Love is More

My friend David is one of the most loving people Iknow. I met him when I walked into a reception on the first night of my first doctoral program residency. I was nervous, my enthusiasm for this new adventure in my life faltering under the weight of impending hotel bill, homework and the navigation of many new strangers at once. (How strange that is to think now - us Union folks don't stay strangers long, do we?) David was off to the side, smiling at the crowd, exuding openness. Catching my eye, he introduced himself and began asking genuine questions about my life, affirming each path I described. His energy was--and always is--amazing. I felt welcomed and heard. My anxieties moved away for the moment. Every time I see David, we immediately hug--even if its been only a few hours of class time since we saw each other last. A room with one in it is one in which I know that I am deeply loved and safe in the universe's arms. On Facebook, he often comments on my posts, cheering me on, offering gentle support when he--through his loving attention and remarkable insight--sees me wavering from letting myself fulfill my potential, from putting trust in myself and the world, expressing love openly.

David inspires me. I take cues out his playbook a lot, emulating him and seeking to find my own way to spread love just as powerfully. Like Katie Reider before him (and so many of you, too), he has helped me learn how to better Show My Love.

But that other tattoo I considered? The Nietzsche I wrote that I was "over"? "What is the seal of freedom? To be unashamed before oneself." It resurfaces now and then, especially when those with a painfully, tragically narrow view of love get in the way.

In the UU service today, Steve Abbott discussed the ambiguity of the word in our screwed up culture, giving as an illustration a guy saying, "But I love you, baby," to a woman who responds, "I know what you mean, and that's not love."

Yep, we all know what that means, don't we? I think maybe this is the secret of my great love for gay men; David and I can express our love for each other as genuinely, openly, extravagantly as we want, and no one assumes there's anything "dirty" going on.

Don't get me wrong - sex is awesome. I'm a big fan - whether or not it overlaps with love, as long as its consensual and respectful - but I'm not fool enough to reduce the thousands of ways that humans offer love to each other, the thousands of ways that we need each other's love, with gettin' it on. But I am weirdly proud to take it as a measure of how much my life has become built on love over the past few years that, when I got smacked in the face with that stupidity this week, it was at first baffling to me. I'd forgotten that someone could have so small a vision of the world as to read a post David might write on my wall as an attempt to get into my pants. I'd forgotten people think that way at all.

When I was in high school, I was known as a hugger. Less physically expressive friends would sometimes have to dodge me in the hall to avoid being caught up in a sudden squeeze. I have warm kinetic memories of Ashlee and me dozing off in class as we leaned against each other. If I could rebuild the now-gone building just long enough to recapture one moment, I'd go stand next to my senior year locker, along the corridor of English classrooms, and try to recall the energy of the hug I got each day from Mandy (Pfeifer) Steward (despite her own inclination to dodge such expressions) as she headed down the hall in one direction and I headed down the stairs in the other.

Then I started to come out. Then, the summer after my freshman year of college, some dumb-as-shit guy at a party looked over at me throwing my arm around an upset friend to comfort her and said, "What are you two, a couple of fucking dykes?"

Whatever homophobic stereotypes you might encounter, some version of this is always included; they all include the idea of the sexual predator, the thought that because I love some women romantically, I can't go near any woman without sex being on the table. Harvey Milk brilliantly played on this when he said he wanted to recruit you. Suddenly, I quit hugging. I quit freely loving my friends--especially my straight female friends. Suddenly, I started worrying about being taken the "wrong" way, by them themselves or by those who might be looking on. I did not want to get the queer on them.

Ever read the story, "Hands" from Winesburg, Ohio? We never know definitively if that teacher is or isn't queer in his desire, only that the whiff of a hint that he could be causes him to restrain the most expressive part of himself, to cut off the motion of love through him - expansive, healing love in all its myriad possibility - because he lives in a town small-minded enough to think that the only thing a encouraging hand resting on a shoulder could mean is sex. I get that guy all too well. But thousands of loving hugs, arms around my shoulder, sudden wipings away of my tears from friends like David have slowly, slowly reminded me what I knew intuitively as a child, have taught me how wrong it would be to let such narrowness have power. I wll not let homophobia or any other bullshit stop me from giving my love in every way I know how.

In a song about how a guy tried to pit her against other women in competition, Dar Williams repeats in a soaring chorus, "I will not be afraid of women; I will not be afraid of women." I hear that in my head when the second-guessing starts, when the impulse to just step away from those I care about before I get the queer on them starts. I want to say that I have hope that it will help expand what even those conclusion-jumping, rumor-spreading folks can understand about their own capacity for loving the people in their lives, but in this moment, I don't yet have that hope. (Though I do have Harvey's hope for the Us's) I only know that not being the kind of person that my friends have taught me to be, that not openly extolling your virtues, my wonderous loved ones, not sending an encouraging word because some narrow view might read it poorly is simply not an option. (Love illiterates, I like to think of them...and that does help me a little to see them as needing help instead of scorn.) That will not bring the beloved community into reality. And you may remember from my last post, that is the thing I'm truly after.

I will not be afraid of women, and I will not let love be made small.