The media has recently focused a great deal of energy on the issue of LGBT youth suicide. To be honest, I am not sure why. That isn’t to say that I don’t think the problem isn’t both enormous and heart-rending, because I do (see: “Our Kids Are Dying”- Barking Shaman 9/29/10). However, according to The Trevor Project, suicide completions are not notably up in our community, the media has just suddenly taken notice.

One response, and a response that I support, is Dan Savage’s “It Get’s Better Project.” Not a solution, or even a band-aid, his project ideally brings a small bit of hope to folk who don’t have any. But that hope is generally tempered with the reality that for kids already in crisis, their situation will remain poor until they can get out of their home and school environments and start a new life. This misses out on an essential point in my opinion:

It’s already better. Not for everyone I’ll be the first to admit, and I think we’re working on that, but things are changing.

I came out as gay (I now identify as “queer”) at fourteen in 1994; I had been attracted to boys my whole life. The following was my “coming out” conversation “Mom, what would you say if I told you I was gay?” To which she replied “Are you?” I said “Yes,” she hugged me, a little misty eyed, and told me she loved me and didn’t care who I brought home as long as they were Jewish. When I left my milk religion several years later it was far more tumultuous than when I came out as queer, which, as you can see, wasn’t really tumultuous at all.

I am thirty now, and my experiences coming out and growing up in my queer identity have been quite different than those of someone who is forty or fifty.

I recently went on a date with a twenty year old, born ten years to the day after me. When I asked him what it was like being out as gay in rural New Hampshire he replied “Well it was hard in elementary school because I was the only out gay kid so I felt pretty alone, but by middle and high school it was fine.”

At that moment I realized that his experience was, in its way, as different from mine as mine was from the generation before me. He had never known a time when the Plague stalked our community bringing swift and brutal death (I was too young to be an active part of the community, but I certainly remember), he’d always had out queer people on television, and for him it was a given that by the time he’d ready to be married he would have the right to do so (in my opinion a naïve view). I don’t think he has ever known anyone who has been disowned by their family for being LGBT.

I am not trying to say for a moment that people in our community, are not suffering. Especially our children, the most vulnerable and hardest for us to reach. But let us not loose sight of how damn far we’ve come and how steady our progress continues to be.

Every few months the LGBT, or sometimes the mainstream media, runs a story about a parent who beats a young child to try to make him “straighter” or more “manly.” This is tragic and as a culture we need to have a discussion around the issue. But that discussion is incomplete without the other side. Let me tell you about one of my favorite childhood memories:

When I was ten years old, my parents picked me up from religious school one Saturday morning and drove us into Boston. I don’t remember the reason they gave, other than that it was ill defined and I didn’t care because I had MegaMan on my Gameboy. As we rounded the corner to Tremont St. my mother pointed out the sign for the Wang Theater which had a prominent sign advertising that the touring production of “A Chorus Line” was currently playing there. I was a little slow on the uptake, and my dad had to spell out that that was where we were going, at which point by all accounts I went crazy in a ten-year-old sort of way.

“Chorus Line” was my whole life at ten, I danced around the house to it, sang along to the tape until I wore it out and had to buy another copy, and I’ll freely admit, a good bit of it went over my head. Seeing the show was a highlight of my childhood.

For every story of a parent beating their non-conforming child to death, where are the stories of parents surprising their non-conforming kids with third row seats to the show of their dreams?

As we move forward in the discussion around how to make things better for people who are struggling on our community, it is vital that we not loose sight of how much progress we have made, of how much better things already are.

My Dark Odyssey Summer Camp attendee bracelet started to crack this afternoon, which is the Universe’s way of saying I really have to sit down and write this. And yes, I realize that it is also, it’s the Universe’s way of saying “Hey stupid, those bracelets really aren’t meant to be worn for twenty days!”

