Changes

This is not going to be my typical article.  It is not going to be a comparison between my life now and where my life was in my youth.  It is going to be about who I am as a person now, living in Toronto for the past year, about what changes I have encountered and what I need to do to make my life more complete.  This may sound like a tall order right now to fill, but I need to spill my thoughts on to paper (or screen as it were).

When I moved to Toronto just over a year ago, I was filled with so many conflicting emotions.  I was filled with fear of this place I wasn=t even familiar with, only by name and possible career choices.  I was filled with anxiety about a move to a city I had sitting in the back of my mind for over two decades.  I was filled with expectations about this place where my life would take abrupt and world altering changes.  I remember being on that bus for over 40 hours thinking between, "what the hell am I doing?" and "I can't believe it was this easy" and "this is the adventure that I have always been wanting to partake in".

If any words could be used to described my feelings on Toronto, sitting here on the back porch only a year after I moved here, I think I would have to use, "eye opening".  In some ways, I have learned more about myself in the past 12 months than at any one point in my life (with exception to my coming out).  Everything about this move in my life has been straddling the lines between realism and fantasy, myth and truth, normal and surreal.  I don't think I could have imagined how my life has been altered when I bought my bus ticket for my trip and I doubt my mind could have fathomed the changes.

My ideas on sex, sexuality, family, home, relationships, friends and career have been transformed into something modified by the sheer exasperation that is Toronto.  It gives life and it takes away life almost in the same breathe.  Somehow I never thoughts any place would do that to me.  It has literally opened my eyes to a whole new world and asked of me to discover joys and pains in ways I never dreamed.  My emotional being has felt the worst of the changes and sometimes I fear that maybe they are not as strong as I thought at one time to stand up against these powerful forces.  When I speak about powerful forces, I describe the greatest change that can overcome any person: the changes in what they believe, what they have faith in.

My faith has been altered on numerous occasions in this past year.  It was altered in the heart numbing experience of Rick's play with my soul.  It was altered with the loving relationship and then friendship with Dan.  It was altered by the learning of experience with Giraffe Multimedia.  It was altered by the community of bears I have been accustomed to in the past year.  It was altered by the family I have found in Bill and Danny.  It was altered by the confusion of Scott and the pain/ecstasy of Mike.  It was altered by the consistency of Alexandre.  It was altered by the comradery of Gen X Bears Toronto.  It was altered by the heartwarming feeling of the bike rally.  It was altered by the distance from Amy, my parents, my brother and friends all over this country.  It was altered by pride and what it means to be consumed by it.  It was altered by every moment I have experienced in the past year and its that type of change to faith that makes one question their position on things.

Don't get me wrong, I haven't lost my faith in me, people, the world in general.  I still believe my fundamentals, that everyone have a part of them good, that everything works out in the end, that somehow the world takes you in unexpected paths, but that doesn't mean that you were not meant to go down those paths.  By the change in my faith, I mean that maybe it has become stronger in the face of the great confusion I have experienced.  I think this is the point where I have to explain how my faith and beliefs have become more aware of the world around me

1) Sex - I used to slough this off to something that occurs only when two people are committed to each other.  From my year in Toronto, I have discovered that sex has so many different meanings to different people, the most important being the meaning it has for me.  If there were one lesson I have learned from this past year, it is that the heart for me must always follow where my sexual being goes.  It is so connected to my emotional and feeling self that its not possible to separate them.  My experiences with Dan, Scott, Rick, David, Mike, Alex and at present Raphael are defining my being in the area of sex.  It is not something to be taken lightly for me as it usually creates disillusionment and turmoil for my heart.  I have discovered that most people don't feel this conflicted, that sex is just something that happens and that its supposed to mean a good thing.  So far though, for me, it has been my achille's heel, the creator of problems.

Out of this turmoil, however, I have discovered something.  While it has been a weakness of mine, the meaning behind sex, it is also what divided me from other people I know, friends I have made.  I have become conscious of it and its power and how it creates and how it destroys.  I have become conscious of how I need to control it to remain the person I like in me.  Don't get me wrong, I have hormones like every other gay man, but when the ball drops, sex means nothing to me and when something means nothings, it probably isn't that important enough in the scheme of my life.  My heart is far more important and whether it be my career, my writing, my friends or my relationships, my heart is the part of me that I will follow, not my penis.

Now in the past year, I have increased my sexual experiences, some by quick evenings that ran a few days that have melted away in a short time.  I don't regret these things happening, but I don't place them in my pride category either.  I'm tired of a sexual partner being as disposable as a Bic razor.  As Ouisa Kittredge exclaims in Six Degrees Of Separation, I don't want these to be anecdotes, they are experiences.  I value what happened, but only as a reminder of what I don't want happening again.  I don't want quickies because in the end, my heart suffers and then I suffer.  The two have to be linked and unless that happens, they can't exist for me and those people who create those experiences for me become smaller and less significant and I can't imagine anyone sharing that experience as being anything not important.  Sex is not important, but the feelings and meanings behind it are, period.

