Advice for Neurotic Guppies
Occasionally, as you know, I come across some little titbit in the local news that inspires me to offer up some homespun wisdom in the form of unsolicited and often (I suspect) underappreciated advice. This morning, as I was perusing the Sunday Globe, I came across this little piece of pink journalism that seemed a cry for help I simply could not in good conscience ignore.
I mean, here's a gay couple—in Guppie-friendly JP, for chrissakes—whinging and whining about whether they should officially come out to their neighbors and demand that the latter affirm them with a daily greeting of "Hello gay neighbors! We see, support, and actively affirm your gayness! Have a great big fabulous gay day and come home gayer than when you left the house this morning! And we will love you even more tomorrow for being gayer than you were today!" After which said neighbors should pump up the Gloria Gaynor and shower them with pooka beads, little packets of lube, and flavored condoms.
The author of the piece, a certain Dave Demerjian, is oppressed by doubts as to what his Caribbean neighborwoman really thinks of him—does she support his and his partner's marriage? Will she think they're pedophiles for inviting a ten year old boy scout selling candy door-to-door in from out of the rain? Even if she does, will she still collect their mail for them when they're away on vacations? (That's the big question, innit?)
And what about the tough-looking (likely Hispanic) youths that hang out on the corner, who, by Demerjian's own admission, greet him when he passes, but whom he assumes are really just waiting to mumble homophobic slurs about him. Because, of course, they must all be homophobes, since they are "tough-looking" and don't shower him with praise, pooka beads, and flavored condoms for being gay as he passes. (And, Dave, that little fantasy about one of them noticing your matching wedding rings—straight out of an old issue of First Hand.)
All of this lack of everyone celebrating his sexuality all the time leads Demerjian to ponder if he can live in a neighborhood where no one seems to really care who he's having sex with.
Because, if you read the piece you'll notice, there have been no nasty slurs, no threats, no evidence of intimidation. No rainbow flag-burnings on the front lawn. No one spray-painting epithets on the door. No flaming dildos launched through the front window. Nothing. Their neighbors do what neighbors do. Wave and say hello. Collect the mail when they're away.
What seems to bother Demerjian is that no one seems to be as hot and bothered about his homosexuality as he, himself, is. So your neighbors aren't constantly affirming your sexuality and reassuring you it's OK to be gay? Well, waa waa waaah, Dave! Life sure is hard in JP. It must be at least as bad a place to raise kids as Mogadishu, or Baghdad, or Bhopal, or Chernobyl, what with all the people lurking around not muttering homophobic remarks (but surely about to), and not giving you dirty looks (at least not while you're looking back), and not really doing anything hurtful or hateful or nasty at all (but eminently capable of it, no doubt).
Crikey. Give me a break, will ya?
So here's your free frickin advice, Dave: stop projecting your shame and fear onto the world around you. And while you're at it—not to Doctor Phil-out on you, but—you might want to change your inner dialogue. Your paranoia and guilt will taint the relationships with neighbors more than your gayness ever could. Your casual assumptions about them are clearly based on race- and class-stereotypes which might be turned on their heads if instead of passively waiting for them to fulfill your negative expectations of them you made a move, reaching out to squelch their negative expectations of you.
Because, you know, the thing that's interesting about your narrative is your utter passivity in all of this. You don't mention one thing you've done to invite the neighbors in, or to get them all out in the street for a block party. How many fruit baskets have you sent out? Do you know your neighbors' birthdays? Do you even know their names?
There's been no effort that I can see to take any steps whatsoever to get to know your neighbors as anything other than the clichés you've represented them all—and yourself—as: "the Caribbean woman," "the tough-looking group that hangs on the corner," "the gay couple." Maybe that's why it seems more important that your neighbors pass some ideological litmus test about abstract social identities than that you get to know each other in a way that transcends them.
And now some unsolicited advice to my gay brothers and sisters out there: lose the victim complex. It's a little adolescent, don't you think? I mean, Dave, when was the last time The Globe printed an op-ed by a Caribbean immigrant talking about the difficulties of living in a traditionally ethnically and racially fractured city? About the assumptions people make about her? Their ignorance and lack of interest in her experience? (I'll bet your being gay is not even on her list of grievances, honey.)
There's a tiny and very marginal population of committed homophobes out there, and the rest are of the live-and-let-live school of neighboring. They're about as interested in the inner workings of your marriage and sex life as you are in theirs. It's not their job to pat you on the head and scratch you behind the ears, and give you a scooby snack for being gay. Invite them into your home, into your life. Earn their respect by showing respect for them. Send them a fruit basket. Learn the names of all their kids and grandkids. Have a block party. That's what good neighbors do. They don't cringe and cower and think the worst of everyone in their neighborhood and write about them disparagingly in the Sunday Globe.
