Gay or Straight: A Choice?

I don't have Writer's Block, any more than I have Talker's Block (something many people wish I did have, periodically). Give me a subject and I'll discuss it, whether in speaking or in writing! But with so much crap going on right now, I am feeling rather blase about blogging.

Don't get me wrong! I am as interested in you as I've ever been. My life remains interesting as well (although perhaps a little too interesting).

After all, I could talk about the various debacles that are occurring right now. For instance, I have rotting rats peppered throughout my kitchen; behind walls, under cabinets, and in drawers. Only my intrepid next-door neighbor, a seasoned Vietnam vet, is willing to find and remove the corpses. I haven't been able to cook in there for a week. But do I blog about it? Heck no! It's rather horrid, and I'm burned out about it. Thank heavens it hasn't been so cold that I have to keep my windows shut. I'd have to move out at that point!

I could whine about my businesses. But, I also don't wish to be too specific. So, how could I whine effectively? Besides, whining doesn't take care of issues. It just inflicts small portions of misery on everyone else and I will be no less miserable for sharing.

Of course, I could tell funny stories and thus distract both myself and you, but I'm not feeling particularly funny on this cold, grey, wet winter day. And I'm not inspired to craft clever dialogue or witty repartee.

Still, this blog was born from a desire to enrich your life as well as mine. And today, I feel that I am not living up to that goal.

So, let me leave you with a very interesting excerpt from a Robert B. Parker novel ("Widow's Walk") which I just finished reading. Consider it food for thought. I have many gay and straight friends who will be interested in this fictional discussion.

Let me briefly set it up for you: There are four people having dinner together. One, Susan, is a brilliant counselor (who is modelled on Robert Parker's real-life wife). Another is her main squeeze and the protagonist of the book; Spencer (a private detective).

Susan is very upset, because a young patient of hers just killed himself. She is discussing this with Spencer and his friend Hawk, and Hawk's girlfriend-of-the-month, Estelle. Let's listen in:

"Do you know why he killed himself?"

"He was gay, and he didn't want to be," Susan said. "That's why he was seeing me. He desperately wanted to be straight."

"Isn't that a little outside the scope of your service?" I said.

As she talked, she began to focus on the subject, as she always did, and in doing so she came back into control.

"It is hideously incorrect to say that one can help people change their sexual orientation. But in fact I have had some success, in doing just that."

"Helping gay people to be straight?" Estelle was startled.

"Or straight people to be gay. I've had some success doing both. The trick is over time to find out where they want to go, and where they can go, and try to achieve one without violating the other."

"I've never heard of that," Estelle said.

She was genuinely interested, but there was that sound in her voice that doctors get which says, in effect, "If I haven't heard of it, it's probably wrong."

"No one is willing to incur the vast outrage that would ensue," Susan said.

"It's your experience," Hawk said.

"One ought not to have such an experience," Susan said. "And if one were stupid enough to have it, one should surely not talk about it."

"Shrinks, too," I said.

"Hard to believe," Hawk said.

"We've all known people who were married," Susan said, "and left the marriage for a same-sex lover. Why is it so impossible to imagine it happening the other way?"

"But who would be gay, if they could choose?" Estelle said.

"That is, of course, the existing prejudice," Susan said. "But it also implies that those who led straight lives could have chosen not to before they did."

Estelle didn't look too pleased about existing prejudice, but she didn't remark on it.

"I guess, as I think of it, that if a gay person entered into a straight relationship I'd assume it was only a cover-up."

"As if gay is permanent but straight is tenuous," Susan said.

"I hadn't thought of it quite that way before," Estelle said.

Susan nodded. "It's a hard question," she said.