I Googled my name yesterday to learn something about myself. I reasoned: it would either come screaming like a gay banchee to the top of the list, loud and proud; or it would wade in the waters of third- and fourth-page searches, content to be barely noticed. 

I think I Googled myself to find out who I really am.

What silliness, right? Like Gandalf having it out with his staff, as though the inanimate, knuckled wood might suddenly convince him that yes, he should in fact be a wizard.

But I indulged my crazy. Like Gandalf did.

This being the digital age, however, one must have it out with search engines and blogs. "Tell me!" I cried to Queen Google, desperate for something(one) else to decide who and what I am. "Tell me I'm a doctor, a leper, a teacher, a disgruntled writer, a Nobel-laureate. Anything! I don't care." My conscience took a double-espresso at Dazbog as it waited out the deliberation.

Google, meanwhile, peered into the pieces of my soul captured by the interweb and found this: "Jeffrey Steen | Partner in the Corporate Reorganization and Bankruptcy Group." 

"Oh, God help me," I lurched. "I might need someone like this to clean up my haphazard life in a decade, but I sure as hell am not savvy or anal enough to reorganize business. That's most definitely someone else's business."

Another shot for my conscience while it skimmed a scantily-clad cover of Gayzette.

A bit lower a line popped: "Ecumenist. Writer. Foodie. Homosexual." Did I write that, once upon a time? I wondered if the order mattered and if it should guide my thinking: faith first, then cooking. Out with the restaurant idea, then. Or?

Sneaking its way into my peripheral vision was the page's final find--a blog post by me some months ago. It reeked of sex obsessions dressed up in theatrical pomp. I could almost see the half-naked scene on stage: "Good Writing is Like Sex." I remember wishing my parents didn't actually read my blog.

One thing was certain: I have a confused sexual complex that rivals Anne Heche. It tells me to stay away from the spotlight, unless I'm comfortable being a social pin cushion. Stick to what matters, it says; be driven by what drives you. 

So far, it's sex and writing. With a splash of religion.

More pages revealed sundry Steens whose careers are beyond reverie for me: oil company moguls; lawyers, lawyers, lawyers; an odd doctor; even a profiled gent on Forbes.com. He dabbles in oil AND law, it told me; on Sundays, he enjoys a round or two of golf to the sounds of Texas winds. He might be married or gay, but I can't tell. He wears tweed jackets (though I might have made that up).

Despite these interesting misfires, the mission was getting stale. My conscience, hopped up on caffeine, was tired of re-reading Gayzette. I lingered with the notion that Google was telling me both everything and nothing. That there isn't enough about me yet, that i'm still inchoate, cracking through the egg. And... there's more to come.

Google wouldn't tell you this, but I would: I'm something of a Norman Rockwell madman, pretty in paintings, great for the holidays, captured in moments. But there is dirt between the days, and flapping about between a culinary exploit and a tract on Luther's catechism. I would like to yell at Google, to tell her that there's not quite a picture there, that she can do better. And that I would like to know what on earth I'm supposed to do with myself.

But in her resigned and confident way, she only smiled back, as if to say, "What are you looking at me for? It took me 13 years to get here and I still don't know what I am. Relax. Have an espresso."

However much I relished the turmoil of not knowing me, I shrugged my shoulders, sat down with a doppio, and perused a recent issue of OutFront. 

It's exciting, don't you know? I wrote an article for this very edition on religion and sex and beer. Cheers to that.



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Isaidhesaid eat a peach; at dawn; firstfruits at midnight when the 
cock crows. And
Peterock was through and through with pecking orders
by the fire, handswarming.

I said I tried, andbut hanged beside the sad tree I'm
sorry. It came
time to for the Sabbath, ringing knocks like angels
bread notready for the smiles. 

Suchso Simon says: of course, of course you are
a fish hoarder;
sit and nip at heads with casks of whale-piss
whine and dine, lastly, Emmaus.

I'vent Eve if that's what you're asking! sure
as a rib.
a breastachest from merry marriage, 
Commit a ho! And that's why I've said God
is only Sundays, 10-noon.
 
