Fruits of the Dead Season: The Blue Hour Gospel Section 2

A burning cabin seen through a rainy window

So I was going to save this article for later, but I can feel the shift in the season starting so felt why not be vulnerable.

Yesterday I came across a note on here shared by a user talking about community and finding it here. I remarked that it was lovely to be in a community that is still focused on perspective and thought here and not the typical things we find ourselves drawn to. As a gay man it’s inevitable on these social platforms. Someone can’t find the “traction” they want so they pair their post with a picture of their body. Sometimes not even the body but a hint of it. Anything that puts the worth less in the words and more in the visual. Eventually the messages change and and suddenly we are bombarded again with the importance of being fit. The importance of being lean. There will come a time when the messages shift even further to “if you only looked like this you would find success here as well”.

But in the meantime lets celebrate the fact we are still focusing on the word here. The message that we are more than the shell and if your shell doesn’t match what your community deemed is important, then your message doesn’t lose any worth or veracity. With the season back to the dead season (yes I know, spring = life, winter = dead, silly Colin, but my seasons don’t follow the weather so silly you!) and the inevitable ebb and flow back to feeling is my word worthy because my body isn’t, it feels correct to share more. Fruits of the dead season tackles some pretty heavy things. Self-erasure, body image, masculine image, sexual pressure, assault and healing. So here is a part of a piece that I wrote that never quite leaves you, especially when you are bombarded with images of men across all platforms showing you how unworthy you are.

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Body as a Chapel

I know what this is; I have for a long time, but I still don’t understand the name it carries, or more specifically, why the name it carries is supposed to feel like power when it came only after I learned how to make myself vanish. During that period, the word “twink” hadn’t yet absorbed the online performance, the commercial packaging, the faux empowerment it will later pretend to have; it was something quieter, smaller, used in chatrooms by older men to define what they wanted from me without ever asking if I wanted to be that thing in return.

They didn’t want a man. They wanted something narrow. A boy-body thin enough to lift, hold up, show off as proof of their own strength, not mine. If they were bigger and I was smaller, if I stayed soft-voiced and vanished into angles, then their fathers’ voices wouldn’t echo when they came. They called it chemistry. They called it love. They told me I was beautiful in the way you praise a stolen thing. So many of them said, “you’re so skinny I could snap you in half.” I’d said thank you every time.

I started drinking because it made the hunger less noticeable. I threw up when I drank because I could call it an accident. We were taught what eating disorders looked like, so I just made mine look like a party trick. No one worries when a teenager vomits vodka, they just say, “pace yourself” and hand you water. But the math kept showing up in other places. Ads. Movies. Music videos. In magazines with men I didn’t even want, just wanted to be. Male + muscle = desire. Male – muscle = invisible. But muscle didn’t make men want me. Weakness did.

Strong men didn’t fuck strong men. Strong men dated smaller men. I wanted to be wanted. So what do you do?

You track. You log. You limit. You substitute. You skip. You make rules. You count everything. No carbs after six. No food after drinking. Two meals a day. No meals on weekends. Eat before noon or not at all. Don’t eat with others. Don’t eat with men. Don’t eat if you feel good. Eat only when you’ve earned it. Stop. That’s too many rules. Keep it simple. You’re just being careful. You’re being strategic. You’re making room for better habits. You’re not disordered, you’re efficient. You want to be strong. No, you don’t, you want to be compact. Shut up, you want to be lighter. No. Stop asking. Stop changing the question. Pick one side. Stick with it. Don’t complicate it. You want to be wanted. That’s it. That’s all.

But not too wanted. Not wanted the wrong way. Not pitied. Not touched. Not ignored. Not devoured. You need to be seen just enough to be controlled. You want someone to say stop. But if they say stop, they’re wrong. You’ll hate them. You do hate them. You want to be small enough to be loved, but not so small you disappear unless they’re watching. You want it to look effortless. You want it to look accidental. You want it to hurt. You want it to stop.

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The rest of the piece opens up for a duplex poem before starting the slow ascent out of the madness that these cycles often trap us in. I would share it here but I also have to keep SOME hidden to get you to buy the book! What’s the saying, a girl has to have some secrets?

But to climb my spiral back to the beginning I thought this was a piece I would like to share today. Maybe because I figured it was nice that we don’t focus on the body so much here. It’s breathing room that makes me feel valuable without making me think about the time this morning while getting dressed, the band of my pants felt tight, or when I went to the store and sped walked past anything that looked delicious. I think places like this, community like this, are SO so so important, especially for the gay community. It reminds us that we still have a voice independent of the body and that there are people listening.

It also reminds me that we have the power to change this. We WILL change this. Step by step and eventually leap by leap, we can make it so the generations who follow us don’t have to feel like they need to dim themselves because their body isn’t part of the algorithm.

Anyways, hope you enjoyed, or it provoked some thought in you today with how we show up in the digital space and how our curated feeds still drive the doubt we have in ourselves.

Cover Design: Brian Futter