Twin Suns, Sun Twins: part one

When I was a kid, I didn't know who I was. Still don't.  Who does, really; but oddity parsed my tender mind's tendrils, drew odd doodles and etched them into matter. Because it could not then grow straight, it grew strange.

This is that story- my stamp on things.  Things that have been around like galaxies but only now speak through this particular voice. A stamp on the sea, sparkling, fading, as only another timeless and ongoing death; a death that allowed the sea to sparkle ever at all.

The grace of novelty; each to each.  This is a story that in some sense revolves around sex-  and yet has little to do with fucking. Yet fucking will play it's part- it certainly has for me- for without it, I'd be circling some birthless star far from this juicy, eatable sphere. Dad need not reveal those details, thankfully- but I've never told this tale; it was the burr under my saddle for 35 years.  Burrs never end; but this one bit the dust.  Or so it would seem............

I was born in Tidewater, Virginia, to a middle class world, a very conservative Southern world in those days, a fifteenth or so generation Virginian.  Yet I was raised by the Woods;  school and the social world in general were a peripheral and alien affair I drifted through like a tiny street person.

I was depressed.  Out in the woods. Yet, moments of ecstatic communion with what I knew not, and longed to know better. I obsessed on that secret doorway that swung open, then closed- the rhythm of some inscrutable heart beyond the world, yet within the world. A fucking mystery.

So, I was skinny, sensitive, shy, shamed to be seen. (I guess the tendency to be overly alliterative came later).  I longed for the moon, and although I didn't make my own curtains, it was clear I wasn't much like the other boys.

So, you figure I'm a gay kid.  Reasonable, reasonable. Let's see what happens to this fayrie-touched lad when those tender barefoot chemicals wheel towards the night sky of adolescence.............

Oh shit.............I am gay, pleased to meet you fuck-me-up-the-ass Gay.   I want to wear women's clothes, and do. I dream of being taken, penetrated, by....................,oh fuck me.............Men.

This is a problem, and I'm not the first.  Strong mother, weak father, a classic case...........  But as I grew through those tortured years, I found that I wanted to be with girls, but my fantasy life with boys would come crashing the party, possess me for a while, and then leave. (and he never writes, he never calls...........)

Over and over. I wished to be dead a thousand years a thousand times.  When I managed to struggle into my twenties, I figured it was time to come on out and get it over with.  I'd had a good assortment of girlfriends, but I was so unsure of myself, didn't feel like a Man; so I decided being gay was going to have to work.  I took lessons from gay friends, how to make that switch.  A new world. I slept with men, and it was o.k., passionate, but why did I always have to get so stoned?  Oh- typical, typical, these things take time.  So to speak. Working through the shame, the crushing depression that came on the heels of the Possession.

But I kept falling for various women. I'd get obsessed, involved- then like some murdered ghost come a hauntin', I would become Gay.  Again.

Fuck.  So the pattern develops- I seem to have two selves. Automonous selves. One is gay.  One is straight.  They are both 'me'.  They disagree on, well, you don't want that kind of disagreement.  Gay people don't accept you, and straight people don't either. You're a true freak, envying gay people as well as straight.

So, bi-sexual is good, right?  But I wasn't bisexual- I had one straight self and one gay self (actually one straight woman and one straight man) and the two took turns dammit.  When one was in gear, out on the open road, the other languished in an underground garage. How do you live with that?  How do you sustain a marriage, a relationship?

Uneasily.  Hiding a secret world from your own wife. Miserably.

Now, dear reader, having come this far with me, let the years tumble quickly by-  winter lies chilly in the strangely modern year of 2006. I'm married, second marriage, and I'm the ripening, not much less tender age of 46. I've finally come to accept my fate, sort of, and figure I will go to my grave a schizoid and deeply divided man.  Or a gay man who never had the courage to step out.  Or a straight man with a tragic psychic flaw.

One day, and I don't know why, but there's a Big Problem.  My twin selves have had it with each other, and push has come to shove. I still can't explain this, but the straight self posseses the right half of my body, split literally right down the middle. Which leaves the left half for, you know, her. or him. Whatever. Because the gay side is now a woman, not a gay man.  This is a physical happening. I'm watching all this with a long suffering bemusement.  Others are pretty  much totally and distinctly unamused. Besides that heartbreak, it's kind of fun. Let the chips fall where they may.

So, for several intense weeks this is my reality- and I'm not crazy, never had a thought disorder or psychosis, but this, I've never heard of.  And I have a Masters degree.  In psychology.

So, for several intense weeks this is my reality- and I'm not crazy, never had a thought disorder or psychosis, but this, I'd never heard of.  Still haven't.  One body; at least two selves.  Somethins' gotta give.............

Next time: What next????  Here's a link to part 2.