Narcotics Anonymous.

As a guest, I attended a Narcotics Anonymous meeting with my badass Uncle.

I spent an hour listening to some of the most eloquent speakers I’ve ever heard in such a casual setting. While myself or the average Joan would stutter or avoid eye contact while revealing their raw emotions and painful experiences, the healing members of NA made unfaltering eye contact with each person in the room as they verbally journeyed from recovery to relapse, through the depths of human pain and psychological struggle.

I listened to tales from those who have been with the program for years, and have not yet broken the seal of step three of twelve.

I listened to the profanity-laden story of a genuine father who has had enough with drugs, and instead feels high from the sound of his daughter’s voice on the telephone each day.

The community is warm and welcoming, there are no capacity limits nor penalties. Members volunteer to read and share while others cheer them on with exclamations they all have seemed to memorize.

My uncle told me later, eyes sparkling, of his sponsor, a person who had completed all of the twelve steps and remains with the program to mentor the newly recovering.

“I am so into recovery right now,” he gushed.

“Are you motivated to finish all twelve steps so that you can be a sponsor and eventually help others, too?” I asked.

“Well, that’s the point,” he told me as he flipped through his journal that chronicled the days of his progression through the first step.

His writing was honest and hopeful, and nearly brought tears to my eyes.

My visit to this meeting affirmed my belief that the more widespread the experience, whether this may be self-constructing or harmful, the wiser the soul;

The deeper one drinks from the dark waters of the earth, the deeper the potential for spiritual realization and truth.

Sexuality.

Many childhood memories are likely to reminisce some sort of outlandish family member, coming in and out of the picture, causing both joy and confusion throughout the youthful years. For me, that person was my matrilateral Uncle. He asked me to use a badass name in lieu of his true identity, to conceal his affinity and upgrade his style; unfortunately I can’t come up with one that’s badass enough.

He was the uncle who was in and out of trouble constantly, having sleepovers on our couches, and crashing christmases to rave about nonsense in shirts that read “DRAMA QUEEN”.

The naiveness of myself and my brothers did not allow us to intercept these signals and to decode the message that our uncle was different from what we were used to. It was not until young teenage years that I realized that my uncle is a member of the homosexual/ bisexual community.

Today, we speak freely and openly, sometimes revealingly, about our own love lives or preferences. One day, standing outside of a regional swimming hole, the trees a vibrant green and vibrating in the summer breeze, he inquired whether I was going to “stick to guys.”

I nodded and laughed, partially due to his flamboyant bluntness and partially because of his genuine curiosity.

In an entirely airy fashion, he said, “Alright, okay, that’s cool… Ya know, I don’t have any beef with you Breeders!”

“Breeders?” I felt as if I were being dubbed as a “Mudblood” from the Harry Potter Series.

“Yeah, us gay guys, we call straight people breeders, you know, because you make babies.”

He and his current boyfriend, Seton, live together in Riverside. Ceton is an interior designer, and according to my uncle, his “future husband.” They met at church, a place where my uncle says is common alongside bars and friends’ contact-lists.

What struck me as I realized that my uncle had been homosexual  all along is the fact that he always had a boyfriend. Did he find any difficulty, I wondered, in finding others with similar relationship interests? Our society is divided over accepting freedoms of sexualities that stray from the norm, and for this reason sexuality is not blatantly pronounced nor self-labeled.

As we sat and discussed life’s joys and concerns over coffee, he told me that finding a boyfriend was easy for him; it was finding a girlfriend that was more difficult.

There are aspects of their same-sex relationship that I noticed are purely and openly sexual, while the emotional, long-term bond is still under construction; this is common, however, in heterosexual relationships as well.

I developed a hypothesis about the sexual and emotional aspects of the homo vs. heterosexual relationships. I noticed a slight battle for dominance in the household; although common masculine characteristics were avoided by one or both of the partners in the relationship, there is a secret, innate battle for dominance in some areas. Amongst these were arguments about how to decorate the interior of the house and whether the obnoxious, stray cat should be fed.

In heterosexual relationships, these roles are often assigned by society and socialization and therefore this battle does not occur. As for my uncle’s relationship, however, allocation of feminine and masculine roles, in accordance with society’s, are chosen along with the color of paint in their newly shared home.

I attempted to piece my observations together to understand the complex mechanism of homosexual relationships, yet much more research is needed to come to any conclusions.

Staying the weekend with these flamboyant persons who wear their sexuality proudly was a stimulating experience.

[‘Flamboyant’ is a term I use in a neutral sense, not to blame flaming homosexuality nor neon ubiquity.]

I lounged on the beach and watched the young lovers, only three months into their rendezvous, frolicking in the water just as flirtatious as school-kids.

Their love, although fresh and pure, was hidden on their own accord in public spaces, as they and I both knew that discouraging stares would be cast their way.

In conclusion, my first-hand experiences with models of the homosexual culture were enriching, and affirm that human attraction is synonymously beautiful in any and every form.