And if you're not up to all that? Then, yes, you should probably move back to the gay ghetto where you never have to worry about whether everyone knows you're gay, because you will all have slept with each other anyway.
You hit the nail on the head. I thought the same exact thing when I read this article this morning. Dang it I want my neighbors to be more excited about my heterosexuality! When is the last time any of them have asked me if I have a girlfriend or anything of the like or showered me with condoms and issues of playboy?
Heck they don't care about my sexuality either way and if you're hetero or homo I feel that most people would prefer it that way. I don't need my neighbors actively thinking about what I shack up with when I talk with them.
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Right on. Well said! It seems so obvious, but seriously... "They're about as interested in the inner workings of your marriage and sex life as you are in theirs." How could he not realize this!?
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MIKE, WOW, YOU REALLY DROVE YOUR POINT HOME. BUT GOOD ADVICE.
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Wow. Do you really love everyone as you claim? Your scornful post here sure doesn't show it. Despite making such a harsh judgment over what you claim were assumptions Dave was making about his neighbors, you made a whole lot of disparaging (and flawed) assumptions about Dave, and you don't even know him.
I happen to know that he has in fact been threatend in his own neighborhood with homophobic slurs and posturing from neighborhood guys. I am Latino, and grew up in a neighborhood much like the Latino not-so-gay friendly part of JP where Dave lives, and so I find it easy to sympathize with him.
You ask us to "lose the victim complex?" How about asking all the drunk frat boys and macho papis on the corner to just live and let live and keep their homophobic comments to themselves?
I don't know you, so I won't repeat the mistake you made in writing erroneous assumptions about people you don't know (at all), but I have to wonder, what is it you are trying to prove with this nasty commentary you have written here? I'm sure you're a real nice guy and meant well with your advice. But why didn't you write Dave and directly offer him your gems of wisdom? You who condescendingly advise him to get to know his neighbors (as if he hadn't already been doing that) rather than writing an Op-ed (which, by the way, he was solicited to do, and did so reluctantly). You may have valid comments and criticism, but you've managed to mask them with a patronizing tone full of malice.
And by the way, The Boston Globe has in fact run many articles on the difficulties of being non-white and living in Boston (your comment here implied otherwise). Just saying (since I'm assuming you enjoy getting criticisms as much as you like giving them).
Sorry, I really (truly) don't want to sound bitchy; like I said, I don't know you, and you are probably a real nice guy. I just have to respectfully disagree with your opinion here.
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great post. It would be nice to see this as a follow up in the Globe
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Marcelo is obviously new to Masspurgation. So first off, welcome, Marcelo!
Now, down to business.
I think Mr. Demerjian's hyperventilating op-ed piece speaks for itself. You are right that I don't know him personally (that I know of), nor is there any reason to contact him personally with my criticisms of his op-ed piece.
You might call my post a sort of "open letter," meant to further the public discussion Mr. Demerjian’s op-ed was a part of. I would not have responded at all had it not been for the fact that I feel I have some small stake in this very public debate, myself.
I don't think it's a stretch to see what Demerjian wrote as tinged with paranoia and the assumption of victimization on his part. But his persecution complex is more interesting to me as representative of a strain in gay thinking, a way of approaching integration or assimilation that shows considerable ambivalence about giving up a cherished outsider/victim status for an ordinary, but essential, right of belonging.
Gay identity has been predicated on the victim narrative for so long, we are at great pains today to formulate an identity that does not rely on our being reviled by society at large. What happens when people know gay people is that they cease to see them as primarily gay and start to see them as people. But this is a hard transition for gay people used to seeing themselves primarily as gay to make.
Whether the paranoia and persecution complex in Mr. Demerjian’s piece was a writer's poetic license, or the reality of the situation, I obviously can't say. Whether Demerjian sees himself as the stereotype he presents or it is just a convenient expository device, I don't know or claim to know.
I do know a bit about the area, though. I used to live on Paul Gore in JP, myself. "The drunk frat boys and macho papis" may be a nuisance but they are a nuisance for all. Gays can’t claim any special status there, either. If you’re a woman, they make offending comments as you pass. If you're a yuppy, they call you names. Asian? Dog-owner? Senior citizen? It’s all good. These guys are your garden variety bullies. It's not about your sexuality so much as their social status.
