Upon Further Consideration of the Dude Who Hit on Me in Church Yesterday

Two Men in Love

I’ve been thinking more about the man who hit on me in church yesterday.  Also, when I got up this morning I had a very long email from a longtime friend of mine who shared a lot of the feelings the blog brought up for him. (Thanks Gordie.)  Even before I’d gotten Gordie’s email, I’d been thinking a lot about what I wrote.  And about what I was thinking and about how I was feeling through the whole thing; the actually event- his expressing his interest in me, my thinking about it after, my blogging about it, my thinking about the blog, getting Gordie’s email, thinking about Gordie’s email and still more about my own thoughts and feelings.  I think God has a little bit more there for me.  I’m grateful for the opportunity to use even a simple event to hopefully grow and be a better person.

So first off, what was the man’s “crime?”  He found me attractive and wanted to let me know that he found me attractive.  So what?  Isn’t this the world I want to live in, where that would be okay?  Look, I know it’s not the world all of you want to live in, especially som… no, no.  I was going to say “especially some of my women friends” but I don’t think that’s necessarily so.  I don’t think that many of my straight buddies would be less uncomfortable by a dude coming on strong to them than my women friends would be.  Okay, back to the world I want to live in… wouldn’t it be great if it wasn’t so horrible a thing that if someone found someone else attractive they could say so without it being such a horrible thing?  I mean, take the guy yesterday, there we are in church, he finds himself seated by someone he thinks is interesting and he wants to tell him so.  That’s the world I want to live in, a world where that would be just fine.  It’s not even as if he turned to me and said, “Hey Man, I’d really love to suck your cock.”  (in that case, I would’ve left with him right then!  joking.  relax.)  He said, “You really have my heart beating fast.”  That’s actually a very sweet thing to say.  What if when I first met Adam he’d said that to me?  Why, I’d think that was incredibly hot and romantic!  (Incidentally, Adam was way too shy for that and instead, just stood really, really close to me and watched his own feet shuffling side to side as if independent of the rest of him.  God, I love that man.)  Back to yesterday, another thing you have to consider is which church it was in that the man expressed his interest.  I go to Salt Lake Center for Spiritual Living, a Religious Science Church (no, not Scientology.  look it up)  It’s an open and affirming congregation that honors many paths to the Divine.  The room’s full of ex-Catholics, ex-Mormons, and ex-everythingelses who left the religions of their youth because they found them judgmental and shaming.  It seems I drug a bit of my old Church of Christ thinking into my Science of Mind life.  (There are actually a lot of great things I learned riding the pews of the Church of Christ which I drag into my everyday life and hope I always will.  Just sayin’) Another important part of the interaction with that man was my own homophobia.  (yup, it’s still there.  just as soon as I think we’ve swept out all the dusty corners, I get a lesson like yesterday)  I get hit on by women all the time.  I just let them know that I’m both gay and taken and go on my way appreciating that someone thinks I’m hot.  Why was that not so easy with Dude-From-Church?  It’s because he’s GAY.  And all gay men do all day is look for sex!  That’s all we care about!  (or at least that’s the lie I’ve been programmed to believe)  One of the most important life lessons I’ve learned around homosexuality is that we’re not immune to homophobia, we’re possibly more susceptible to it.

So I better wrap this up.  I gotta go get in the shower and then go teach the kiddies to read.

How in this case can I “be the change I wish to see in the world?”  In my defense, when the man did tell me about how fast his heart was beating after we all held hands for our gay-ass little peace song at the end (see? homophobic.), after he said “you sure have my heart beating fast,” I did say, “Oh that’s good” (before beating a path to the door.)  At least I didn’t say something horrible like “not interested!”  In the future, what I think I’d like to do is give him a little more attention, give him an opportunity to express what he’s feeling.  That doesn’t mean I have to move any boundaries or be unfaithful to Adam in any way.  I could just be present for this other sweet child of God while he gets to have a contradiction to how it’s always been.  How different the world could be if this were the way we interacted with each other around sex and attraction.  Instead of simply keeping on marching in the same dreary trenches that it’s bad and dirty.

I hope that guy sits next to me in church again.