Gays Handcuff Themselves to the Standard Narrative

How our fear of feeling "less than" leads to following society's standard set of rules that aren't working for anyone.

When I was 20 years old, I moved to California to be gay. 

I planned to leave all the rules of small-town Idaho behind by dropping the standard narrative I grew up with to pursue a professional ballet career. But, even though I traded in my priesthood Sunday suit for ballet tights, the mental and emotional download I received up until then dictating what is right and wrong rumbled incessantly under the surface of my agreeable gay smile. 

It was agitation born from an unconscious overheating of my still-developing, overclocked prefrontal cortex. It was trying to sort out my surrender to being gay, with persistent ruminations of Idaho morality messages and a daily avalanche of new media telling me I was “less than” for going with the gay thing. 

On the surface, I lived a simple story. I grew up Mormon, came out as gay, and moved to California. Now, I live the dream. 

The reality in my gut, heart, and head were different. 

Only now, 39 years later, at 59, do I realize that every act of pleasure was a wild swing trying to dissipate the persistent rebukes telling me my choices were wrong and people who made such choices ended up alone and unloved. 

Every act of gayness, from walking in Pride parades to using lots of sibilant Ss to wearing short shorts to using the pronouns “gurl,” “she,” and “her” for every queer I knew, all included an unconscious prayer to the Universe, hoping my blatant gayness would empower me somehow. 

My lifestyle changed, and I thought I’d left behind all that hand-wringing and second-guessing. 

I was wrong. 

Unconsciously, I still trusted the standard narrative more than my own agency. 

Let’s use monogamy as an example. 

My first long-term live-in boyfriend (when I was 21) and I suffered from the standard narrative idea that monogamy was the only way to be in a relationship. We know now that we were both having sex outside of the relationship. That led to a wad of keys thrown across the room hard enough to leave a fist-sized divot in the drywall next to my head, personal belongings being destroyed (by me), and my shirt ripping off my body as I pulled away from my boyfriend’s grip on it before I ran shirtless down our condo stairs towards the night waves beating on the sandy beaches of Dana Strands Beach just south of Laguna Beach. 

So! Much! Drama! 

That is not surprising, considering all the episodes of Dynasty I watched shoulder-to-shoulder with my fellow gays. Clothes ripping off screaming queens in an over-privileged condo development seemed normal.  

I had no idea all the drama was avoidable. 

If we’d had the capacity to honest from the start, we would have both received what we wanted: a loving partner with whom to explore life, sex, and everything else, no monogamy required. 

But we never questioned the standard narrative edict regarding relationship monogamy. 

I didn’t ask myself why I, Mike Gerle, wanted monogamy. I just assumed it was the only way to be in a relationship. 

I didn’t know I had that freedom. 

I just knew that cheaters are terrible people, that those who enjoy and pursue sex are bad, that queers need to stay out of the way of non-queers, and that a man doing anything feminine (mannerisms, speech, being a receptive partner) is demeaning. 

The standard narrative is an insidious force influencing who we have sex with, what we eat, who we hang out with, what kind of car we drive, how we decorate our home, the clothes we wear, how often we post on social media, as well as all the relationships we have: familial, professional, and sexual. 

It is a community’s collective moral agreement regarding what is right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, to be celebrated or ridiculed. 

In this song called The Four Agreements, the standard narrative is called “Society’s Dream.” 

Every country, city, neighborhood, family, club, and organization has its own standard narrative, which feeds the larger narrative. There is also a global narrative, but I’m only looking at the standard narrative in North America, with a particular focus on how it affects a gay man’s internal and external struggle with sexuality. 

Even gays in North America internalize these dictates. 

In relationships, the standard narrative says people who are straight, beautiful, parents, married, coupled (not single), monogamous, and prioritize their biological families ARE BETTER THAN gay, ugly, childless, unmarried, single, pleasure-seeking, and chosen-family-centric people. 

In sex, it says limiting pleasure, being a man, HIV-, masculine presenting, and topping (insertive) IS BETTER THAN enjoying pleasure, being a woman, HIV+, feminine presenting, and bottoming (receptive). 

In economics, it says powerful, wealthy, famous, and 9-to-5 workers ARE BETTER THAN people without power, with limited resources, few followers, and non-degreed professions.  

So, as a poor, single, pleasure-seeking, vers-bottom, working as a barback without a college degree, my social clout was pretty low. 

Well, that’s not entirely true.

After that breakup, I placed my 25-year-old self in a gay bar called Revolver in the gay mecca of West Hollywood, where my tall, white, blonde beauty opened doors. 

Beauty, money, and power all have a particularly strong effect on North American humans, making them compliant with the wishes of those who possess one or more of those “better than” attributes. This is why losing beauty can really hurt if you don’t find something other than the standard narrative on which to build your self-worth. 

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It turns out that the part of our brains “responsible for skills like planning, prioritizing, and making good decisions” does not fully develop until our mid to late twenties. 

One of the last places in the brain to mature [is] the prefrontal cortex… It is where we process moment-to-moment input from our surroundings, compare that input to past experiences, and then react to them. It is where we manifest our insight, foresight, and planning capabilities into the actions that define who we are. (source)

Until then, we function on the exterior programming we receive from parents, teachers, preachers, and media through the standard narrative. 

It explains why, on a recent gay cruise, I got mixed vibes from a beautiful, sub-30s guy. Dancing ass out in tennis shoes, a jockstrap, harness, and baseball hat, he was hard to read. There was a slutty, “please touch me” edge to him interwoven with a standard narrative “don’t treat me like a slut” or, more accurately, “I can’t be seen as slutty” vibe. I received a lot of come here, go away, come here, go away, come here, go away body language from him. 

That’s drama waiting to happen, so I found other guys to dance with. 

It turns out he was a Down-Low-Sluty-Gay who required his friends to be out of view before saying yes to going downstairs to our cabin. 

Five minutes into his visit... “I came.” was said flatly, with him still inside as the perfunctory motion of his hips ceased. 

With the effusiveness of a daily Metro bus commuter, he did not moan, giggle, or laugh.

That makes me sad for guys like him. 

I blame that squarely on the oppressive effects of the standard narrative. 

When sexual pleasure is bad, people who seek it are bad, and being gay is bad; it’s no wonder many men repress the euphoric experience of pleasure and release. 

Showing delirious gratitude and vulnerability when waves of pleasure pass between you and another dude is antithetical to standard narrative dogma. So, this guy who paid more money to be on a gay cruise than he would have on a straight one found it necessary to limit his enjoyment of the adventure. 

DON’T DO THAT! 

Make your own choices. 

Choose the rules you want to live by. Don’t let the rules of the standard narrative choose for you.

George Carlin was right when he said, “Of all the things you can do to a person, giving someone an orgasm is hardly the worst thing in the world.”  

Sorry for being preachy. I’m feeling my daddy-ness right now and somehow want to forcefully download this information and attitude into all the gays out there limiting themselves in order to pacify a narrative that’s not particularly healthy for gays. In fact, it’s not all that healthy for the non-gays, as divorce rates indicate. 

Yes, it is more work to live outside of the standard narrative, but that challenge is why so many of us are celebrated creatives—because we have had to be in order to find our individual dignity. 

And if you’re over 30, please love yourself or surround yourself with others who can do that for you until you can do it yourself. 

Being a sub to the standard narrative makes you a prisoner to a power structure in which very few gays have thrived.