2) Sexuality - I'm proud to be gay, but I'm more proud to be Steven.  It now has been almost three and a half years since I came out of the closet and a lot has changed for me and thankfully for the better.  When I came out, I told myself consciously that who I was after I came out and who I was before are the same person and I believe in that more now than ever.  What coming out has done for me is let me explore parts of me that I was unable to express before and completed a picture of myself than remained in pieces.

Now upon my first year in Toronto, I have begun to see my place as a gay man and in general as a person.  I don't want a role to play or a label for who I am.  I have my masculine side and I have my feminine side, both of which exist not only in gay people, but everyone I have met.  One friend described me best with an Aboriginal term, "two-spirited" which implies that I gracefully carry both traits with pride and I do.  Living in a city where people channel these two ideals so literally annoys me greatly and makes me wonder how we ever as a society can accept gender roles as being something completely of our making.

Now how I see sexuality being displayed has disturbed me in Toronto, but it has also made me see that the whole idea of static sexuality is pretty insane.  Sexuality is fluid and I have often found myself saying that I feel very ungay or non-gay from time to time.  What I mean to say is that in general I feel like me.  I don't conform well to follow a certain pattern of being and sometimes I wonder if we limit ourselves by not allowing ourselves to be instead of acting out something.  When people get to know me, they rarely know what to do with me because I seem to have my own distinct personality.  I believe we all have this uniqueness and its sad that many people don't show it.

By showing off who we are, I am basically describing who we are in light of the world.  I have never been in favour of gratuitous affection in public, but my world has been opened to affections expressed and that my comfort levels have increased.  However with my comfort levels becoming greater, my need to see that affection in every facet of my life has increased, such as our openness of our sexuality to our friends, family, workplaces and the general world.  There is a fear even in a city of five million souls that we cannot show ourselves too much or place ourselves in danger of being seen, hurt or killed.  My mentality was close to Harvey Fierstein, "visibility at all costs" and that we can't change the world if the world doesn't see us.  I have pride in being gay and I'm sure many gay people do, but that pride has to exist outside of Church Street and in our daily lives.  The ghetto of Church Street maybe a safe spot, but it may also be are way of creating another closet, only this time it's a walk-in closet for all our clothes.

3) Friends - I have met an amazing amount of people here in Toronto that it is hard to believe that I know so few people in the city itself.  For a city of 5 million, it's amazing how big and small it feels at all times.  Now it is true that most of my friends are gay and I think this was a conscious thing that happened, but by being so gay centred in this city, I have discovered how important many of my straight friends as well as ones that don't fit into the scheme of the gay male world are in my life.  I like my gay friends dearly, but I'm not a groupie type of guy, which I have learned both with the Church and Alexander crowd as well as with Gen X Bears.  I need my separation from groups from time to time and more often than not, it has nothing to do with them at all.

I have resurfaced as my most typical position in a group: the camera.  I am an observer.  I always have been since I was in elementary school.  When I sit amongst a group of people, I will often sit and watch how people react to each other, for reactions to conversation and what their personality is within the group.  I get quiet often in groups and barely utter a word unless it deems it worthy.  Amongst friends, especially these friends I have made, it is unsettling for them because they feel judged, which I guess is a fair assessment.

This observing becomes problematic in most gay situations such as bars where I abhor being around drunk people and house parties where all they talk about is sex.  I feel uncomfortable around them and it is frustrating since this encompasses gay people's lives so much.  I feel like I should be sympathizing with these people and yet they seem so foreign to me on so many occasions.  I often feel unresponsive amongst them and wish I wasn't there.  The last two occasions where this happened, I snuck out of a bar with a fake, "I don't feel well" and the other I snuck out of a crowded movie watching room and typed a portion of this article.  I feel like I am in high school hell sometimes all over again where I sit watching everyone and not understanding them like they speak in a different language that I don't pick up.

What all this confusion has left me with is a homesickness for people in Manitoba and Saskatchewan where I was before the move.  It has made me value the friends I made on the pride committee in Regina, the volleyball team who I was so proud to play with in Calgary, Darcy who was probably the best straight male friend I have ever had who I feel I am neglecting and god knows who else back home.  I miss these people so much.  However, this is not a complete mess.  Being in Toronto has granted me a great appreciation for the people back home and made me more thankful for the people I have met here.  I have many solid friendships which have become invaluable to me in my transition to the big city.

