Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.3 4.3bsd-beta 6/6/85; site ptsfa.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!tektronix!hplabs!well!ptsfa!rob 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! -- +--------------+-------------------------------+ | Rob Bernardo | Pacific Bell | +--------------+ 2600 Camino Ramon, Room 4E700 | | 415-823-2417 | San Ramon, California 94583 | +--------------+-------------------------------+---------+ | ihnp4!ptsfa!rob | | {nsc,ucbvax,decwrl,amd,fortune,zehntel}!dual!ptsfa!rob | +--------------------------------------------------------+