The Queer Blues

I visited my local gay bookstore not long ago and saw a book entitled, “The Queer Blues.”

Now there’s a title.

Obviously someone has taken the time to study this so-called phenomenon and I should have purchased the book. I have suffered from this malady for quite sometime. Clearly, a lot of other gay people do too. In a warped way it’s comforting to know that I’m not alone.

I also suffer from diabetes which is known to wreak havoc on one’s emotional well-being. My doctor tells me that diabetics are notorious for “blowing their neural receptors” and this brings on depression. It’s a chemical imbalance.

So now I have two reasons for the blues.

Why do I have to be twice blessed?

I mean, after all, I can be in the midst of any one of a number of joyful celebrations. I can be laughing and having a grand time. Then it starts. I can’t describe it. It just begins to envelop me, like an unwanted cloak on a beach.

I can generally tell when it’s the diabetes and not the gay issues. If it’s diabetes-related, I’ll have no real reason to be depressed. It will come from left field. After a few hours it departs and I’ll feel tremendously better.

The queer blues happen when I read something gay-oriented that makes me sad – a bashing, a right-wing speech likening me to a child molestor, an alcoholic. I suppose the one thing that did me in more than any other one was when Pat Robertson and Jerry Fallwell blamed me, a gay person, for the terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.

The right-wingers and the Christian Fundies are nuts. They don’t understand.

Homophobes don’t understand.

I am an upright citizen. I pay my taxes. I live my life. Don’t I deserve to live my life in a way that will that will bring me happiness?

I wonder how many other upright citizens who pay their taxes suffer from the queer blues? It’s not something they could readily confess. They probably can’t even define it or put their feelings into words.

How many of these people take the extreme measure of ending their lives because of it? How many miserable teens use this as a reason to kill themselves?

I think we’d all be surprised at the answers.