However we may have been conditioned by society over the years, paranoia and fear of the type in evidence in Demerjian's op-ed (whether acknowledged or not) are poisons in our system that we must take active steps once we realize they're there, to purge. Other people's actions (or inactions) are only a small part of the equation--fear of "them" is largely in "us."
The good news is, there is a time in everyone's life when they can make a choice as to how they want to live--in a state of fear and paranoia and passive certainty about the malice of the world around them--clinging, in other words, to their victim status. Or in a hard-headed, black-humored struggle to fully engage with the world around them. An ultimately hopeless struggle doomed to abject failure, but good for an occasional laugh.
Anyway, Marcelo. One thing’s for sure. Mr. Demerjian is lucky to have friends like you. But like Sun-tzu says in The Art of War: keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. It could be the start of a community.
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I live way out in the hinterlands, so maybe the same rules don't apply. I have lived in the same neighborhood with 2 lesbian couples for at least 10 years. I have never gone out of my way to acknowlege that they are a gay couple. When I see one of them, I wave and say hello. I don't see why I have to treat them any differently than I do my straight neighbors, or the couple "just shacking up".
I think it says far more that nobody is commenting on it. Maybe because it just doesn't matter. And isn't that a good thing?
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Mike, just when I think I love you so much I will explode, you write something like this and I love you even more. I understand what Marcelo is saying, and as someone who lives a stones throw away from Fenway I am regularly greeted with the shouts of faggot from the greatest fans in the world. In the end though you are right, when we mo's stop clinging to the ghetto and start engaging on a simple human level with everyone around us are lives are going to get a lot better. Oh, Mike. Try returning a call once in a while will ya'?
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Nice job, Mike.
One thing I find interesting is that if it is true, as Dave's valiant defender above asserts, that Dave "has in fact been threatend in his own neighborhood with homophobic slurs and posturing from neighborhood guys," you'd think Dave might have thought to mention it himself, as it would have represented the only fact in his article that would have justified his paranoia.
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A very interesting reaction to Mr. Demerjian's piece. Some insightful things and some ignorant things. Let me explain.
I was disappointed to read a tone that speaks to the fact that Dave should get over being a victim. You do it in my opinion in an incredibly harsh manner This bothered me for a couple of reasons:
1. Do you really believe it's unreasonable to think that undereducated, ethnocentric (speaking in generalizations here, not pigeonholing anyone) folks might be intolerant of homosexuality? Get real, we have people in suits on Sunday who stand in font who are intolerant of homosexuality. In fact a certain religious text a lot of us subscribe to condemns homosexuality in the worst kind of way. In fact the biggest Christian church in the world has no compassion for them. So if the Pope and almost every other conventional level religion in the world condemns homosexuality Dave shouldn't be concerned about the folks in his Jamaica Plain neighborhood? The evidence is thus overwhelmingly out there, so don't take the ridiculously less moral position that he needn't be concerned. Ethnocentrism grips over 45% of our country. So if he carries that reasonable concern he shouldn't be taking shit from you. Now the reason why you are giving him shit in my opinion is because you havent't walked in his shoes in some way. That's when we start to get an idea of your level of moral development. We learn that through your ability to walk in somebody else's shoes. The more you are able to take the perspective of another the more depth that you have. You obviously failed the test with Dave.
Now maybe or maybe not Dave has to get over his victim issue. That could be some insightful advice for any of us. But here is the thing, you don't know him, and you don't really care about him. You judged him based on a text alone.That is why you chose to publish this the way you did. Which is again indicative of your own moral development. It's also indicative of narcissism too. Think about it and look within instead of judging everybody else. Isn't it time to elevate your own game?
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I got the following comment on this post from "Mark": I found his comment a little hard to follow (I was looking for a No.2, but couldn't find it), and emailed him back to ask him to clean it up a bit, and resubmit it. I received this sage reply: Love it! Keep it coming, people!
(Still if anyone out there is a Boddhisatva like Mark and can help this comment "make more sense" to me NOW, I'd be open to enlightenment.)
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"But his persecution complex is more interesting to me as representative of a strain in gay thinking, a way of approaching integration or assimilation that shows considerable ambivalence about giving up a cherished outsider/victim status for an ordinary, but essential, right of belonging"
hmmm mike...hungary, maine, JP,Dorchester, somerville, running away to the peace corps at middle age; constant angry blogs and a generally combative online personality; jealousy, schadenfreude, and obvious social discomfort in person; isn't your quote above just the pot calling the kettle black?
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