The Big "Duh"
The truth doesn’t always announce its arrival, knocking loudly on the door to our brains…
Sometimes it is a deceptively simple fact floating somewhere on the cusp of consciousness
Awaiting our cry of recognition and subsequent action.
I went to lovergirl again last night…
Where all of womankind was represented…
Hormones floating in the air seeking whom they would devour, as the good book says.
I stood around for quite a while…
This time working seriously on not recognizing that there was a glass,
much less whether it was half empty or half full.
A charming soul echoed my thoughts with her counsel when she said to me:
“Don’t go in expecting…Be uninterested and aloof.”
The music and ambiance were what I went seeking, or so I thought.
And then a strange thing happened…
I became so uninterested that my mind actually wandered from the many sights available for feasting.
I looked around and I thought to myself…what the fuck am I doing here?
Here’s the big duh…
I’m not a natural-born club-hopper.
I prefer intimate encounters that dwell more on the beauty of the soul
than the carefully groomed superficiality of alcohol-tinted club atmosphere.
Yes, occasionally the urge to just dance the night away comes upon me,
But it is by no means consistent.
Alcohol and I are barely acquaintances – although we were once close friends.
Back when I drank heavily, I did it to get drunk in the shortest possible time…
To try and outrun my depression
To try and lose my inhibitions to the point where I could sleep with a man, so no one would seriously suspect I was gay…
So why was I really at the club?
(Drumrolls please!!)
It suddenly occurred to me that I was really looking to hang out in a room full of gay folk…
I just wanted some lesbian company. Period.
Now, if I wasn’t stuck in the ‘burbs, I would simply hang out at gay bookstores, coffee houses and the like…everyday meeting places that many take for granted.
This opened the door to duh number 2:
I realized it was okay if I didn’t always have such a great time, and if I often felt out of place.
That’s just who I am…I have my party moods…but can also be quite conservative.
I don’t have to change that just because I feel the need for lesbian communion and feel the only place to get that right now is at a club.
Nothing wrong with going to the club as long as I was aware of my true motivations.
All this seems rather obvious…hence the big “duh”
But standing in that club looking at people who I felt totally disconnected from, it hit me as a profoundly liberating truth.
I didn’t stay long after that.
And I didn’t feel any sense of let down, only wishing I had figured things out sooner.
I’m not surprised at my actions though.
I grew up in a place where homosexuality simply was not an issue.
Never acknowledged…never addressed.
So, if I happened to come across someone who was gay, I couldn’t help consider the person a possible partner…
I mean, there was no guarantee I’d come across another any time soon.
Back to the club.
It’s good to finally realize that I don’t always want to go clubbing…and I don’t have to.
I’m only here for another month, and I can handle the solitude in that time – I’ve managed years of solitude in the past. I will survive.
The “stop looking for her” theme in “Infected by Foolishness” is still quite valid.
But it is no longer tinged with bitter despair…
I’m just going to live my life, knowing that whatever or whoever is meant to be part of that life will show up somewhere along the way.
Now I’m off to cuddle up with a good book…
