The Velvet Rage Read Online Free PDF Page A

better-developed tender side. We cultivated creative, compassionate, and nurturing talents. In addition, we became comfortable in the company of women. While this wasn’t true for all of us—some of us had fathers who were emotionally present regardless of our sexuality—it was true for many of us, to a greater or lesser extent.
    So as mere children, years before we would have sex for the first time with a man, we had suffered rejection by our peers, emotional neglect from our fathers, and overcompensating protection from our mothers. We survived by learning to conform to the expectations of others at a time in our development when we should have been learning to follow our own internal promptings. We became puppets of a sort—allowing those around us to pull the strings that made us act in acceptable ways, all the while knowing that we couldn’t trust ourselves.

    What would you like me to be? A great student? A priest in the church? Mother’s little man? The first-chair violinist? We became dependent on adopting the skin our environment imposed upon us to earn the love and affection we craved. How could we love ourselves when everything around us told us that we were unlovable? Instead, we chased the affection, approval, and attention doled out by others.
    Not surprisingly, the long-term effect was an inability to validate ourselves. The ability to derive internal satisfaction and contentment didn’t emerge from our adolescence as it should have. Instead, we sputtered along looking to others for the confidence and well-being that we needed to protect ourselves from being overcome with shame. What normally becomes an internal, self-sustaining process of self-validation in the healthy, young adult remained infantile within us, and we instead became sophisticated in the ways of coercing acceptance from the world around us.
    So the little boy with the big secret becomes the man who is driven to avoid shame by hiding his dark truth. Famished for authentic validation and without a reliable sense of self-direction, he develops a sophisticated radar for those things and people who will make him feel good about himself.
    This little boy grows up to be a man who is supremely knowledgeable of culture and fashion. A man of Adonis-sized proportions and many lovers. A man of great success and wealth. A fabulous and outrageous host. An arbiter of good taste and elegant design. A pop-culture aficionado.
    To a great extent, these are the gay men we have known. This is you and me—a little boy with a terrible secret who hides his curse behind a curtain made of crimson velvet. It may surprise
many to learn that his secret is not his sexual appetite for men. No, it is something darker, stinging, and filled with rage.
    His secret he cannot reveal, not even to himself, for fear that it will consume him completely. Deep inside, far from the light of awareness, the secret lives. Go down beneath the layers of public façade, personal myth, and fantasy. Peel away the well-crafted layers, for only then can you see the secret clearly for what it is: his own self-hatred.

Chapter 2
    UGLY TRUTHS &
HIGH-FASHION DREAMS
    â€œI guess my worst fear is that I will become a bitter, lonely old queen hanging on to a bar stool in some dark joint where nobody goes. I mean it isn’t getting old that worries me—it’s being old and alone that terrifies me. I look around and I don’t see one of my friends in a happy relationship. We’re all pretty much in the same boat. We date. We fall in love. We fall out of love or get dumped. We are single again. After a while, we’ve all sort of given up on finding Mr. Right. It’s more about are you Mr. In-My-Bed-Right-Now and, whatever you do, please don’t stay for breakfast. If you do, we’ll eventually end up hating each other.”
    JOHN FROM SAN FRANCISCO, CA
    I n modern history, there’s never been an easier time to be gay. Sure, we’ve got a