WHAT IS this gay community to which I claim to belong? And how can it be a community when the definition of one’s sexuality (the membership criterion) is constant only in its fluidity? I have a friend, who lives in America, who has informed me recently that he is not gay. Now this is a man I have known for at least twelve years, who is currently living and sleeping with another man.

He is by any other person’s definition gay, but he has decided that he does not wish to define himself by whom he relates to anymore. Moreover, in the American context, where cultural separatism is the norm, saying one is gay implies that one is a signed-up member of that particular minority grouping called Gay Americans. Enough to put anyone off.

When we are not relating, do we cease to be gay or lesbian? My sense of loss in recently finding myself single again has been compounded by a disconcerting sense that I am no longer conforming to (living up to?) one of the labels I have chosen for myself. And, indeed, one in which I have a professional interest, for this column’s identity is rooted in my self-definition as a gay man. And yet, and yet. When single, am I any different from any other single person on this planet? And if I am, then why? If I’m not, then what is the point in saying I’m “gay”?

Eventually, of course, I want not to have to label myself at all. Success with my ideological agenda requires that my “category” eventually disappears, becomes redundant, and I merge into the rest of the rainbow of humanity.

But I can’t, and won’t, disappear. I have been queer-bashed. Threatened. Discriminated against. Criminalised. The labelling is a self-defence mechanism, as well as a statement of sexual preference. The gay community exists precisely because we share the same experience of marginalisation, and more recently and powerfully, the threat of annihilation through AIDS.

When, eventually, the battles have been won, and equality is truly ours, will I still want to claim that the person to whom I relate is central to my identity? It is an odd thing to want to do voluntarily.

Women have always had this dilemma to cope with in this society. The identification of women as the ones who relate, whose primary motivation is emotional and geared towards nurturing and the family, is a hard one to shake off. Yet to this day most women who get married adopt their husbands’ names, proving how central relating is to their self-definition. There may be something romantic about it but it is quite simply a surrender of identity. This is of course changing, but slowly.

PSYCHEDELIC EPIPHANY

I had a taste of what the new generation gets up to last weekend, when, for the first time, I tried Ecstasy (White Diamond for you purists) and bopped the night away in a psychedelic epiphany of almost spiritual proportions. The fact is that I have needed my thirtieth birthday to pass before I felt safe enough to attempt any perception-shifting drug; I have always been primed to be aware of their dangers, the possibilities of flashbacks, of demons emerging from the plughole and gobbling you all up.

Recently, I have felt able to face them, and therefore the truly risky possibility of giving myself a fabulous time. It was a fully-informed, adult choice. Which counts for nothing with the law, of course. I wonder is my attitude to the law at all affected by the fact that ever since I started having sex I could have been jailed for life? Naw, it can’t be that. It must be to do with my innate rebelliousness, my desperate self-destructive urge to go down in flames and to hell with the establishment. Yes, that feels better.

I do not wish to go on about the ultra-amazing time I had, for that would be boring. There is nothing more tedious than listening to a druggy talking about the last trip they had. But I do wish to mention one aspect of the experience that in retrospect is well worth sharing. It is the fact that in a crowded mixed club, with music pounding away and scintillating every cell in my body, I became aware of the beauty in everyone. Men and women.

Each and every individual on the dance floor seemed to be at once both unique and part of the greater whole. My sexuality changed to an all-inclusive polymorphously perverse sensuality; my cock ceased to be the powerhouse of my relational urges, and something altogether more subtle and spiritual took over. It was as if, in my state of exquisite deliciousness, I was tapping into everyone else’s benign natures.

Catching a glance from someone was understood to be the most magnificent expression of mutual adoration and approval; the very brevity of the exchange implied that words were redundant. Bliss for me was contained in one such interaction with a woman; the sheer wonder of her being was impressed on me in all its glory; her strengths, desires, style and benevolence overwhelmed me. The wonder of it was the certainty that it was reciprocated. Labels of identity such as gay or straight or dyke or bisexual became absurdly artificial and redundant.

MULTIFACETED DESIRE NATURE

That night I became aware of my multifaceted desire nature as I had never been before. And the sense of it has not disappeared. My friend who accompanied me on this journey (and I emphasise the importance of being with someone you trust on such a trip) was talking of his love for a “straight” man with whom he spends a lot of time on planet E.

He showed me a photo of him, later on as we were coming down; it was a photo of a youth out of his head on drugs, with vacant eyes. I suppose I had to be there, to see the attraction. But the thing is, I was, in a way. I understand now.

What is more, I understand that this “straight” man loves my friend in a way that is not hetero- or homo- sexual; indeed it is not even sexual. Perhaps another word is erotic. Eros, the capricious god of love, did not aim his arrows at the groin, but at the heart.

Perhaps the truly erotic is not to be found in the messy exchange of fluids that causes so much joy and grief, but in the magic of a shared look of acceptance and wonder that is beyond labels and limitations.