with much, even professionally,  sometimes  make
me  feel  disenfranchised.   Just subtle things	in the way they	phrase
things sometimes.  Usually nothing so consciously anti-gay that, if  I
chose, I could challenge them about.

Nobody but me in our office openly gay that I  know  of.   No  one  to
REALLY	talk 'sisterly'	with.  There are a couple three	people at work
I can sort-of talk with	to in the way I	 would	only  normally	do  to
another	gay man, e.g. feeling comfortable enough to remark how nice it
is that	there are quite	a few construction workers around to  look  at
(the  building	is  half  unbuilt).   And  that	comfort	came only very
recently.

Sometimes I feel lonely.


AIDS

I don't	think there has	been a single day in the past year or so  that
I  have	 not thought about, worried about the threat of	AIDS.  The New
York Native (a NY-based	gay biweekly newspaper that is national	in its
scope of news) arrived today and a good	quarter	of its 60 odd pages is
about AIDS.

I will go to the gym tomorrow morning.	I will see  perhaps  a	little
bruise there or	a red mark here	and the	first thing that flashes in my
mind is	KS, even when I	KNOW that I ALWAYS get a little	 bruise	 there
from horseback riding, and that	I ALWAYS have had that little red mark
here ever since	I can remember.	 I will	effortlessly use the  exercise
cycle  for 20 minutes, but later in the	day when I return to my	office
from lunch and get a little winded going up three  flights  of	stairs
while  talking	at  the	same time, I wonder if it is pneumocystis.  On
Friday,	Bay Area Reporter, a local gay newspaper, will	come  out.   I
will  turn to the obituary column with morbid interest.	 There will be
half a dozen photos, mostly of gay men about my	age, some  of  whom  I
will recognize from the	neighborhood, from the gym, etc.  Infrequently
there will be someone I	knew  well,  a	person	I  once	 dated,	 or  a
roommate I once	shared an apartment with.

Do you think there's a chance Reagan will get AIDS from	the  blood  (I
presume) he got	during his polyp surgery?

Sometimes I feel terror.


HOME

I dream	of having a home life with another man on a gentleman's	 farm.
Something  small  but pretty.  A few animals - two horses, some	goats.
Something I think I could afford  with	another	 person	 of  the  same
means.

Another	gay man	who likes country living?  Another gay man  who	 likes
horses	(and  that's  not  just	 from  the  other  side	of the fence)?
Another	gay man	whose boots are	not just a part	of his	"cowboy	 drag"
when  he  goes out to the c/w bar on the weekend?  (And, god, he's got
to be intelligent, verbal, and introspective enough to get along  with
someone	 who  grew up in an upper middle class mainly Jewish suburb of
New York, who went to college for 10 years,  and  who  is  a  computer
programmer).

Sometimes I laugh!
-- 


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| Rob Bernardo | Pacific Bell                  |
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| ihnp4!ptsfa!rob                                        |
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