  
 



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End of Day(s) 11/16/2011
 
How great we think our purpose and our prize
'Til on our dreaming dais realize
    Love's a pregnant whore in heat.
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Dear Clearness:

I give thanks for you always, knowing not what makes you what you are, but in being that you have become for me the light behind the darkness, doing away with days when I cannot see and stumble into myself, backwards.

Though I confess in my confusion I cannot rightly focus or make my life something of a purposed direction, simply that it is and frays the reason that you would otherwise provide for simplicity and happiness. 

Can't you see that I cannot? Oh but surely that's what makes you shine in the muddiness of me, and I'm sorry for that. Weeping wisher I am, and nothing more than a blockade set against the open door. Jesus had it out with me, but it wasn't my fault. I rifled through a few arguments that came out like neediness and he just left. The door was open, and I couldn't bring myself to shut it.

I guess my point is that you have a point and I'm not sure I do in my pointlessness other than pointing out your points. Forgive me, I'm rambling and there is nothing left to say but just saying things that aren't coherent much or really anything.

Take care of yourself and do me a favor. Give me the benefit of the doubt? Confused I am, disbelieving never.

Yours and mine and everyone's,

Confusion



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Sex Returns 11/14/2011
 
9:03, and the sex had dried up like the Gobi. Not two minutes earlier, my climax hit an understated rage of "get 'er done boy," then all systems shut down. The rest was acting, eyes halfway tilted at the ceiling in tired, artificial ecstasy, halfway at the clock--9:04, 9:05, 9:06 ... 

A few years ago, the only writings that litanized my hot-winded blog were theological sermons on sex. I remember scrolling through 1 Corinthians in my mind as the tirades went on, buttressed occasionally by T.S. Eliot's poetry and the confessions of the queeny Augustine. Drama was ripe and rich in my writings then. Sex was a seedy play in two acts--climax and guilt.

There's much I could say now about what I've learned in my sexual forays--practically and theologically. But however much I relish the fantasy, the lusty deceits and bad-boy seductions, it ends up slapping me in the face with the same two dry acts. Shakespeare would be bored to tears; the Pope would be proud.

I don't suppose there's much to say about it being a gay problem. I think the consternation would be as great if I were straight, playing the field and finding my sexual self. There is a part of me, a genuine, earthy part of me that shuts down when the physical is satisfied. Awful? Twice over. However much you may think it stems from absent intimacy and lack of attraction, the truth is this: it comes from nowhere else but my many-layered, confused psyche. 

Oh, there's some soul-searing in there, too, and spiritual upset that never saw faith-filled Pepto-Bismol cure the ills that plagued me. I think, frankly, there is still a part of me content with the unhealthy distance, the rough separation of church and state of sexuality. Primacy belongs to the church, to faith, to the Catholic-commanded embrace of spirituality and casting out of the physical.

But I am both too old and too young to believe that nonsense. Nonetheless it clings to me like a haunting memory, like the ones who love me who want nothing more than to be physically intimate. But I look at the clock--9:07--and think on sleep. Away from that place I go. Away.

There is healing to be done, and apologies to make. This post could very well push away the hearts that seek me out. And if I am sexually handicapped, I should like nothing more than to have the courage to acknowledge it and move forward, healing old wounds. And to stop being ashamed.

How unlike so many in the gay community I am! How at war with lust and loving sex, how deeply enamored of making love, pure and simple, how poetic in my obfuscations and disgustingly cerebral in my evasion.

At the end of the night, showering in the wake of un-intimate intercourse, I can imagine I'm more than a frustration to many. I hope it occurs to them, even in their frustration, that I am as frustrated as they are.   

What was it the Marquis de Sade said? "It is always by way of pain one arrives at pleasure." I can only imagine what he meant in the moment, but it speaks volumes to me--to me, and about me. 
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If pie had a name
  like Marion Berry 
through the coffee-rusted kaleidoscope
or before a glass of sherry

Beneath the frost-glass eye December blinks

Whatever I cheated on
   or with whom
the blazing coat of woolen sheets 
keeps me free from 

The frost-glass eye of December
glaring

Cages the truth of up and showering
  before I shave
Before I out the door and work
And living through my sherry save

A canister of whipped cream 
  topping pie and I 
Laughing through my sherry 
And making rather merry 

Forgetting eyes of cold December doing nothing
But in the coldness, stare.

