Walking Back the Cat
I have a close friend, we’re both male, mid-teens and speak to one-another every day. He declares himself homosexual, gay, yet he’s never had a male-to-male relationship. I’m hetero. I’ve had enough heterosexual connection to know that I’m assertively hetero. I wonder about him, with no real sexual experience, how can he be so sure?
We met about four years ago as common members of an AEPP (Advanced Educational Placement Programme) group where we became close friends. Part of the program was a community service activity which most of us took as a lark, just something we had to do and we just did it. No worries. But my mate took it as something that he could use as a new focus on engagement. He devoted himself to ‘children-with-disabilities’ care. Over time he became a self-confessed’ valued team member looking after vacation care and Saturday supervision.
Now
Over time my mate has convinced himself that he is an indispensible member of the team that looks after young people impaired by disabilities. He works unpaid, in a voluntary capacity to care for young people who simply look for something outside the norm on weekends and the like. My mate has found identity and ego-stroking through this activity. he admists this, he readily confesses to seeking and gaining self-esteem through this community activity. In fact, he maintains that this is the only source os self-realisation for him.
Today he got sacked. He was told that he is no longer required at the centre.
** This evening**
He rang me, devastated. His depression is so deep that he admits to considering suicide.
His theory it that, because he is gay, he needs more stroking of his ego. He needs constant reassurance of his worth because he feels aberrant, because he is deviant. My natural response is ‘rubbish’. How is gaydom aberrant, deviant?
But, who knows?
Is this a gay syndrome?
Do gays feel a greater need for reassurance, for ego-building, for meaningful engagement for life-meaning?
Or is my mate compensating for other missing bits?