Man-ifesto.

Now that I have become a man, what is to become of me? I feel as though my boyhood is like an abandoned snake skin just, just behind me and I’ve been handed a new role to play. Now that I’m a man I must do manly things mustn’t I? I must be a brave, a big, strong protector. I must provide. Or can I just continue to cast my creative nets into the seemingly unyielding ocean that is this industry and hope to sustain myself ten, twenty or sixty years from now ? In other words: Is it time I got a ‘real’ job and stopped ‘mucking about.’
I started Speech and Drama as a child because my little (Little) brother had a lisp (now gone) and my mother asked if I wanted to join. I was the proverbial duck to water and when I turn around and wipe the Kryolan make-up out of my eyes I realise that despite the “sukkel” and the uncertainty, I have adored every projected utterance. I love to entertain. Strange that I have recently been feeling such pressure, having turned thirty, to suddenly produce the real estate with the white picket fence and the Toyota RAV in the garage. Do I really have to cash in my chips now? Have I been playing for long enough? God knows that I don’t want to but I feel bogged down by guilt and obligation. I’m not getting any younger and I don’t have any real assets to my name, whilst people I know and watched grow up are sitting pretty, high on top of gilded nest eggs. I’m also tired of being snubbed because my clothes are not new or expensive or feeling bad because some of the men I have dated can afford the finer things in life while I choke on my half of the dinner bill. Then there is also the ‘where to from here?’ As an actor or entertainer in South Africa, are the greatest aspirations and long term goals I can have, to be a feature on a soapy or the lead in consecutive musicals? There must be more to my life. There must be more for all of us. What though I don’t know. One thing this lifestyle does afford is time to think (when you’re in-between gigs) so I have been doing a lot of it because it passes the time and is free. There are a few corporate type jobs that may be on offer, if I play my cards right, but I can’t help wonder if it would just be giving up the ‘goose’. Or would a steady income and responsibilities provide me with a ‘golden goose’? I am sure though, that if my income continues to be so erratic then my ‘goose’ is ‘cooked’. I’m unsure about just about everything else.
Also, now that I am a man, I am finally getting attention from other men (I’ve always liked guys in their thirties who’ve only recently returned the favour) and though they now seem attracted and give me the eye brow shuffle, they seem to shy away or disappear once they realise how inconsistent my finances are. To be honest I don’t blame them. Dating any artist in a recession mean that you are either stupid, besotted or he looks like an Abercrombie model. Fun, but not necessarily a good idea. Since my last blog I have been reminded of two friends of mine who have been in a loving monogamous, that’s right, I repeat: MONOGOMOUS, gay relationship for eleven years. One is corporate and the other creative and so I am starting to believe that there are no hard and fast rules. Things are generally a less flattering shade of grey. There are people who need to constantly upgrade their lovers like cell phones, there are people that are committed. There are artists that make plenty money and there are loads of poor people doing kak jobs they hate. Some people can and some people can’t. Some people will and others won’t, but I just need to figure out which of those people I want to be (Even if it changes from time to time.)

Saving Yourself.

Quite a few people that I know believe that you give a part of yourself to every person that you sleep with. Now I’m not just talking about the usual saliva and skin cell exchange, they believe that you leave a part of your “spiritual essence” with every person that you are physically intimate with. Well, if that is the case then many of us are scattered far and wide like rainbow coloured shards of glass at the bottom of a very vast kaleidoscope (It makes sense if you consider all the mirrors and mirror-balls in gay clubs). I am probably the last person to advocate abstinence. With regards to most things I consider life to be like a “buffet” and I have queued with the best of them to sample a taste of everything on offer. It’s been fabulous. Until about nine months ago. I haven’t lost my appetite I just haven’t found a decent meal and I’m tired of junk food.
Originally I wanted to write a blog celebrating all the “singular sensations” that I know. I have become aware of how many gorgeous, creative, intelligent and sexy single people there are out there and I wanted to write something acknowledging them, thereby comforting and acknowledging myself. I was going to gush but, something about the content didn’t seem to sit authentically with me because I kept putting it off. There are loads of hot, clever, single people and there are also loads of scary, “Hildegard”, stupid people that have been happily involved with a significant other for years. There are also single “ugly stupids” and involved “pretty clevers” of course. It appears to be random, like being born with a tongue that can fold into a tube, or one that, despite working well in the tasting and blowing “raspberries” department, cannot. Being single does not equate being a failure or an inability to be attractive. It is merely what it is: being single.
Sex is something that involves both ‘single’ and ‘involved’ people and is in my experience something to be enjoyed most frequently by some of the ‘single’ people I know. I’m not exactly sure that I have left a part of my “being” with every person that I have had sex with like one would a sock, a cap or a pair of sunglasses, but, I do feel that there is no such thing as “no strings attached” sex, not for me anyway. It always means something in some way and every action has a repercussion. On one occasion it may leave you feeling sexy confident and grinning as you “mince” through a mall with your newly reinforced ego. On another it may leave you feeling inadequate, isolated and yoked with regret. It is no longer something that I feel that I can take lightly and although I have been charitable, has never been something that I have been able to dispense too generously. I realise now that, to me, sex is too important an expression for that.
I am by no means a monk; I am far too promiscuous with religion for that! (Buffet again) it’s just; I am beginning to think that (for the umpteenth time) Madonna had a point. “Like a virgin, touched for the very first time.” this from a woman who had previously marketed herself as a sexual ‘libertine’. From “the whore of Babylon” she repackaged herself as “the Virgin”. I think she did this for the purity and the clarity that this title would afford. Going around smearing yourself off on people must get a little emotionally untidy after a while.
A laser beam is potent because it is concentrated light focused on a specific spot. Diffused and general light does not have the same efficacy although it is very illuminating. If I try to shed light on everything I encounter I will become more aware of my surroundings as my light bounces off everything, but I will never have the potency to be able to truly penetrate anything. I think sex is a bit like that, and not just when it comes to the ‘penetrate’ part.
Sex is easy and available yet, I hope it has the potential to be more than just a mutual body function. I have never been of the opinion that it is overrated. Sex has killed and conquered thousands of brave and wise souls. There must be more to it than procreation or in our case recreation. I wonder if it is perhaps something worthwhile waiting for after the initial discovery and experimentation has ended. Do we ever stop experimenting and discovering? Two of the longest and most successful gay relationships I have encountered have been ‘open’ relationships. But why does that fact leave me with a dull ache in my gut? Maybe my massive actors’ ego doesn’t like the idea of someone I love getting sexual satisfaction from another soul. Am I deluded by thinking I can be the sole source of all that special man may want or need, sexually? Maybe I just don’t know enough monogamous and happy long term gay couples. I’m not sure.
I know that life is short, but I’d really like the next person to be someone I have a meaningful connection with. Not just someone who has the right look or ‘bad boy’ quality. Delayed gratification seems to be a recipe for many types of achievement, perhaps in this matter too. But then again the loins can roar like lions. I wonder if I can make them tame.