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Sam of the Sea 11/09/2011
 
He walked into the room, a dull blue shadowing his face, and he said: I am over water.

It wasn't the drinking so much as the swimming, the wading, the drowning, the arguments with rolling seas he always lost. As a child, he tinkered in creek water, grasping at pebbles with his toes. As a young boy, he fished in the bays and swam after sea creatures with a ludicrous giggle and feet like fins. As an adult, he plied the trade of the great, outstretched oceans. But with each battered ship that returned to shore, his spirits dulled, the light of the distant horizon faded, and the mystery of the ocean lost its charm. 

Like the blistered, splintered bows of his retired vessels, he, too, bore the tired marks of watered-down beatings, of tempestuous seas, of insouciant waves. His heart reluctantly agreed with his limbs: sailing was done.

And yet, no span of years could erase the gentle, gem-like blue that forever masked his face. He carried the history of the seas with him, treading about amphibious on land as though he were resigned to such a life--dull, languid streaks creasing his face. He was a sad, somber man superlative, divorced from the excitement of wetness. In old age, he waded from one obligation to the next.

This was my father before he died--a man unimpressed by things like religion and government and sex. Occasionally, when the three forcibly converged on television shows and radio, he would sip a cracked mug of stale black tea, nodding thoughtfully. I could almost hear him break into a tirade: It's all a mess! They should try to care about these things, lapped up in a shitty tireme by the tongue of a hungry sea storm. Fuckwits. 

But whatever stirred behind his eyes, hidden by the stunning blue, he kept to himself. As he did most things. He spoke little, except when he had to. Even as he was dying, pinned down in a hospital bed by IVs and scratchy gray blankets, he spoke matter-of-factly: I think I'm dying, he muttered, eyes buttoned to the ceiling in wonder. If you wouldn't mind, take care of yourself. And off he went, back to the blue where he belonged. Permanently. 

The truth is, I never heard what really went on during his sailing days. By the time I was born--soon to be wide-eyed and idealistic--he had left the annals of seafaring behind. Mother told me some things, but details were sparse--only odds and ends, scraps of another life probably best left to drown somewhere in the deep between New York and Africa. The stories were wondrous once, but names had since been forgotten.

It's only recently that I recognized what I missed. There was something stirring in burying my father, something of loss and shadow. There was a revelation that reminded me: the truth dies fast if you don't hold it fast. And flesh fades faster than an ocean storm.

When Father was buried, I went on a hunt. I was determined to uncover his story, telling myself to shun all prejudice, all judgments, all preconceptions. What did I know of the sea, after all? Since my earliest days, I was a land creature, never wondering after the wonders of water. It was to drink, sometimes to swim in. Never to explore.

But that exploration was in my blood. I needed to travel the seas with my father--at least in memory, if not in reality.

Unfortunately, nobody would talk to me. Up the street from my family in New York City lived one of my father's sailing buddies. I remember Mother introducing me when I was five. I hid, frightened, shivering behind her legs. But he was long gone by the time I began my chronicle of Father's past. And while my father spent years aboard ships, names and dates made themselves scarce--no companies, no businesses, no traders, no sailors, no vessels connected themselves to my father. He was an unknown. 

At least, that is, until I begin rifling through old boxes in Mother's attic. Their cardboard sides were weak from dust and age, many falling apart in my hands. My fingers flipped through hand-scrawled documents--financial ledgers, report cards, pictures long forgotten of people even longer forgotten. 

There was little there. Except for an old bound journal, fraying at all corners and badly stained. I set it aside as I heaped together the junk that would make its way to the dumpster.

Mother wanted to clean out the house, so I had volunteered to rummage through the attic and scrap old toys, trinkets given as gifts dozens of Christmases ago, and boxes upon boxes of antiquated paper records. I could probably have tossed them all out without thinking twice, but my curiosity got the better of me. I assembled the trash, then sat down on the warped wooden floor, brushing away the dust, to read the curious old journal.