I have asked myself repeatedly why I have not taken off my attendee bracelet, and I keep coming back to the idea that D.O. Summer Camp 2010 was an important event for me. Rather than say that I experienced a great deal of personal growth at the event, I’d say a great deal of growth I’ve been doing crystallized for me there. I guess in some ways that little piece of purple plastic represents a lot of positive change in my life over the last few years, and the last year in particular. This piece of writing will instead take its place, thought and ideas being far more durable than cheap synthetics.

Some thoughts that came out of the last year, and DOSC in particular:

* People care about me. There have been some new mysterious medical issues going on with me that are as yet unresolved. The outpouring of support from people in the community who knew about my fears and concerns was overwhelming. Living in rural NH, and near Boston, a city & community that my partner and I just can’t seem to forge a connection with, it is easy to think of myself as being relatively isolated or having a pretty small circle of friends and family of choice. The realization that people even knew who I was was pretty shocking (my classes are popular for what they are, namely specialized, but I’m not a huge draw). I know that some of this is due to my issues with self esteem, but the feeling of welcoming and belonging I got from everyone will help sustain me during the winter isolation in NH.

* My Work is benefiting the community. For a long time, I’ve known that the kink/BDSM community was one of the places where I felt drawn to do my spiritual Work as a shaman, and to a lesser extent as a magician. This has been a goal of mine that I’ve been working towards, but at DOSC it really hit home that somewhere along the line, without even realizing it, I had found my way into doing it. At Camp, I know that I provided valuable service to individuals in the community in the form of spiritual counseling, ordeal ritual, healing ritual, and the “Ritual for the Breaking of Energetic Ties” that I ran. It was highly fulfilling Work, and being an accepted and valued part of the community for doing it is not something that every spirit worker or shaman gets to experience.

* I have come into my own in terms of BDSM skills. Within the areas that I specialize in (which are admitted relatively narrow) I am quite good at what I do. Being a good player is a constant learning process and I’m always trying to expand the breadth of my skills as well learn new twists on the skill sets that I already have. That said however, within my comfort zones, I know my shit and it’s ok to take pride in that.

* I’ve become comfortable with (and fond of) the title of “Sir.” This is a pretty new thing to me, I haven’t publicly identified with this type of power dynamic up until recently. Interestingly, until now I have not said anything about it, but something in the signals I give must have changed, since at the last few events I’ve done people have started using “Sir” with me. I’m also rapidly learning that, at least for a spirit worker, the “Sir” hat comes with restrictions and obligations like any other spiritual role.

* People are attracted to me (although I still don’t notice flirting 9/10 times). I grew up as the obese-barking-queer-nerd and somewhere inside that’s still how I think of myself. To be fair, other than the “obese” part those are all pretty much still true. I am not entirely sure why I am continually surprised that people are attracted to me, although a certain segment of the population whom I am quite attracted to continues not to notice my existence. I am working on getting over the whole being “surprised when someone is interested in me thing” in part because I think it’s an unflattering personality trait in myself.

* I can function (and have fun) without my partner. As someone whose been struggling with challenges related to serious health issues for many years, not to mention being shy, this was a pretty big revelation in itself. The fact that I could both make things happen on my own, and ask for help from others when I needed it was quite literally liberating. More importantly, if I can be more independent, that frees him up to enjoy himself more when we are at events together.

So how do I write this without sounding like a whinny bitch? I spent a good five minutes trying to figure that out before deciding that perhaps I would simply allow a bit of whine to leak out, so I apologize in advance. -WST

The last year has taught me some interesting lessons about life, relationships, polyamory, and what I’m looking for in my emotional and romantic life.

A year ago my primary relationship, a poly triad that had existed for over eight years, ended when our husband left us. I’m sure I don’t have to elaborate that this sucked. Hard. It was a complicated situation, made much more complicated and difficult by the ways in which our spiritual Work and our relationship overlapped, or more accurately were interdependent.

