Growing up from season one.

I saw last episode of season four of Queer as Folk about a month ago and I still think why I don't like it? Why even though I loved season four and think it's the best season after season one, I can't relate to it. In one of reviews of QAF author compared Brian/ Justin love scenes with mythical love stories of Greece gods. Why they didn't seem like that anymore? I think the reason lies in the slogan that Showtime tried so hard to view in season one, but gradually deleted it: QAF is about lives of a group of gay man and isn't portrait majority of homosexual community. Season one of QAF is more like a fairy tale than a real life story.

But despite Showtime slogan I think this fairy tale is part of lives of every gay and even straight boy. There is a period (And there must be a period) in every boy and girl life that they live like a fairy tale. The happily ever afters in happily ever after stories usually don't last long, but even those small moments of extreme beauty and extreme foolishness, are moments that fuel rest of our lives. They made our stories and a life without stories isn't a life at all.

Brian descends from his godlike character; Justin isn’t an innocent angel anymore. In a year or two Brian/Justin will be another Ben/ Michael. Their worries will be marriage, adopting a child and building a secure life. They will become old, but moments like season one let them be young forever. They always have stories to tell. Stories to remind them of days of fairy tales.

In fairy tales people assume that their dreams are all fulfilled. They just dance, kiss, smile and make love forever. They don't worry about everyday life. And they don't dream anymore. Sex and love are just small parts of big scheme of our lives. But in order to be able to understand wasteness of this scheme, in order to see our own scheme in universal portrait of humanity we need to pass this fairy tale period. We need to get free of childhood dreams to be able to make our adult dreams. We need to have our own stories. I think the reason that many closeted gay boys (me included) is frozen in dreaming about life like season one of QAF is lack of having our own stories. We lack fuel of fairy tales and fairy loves to get past our boyhood and become a man. I think Paul Monette described this at best in beginning of his National book award winner autobiography "Becoming a Man: Half a life story": "Everybody else had a childhood, for one thing-where they were coaxed and coached and taught all the shorthand. Or that’s how it always seemed to me, eavesdropping my way through twenty-five years, filling in stories of straight men's lives. First they had their shining boyhood, which made them strong and psyched them for the leap across chasm to adolescence, where the real rites of manhood began. I grilled them about it whenever I could, slipping the casual question in while I did their Latin homework for them, sprawled on the lawn at Andover under the reeling elms. And every year they leaped further ahead, leaving me in the dust with all doors closed, and each with a new and better deadbolt. Until I was twenty-five, I was the only man I knew who had no story at all. I’d long since accepted the fact that nothing had ever happened to me and nothing ever would. That's how the closet feels, once you've made your nest in it and learned to call it home. Self pity becomes your oxygen."


... And I just discovered Out of the Closet Television. A magical kingdom of online gay videos about gay life. Ted Trent's welcome to out of closet video is so heart breaking, yet so familiar.

... And The California Supreme Court voided the nearly 4,000 same-sex marriages sanctioned in San Francisco earlier this year. It seems there is still a long way to go.

... And it seems animals are going to come out of closet too!

... And a great QAF music video from Sandstorm.

... And a great Gay literature website with collection of online books.

... And maybe I become crazy, but isn't this Whale song cute?! (Results of reading David Brin's Uplift Saga!!!)