Monday Morning

Well,

The reality of the situation hit me this morning. I live in Tennessee.

Now, I grew up between Nashville and Northeastern Alabama, and to add to that, I belong to a very conservative family. Sure I am a male here, and there are double standards, and there are many affairs and infidelities . . . but what my mother told me this morning shocked me beyond belief.

As I am walking upstairs from my slumber my mother tells me that she talked to my aunt, and that one of my female cousins just got married. Why did she get married? Because she is the assistant church secretary, and the pastor called her house three times upon which a man answered the phone -- ALL THREE TIMES! So, Pastor told Female Cousin to get married because she could not hold her position in the church and be shacking up.

So she got married.

Stop the fucking bus!

I lived with married couples in Europe (nonsexual but plenty of tension). I have been in a couple of interesting situation that did not manifest into anything physical with married couples. I have been with guys. I have lived with a girlfriend for a little while. All the while my mother has been calling me nervously for the past 15 years of my life about who I am living with. What I am doing. Mind you she never says sex, fucking, licking, sucking, being satisfied (I remember when a friend of mine's father came to university and asked his 21-year-old daughter if her boyfriend was sexually satisfing her while puffing on a spliff . . . I was in total awe). Neither does the Pastor. This has kicked up some stuff in me.

1. I live with pilgrims.
2. I was taught to live in shame and guilt about intimacy and the body.
3. I was also taught that Jesus is always watching, and I should do what he wants me to do.
4. When I come home I have to fight this thinking, not in myself anymore but with others.
Which means that many men and women live double lives so they don't have to fight.
5. Hell, when I wake up in the morning, that world view is greating me at the top of my stairs.

Now, that could very well be 800 dollars worth of therapy right there. I am aware of that. But, I am so sure that others have had to go through the same thing. The same realization, and even more frightening, how many people have married despite their sexual orientation because of a call by Pastor or Moma. Interesting hmmmm.

And then there are the straight folk that are living in the matrix. Is it comforting to have the world's views (at least here in the bible belt) on your side, or is it different. Does it feel different . . . the world . . . when it is catered to you?

That's all I am saying.

Now my mom, she has interesting views about the world and life and I think that she is more humored by the facts of the marriage . . . the story we should say . . . than by the theology. But she did tell me this story with a bible in her lap and eating breakfast.

Man. The South.