In the time since our husband left, I’ve come to accept that there was much about our relationship that was not healthy for any of us. Although I miss him terribly, in the past year I’ve been free to be myself in ways that he never allowed me, and I’m more comfortable in my skin than I ever was when I had to closely modulate my behavior for his comfort. Likewise, while the three of us were together my remaining partner was not permitted to explore his gender identity, and the divorce, painful as it was, freed him to begin the process of transitioning.

We have also greatly expanded our extended poly family. The people who we consider to be “family” have enriched our lives in a way that I never really imagined, and brought me many unexpected joys.

Through that though, there has been an aching hole in our lives, and fear for our future. My partner Fire and I are not cut out to be a primary dyad. We liked being part of a triad, it was the relationship we were looking for from the time we first got together, and we looked for a 3^rd for two and a half years before we found our now-ex-husband, and only then with divine assistance.

Most of our friends and family have told us that another triad is likely just not going to happen. Most unicorn hunters never catch a prey, lest catch two, and a queer guy who’s down with cis & trans guys, on the same page with our spiritual and magical Work, poly (because we’re not giving up our extended poly family for anything), and very kinky, is a pretty tough beast to find. There are even more considerations, but I’m not going into all of them here, and to be honest, some of those things could be worked around and others not-so-much.

People have been telling us that we should just enjoy our extended family and be a dyad, or each get a boy or sub, and while I in particular would like a submissive, it is not a substitute dynamic, but an additional relationship. We’ve been accused of simply trying to “replace” our ex-husband, an accusation I find odd, and uniquely poly. When a monogamous person gets divorced and expresses a desire to remarry in the future they are rarely told that they are merely trying to replace their old relationship.

The three of us got together when we were in college, a simpler and more direct time in our lives. A time when we’d never heard the term “polyamory” and didn’t know that there other people out there doing what we were doing. Strangely, I find it much harder to imagine finding a third primary today, steeped in poly, queer, and kink community, than I did then. Maybe because now I know the odds and then I was ignorant.

There is of course another factor in the discussion, and that is my Patron. She had a pretty big hand in making the triad happen in the first place and She has given indication that She would have a hand in doing so again. But that brings matters of faith into the discussion, a hard thing to do when the people you love and trust are telling you that you’ll never have the kind of relationship that you desire again.

I am not saying that if we found ourselves in another kind of relationship that was fulfilling, we’d abandon it simply because it was not a primary triad. That would be foolish and self destructive. However, we know that the triangle as a core relationship is a form that works for us, and a dyad does not.

I know that our friends and family are trying to be helpful and supportive when they tell us to forget about having a triad in the future. I know that they are warning us off from chasing unicorns and missing out on other wonderful possibilities that don’t quite fit a particular vision. We aren’t looking with singular focus, but letting go of the idea of a multi-person primary is a heart wrenching idea.

I don’t know what the future will bring. There are days when I have hope, and days when I have faith (not always the same days) and other days when the statistical reality of what we desire brings with it a crushing feeling of loss.

I know that Fire and I were lucky, we got together looking for a third and we found someone and while it ended rough, it wasn’t always that way. I hope it isn’t asking too much of the gods and of our Lady in particular to have that stroke of Luck a second time.

Our kids are dying.

I don’t know any other way to say it. The recent rash of queer youth suicides, or at least the rash of reporting about queer youth suicides, I’m not sure that the actual numbers are so atypical, have left me feeling helpless and angry.

I like direct action, situations where I know what to do, or at least what I’d like to do. Fuck, I like a situation I can look at and say “eh, in a perfect world I’d put a bullet in that guy there and things would be better.” This isn’t one of those situations.

Sure the list of hatefully bigoted assholes I wouldn’t mind providing with a high-velocity trepanning is pretty long, but it won’t save our kids. It might shut up a few gloating fuckers who take to the airwaves and blogs to profit by their deaths, with their ranting about how each suicide “proves” that we’re unhealthy, emotionally unstable, not right with their god, or that being queer inherently makes us more likely to die young. But there would still be another dead kid.

