“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.”
They told me I was different. I felt different too. But they also told me that I was an image of you, and you have many manifestations – some odd 30 million forms and kinds. I certainly believed that I’m at least one of them. But today these, these other images made by you make me feel like an artifact worth display and open to unjust criticism. They say I have absolutely no use for the society and its evolution.
You, those that god made, call me a “Homo.” That is exactly where my identity starts and ends for you like there is nothing more worth elaborating about me. As if me and my kind are a single product of manufacturing with no features what so ever. My achievements and my accomplishments come much later (if at all) and my sexuality is being given away first as if in a warning. I do not have a problem with my sexuality coming first and then me, but I think you got the order of priority wrong. I am a minority category and thanks to you I feel exotic in my own home in a not-so-good way.
Today I am an item of undesired and wrong prejudices. Some tell what is right for me and some tell me what is wrong. Some adore me today like a naive child, fallen or worse through the pitiful emotions that they view me, the kind triggered by a special child. I see such remorse and concern in the eyes of my loved ones. It comes across that today they feel sorry for what I am. Today they are made to feel that my own being isn’t good for my existence. I cringe and I feel low.
You have gone to the extent of calling me names and by default I now have a criminal record. Your crimes are concealed and my virtues are soiled.
Do you know what I never wanted? I never wanted to come out on the streets with my kind bearing colorful flags and trumpets. I never wanted to be ridiculed for this little part of me, which is not a commonality. I never wanted to be a voice screaming and shouting for acceptance. I wanted to be invisible. Invisibility and the quest of it is what made me this feisty hurt canine. A private life is what I wanted with a man of my choice. To go out and come back without raised eyebrows. To share a bench in a park with my better half comforted by a spot on his shoulder. I wanted to live with no liabilities to “come out.” Foolish me that sometimes jokingly I even entertained the idea of my parents finding me a boy and arranging the union. I wanted to be as invisible as the street cat. To eat, sleep and grow old just like the others but with a man. Consensually.
Some years back with the high court ruling, I thought that recognizing my rights and decriminalizing my idea of love would make my kind and me invisible in the coming years- invisibility not of the kind that didn’t matter but like similar flowers of a single garland. A tulip in a field of tulips. No difference and discrimination between me and my lover and the couple next door.
Today, you have insulted me enough. You took away what you gave me, which in the first place was never yours. A thief and a scoundrel you are. You looted me under the pretence of societal morals and ethics and trapped me in the technicalities of words. You stripped me off my soul and you enraged me.
I would not say that I wasn’t sad but I feel revengeful and conspiring more than ever before. This visible fight for my invisibility is more throbbing than ever before. My heart is wounded and my veins ruptured. I shall rub it against the coarseness of your hypocrital standards to not let the bleeding stop for it reminds me of you and how you wronged me. Now you have given me a new purpose. The cultural weave that you blame on me to have loosened and bleached, I shall reinstate. I shall be human about it with all emotions in place. You, in the coming days of historic characteristics will see me cry, howl, screech and scream. I shall bend down if I have to and will snatch if needed. But you will never see me give up or weak.
I shall have a lover of the same sex. I shall foster a family in your seeming autocratic regime and hope the adopted offspring are gay too. I will be the most functional and focused criminal you have ever seen. I will kill you by my kindness and shall hurt you with my words. I, in all my senses welcome your decision as a competitive game. I was making love to a man when you passed the “judgment” and only making love more to other men will get me through this. This double standard and hypocrisy shall end before I do and I will make sure that my gay children and grandchildren will not have to see this. A quarter of my life was wasted in coming out and fighting myself and now probably another quarter will be wasted to fight you.
My fight for invisibility will be more visible than ever before. I know I will win. So good luck you and all the best.
