Pulp's more than paper

Today, for the first time in ages, I did not feel a relapse coming on when I was around X, but a stronger resolution, one I think is finally going to stick.

Nothing quite helps you in your determination to get over the way you feel about someone as knowing she would most likely despise you if she knew you had feelings for her. It's not that this person is mean, but that it's a burden to be on the receiving end of an unwanted crush. I don't know for sure she knows, but I worry she does.

I'm not sure I can keep make up for my past moody and moony behavior, but I think I can be better than I have been from now on...it takes a lot for me to get past something this stubborn, but knowing I make someone else uncomfortable is not something I can live with on this day or any day. 

So in trying to ground myself once and for all, trying to get past this silliness (because isn't a crush basically silly when it persists despite your age and reality's daily intervention?) As usual, it's a book that's helping, a book that's over fifty years old and archaic enough in attitude to be downright insulting.

I absolutely hate the cover to Queer Patterns, though it's rather typical of the time period it was first published. Lesbian pulp fiction covers often portray gay women as either "predators" or "weaklings" who are totally led astray and "mistaken" in their emotional "attachments."

Lesbian pulp fiction I read for a weird combination of comfort and punishment, with a little bit of reinforcement thrown in; lesfic romance I read for pleasure and when I dare to believe it's okay to be gay...the former is no friend to the modern gay girl, even if there is sometimes a surprising amount of sympathy found within the pages of pulp. 

The bulk of modern lesbian romance is astonishingly and blissfully (even for these modern times) unaware of homophobia...on days I need to pretend I head for the romance. I mean, come on, the main character always accidentally "meets cute" with a woman who just happens to live in the same small town and also likes women, even though there's a one in ten chance a woman is actually gay (though that figure itself may be too high) in real life.

As much as I find the pulp fiction variety despicable for its treatment of women (gay or straight) I unabashedly love the writing style and rare and useful (unintentional) advice I can use in my personal life. I don't really think of it as advice, it's just that I relate to the pulps far far more than modern lesfic because it's more realistic and applicable to how I see things.

In Queer Patterns, one of the ladies has decided she's not going to give in to her feelings (which can happen in modern romances, too, but for completely different reasons):

The magnetism of this lovely being gripped Nicoli, making her remember the years she had fought to keep in check the side of her nature that she was determined to control--to sublimate--forcing herself to lead a loveless existence that she might adhere to a principle. 

She would need that principle now as never before, because she knew that in Sheila was a woman whose lightest touch could forever destroy her staunchest resolutions.

Perhaps it would be best, she told herself, not to assign the role to her. How could she hope to stand the weeks of anguish which close proximity to Sheila would cause her?

I don't get Nicoli's exact sentiments as much as I do her desperate need to fight her true nature.

Which leads me to this op-ed piece I read yesterday that made me try and see things from a different viewpoint. It is a sympathetic and insightful article on the difference between being gay and "acting on" one's gayness, two completely separate things. I wouldn't say I'm ready to agree with Rick Perry, but I can say where the writer is coming from, at least a little bit.

I would be tickled if even the most hardened of homophobic people could understand just how separate the two states are...how one is intrinsic and the other is voluntary, even if the cost of not really being who you are can hurt one's heart terribly and be wearing on the soul:

http://www.dallasnews.com/opinion/latest-columns/20140615-gays-focus-on-perrys-alcoholism-reference-misses-real-debate.ece

Of particular interest and help for me is this link, which rather nicely captures what I've always believed...that you can't "turn" straight (no matter how much "ex-gay therapy" you engage in), but just "refrain" from being gay, if that makes sense:

  http://www.christiananswers.net/q-cross/cross-gaychange.html