Lost things

I have an image in my mind that is my home.  There is a concrete frame, columns and beams, and the sense of wide floors above. The concrete feels old and it’s badly weathered, flaking in parts, exposing the rusting steelwork behind.  There are no walls, and no interior finishes though there is a sense they once might have been here. Where there once was a floor, there is now a choppy sea, rolling around under the frame, splashing the columns. Some time ago, long ago, there might have been a wall and a drawbridge. But the sea has long since removed any evidence of these.  

The sound of the wind and the waves is strong, and there is a distinct taste of salt in the air – mostly sea salt but tinged with other flavours like sweat and rust and age. Some sort of dark maroon igneous rock sits at the side of the frame, barnacle encrusted and deeply pitted, anchoring it. The frame is quite sturdy despite its clear decrepitude, and in no danger of collapse. It appears to have been ransacked, pillaged.  But the reality is this is place was abandoned well before it was looted. 

I’m not sure why but I can’t see above the frame. There is partial ceiling, again bare concrete, and there are holes in it, quite large holes with twisted, rusting reinforcing bars poking down here and there below the level of the frame.  Even though I cannot see what is above, somehow I know it is in a similar state of ruin.  I think there’s only one or maybe two floors above.  They too have no walls, but there’s a hint of remnant furnishings. It’s breezy up there and there are torn, sun bleached curtains flapping in the breeze around a pile of cushions or maybe bedding. Maybe it’s a throne from when this felt more like a castle. But it’s more Arabian than that – summery warm colours and open like a sultan’s palace vaguely reminiscent of the Red Fort in Agra. A ransacked sultan’s palace. But it’s too hard to make out.  I know it used to be quite richly appointed when that sort of thing seemed to matter. I’d like to think there was an observatory on the roof, but that would be mere conjecture. 

Off to the distance there’s a beach somewhere, around the headlands of similarly formed igneous cliffs. But it’s deserted.  I’ve never seen anyone else there, even though I know exactly who ransacked the place. Well, the first few… starting with me. After that, who can say.

I feel safe here.  There’s nothing left to destroy.  There is no value in the concrete – help yourself. The wind blows through and the sea washes in, but that’s how it is. How it should be.  Gently scouring the surfaces. No one lives here now.

Somewhere, far away is a man with a hooded robe and a backpack.  His face is shrouded. I see him occasionally looking back, but I don’t know exactly what he looks like. I cannot see his face but he is often grinning. If he were a tarot card he would be the Hierophant or perhaps the Hanged Man. He has some of my home with him as well, in the backpack. The valuable portable things that also say home. Not gold and gems, but things that have a special resonance. Things that marked and witnessed particular events. I can’t tell you exactly what they are – some are metal, some fabric, weird trinkets like bottlecaps, ticket stubs and corners of playing cards. 

I don’t know where he is taking them. Perhaps he is keeping them safe, constantly on the move, away from the ransackers and pirates.  Perhaps he has taken them for himself. Maybe he is condemned, exiled. Or perhaps he is free. Maybe these are the items that he will bring back at some future time, when the frame is renewed and the spalling concrete patched and repaired, the sea calmed and drained from the foundations. Or perhaps he and these trinkets need to exist elsewhere. Like fixed moments in time, they need to happen, and they need to exist. Eventually they will decay and corrode. But they can neither be destroyed or returned.  Perhaps they will recombine and witness new moments far into the future.

It brings me great calm that he has these things. And that I do not know where he is. I sometimes wonder if that is me under the hooded robe, hiding in plain sight somewhere. If that is me, then who am I? And why do I keep remembering this frame in the ocean so far away.

MADness

It’s a brave man that goes digging around in gay relationships.  I don’t mean anything more than a couple of gentle questions – you wont need a shovel and a pick. After my umpteenth romantic failure I made it a bit of a habit out of it. Like Danté, I had found myself lost and unable to find the “straight way” (diritta via) to salvation (yes, technically, also translatable as "right way" but you see my point). Perhaps I was searching for my own answers. Perhaps I was hoping for a role model - a template I could roll out at some future time should the opportunity ever catch me off guard again. No sense reinventing the wheel – surely some of the men living in Sydney must have found at least some of the answers. Let me tell you it is a line of inquiry that could just as easily have carried above its gate the same inscription Danté found. 

Try it if you dare. Be kind. Life, even easy life, is hard. Ask gentle, reasonable questions about why they stay together, how often are they intimate, are they happy. Are they like affordable flat-pack furniture: underneath the beautiful thin veneer of mahogany all offcuts, chipboard and glue - sturdy so long as it all stays dry? Or are they like a Balinese villa – completely open to catch the trade breezes?  Can you ever really tell what’s going on inside a relationship unless you are in it? Even if you are in it? Every relationship it seems has its own individual arrangements and fine print. Often it seems each party has a different contract, a different set of rules. Or perhaps they’ve just never read the rules, just agreed on face value, and let finer points be most oft observed in the breach: Special clauses written on the go, subtle changes to wordings, never spoken about, but cajoled into existence. Ask them. Inquire.

I can count on one hand the number of gay relationships I know that are based on any kind of demonstrable honesty, trust, or integrity. It seems to me that the rest of them are an art form of coercion, of intimidation and subterfuge. You see them out at brunch, smiling and shaking hands like Reagan and Brezhnev, posing for the cameras. But later they’re at separate sides of the sofa blocking each other on Scruff. Perhaps there was genuine love and attraction at some point, early on. Perhaps deep down they still remember it. But now it’s a state of political hostility characterised by implied threats, plausible absences and other measures just short of open warfare. Then they return home to their designer apartments with the mortgage payment neither could individually afford, and the 1000 count Egyptian cotton bed linen that is a more loving caress than either of them still have for each other. 

These are not the model relationships the counsellors and the self-help books tell us about.  These are the antithesis: Relationships built on the complete absence of trust. A kind of détente. How could this be? Is this even possible? It is a familiar scenario to anyone who like me grew up in the 1980s.  It is called a cold war.

Perhaps the pinnacle of cold war strategy is the doctrine of mutually assured destruction - MAD. It is based on the theory of deterrence where the threat of using strong weapons against the enemy prevents the enemy's use of those same weapons. In its ultimate expression, the full-scale use of high-yield weapons of mass destruction by two or more opposing sides would cause the complete annihilation of both the attacker and the defender – annihilating humanity. Is the cold war alive and well, and living at a domestic scale in apartments throughout Darlinghurst, Potts Point and Waterloo? The fear of being left driving acceptance of almost any behaviour, and the thought of leaving always just below the surface and justifying almost any kind of behaviour. Actually leaving though – this is a horror far too uncomfortable to contemplate, far too destructive for either part – that would be madness! So it is a power always held in reserve. 

Despite concern over the hair trigger that the United States or the Soviet Union might possess, and that was a very real concern in the 1980s, when it came down to it, neither side went through with launching their missiles. This was proven on a few particularly gut-wrenching occasions like the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962. I suspect it’s the same for gay men and their infidelities, betrayals and designer apartment lifestyles.
MAD, however, didn’t exactly create an atmosphere in which Soviet premiers and American presidents were great companions. The nations had very little trust in each other – with good reason. Each side was steadily building its arsenal to remain an equal party in the MAD doctrine. They were like two gunslinging foes, adrift alone in a lifeboat, each armed and unwilling to sleep. Sound familiar?

Mutually Assured Destruction. And yet, it was arguably the greatest period of stability and prosperity the world has ever known. I can’t help but think that this may the best I have to look forward to. Stability, prosperity and détente. "Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch'intrate".