My reading resolution

I had a lot of fun with my last post. Besides getting to post pics of pretty boys, it was great fun to just be real. One of the problems with an anonymous blog is the lack of personal details. I may want to share a funny story about my 15 year old son, but hesitate in sharing any real details lest my ward's gossiper recognize and out me. This lack of personal detail can lead to a lack personality.

While I'm not sure I'm ready to come out to my kids or at work, after the last post I realized the type of person reading this blog is less likely to be the ward busybody and more likely to be someone open to a gaymobro married with kids. So if they happen to discover my identity... well that's probably ok. Why not include more personal details?

Here goes:

One of my New Year's resolutions this year was to read more, write more, and watch less. (The only new TV show I've added to my regular watching rotation is The Flash. I admit I enjoy a good superhero story and for a CW show it has surprisingly little soap opera. Plus it doesn't hurt that Grant Gustin is easy on the eyes... and can sing.)

So over the past two months I've read more fiction than I had in the previous 12. I tend to gravitate to young adult fiction. It's because my wife likes YA so she got me started with John Green's An Abundance of Katherines. I also enjoy the first person voice typical of YA fiction. At the end of the day, fiction is all about getting to know a new character. First person often (not always) helps me get inside the character's head.

In an attempt to find books with strong teenage male voices, without even meaning to, I ended up reading back-to-back a couple of gay-themed novels including Will Grayson, Will Grayson and Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe.

Before I complain about Aristotle let me first solicit recommendations. What are you reading that you recommend: gay, straight, YA, grown-up, chicklit, whatever? 

Now, after a big ole SPOILER ALERT, on to my complaints:

In Aristotle, Ari (short for the philosopher) meets Dante at the pool one summer day and the boys become fast friends. I loved the first half of the book. The two boys have distinct characters and their friendship reads genuine. I'm a sucker for friendship tales.

I was fine with Dante coming out. That was about as obvious as an electric billboard in Times Square. I appreciated the fact that Ari was OK with this, even though he was not necessarily gay. He did institute a "No kissing" rule though. As a gay teenager who wouldn't want a strong friend willing to stand by you whatever?

(One last spoiler alert. If there is the slightest chance you might read this book, stop reading this post now.)

My biggest issue with the book? In the end, everything revolved around homosexuality. Every subplot somehow tied into it. Besides Dante's outness, there were disowned lesbians and not one but two hate crimes. Then the last chapter had Ari's parents sitting him down and telling him that he was gay. He didn't figure it out for himself. His parents had to give him a beer and break it to him. "Son, given your behaviors x, y, and zed, don't you think you are gay?" And just like that, Ari realizes and embraces his new sexual identity.

I'm all for books that help gay teens see themselves and know that they are OK. And who wouldn't want parents as understanding and compassionate as Ari's? But a book that ties everything together using homosexuality is not healthy. Sure, being gay is going to affect many factors in a teenager's life, but it's not the only thing that happens. Gay teens need to see that life's joys and heartaches are influenced by factors other than one's sexuality.

In my opinion, the book would have been better without Ari's outing. Why not let him just be Dante's fiercest advocate and forever friend? Or just end the book without Ari making up his mind whether he is gay or straight? And if you must have your protagonist realize he's gay, at least spend a few chapters (instead of a few measly pages) with him coming to terms with his sexuality.

In short, it started out with so much potential...

Girlfriends, boyfriends, and man crushes

I had two experiences this week that caused me pause. Though separate, as I've pondered the experiences, I have begun to see the two as somewhat related.

The first happened when my wife and I went out to dinner with a couple of friends. As often happens when new people are getting to know each other, the "how did you meet" question came up. We've told our story hundreds of times since we got married. It's not that the details change, but with each retelling, our familiarity with those details and with each other has given deepened meaning to the story.

My wife and I have a great story. It's one that I can't share on an anonymous blog and hope to remain even remotely anonymous, but a very generalized version would go something like this:
We met and were friends. My now wife wanted to be more than friends, but I missed the subtle and then not so subtle hints at this, leading my now wife to conclude I was clueless. We didn't see each other for a few years then caught up again just as friends. We had both changed. Three dates later we were engaged. Three months after that we were married.

At the end of this particular retelling one of the other couples turned to me and asked, "Are you OK with how this story was told? Do you want to add anything?"

No one had ever asked me this. As I thought about our story (which I still love) and the question they were asking, I realized that in our story I come off as slow on the uptake. My wife clearly knew what she wanted in a boyfriend. I clearly DID NOT know what I wanted. With the question "Do you want to add anything?" came an invitation to defend myself, to prove I was not so clueless. In that instant I realized the only way to tell our story honestly would be to end, "In spite of the impression you may have received from this story, really I always knew what I wanted in a girlfriend. Simply stated, I wanted a boyfriend."

I didn't say this though. Not because I'm just a clueless boy. But I'm just in the closet.

