Nobody Speaks...

It is with deep and great sorrow that I write this note... I am heavily pressed with a feeling of sickness to my stomach, and a feeling that I wish to cry all day... Perhaps even sadder is an idea that I have company in my situation... This might seem like less than a happy tale, but it is true, and I can remain thankful for the years with love with my significant other that I have enjoyed.

It seems our federal government, in calling me ‘some buddy’, has defined me as ‘nobody’... I have been Nobody before, the particular Nobody that people quote when they say “Nobody said...”

Somehow I doubt that a simple apology in the future will help to cover the pain of today ... sort of like having a Nazi say, “I sorry” for having killed one’s family members... That alone to me seems to fall short of anything, even if it might be better than nothing...

For the past 30 years I have been blessed and beset with a romantic relationship with someone I continue hold very dear, my sometimes and yet always significant other... There have been at least three major influences upon my closeted companion, one being me, and my life experience which he has observed, another being our governing system, or more precisely the alleged law enforcement personnel who inhabit our governing environment, and the third being his family...

I sometimes call my significant other my ‘Z’, which I joke means an ex-X, one who has been an X so many times that there is no why-Y for it, so has become a Z... There is, however, a Y for it, and that why is love...

For the past 30 years, which I do believe is a significant amount of time, I have been with my Z, and without a criminal record, and sought to live legally by holding jobs, seeking to do them competently. I am without ‘affectation’ that would easily brand me as gay, but I have let it be known that I am politically gay, a proponent of equal rights, a proponent of human rights... That position has brought to me sometimes harmful hostility from bigots at the work-place (and other places), discrimination in housing wages, and other work-related benefits. My home has been attacked ... my beloved pets attacked... I can sadly say that while some non-gays might have subjected me to undue harshness in the work-place, including women who have felt frustrated in their sexual desires, that some gays have demanded sexual favors from me in return for employment... Problems have been on all sides of the proverbial board due my simply saying that I am gay, even in realms where sexuality should be irrelevant... However, my Z was a ‘love at first sight for me’, and that romantic love has endured, and remains of value to me.

Observing the ‘challenges’ I have endured, my Z has preferred to remain closeted, has at times sought public female companionship to protectively cover his image, a ‘beard’ so to speak... For myself, I had thought such a secret reason for being with a woman would be unfair to that woman, wrong, and have preferred to seek to enjoy my male companion in life... In 30 years, members of my Z’s family have opposed the relationship between my Z and I, from a brother who would publicly yell ‘faggot’ at my Z, even though that brother did later sexually proposition me, to a mother who has never entered our home, but who would visit and sit in the parking lot for hours to ‘talk sense’ into my Z...

Everyone is in a middle of some sort... For my Z, that middle was in part between me and his family. When with me, my Z would be responsible, hold jobs, and would have to endure constant hostility from his family, as if his simply leaving me would end or change his sexuality and then he would be properly ‘straight’ as if the only problem was me... While both heterosexual and homosexual unions might have sexual issues as an aspect, there is much more to any relationship than just sex alone, or at least there is in the rel