Do Your Holidays Hurt?

Gay men, and anyone who doesn’t match the style guide of their bio-families, can get hit with a special kind of emotional whiplash this time of year. However you’re spending these weeks, please know you’re not alone. Not with the feelings, at least. Plenty of us have been there, and many of us still are.

I’ve spent Christmas Eve barbacking a thinly attended Monday karaoke night at Revolver in West Hollywood. The flimsy pretense that it was just another casual hang evaporated as the holiday songs rolled in. Fifteen or twenty guys clinging to each other’s company because we had nowhere else to be that night. I wasn’t about to call it holy, but the air was heavy with something.

I’ve spent Christmas Day alone in the West Hollywood City Hall server room, logged in as one of only five people on the entire network. The city doesn’t offer paid religious holidays; it provides three personal days to use however you want instead. Cool policy, sure. I thought working Christmas might feel like a satisfying “fuck you” to the culture and the Mormons who took away my marriage rights with Prop 8.

It didn’t. It was lonely as hell.

Watching porn in an empty server room, scrubbing my browser history, and telling myself I’d “earned” a day for International Mr. Leather in May wasn’t the triumph I’d imagined. It felt hollow.

Then there was the Christmas I did the divorced-parents circuit: Kansas City with my dad and stepmom, Tucson with my mom. Christmas Eve in KC came with presents, Mormon niceties, and a nighttime outing with my older brother and two step-uncles. One uncle got drunk, the other stole his brother’s money, and we dumped the drunk uncle, literally, on my parents’ lawn before taking his car. My brother then taught me how to buy and smoke crack in it.

That night convinced me never to touch crack again. That might’ve been the Christmas miracle.

Two days later, I landed in Tucson to find out my grandparents had been sent home early because my grandfather punched my mom’s fiancé while calling him the N-word.

I get it. The holidays, as Whitney Houston said about crack, can be WACK!

If this is one of those wack years for you, I’m sorry. You’re not the first to go through this, and you won’t be the last. I hope that gives you a little ease.

We’re all just trying to follow our hearts and go where we think the love might be. May you find some peace, and may whatever challenges you’re facing now deliver something like wisdom in the long run.

And here’s the part I hate to admit: the best holidays I’ve ever had were the ones where I gave in and joined the conventional madness.

Humans are just built to commune with each other. It’s medicine.

We gay men do it instinctively, on dance floors, at onesie parties, camping trips, bike rides, sex parties like CumUnion. Give us a theme and a protocol, and we’ll build a small, temporary village of belonging.

“I’m just happy to have everyone here, together!”

I heard that line twice in my life. The first time, I was eleven, rolling my eyes at an elderly woman at Thanksgiving because three people at that table annoyed me. Poor old lady, I thought.

The second time, I was twenty-six, sitting at a Thanksgiving table in my own apartment, surrounded by gay friends. This time, it was me saying the line. And suddenly, I got it.

What made that Thanksgiving magic was that nothing in me needed hiding. My roommate had hosted for years, so there was a rhythm. I was in the kitchen making gravy (with emergency phoned-in guidance from my mom), and I didn’t have to worry about anyone tensing up when they asked who I was dating.

When my roommate chimed in, “Does fucking count?” I felt seen.

And now, somehow, I feel that same belonging with the family that raised me. They don’t tolerate me anymore; tolerance is for elevator farts. They accept me. Fully. The whole messy, fabulous truth of me. And because they’ve grown, and I’ve grown. I can accept them as they are, too. Funny enough, that acceptance has become its own gift: more love in my life.

If you’re struggling this season, hang in there. You’re not legally required to be merry. You’re not even required to be pleasant. Notice what you feel, and let it guide what you choose to do next year.

New Year’s Eve is around the corner. You’ll have months before you have to do this circus again. Use that time to find where the love lives, invest in yourself, and strengthen your chosen family.

There’s no one right way to do the holidays. But if you get the chance to celebrate them old-school, with people who let you be you, it might hurt a little less. I might actually be healing.

Until we meet again, be good to yourself.Mike

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