I’m one of the biggest supporters of religious freedom you’ll ever find. But we live in a melting pot and you don’t get to huddle behind religious freedom when it comes to making someones life a living hell because you don’t agree with them. As a non-Christian, it’s a daily struggle for me to remind myself that these kids blood is on the hands of right wing extremists, not on Jesus’. It would be easy for me to brand all those of the Christian faith as hateful, because the bigots who gloat and profit over our children’s deaths use their Christianity as a justification for the poison in their own hearts. But our kids would still be dying, and blind hate can only breed blind hate.

I believe in Dan Savage’s “It Get’s Better Project.” But I also know that for many out there, it’s just not enough. The promise of a bright future can’t wash away the shadows of the present for too many of our youth. I don’t think that this is a situation that has a legislative solution either. Frankly, there are already federal laws regarding bullying and school safety, but clearly they aren’t doing what we need.

I can’t have children. From a biological standpoint it’s impossible and from a practical and emotional one, I worry that my health issues and the life I live aren’t suited to raising a child. Maybe it’s because of this that I feel a special connection to the younger generation of queer youth. They are surrogates for the children I’ll never have. Every new death is a twisting knife in my chest. I envy Dan for having been able to have some impact on the situation, no matter how small.

Whatever we’re doing (or not doing) clearly isn’t enough. We’re on the verge of being accepted into the armed services, we can get married in a handful of states, our jobs are protected in much of the country, at least if we aren’t transgendered, in which case our situation is still far more dire, and the majority of Americans seem to feel like we deserve to be treated like human beings (if not fully equal ones). It’s probably safe to say that there’s never been a better time to be a queer adult in this country.

But our kids are still dying, and if we don’t care about it, no one will.

I created Barking Shaman to write about the odd experiences and perspectives that go hand in hand with the atypical life that I lead. It was supposed to be a place where I could express my insights and views in a way that people could find interesting and enjoyable. Essays have ranged from purely funny (the Nexium commercial you’ll never see) to ones that maybe made a difference, such as the one about the Southern Poverty Law Center which actually led to a dialog with the SPLC.

But life is about unintended consequences. If you go back to the beginning of this blog a read the essays in order you’ll find that my writing gets steadily better for a time, levels out, and then gets steadily worse. The essays get more and more stilted, and the humor bleeds away like blood from a wound.

Notes From a Barking Shaman has, quite by accident, chronicled my worsening pain, and steadily increased dependence on narcotic pain meds, all through the changes that those meds have made in my personality. There is little humor in my essays now, not because I find the world to be a bleak place due to my situation (although if I did, few would blame me at this point) but because I quite literally don’t feel all that much in the way of emotions, a common side effect of regular narcotic usage. More importantly, the cognitive side effects make stringing my thoughts together and writing them down quite difficult right now, and this blog is not at the top of my priority list for writing. Typing itself has also become agonizingly painful, and I typically write via voice dictation, which (for a number of reasons at the moment) is a clumsy and time consuming method.

I am a contributing writer at the spirit worker blog Gods’ Mouths, and the ordeal worker blog Blood for the Divine. I don’t contribute there as often as I would like for the above reasons, but when I look at my limited resources, they take priority over Barking Shaman.

I am embroiled in a quixotic fight with my insurance company to get approval for a radically different pain management system, a computerized implant. I had a 30 day trial implant last year and it eliminated %80 of my pain, allowing me to go off of my narcotics entirely. However, while the insurance company was happy to pay for the trial procedure, they won’t pay for the actually implantation surgery.

If the situation changes, and through this or another means I can go off of my pain drugs, I will resume writing here. Silly as it may sound, I loved writing here and I miss it.

In the meantime, please look through the old essays. With few exceptions they aren’t time or date sensitive. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them.

Wintersong Tashlin
June, 7 2009
New Hampshire