Sexual content
“I mean, one of their initiations is letting yourself be sodomized,” says my friend, with obvious distaste. “Really, what's up with that?”
We've been discussing the OTO; he's alluding to the Ordo's XI° initiation. I'm not OTO myself, though I have friends that are. I am, though, gay. I could easily tell him what's up with that.
I will never, never get used to hearing a sacred act of love, one of the most intimate things that it's possible to do with another person, be spoken of with such visceral loathing. To my surprise, though, I don't find my friend's clumsy faux pas offensive. Rather, I find myself loving him for it. He's actually just given me a gift.
All too often, being gay, like being a member of any minority, means being reduced. You don't merit full personhood; you're always the gay guy. In this reducing atmosphere, of course, gay men, distressingly often, become synonymous with a single act of love, which (ironically) some of us don't even like. “Nothing like being reduced to one action,” a gay friend of mine once remarked, bitterly.
(Talking with an acquaintance at Pagan Pride one afternoon, I listened with increasing confusion as she spoke effusively about something that I'd supposedly done recently. Finally, I realized what was going on: she had confused me with D, the other prominent gay elder in the local pagan community. [You know, those gay guys all look alike.] I thought of telling her: “No, I'm the other gay guy.” I didn't, though; she would have felt humiliated to have made such a mistake. Aînesse oblige: elderhood obligates.)
What my friend has just told me, without realizing it, is that in his mind, I hold full personhood; I'm not gay first and foremost. It's an odd, and maybe even pathetic, thing to be grateful for, but I am.
The two of us have been friends for a long time; there's a lot of love between us. Still, there's an important point to be made here.
“Well, it sure was initiatory for me,” I tell him.