HALF-LIFE

[August 31st, 2005] Scientists can determine how long an organism has been dead by the process of radio-carbon dating. That's where you count the number of beta radiations given off per minute per gram of material.

For the rest of us, though, discovering how long someone's been alive is as easy as counting the number of flaming candles on a birthday cake. OK, so maybe life shouldn't be reduced to ritualized, flaming sticks mired in mounds of chocolate-flavored frosting. But this train of thought-and the fact that I just celebrated my 43rd birthday-has lead me to think, paraphrasing a song from Rent, if it isn't candles providing ample illumination on our lives, then what the hell does measure a life, anyway?

This question, of course, leads me to the queen of pop, Madonna, whose lyrics inspired me to hold on to a cliché that I consider my personal mantra: "You have to be willing to let go of everything to have anything else."

But it's hard to let go of something if you don't feel like you have anything to begin with. I guess I could acknowledge the loss of another year in have/have-not terms, considering such traditional markers as money, family and the kind of car I drive. But for gays like me, these benchmarks mean squat. Despite what FOX News anchors spout out nightly, we homos aren't taking over the suburbs, raising passels of kids, driving Hummers or making the kind of money that assures we'll never need Social Security. In fact, some queers I know around my age are still trying to figure out what they're going to be when they grow up; you know, when they get a "real" job.

I have a real job: It's being gay full-time. And no matter how loud and proud I sound off about my choices, I can't help feeling like a fuck-up, a good-for-nothing faggot. Because I was born in the post-Ike, pre-Stonewall era, I feel like a failure-God help me for saying this-simply because I'm not straight. At this halfway-ish mark between cradle and grave, what I hear in my head is that I will never measure up.

So when I die, how will scientists carbon-date a drama queen like me? Perhaps they could count the number of cocktails I choked down. Or they could get all CSI-esque on my ass and count the reasons why I never tried to be anything more than a party-loving queer boy. Maybe they could find evidence to explain to my family, partner and friends (and critics, too) why I never butched up long enough to tackle anything requiring more than a smidge of real, honest-to-goodness effort.

For once, I'm not looking for superficial sympathy here, or the easy out of a flip cliché. I'm beginning to realize that any life that focuses only on one's sexuality isn't much of a balanced life. If I took my head out of my rainbow-colored clouds long enough, I probably would have realized years ago that we're all more than just the sum of our parts.

This birthday, I'm trying to face the limits I've set for myself simply because I am gay.