As with all sorts of obsessive compulsions and addictions, there is a constant descent into a numbing world of pervasive boredom and dissatisfaction. Saint John of the Cross understood this phenomenon as stemming from a crucial break within humanity into two highly contrary camps: those who have been freed of earthy attachments and those who are inexorably tied to this world for their peace of mind. The first group, those who are open to receiving the Spirit, are honored as “the children of God;” because of this distinction, they are privileged to eat at the Father’s table and from His dish; the inverse crowd are those who constantly seek to fulfill their appetites, looking for solace in worldly things by feeding upon other creatures; i.e. finding the highest gratification in earthly sensual bodies; their refusal to rise above the purely material makes them like “dogs” devouring the scraps or “crumbs” that fall to them; Saint John of the Cross explained: “This is precisely why they wander about hungry as dogs. The crumbs serve more to whet their appetite than to satisfy their hunger…This is the characteristic of those with appetites; they are always dissatisfied and bitter, like someone who is hungry.”

Part and parcel with this self-relegation to animalistic behavior is a certain blindness which prevents the person from recognizing or even partially seeing the state of their current situation; again, St. John of the Cross wrote: “Thus it is impossible for it to lift its eyes to the divine light, or even think of doing so, for in never having seen it, it knows not what it is…Accordingly, it will be unable to desire this light; it will rather desire darkness because it knows what darkness is, and will go from darkness to darkness.” This long dive into the abyss happens, for example, with almost every porn addict when there is a gradual descent into more and more explicit material; as a kid, when I just got a glimpse of a “Playboy” Magazine cover that was enough to make my entire body quiver with uncontrollable excitement; within a year or two – looking at the pictorials inside, I couldn’t even get an erection. What had once completely satisfied me, and put my mind at peace, no longer did so; in fact, it become annoying and wholly disappointing; but, as John of the Cross wrote, I was merely feeding upon crumbs, and no matter how hard you imagine – a crumb will never become a feast. Yet, while you are inside the darkness – it’s almost impossible to see a route out or a different way of doing things; it’s as if you become comfortable with crawling and scratching. For, it’s really all you know how to do; and, for the most part, the hunger doesn’t inspire some courageous move to go outside of what has become comfortable, but actually engenders a deepening desperation and a further reliance upon what is not working.

In terms of my own life, this happened with the proverbial pushing of the envelope: going from porn addiction to experimentation to sexual perversity. Looking back now, it’s strange, but at the time I actually thought that upping the ante would inevitably make me a winner and I could walk away from the table – finally and completely fulfilled. It never happened. For every consecutive dark room that I walked into – turned out to be just as empty as the previous one; the only thing was – I couldn’t stop. Because, I kept hoping beyond hope that the next doorway would lead to the palatial mansion, with an endless banquet set before me, and, at last – I would be content, and I would be happy. Instead, I became like a half-starved rodent constantly twitching for any rotten morsel. Only, what kept me quiet was the fact, that when I got that little crumb – it satisfied me for a while. Though, afterwards, I was willing to do more and risk more in order to find my next meal. Finally, there was nearly nothing I wouldn’t do, but, I kept finding myself empty-handed. Towards the end of my imprisonment inside of “gay,” what was left that could possibly excite me? Yet, this experience is pervasive within the “gay” male community; hence, the dramatic and extremely ugly base-line of debauchery which exists within male homosexuality and has no corollary in the heterosexual world; for instance, when I was unconsciously checking out of “gay,” one of the last major sex parties I got into involved a single passive man and several insertive males; at the time – this was considered, even within “gay” circles, incredibly shocking. Almost 20 years later, another young man, again in San Francisco, agreed to have a gallon of semen, collected from various anonymous donors, injected into his rectum. No woman, unless psychologically ill, would ever submit to such a thing; this is because the same male mind that can contemplate the beauty of the Sistine Chapel ceiling can also construct a nightmarish corridor to ultimate degradation. And, in this subjugation, all is revealed – as homosexuality has always been a road to nowhere. Recently, gay millennial blogger Milo Yiannopoulos said: “I can’t get off unless they have a gun to my head.” This statement, though hyperbolic, is still incredibly revealing; for it shows the eventual end of all homosexuals desires: a wasteland of unfulfillment that irreversibly becomes self-destructive.

Only, this near psychotic need for completion is unfathomable to nearly all non-gay men; it’s most offensive, and thus completely ignored, by modern lesbians, typified by Ellen DeGeneres, who, by her carefully selected list of guests on her talk-show, continually gives a false image of “gay” male sexuality as prodigiously uncomplicated and surprisingly bourgeoisie; see Nate Berkus. Yet, there is always this dark-underbelly of “gay” male sex reality that is suggested in the endless data from the CDC which, usually with no mention in the media, methodically charts the continual rise of HIV in a younger and younger “gay” male populous, the reintroduction of syphilis in “gay” men, and the scary rise of anti-biotic resistant gonorrhea. Someone who actually instinctively understands this issue, yet sadly exploits it, is “gay” pornographer Paul Morris; of his completely ugly and sadistic films and of their impact upon “gay” men, speaking to a straight male journalist, Morris said: “These aren’t the incidental fantasies of a small fringe of outliers. These speak to the heart of the sexual imagination of most queer men. It wasn’t made for you. There’s no reason for you to see it. For you, it would read as an irrational stunt. But for the straight world, much of what comprises queer culture and life is incomprehensible.” And, he is precisely right, the complex psycho-drama taking place inside each and every “gay” man, a tragedy dating back to their childhood relationship with their father, is a place in which only those who have experienced it can ever fully travel. And, for those like myself, “gay” becomes a dark abyss of false hope, that, especially when we were young – we impetuously ran into with overflowing optimism only to later find it utterly miserable; it was child-like: we were chasing after a rainbow and expecting the Emerald City; but we never got to skip down the yellow-brick road – there was no Wizard and no home to go back to; instead, we stayed and tried to make the best of it; and, in the era of AIDS – we stayed and died. On the “gay” experience, legendary AIDS activist Larry Kramer is often prone to excited utterances, which regularly reduces his shifting stature to that of a respected pariah in the minds of those who uphold the modern white-washed “gay” theory, but he often reveals much truth; according to Kramer: “We have created a culture that in fact murdered us, killed us. What you can’t help but think, if you’ve got any brains, is don’t people ever learn anything?”