Most of it was water stained so badly I couldn't make anything out. But I caught pages here and there, sentences that stubbornly resisted erasure, and words that tiredly hung on. Pieces came together slowly, not altogether clear at first: ...treatment not working... stories fascinating... My mother's voice broke through in a haze of thoughts and reflections: ...thinks he's a sailor... cannot tell Sam Jr... imagination... crazy...

As I thought back to the stories Father told me when I was a child, they seemed suddenly surreal--the kinds of bedtime fictions every parent weaves, sometimes with fantastical creatures, sometimes with sword fights and pirates. And I remembered my father telling me about the violent storms, crushing down on ships, and my mother's voice correcting him from somewhere in the kitchen. I remember believing every last word.

While most of my friends grew up and learned that their bedtime stories were just playful fantasies, I never stopped believing. And the stories continued, into my adulthood. Until, in dottered old age, my father looked up at the hospital ceiling and told me to take care of myself. Then, no more stories.

I believed those stories. Every word. Until that moment.

Slowly, the fabric of wave-torn ships unraveled. I had never found proof of his heroic past, of the adventures that saved dozens of lives and quelled the silent rebellions of the sea. Sure, there were sirens and giants and monsters beyond imagining, but no names. I grabbed in my mind for one small detail that I could use to prove the stories were real, that he was real--something in that ocean of fiction that he crafted that I could hold onto. Something I could some day experience for myself.

My eyes scanned the recesses of the attic as I parsed the possibility of my father's madness. The word "crazy" played over and over again in my mind, until finally my eyes rested on a small little teddy bear. It was Marlow, the very one I cuddled as a child. That bear was once my only comfort, and he and I were the ones who listened excitedly to the soft, dramatic voice of Father as he regaled us with ocean tales. Suddenly, a detail dawned. I remembered one particular story he told us, and one particular place he had mentioned.

Throwing the journal at the pile of dusty boxes, I lurched down the attic ladder and rushed toward Father's aging set of encyclopedias in the den. He never looked at them, but they always gave me the impression he was a learned man. I scrambled for the right letter, the right book, my palms sweating, my eyes shifty. The right volume finally fell into my hands. I flipped through the starchy pages, ripping corners and smearing ink with wet fingertips until I landed on the spot where it might have been, where it should have been--

But there was nothing. Not a reference. Not a hint. Nothing.

How great, my father the sailor. That madman missed. The blue-faced marvel. He was nothing but a lunatic. And yet, though the floor beneath me--that foundation of the past, of bedtimes weaves--slowly crumbled, I could not help but think that to him, every story told and fiction woven was truth through and through. And my mother, desperately in love with me and resigned to him, let the fantasies live on.

I had a father once, and he was a sailor. That I believe, nevermind what history says. I had a father once, and yes, I love him for the adventure-bound hero that he always claimed to be. To hell with madness, 


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As many already know--and have witnessed first-hand--the ELCA committed to opening doors and arms to ordained minister in same-sex, committed, monogamous relationships at its last churchwide assembly. It was a giant step forward--not only for the Lutheran church, but for society as a whole.

In the wake of that decision, many churches have struggled to find peace with the assembly's actions, questioning themselves and their faith, as well as their place in the greater ELCA community. Many have openly dissolved their relationship with the ELCA, choosing to affiliate with other denominations. Others have left the church altogether, confused, hurt, or offended by the direction the ELCA chose to take not two years ago.

Now, we deal with the aftermath.

I am, without doubt or hesitation, on the liberal end of Christian theology and continue to parse the nuances of each teaching as it is handed down from teachers, ministers, and scholars. Part of the richness of that earnest consideration comes from a childhood rooted in Catholic teaching--a canon of dogma and doctrine that I was forced to question in later years after I came out as a homosexual. 

Since I began honestly and prayerfully examining the teachings of the Christian church as a whole--from its most conservative proclamations to profoundly liberal assertions--I have naturally continued my examination of self as an openly gay Christian.

Many of my writings deal with this very issue, and any consequential issues that arose because of the inherent conflicts between affirmed homosexuality and Christian teaching. For the most part, my observations began and ended with my faith, wrapped around my sexuality. It was logical to do so, as my faith was primary, and my sexuality was secondary to myself and my life.

