I am a 38 year old guy and have spend a greater part of my life in Delhi, right since I was born, my education, my first job etc.

I never had any real sexual experience with any guy till my first job, though I always fantasised myself having sex with some of the good looking guys in my class, getting pics from magazines such as Gladrags and shagging in the bathroom looking at those pics. I also spent a good amount of time cruising for guys in Andheri and Bandra railway stations when I was in Mumbai.

It was a time when the internet had not caught on and you had a very decent crowd coming to these stations, that is now abound with touts. I also allowed myself to be probed by guys in crowded trains. Once the internet came in, then the means changed and the web became a new field for cruising. One thing I did observe in the gay community, whether it was in the stations or in the web, the focus was tremendously on sex. It all boiled down to ASL and stats in 99 % of the cases.

The balance % are at the extremes. We often follow the herd mentality in the gay community and label ourselves as gays though we may not be pure gays. May be I'll share my orientation with my wife when there is a greater maturity in understanding such sexual orientations or I may choose not to share at all. Over a period of time I have also got disillusioned with the gay environment. There's a tremendous absence of genuineness and sincerity among most of the guys I met, which was surprising since we expect at least guys from the same community to understand each other.

This I am not talking of any particular category of guys in the community. I find it everywhere, whether he be from the chat room, a part animal or even a guy with a profile in gay sites, whether he is qualified with a responsible position in his organization or a guy with a business back ground or a call center guy. It's true that my urge often takes me to meet this guys, either in parties or through the net. But when I sit and contemplate about the futility my experiences, I pray to God to give me the will to get out of this.

Some live their entire lives cheating on their wives and learning to manage that risk. Others want some way to dispose of their homosexual yearnings, so that they can avoid emotional conflict, and they are joined by those who, while not yet married, also do not see how they can afford to be gay.

This desire to resolve the conflict between sexual longing that points in one direction and social acceptance and family demands that point in the opposite direction is the market that 'therapy purveyors' exploit.

By this term, I don't mean the professional counsellors who help their clients towards self awareness and self acceptance. Rather, I mean the less-than-scrupulous so-called counsellors and therapy groups that essentially reinforce the subjects' desire to be rid of their homosexual orientation. They tell their subjects what they want to hear, when it is hardly a realistic goal.

Some of them in their efforts, bring latent homophobia in their subjects to the boil, thus generating even more self-hate than they started with. Others have resorted to measures that can be described as psychological and even physical abuse, as part of the so-called therapy.

Of course, we know that they don't work. You would have thought that after half a century of such programs, there'd be at least one verifiable case of success. But no, every now and then, we hear scandalous stories about poster boys of these "reparative therapy" movements cruising in dark alleys or gay bars, or better still, turning around and denouncing the program. [1]

But those are just the headlines. Meanwhile, millions of homosexually-inclined men continue to live conflicted lives and cheat on their wives.

* * * * *

Take a look again at the story. There are two fundamental starting conditions that make the story. The first is that all the other homosexual persons the writer has ever met, have been those looking primarily for sex. The second -- and not unrelated to the first -- is that the writer is in the closet.

In fact, you can surmise that the vast majority of the other homosexuals he has encountered, were also in the closet. The "gay world" that he described is a demimonde.

When people are deeply in the closet, there is no reason to reveal themselves any more than is absolutely necessary to get the one thing they cannot do without -- sex. You don't need to reveal your real name; you don't need to tell anyone who you really are and what you really feel. All you need to do is to indicate your availability for sex, and a advertise few appealing morsels of information about yourself, usually physical attributes.

Thus the loitering in shadowy lanes or public toilets, and the crotch-contact -- always deniable, if need be -- on crowded trains.

In the internet age, we have the staccato of stats. Well, maybe a pic, but who knows if one looks anything like that gorgeous hunk in the personal ad?

It's a world of illicit one-night-stands, rentboys and unreciprocated (thus, better if suppressed) affection. In a way, it's a logical response to a deeply homophobic social climate. Risk is minimised when contact is minimised.

It's not that gay men aren't capable of love and life-long relationships, but the writer from India didn't have the opportunity to come into contact with this very different world.

Naturally, this is an emotionally healthier world in which gay men's lives and relationships are more consonant with their sexual orientation. But how does one get from here to there?

Through socialisation and coming out. The two go hand in hand. Homosexually oriented persons need to meet other like persons in the full range of ways in which heterosexual persons meet other heterosexual persons -- as friends, buddies, school and work colleagues. They need to be able to develop social trust that enables both honesty and personal chemistry to develop.

Inevitably, this means a degree of coming out. It means acknowledging each other as friends even in public settings rather than pretending you don't know each other barely a week after you've mutually sucked cock. It means not getting nervous if your gay friend tells his friends that you're gay too. And at some point, it means not getting paranoid if straight people find out you're gay.

When enough members of the gay minority in any society have conquered that fear, and the pool of gay persons, secure in themselves, has grown, among each other they will find the loves of their lives. They will pair off and build lasting relationships. Or at least, they will find stable circles of friends that last a lifetime.

Quite often, the two worlds, self-accepting and self-denying, can co-exist, without one knowing about the existence of the other. Even in the same city, there may be a vibrant out gay community, complete with long-term gay and lesbian couples (some with children even), and all kinds of social events, yet at the same time, there can exist tens of thousands more who still believe that being out is impossible and gay life is little more than the furtive shag.

That's where public communication has to play a part. No matter how vibrant the gay community, no matter how many have settled down with same-sex lovers or are raising children, if the mainstream media in that society will mot mention it, then there will be those who won't know much of it. Even if the press occasionally carries a bit of gay news from a foreign country, it will seem so remote, it can't be real or relevant to the closetted domestic audience.

If we care at all about the countless homosexually-oriented persons living half-lives in our own country, we cannot avoid the politics. We have to do our part to open up the public space, including the media, so that people don't feel that homophobic disapproval and uni-dimensional homosexual lives are all there is. 

As a specific example, consider the fight for gay marriage. Instead of pairing up quietly with few other than close friends knowing about it, a legal public wedding communicates in an unparalleled way to deeply closetted homosexuals and their families that the alternative is possible. Beautifully, gushingly possible.

The demimonde and the feeling of futility that this writer from India describes are artifacts of a social, political and personal situation. And a geographic one. This discouraging scene is not the essence of being gay. With a little luck and a bit of courage in many hearts, things will pass.

© Yawning Bread