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| By Perry Brass
It has taken me a while to realize that most of my writing and my life
has been about gay tribalism, the idea that there is a gay collective
consciousness that same-sexualized men can tap into, that nourishes and
supports us.
At this time — when so many queer men want to believe that they are "unique" and don't need other gay men at all, except in the most limited ways — even believing in gay tribalism is confessing that I am completely out of our time. The realization that gay men need each other in a close tribal way; that our happiness and stability actually rests on this; that there might be something under our "individual" feelings that puts us in touch with something greater than ourselves — this really throws me outside the mainstream.
[Please note: I use the word "gay" to refer to self-identifying sexuality; a sexuality that has not been imposed by mainstream society.] I can understand this — even for our own media, gay tribalism is not cool. There is nothing "sound-bitey" about it, because basically the topic would be like biting into yourself. Your own yearning, needful self. But what is tribalism? How important is it? To begin with, a tribe, after the family and family clan, is the last level of actual closeness and contact. For ages, families were in constant intimate contact with themselves. This need for physical closeness became an innate part of our development. We feel this need now — often desperately — even though the family itself is very much in retreat, having been battered by economic problems, technology shifts, and geographic dislocations. Now average people move every five years, mostly for job reasons, leaving families and other emotional ties behind them. Strangely enough, after earlier gay liberation protested the family's strangling hold on us, gay men are now trying to reconstitute these ties, as heterosexual families are falling apart. As families got larger, they shifted into clans: people who felt a sense of biological closeness, even though they did not share the same parents. Clans were often held together by elders. As clans got larger, but still needed physical closeness, they formed tribes.
Beyond the tribal level actual touching, both physical and psychological, ceased.
This world, outside the tribe, became filled with "strangers," whom we
now see as untrustable and hardly worthy of empathy and kindness.
Tribally, men formed close bonds with each other (as women also did) with an erotic component within these bonds. We see these ties in myths and stories that talk about longing and recognition, about connecting with the "ideal friend," the lost brother, the "buddy," the intensely, secretly, longed-for partner who will in his own way find us — as we had looked for him — and strengthen and hold us. These ties ran through Jewish and Christian mythologies, and our own folklore of Native Americans, frontiersmen, soldiers, lumberjacks, sailors, bikers, leathermen, and gay men We play out these myths in our expectations, our relationships, our connections, in all of our stories — from hot porno to high literature. There we see elements of tribal recognition, of naked feelings — of nakedness itself, unadorned, sweet, poignant, touching and moving us. In the old days, when homosexuality had been driven completely underground, this tribal element was more understood. Despite hiding, we could see at some point another man's "story" revealed to us: this "coming out" into a "gay reality" that only we could see. Tribally, innately, we understood it. Nothing had to be explained, because we could feel this "coming out" story in our own desires and feelings. Lately this tribalism has been almost obliterated. We want to see ourselves like "anyone else." The idea of closeness to other men whom we are not connected to in a "business" way upsets us. It questions the corporate mindset in which we are consumers, working our way through the Brave New Corporate World that will embrace us as long as we stay consuming steadily: consuming goods, services, sex, and keeping only a consumer's narrow connection to it. For most people in America today, the only relationship they have with others is the "customer relationship." Any sexuality outside of this customer relationship must be contained, easily explained ("free" of embarrassment, i.e., intimacy), and constrained. The idea that homosexuality itself can be an avenue towards trusting other men, to compassion and kindness, is considered unthinkable. As the kids say, "it sucks." The idea that there may be tribal gay feelings that connect us on a deeper valuable level, that cannot be sold at the mall, literally revolts many of us. It's ridiculous. It will never play in Out magazine, or the next Star Wars. But this tribalism, thwarted as it is, is still inside us. And it is not satisfied by the kind of mock-hetero coupling that so many gay men, especially younger men locked into a corporate model, want. They want a coupling that rejects any other gay man who does fit into the ideal of "husband" or networking ("I'm a customer, you're a customer") material.
This had led us to more and more men rejecting other men and themselves.
They are rejecting any innate, yearning, tribal character inside
them—that closeness that Walt Whitman described as "adhesiveness," a
current holding men together, with its constant, underground stream of
eroticism circling through it. They are rejecting this.
(This adhesiveness, by the way, is something that "straight men," too, yearn for. But as homophobic fears have risen, they have gotten further and further away from it. What it has led to is a society of lone men who are, physically, rarely, if ever, touched: they are ready to explode.) It has also led us to an army of alienated, wounded gay men who find themselves finally locked out of gay sexual consumerism. They have been through the cruising rejection games, the circuit parties, the "mill" of the gay world, and either they can no longer see themselves as part of it, or have become Prozac-ized in it and are just sleepwalking their way through it. For these men, the idea of an "Ex-Gay movement" must be really interesting. I don't blame them for wanting to get the hell out, because what anymore does the "gay world" offer them? If they could snap a finger or find Christ (one of the original real human tribesmen) and get out, they would. But even though our tribe seems to have fallen apart, you cannot change your longing for the tribe. For its own closeness and warmth. For these men I say that for every "Ex-Gay," there are many more "Ex-Straights," who saw their own counterfeit life in the hetero "coupled" world, and got out of that; even though the only "legitimate" images this world allowed were of itself.
So "Ex-Straights" had to go into hiding; they had to choose between
their own deepest feelings and a Straight Society that for the most part
would try to punish them hard for leaving it. Compared with the media
hooplah of the "Ex-Gay" circuit (funded by Christian fundamentalism),
Ex-Straights have been given nothing.
So the only recognition and warmth this multitude of "Ex-Straights" (as opposed to "Ex-Gays") will get, we'll have to give ourselves. The whole gay tribe will have to give it to them, for embracing us (and themselves) again. But first we'll have to re-establish the tribe itself. Realize its validity and place in our lives. See that we all have a place in it, no matter our age, how "gay" we appear in the current fashions of "queerness," or how desirable we see (or do not see) ourselves. So we are not simply a "Culture of Desire," as Frank Browning described it, but a tribe that can compassionately hold its own. So after thirty years of writing about gay topics, I realized that I'd really been writing about the gay tribe. That is: my coming out into it, my finding it, and placing myself, imaginatively and soulfully, in it. This has given me a connection with other same-sexualized men, who have claimed their own sexuality and tribalism, rather than have it dictated by our global corporate culture. This connection has been life preserving to me. It has given me a insight that I would like to share with others, even though I know that many will reject it. But even more important, it has given me a connection with the gay past, which strengthens me constantly. Now, if we could just bring that strength and closeness to our own tortured members of the tribe and offer it to them; and let them, really, smile. Perry Brass has been nominated four times for Lambda Literary Awards and has published three novels, Mirage, Circles, and Albert, or The Book of Man, that deal with gay tribalism. Recent books include The Harvest, a "science-politico" novel, and The Lover of My Soul, poetry and other writing. His newest book How to Survive Your Own Gay Life deals with gay survival in all its forms: physical, emotional, psychological, and spiritual. His books are available at community bookstores nationwide and online. He can be reached through his website, www.perrybrass.com. |
© 1997-99 BEI