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".