This is the fourth and final in a series of articles about Bliss republished from the Visionary archive.
WHAT IS MY PASSION?
– Roger Beaumont
My typical response to this question would be to say that my passions are my dressage horse, Coty; gardening; cooking; wine; entertaining; blah, blah, blah. In my new life, I am compelled to be more honest.
A few years after coming out as a gay man in 2003, I was at a men’s spiritual conference in Albuquerque, NM. I heard a speaker describe how he had to return to his wife because her doctors just told him that her cancer had returned and the prognosis was not good. He was distraught, not knowing what he would do to continue living without his beloved wife.
I turned to a friend who had lived his gay life for many years after an experience of straight marriage, children and a successful law career. I asked him, “Jim, what is the difference between what the speaker and I feel about our respective wives? I loved my wife of 43 years but not in the same way he describes his relationship with his wife. What’s the difference?”
Jim said, “Roger, you may have loved your wife and may have experienced joy and a certain happiness, but there was no passion in your marriage.”
What a breakthrough moment.
I was married in the same era as Ennis Del Mar in Brokeback Mountain, when being openly gay was hardly an option. I lived in unconscious denial for more than 60 years. I was youngest of 12 children, born in Canada after The Depression. My father moved us to the Maine woods to a miserable camp and worked as a lumberjack when I was three. Two years later, he abandoned us all by succumbing to alcoholism and took his own life. I’ve always kept the death certificate which attributed his death to “alcoholism aggravated by drinking lemon extract.” Except for his tainted sperm, I can’t think of any other inheritance.
My French-speaking mother and her children lived in a foreign country, away from the support she had known in Quebec. Fortunately, my father had qualified for benefits in that new system called Social Security. This gave my mother a meager income that helped support the family until the children could work. (Guess how I feel about the current illegal immigrant issue?) I and a couple of my sisters went to convent schools, then cold and heartless institutions. I survived somehow, learning to be the perfect Enneagram nine, self-effacing, knowing I didn’t matter much, hoping that no one would ever guess the self-loathing turmoil in my heart.
After leaving the seminary in Bucksport and Bar Harbor, Maine, in 1955, (I wasn’t good priestly material because I jerked off too much) I found the warmth I craved by marrying the second woman I ever dated and the only one I had ever had sex with. She had the strength and common sense for both of us. Soon, I had purpose in my life as a teacher, a father of a beautiful daughter and three handsome sons. I finally had a home and a family where I belonged. I was, however, disappointing as a husband. From the twin bed honeymoon to the years of not knowing or sharing my feelings, I lived a straight life that saved me from facing what was deep in my heart – a longing and a craving for beautiful men. I denied my addiction for gay porn until 2001 when I was 62. By then, my daughter had come out as a lesbian 12 years earlier. That was a gift to me because it allowed me to start exploring my hidden life and start facing the possibility that I was gay.
When I attended a rite of passage in the New Mexican desert with Richard Rohr, I finally had the courage to know myself. Richard sent us out into the beautiful valleys and mesas with two questions. The first: what is your greatest fear? I was bowled over by the answer I wrote in my journal: “I’m afraid that someone will find out that I am gay.” That was my real birth as an authentic human being. The second question: “What will you say to God when you die and He asks ‘Who are you? I don’t recognize you. You never lived the life I gave you. You denied a whole part of yourself. Who are you?’” Since I’d gone to the retreat to better know my God, this question was just as disturbing as the first.
And so began, finally, my acceptance of who I am, a gay man who has half-lived a good life, full of comforts and much joy from a good woman, four children and 17 grandchildren and a satisfying career. But where was the passion?
I’ll tell you passion. Passion is enjoying the intellectual and the sensual company of beautiful men. [pullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”” class=”” size=””]Passion is living in the moment, surrounding yourself with people who know who you truly are and love you because you are you.[/pullquote]
Passion is living in the moment, surrounding yourself with people who know who you truly are and love you because you are you.
Passion is attending a Body Electric weekend. Passion is looking into the eyes of honest and brave men, regardless of age or size, and loving unabashedly what you see. Passion is feeling the full embrace of another man, skin-to-skin, simply enjoying the closeness, the warmth, the love. Passion is greeting each new day without guilt and shame. Passion is belonging to your tribe, knowing that you can ask anything of your brothers and that they support you with love and understanding. Passion is being able to face the end of your life, knowing that you celebrated every gift that God gave you, most especially the gift of your sexuality. Honoring others and yourself, openly and without holding back, that’s passion.
Caress me beloved, I cried out then. And now, ten thousand years later, I see a world about to
happen where men can answer me. And only when a man has played flutes with the presence
within him can he play flute with a man of flesh. Two flutes, echoing, echoing.
—Andrew Ramer, Two Flutes Playing
Baby, that’s passion. And a whole orchestra of men, flutes playing. That’s passion!
Roger Beaumont, happily plays his flute in Asheville, NC, and surrounding areas.
This article was originally published in the Summer 2006 issue of GSV’s Visionary journal. Read the original article in the Visionary.
Roger’s 2015 Update
Wow! I highly recommend that everyone keep a journal. Nothing like reading one’s thoughts/beliefs/passions nine years later. Here I am in my 80th year and I am still talking about Passion? As we say at Jubilee!: Oh yeah! I still can’t keep my eyes off any attractive man of any age over 18 (an age limit being very important for “Mature” gay men).
The first person I shared the above article from the Visionary with, just last week, was my beautiful lesbian daughter who got married to a marvelous girl friend in a Napa Valley winery in October. If anyone had read it previously, no one had ever commented. Her reaction was very complimentary and accepting. She requested a copy immediately.
Nine years later my passion really hasn’t changed. It may have evolved but it still is my celebration of life. A celebration of being a healthy old man and living out his passion by being open and vulnerable. And by telling someone what I feel when I connect with them, be it by touch, word, or simple eye contact. I always prefer an honest hug to handshakes.
I do admit that as I move along in years and find myself alone, I occasionally have regrets. How could I let my orientation be more important than staying close with my wife and spending the last few years of my life sharing our feelings and our memories? That thought only lasts a few moments before I revert to my honest embrace of my continued passion for my gay world. I guess what I’m saying is that what this gay guy enjoys to the fullest is honest communication with any authentic person regardless of gender or orientation. Oh Yeah!
Of course that eliminates most presidential candidates.