The second happened around our dinner table a few days later. The conversation turned to my wife's list of celebrity crushes. She has long maintained a "Mr. Darcy list", her utterly harmless list of guys who set her heart aflutter. The list is clearly named for Colin Firth who at one point was somewhere near the list's top. (I think the unfortunate Mamma Mia! did not help his standings much, but The King's Speech definitely gave him a boost.)

One of my kids asked if I had a similar list. We spent a few minutes debating whether my mild Julia Stiles fandom constituted a crush. (We decided it did.) Then I admitted I had a few man crushes. My wife (who has known my sexual orientation since before we wed) tried to get me to share my man crush list.

Her: Who's on your list of man crushes?
Me: These are not the questions you are looking for...
Her: [not having any of my Jedi mind tricks] I noticed you haven't answered my question
Me: No. No I haven't.
Her: Is there any overlap between our lists?
Me: Likely minimal.
Her: Hmm...

A few uncomfortable minutes of avoidance and she gave up the subject.

At the end of the day, I didn't want to answer my wife's man crush questions for basically the same reason I didn't answer my friend's "Do you want to add anything?" question. It's not that I don't know the answer. And I don't think it's that I'm ashamed of the answers. But I'm relatively happy in my closet. (That doesn't mean insensitive church leaders don't offend me... more on that in a later post... maybe.) At the end of the day, I've become relatively expert at living my quiet, secretive life and I'm OK with that.

That said, my wife was gracious enough to write down her "Mr. Darcy List" so I could compare lists not in front of my children or for that matter in front of her. I wanted to do this because the nerd in me too was curious about the overlap between our lists. (What can I say. All the world is a Venn diagram, no?)

As I suspected the overlap was small:

Topher Grace

and from my teenage years:
Robert Sean Leonard

And now... to show myself that I'm not afraid of posting this (and for the benefit of my wife, knowing she reads my posts) in no particular order a few others from my list:

Nick Hoult
He made being undead adorable. The pic below is mighty nice, but also enjoyed him in X-Men. I'm partial to guys in specs.

Jonathan Rhys Meyers
Again with the tie. Apparently I like guys in ties.

Christian Bale
If rumors are true and he's a jerk I'll be happy admiring from afar. He is, after all, Batman.

I'm sure there are more, but these are the three that first came to mind.

maybe i'll meet a girl

I enjoyed this post.

http://jeffbenedict.com/index.php/blog/35-blog/378-maybe-ill-meet-a-girl

Stake Dance

On Saturday I chaperoned a Stake Dance. At one point I looked up and saw two boys dancing. Granted they were being a little goofy, but it made me smile to think that we live in a world tolerant enough to realize that this is ok. When I was growing up, I think most boys would have been ashamed to try this for fear of being labeled gay or fag or queer.

is it wrong?

I had lunch with a coworker and the subject of Boy Scouts came up. I expressed my support as an Eagle Scout and a father of a Boy Scout. I could sense my coworker (and friend) who knew I was Mormon wanted to ask if I thought homosexuality was a sin. Thankfully he didn't verbalize this question and the conversation turned to other topics. But the incident has given me pause to consider how I would respond. I think I would respond with a question or three.

If God wants me to be a teacher and I become an accountant, have I sinned? What if He wants me to be a teacher, but He gives me amazing accounting abilities?

What about the couple next door who decides not to have kids because they are not the parental type? Surely if God had wanted them to become parents He would have blessed them with some parenting gifts, no?

Was it a sin for Jonah to go to Tarshish when the Lord commanded him to go to Nineveh?

It is easy for us in the comfort of our modern Babylon to read the story of Jonah and judge, but should we? Surely this story has been included in the scriptures so we can learn, but can we sit in our Laz-E-Boy recliners and say, "Jonah was a lousy prophet"? Are we overly quick to judge Jonah based on one episode from his life?

How about our neighbors who decide not to have children; how should we look on them? We are of course told to be our brother's keeper, but where is the line between brother's keeper and busybody? How can we be more Good Samaritan and less Nosy Neighbor?

And what of me, the wayward accountant?

Abram and Lot

Today was the Sunday School lesson. Once every four years we get to it: the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. It almost always devolves into 40 minutes of gay bashing and the world is going to hell in a picnic basket because it is embracing homosexuality. I went prepared with one of my favorite OT scriptures, Ezekial 16:49, which totally describes the world in which we live. (I totally think of "fulness of bread" every time I go to the supermarket.)

Luckily there was not one mention of homosexuality. The teacher spent the entire lesson comparing Abram and Lot. In the end, I began to wonder if I am more like Lot than Abram. Have I pitched my tent towards Sodom (or moved into the city itself)? I hope not, but it was refreshing to spend Sunday School in introspection instead of rebutting the homophobes.

Love

With all the talk about Utah gay marriage and statements from the church, I'm a little tired.  I think we as Latter-day Saints (and many Christians generally) say, "love the sinner; hate the sin" but then spend so much energy on the second half of the couplet that we don't have strength for the first, which is the more important admonition. It makes me sad. 

I wonder what our Heavenly Father thinks.