Tell Them....

I fucking hate this country for what it does to us.
I am sitting here with a man and I can't hold his hand.
I can't get close to him and just have his essence fill my senses.
I look at him and I can tell he wants it too.
Not sex.
Just that feeling of a man sitting next to him with my hand in his or something equally intimate.
We can not do that.
I am at the point of bursting into tears.
Why is it so wrong to love, lust, flirt and be kind to the people our hearts want.
I am so tired of this shit.

I have to consider safety, security..
We have to wait till we are behind closed doors.
For us to hold each other and dance.
By the time we all get home from a club,
we are too tired and fucking drunk for that to happen.
I fucking hate this country.
At this moment, this hour, this context?
I hate this country

If someone asks what it is like to be gay in this country?

Tell them.

Tell them,
it is wanting to touch someone you love.
And can not.
Because you are in public.
Safety and security first.

Tell them,
it is exchanging cues and love looks in a restaurant,
because offering him a taste from my plate will weird people out.

Tell them,
it is feeling and wanting to be wanted by another human being,
but they can't do that for you.
And in that mini minute you are left feeling unworthy.
Unloved.
Undesirable.
It takes a specific mindset to remind you of your worth.

Tell them,
it is an invisibility that chokes air out of your soul.
Asphyxiatingly.
Killing your very essence.

Tell them,
it is spending your entire life seeking authentication.
.....affirmation.....
.....recognition....
.....benevolence....
Normality in an abnormal world.

If someone asks what it is like to be gay in this country?

Tell them,
that being a self identifying gay man is cloak and daggers here.
So many have been caught in the dagger than in the cloak.
And those who survive?
We live our life's wondering if we are next.
Regardless of our best efforts.

Tell them,
that being gay in this country is having to face your mortality,
it's fragility.
Every time I walk out the door of my house,
I PRAY I am not the next statistic.

Tell them,
it is loving and hating your country in the same equal measure that it loves and hates me,
A dual personality.

Tell them
that in nights like this,
I fucking hate this country.
But glad to be going to sleep,
hoping and praying that perhaps in the morning I will find the sliver of love,
that will sustain me for the next God knows how long