For me, however, it is Amy who is the best thing to come from my move.  She keeps believing that I am her rock when in all fact she is my rock right back.  She is my source of faith in moving here and the reason why I believe success will come eventually.  I honestly think we have become stronger people from our long distance relationship (that sounds so sexy and it so isn't) and even through miles between us, we still know each other best.  She is the constant in my life and I will do everything in my power to keep that over the distance.  She makes me believe in the power of friendship and my faith in people here is restored.  I often listen to the CD that I gave her for Christmas and made for myself back and remind myself of who she is, as confused and determined as I am to make good in the world.  There are days I can feel her everywhere and I know she thinks the same thing.  Maybe we're joined at the brain or something.  Or maybe at the heart.

4)  Family and Home - When I travelled home at Christmas, I felt that my biological family didn't understand me and in so many ways, they really don't.  I have grown so much since I was living at home that I'm sure that I am just a blur to them.  I have blamed them for not looking deeper at me, but I know the blame is more mine for not being there for them.  I miss them from time to time and although I claim to be irritated by them (which I am), I really love them more because I know they are trying and not so many families with gay children have been as lucky as I have.

From those feelings of understanding my family, I have discovered that friends at times become family and that we can have many at the same time and in different cities.  I consider many of the people like the volleyball people in Regina as well as the pride committee family because they cared about how I felt and listened to me in the way a relative should.  I consider Jason, Kevin, Roger and Danny another family in how they took me into their lives unconditionally.  I consider the volleyball team in Edmonton family in how they got excited to see me even from my time and distance away.  I consider Bill and Danny family because they treat me with respect for my views and offer me their own opinions of the world and teach me to be a better person.

I have realized in my move to Toronto that family are all the people who make you feel special in a world where often you feel insignificant.  In so many ways, this concept of family changes how I view home.  I don't consider Toronto home, not yet and I'm not sure if I ever will.  Home is something that has to grow with you and I'm not there yet.  I have many places that I have created homes and sooner or later, I will need a solid home, but right now I'm still searching.

5) Career - When I moved to Toronto, I claimed that I was moving purely for this reason, but over the past year, I have noticed that I have been less interested in this area.  I have often been so caught up in finding a place that a career seems so peripheral to me and this is upsetting to me.  I remember my first meeting with a guy named Mikey where he told me that now that I was living in the big city of Toronto, that I could finally be gay.  I uttered back in a less than cordial way that I was out in Regina, that I didn't come to Toronto to be gay, I was gay before.  However, the gay scene of Toronto has placed its grip over me and I have felt overwhelmed by it.

What does this mean to Toronto?  Well its interesting that in my search for life in Toronto, somehow along the way my beliefs have become tested and reinforced and my choices in the area of how life and my work come together have more solidified.  I have worked on a few projects for Giraffe Multimedia which gave me pleasure, but I left projects because they infringed on my principles, quite in the same way that how I chose friends, relationships and how I lived my life have been guided by my principles.  I turned down two projects that could have been big because one went in a direction not only did I not enjoy, but did not make the project of much value while the other project, a fitness show, decided to add sex to the mix and this was not a choice I wanted to be a part of.

I have decided that the places and projects I work for have two qualities: one, my own vested personal interest and two, an educating quality that benefits people.  I have been grateful for the projects I did follow because I saw their gift as well as seeing their benefit for me and these projects are pieces of which I am proud.  I have now begun to seek out places that strive for those qualities and I have decided to strive for no less.  I learned a great lesson last year when I discovered a phrase, "you work is not your life".  From this phrase comes two thoughts: one, a job is just a job and it should never leave the workplace and two, if work is something you love, then its worth doing, find your love of life in your job.

In my quest for a career, I have discovered something that I always felt ashamed to admit: I am a writer.  I have always been one, but I never took myself seriously to be considered one.  I have suddenly begun to develop a mentality that I lacked as a writer and I find myself not wanting to write like I always told people, but I have found myself needing to write, such as this article.  Writing is my way to explain things and to tell people of the world I see.  I was recently accused of not understanding the world around me since I moved, but maybe I'm understanding it from my perspective.  These are the things I write and I have understood for a long time that I write from the personal.  My writing suffers when I exclude that side of me and when I say what I want to say, there is power in the words and I feel alive.  I am a good writer and I will be a great writer one day.  This I know.

So where does this leave me upon my one year anniversary of my change in my life, my move to Toronto?  It leaves many open doors to enter, many world to see and many joys and heartbreaks to come.  I have changed in many ways, something other people haven't seen.  Only I know that.  I have seen a lot of what this place to offer and I have much more to see.  Someday it's a struggle to stay afloat when everything seems to be all over the place, when every idea you have in your head becomes aligned with more possible ideas, when beliefs are challenged and mad solid, when my heart experiences the pains of being let-down over and over only to be found in the arms of something bigger and more beautiful than I though imaginable.  I don't have a solid answers about the years ahead, but if there were one thing Toronto has taught me is this: I love myself and while it may change me in some ways, I won't let it change the person I want to be.  My roots are way too deep in other dreams to be changed by something so small as Toronto.