Naked and Home Again

The delightful difference between, f*ck you, and I see you.

Dorothy said it best, “There’s no place like home; there’s no place like home; there’s no place like home…”

Over the past several weeks, while I chose to find evidence that gay men’s spaces are rare and under attack, I forgot about the options still available to treat my gay loneliness.

Instead, I rode the dopamine rush of the negative news in general and, specifically, the internal LGBTQ+ coalition struggles we are now facing.

Focusing on what was missing gave me plenty of evidence that my gay loneliness was someone else's fault, that they needed to change for me to be happy.

Creating and blaming an enemy is a vicious, inescapable spiral of doom. It made me blind to my personal agency. It stunted my ability to act on my own behalf.

Instead of feeling empowered, I came to believe that if THEY don’t change, I can’t be happy. I’m stuck, and it’s their fault. I must sit here and tap tap tap at them until they acquiesce and hand me happiness.

This paradigm is the lifeblood of social media.

Without it, the addictive dopamine/adrenaline high attained from reading and replying to our side and attacking their side doesn’t have the same payoff. But it’s terrible for us.

Aidan Wharton’s Substack, Gay Buffet, What’s Growing in Your Brain post woke me up to what I thought I already knew but had definitely not been practicing. The media we consume shapes how we see the world. We grow ideas like, we live in a (fill in the blank: dangerous, hostile, lonely, beautiful, etc.) world.

After the debilitating ick I felt while defending my us/them positioning here on Substack (see my last three posts), I had a moment of clarity and asked for help. A fellow gay who is a master practitioner in body work and mindful healing is who I turned to. I’ve known him socially for years and watched him take his years of training seriously. After a session with him, I told him what I was looking for and what I was opposed to, and he suggested a way to find what I was looking for. He suggested a tantra group on Meetup.

Moving towards what I was looking for as opposed to moving away from what I was against reopened options I had forgotten about while being pissed at THEM.

One of the options for hanging out with gay dudes is Naked Warrior Yoga in West Hollywood. It’s not on Meetup. It’s a commercial venue. I know the owners, and we both explored opening naked gay men’s yoga studios a few years back. They did it. I did not.

I rode past their business on my motorcycle every time I went to the gym, oblivious to the neon marque NAKED WARRIOR YOGA because I was stewing in my righteous indignation that these places do not exist.

So, I signed up for a class.

As instructed on the website, I arrived early, chatted a bit with the very kind and very cute instructor and co-owner Christopher, undressed and stored my belongings, and found a place for my mat in the front and center part of the room. I stretched and moved my body so that I could watch other men arrive, disrobe, and find places for their mats. I was happy to feel that I was happy to see them all naked. There was a lot of beauty in the diverse bodies and faces, quietly attending to the ritual of transitioning from the outside world into this rare space.

Christopher sat cross-legged, smiling as he faced the room of men sitting with their gazes in his direction. He invited us to match his seated position. I was positioned directly in front of him; we were mirror images of each other. An intimate, erotic, and empathic sensation washed through me.

We were instructed to close our eyes and breathe.

With my eyes closed, the image of Christophere’s fit body and floppy cock rested like a reverse photo image in my mind’s eye as I followed his instructions to take in expansive breaths, feel grounded to the earth where my pelvic floor connects to the earth and open to the Universe through the crown of my head. The sound of twelve men’s synchronized breathing expanded my sense of self, filling the universe, for a moment, with connection.

I was home again.

I’ve been back to Nake Warrior Yoga three times this week. And I look forward to moving toward other offerings I’ve identified on Meetup.

The yoga term Namaste literally means “I bow to you,” with a California tradition of adding, “The light in me sees and honors the light in you.”

I look forward to deliberately moving toward more of that while deliberately ghosting media messages tempting me to focus my attention on the haters.