More recently, however, I have begun turning towards the perspective of the homosexual in a predominantly Christian society. In attempting to be both honest and fair, I have written many an article on the responsibilities of the faithful and the LGBT community--and where, as a member of both, my responsibilities overlap. 

In the grander picture, however, I have begun to question the age-old explanation for the LGBT community's distance from Christianity: persecution. Yes, persecution is a part of the church's history--and, unfortunately, continues to be. Though, I am happy to say it is ebbing. At the same time, however, I feel that historical justifications for LGBT individuals' aggressive distance from the church are weak. There is one particular theological problem that arises on closer examination that I think is worth discussing.

It boils down to this: humility. One of Christianity's most powerful calls to its faithful is the call to humility. This is not, of course, to be confused with humiliation, or to be seen as some sort of oppression. Christianity is not calling individuals to be humbled at the foot of religion, but at the feet of Christ. It is asking us to be honest with ourselves about our innate sinfulness and tendency to screw things up. It does not say we are completely incapable of doing good deeds and loving one another; it simply says that we are flawed individuals who need help--a help that comes in its fullest, purest, most essential form in Christ and God.

The true humiliation the LGBT community has known for centuries has prompted an understandable pendulum swing in the direction of aversion. What established powers--both secular and religious--succeeded in doing by oppressing the sexuality of these individuals has now become a loud revolution. The LGBT community has found a powerfully loud voice for itself--and rightfully so.

So what do you suppose the response would be if this same community--told to keep their mouths shut and their lives cloistered for generations--was then told, in a newer, more accepting age, to be humble? We say rightly that humility is part of a true Christian life, but it's a hard call to listen to--for anyone, let alone those who have been forcibly pushed down since the church's inception. 

I do not have a solution to this very difficult struggle, except to say that time itself may present a healing power that words in the here and now could not. It is silly for the church to pretend that humility--practiced throughout its history or not--is not necessary for those who suffered. The fact is, humility is part of being a Christian. And yet, it is reasonable that those cast out should throw back such a responsibility in the face of the church, claiming that the time to be out and proud is now. No humility, no humbling oneself. It is time to shout. 

But there is indeed a way to be proud, to shout out in affirmation of one's God-made self, and still be humble. Fair or not, the injustices perpetrated by the Christian church do not justify dismissal of Christ's call: be loving, be meek, forgive.

It is worth remembering--for all of us--that Christ was the one who gave us this command, not religion and not the church. 

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Winter's coming-coming, hide!
  and no six-figured red will send her sulking
  to the spring--you sling 
  your happiness away, you hear?

It's the Rabid Creatures scrounging-sounding!
  on the island of Moreau, and dying
  or in the jailhouse of Joseph
  all alone; I'd like to scream in fear

But stirring from their bedrest-heat 
  from sickly whispers to a soundly beat 
  those succubus have cried across 
  my ear and trees.

Christmas, Christmas turn the wail away!
  i'm sad for centuries alone inside 
  that all my history i think and cried-- 
  but that's all over now; it rains a belt of snow.

Fire-siding with a bevy drink and five
  good books to toil away the howling she outside.
  and if it's monday, i'm not sure i knew 
  what week it is, or Christmas was last night.

Though cannot help but feel-in-dreaming, I
  have things to say that need the sun
  but it has won, i think, that grim-faced
  clouded wind; tomorrow I will bake a pie.

And sigh, for winter's coming-coming
  while I am chained in hiding, culling 
  memories of whiskey-drizzled spring.


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Winter's Coming 11/01/2011
 
There are deep drifts of snow,
Deep mists I know
Which hush the racing madness
Of the world

And through her window sheer
I see a dauntless fear 
In gallops 'cross
The banks of lush-white snow.

I look but do not touch
What lingers on the pane
For all the madness that I see
In me is same--

And tho the strident light,
From lamp post down below,
Halos each and every flake
In humble perfect-ness,

Still, I latch to bed and pillow,
Staring on, sensing, knowing
What imperfections
Truly live there on

In the breach 
Of an early winter storm.

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