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Dirty Little Secrets
September 8th, 2007by Enrique Cruz
‘feeling very introspective today….I can fit everything I learned about myself from my recent road trip into one fear: ”The Big City impersonal” versus the “Small Island Gossip mentality.” — which one are you?
In the Gay community, at least, the difference between my hometown New York City and a smaller community, let’s say Miami or Atlanta….comes down to how impersonal you want to be.
I sucked in High School…’hated it…and want to forget everybody I met there…but, if I lived in a small town I would be stuck with the same suck-y bunch all my life. The great thing about bigger cities like New York City is (very much like the thing that makes Madonna so great) — the simple ability to re-invent yourself…over and over again.
If you suck in a small Island…you are branded for life and it’s harder for people to except you as anything but the suck-y kid in High School.
I understand better the allure of small Islands…and Island living…in smaller communities, but, since we are all tribal by instinct, each community develops it’s own hierarchy…which it makes harder to become more than the five people you fucked.
As always, your own thoughts are welcome….ec
One Response to “Dirty Little Secrets”
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September 10th, 2007 at 12:06 pm
Enrique,
Thanks for being our voice on some matters critical to our advancement. You are so correct on the small town/big city mentality. Having been raised in the homophobic Dayton, Ohio, and running away from home at 18 years old, to Cleveland, Baltimore, New York, and parts in between, I got a good idea of the difference of the various locals. The big cities, a world away from the small town mentality. The good thing was that the big city was more accepting of me and man-to-man relationships were more open. In Dayton, then and now (as I have been forced to return) having trade is always, then as now, “meet me around the corner, in the back, in the dark, and if you see me in public do not speak.” These days we put lip stick on the pig and call it “on the Down Low” and still, it’s just as ugly.
Most telling, for me, is the following experience. I overheard two 60-
ish year old women talking, one trying to get the other to remember a boy from their school days, “Oh you remember him, he was the one they said messed around with that fag in ninth grade. OMG!! after forty years, this poor man is still identified by that suspision. Even worse, can you imagine how I am identified as I have always been openly gay - long before the term was politically correct. I have yet to re-invent myself here in Dayton, Ohio, but of course even if I wished to, there is no way. “Oh, you know JaMarlow, the fag, etc., etc.”
Thanks for letting me vent.