Category Archives: Fear & Doubt

Fear & Doubt

Growing Beyond False Expectations

Our first love and/or relationship often define who we become in the future. My first relationship actually turned out to be quite awful and in many ways set me back socially for many years to come. A product of being born in the 60’s and reaching my maturity in the 70’s in small town Montana, I had different expectations of what I thought a relationship should be. Through American television, we had all bought into the idealism of a perfect family unit where there were no major issues, and the ones that arose on the surface were solved at the dinner table like in shows like Leave it to Beaver or The Brady Bunch. Everything was always portrayed as happy and normal. This creates a false sense of normalcy and really led to a really fucked up way of looking at reality. There were no role models with good examples how of we really should interact with each other and how to deal with situations that were beyond the norm. Not all families where as healthy as those portrayed on the small screens in our houses we where becoming addicted to as our evening programming. During this era my mother and father were perfect in my eyes. They were the epitome of what we had seen portrayed by these television families. My mother stayed at home, tended us kids, took care of the house duties, and kept us fed. When I left home this was also my expectation. So when I hit my first relationship, and it turns out to be with a man, I had no idea of what to do, but follow what I had been taught. I lived in a fantasy world that I would soon learn was far from perfect. When I slept with someone for the first time, it somehow meant something more and I felt an obligation to hold on. I expected to be loved in return and that somehow we would live in a perfect world and be happy until the end together. But my sexual awakening was happening at the beginning of the 80’s in the height of the sexual revolution where most of the world was finally finding a freedom of sexual expression they had never known before. As you now know I picked up my first partner in a porn world of anonymous casual sex and this should have been my first indication where the relationship would end up. I now look back at my journals from that time and see that though I was having fun and, though I thought I was falling in love with this man, I really was not satisfied with the actual relationship because there are lots of notations of fighting early on, breaking it off, and then coming back together again. Looking back I don’t think I was in love at all but became obsessed with fitting into that idealistic world I thought I belonged. Perhaps I tried too hard to fit into that mode and this is what became the destruction of the relationship. I believed in a monogamous world where we where true to each other. What I didn’t realize or was blinded by my rose colored glasses and refused to see was that he did not. I did not discover this until it was too late. I quit a great job and followed him first to Illinois and eventually ending up in Texas, where once we began to live together, it become quite apparent. That year was probably the hardest and most painful year of my life. Once ended took me years to get over and I think has impacted me ever since.

I learned early not to put to much expectation in others. What people say is what they rarely do or are doing. I have learned over the years to not put trust in a false expectation. As a gay man those expectations are harder then ever to be bound to and in the end can only lead to hardship. We cannot possess or possibly own another person; you have to learn to accept them for who and what they are. You are also not going to change them. These have been lessons learned through much hardship. Since those early days I have actually found love and been loved. I have had some really great relationships that are healthy and strong. I am a no non-sense sort of guy who says what he feels and communicates directly without innuendo. I have learned to love myself first and live my life with as much dignity and pride as possible and have found this is what leads to a healthy relationship with mutual respect and adoration for others. After all we are all human.

The Long Dark Seduction Of My Desire

I recently found an old journal about the first time I actually went home with a man and spent the night. The date was March 1 1982. I would have been 20 years old and we ended up picking each other up at an old video arcade that is still in existence here in Missoula today. There are not many details in the notes, but in my head I flashed back to a very vivid cold night, when my body trembled with fear. The sheer panic and confusion I was feeling floods my mind again as if I am standing in that darkness, alone again. I was a couple of years out of high school and knew that I have always had a strong desire to be with a man, but for some reason I just couldn’t quite come to terms with possibly doing it. The video arcade was a way to have encounters with others without really having to make a commitment, always somehow felt it wasn’t quite real. It was a dark world filled with black light with neon signs that glowed vibrantly in the darkness. Anyone with a white shirt took on a haunting purplish glow. You really couldn’t see the faces of people, because skin tones disappeared into in a dark haunting haze. The place was a maze of walls with hidden openings, covered by curtains and the whir and clatter of films being projected into glass screens within the little booths. You could hear a coin drop from anywhere in the places and then the muted/muffled voices of people talking. Back in those days, people actually did talk to each other in those types of films, as inane as it may have seemed then, adds a certain humanity that is lacking today. But it all happened in darkness. A touch, a kiss, someone feeling my crotch, a quick encounter and then they would disappearance back into the darkness. Once I had discovered the place, I didn’t go there very often. Perhaps 3 or 4 times over the course of a 3-year period. I remember living in the dorms on campus and after one of my visits rushing home to immediately jump into the shower and try to scour away any traces of the encounter from my skin, often my body eventually becoming consumed by sobs of grief that I had allowed myself to go back to that place of such desperate temptation. Then eventually after another 5 to 6 months I would find myself lurking outsides it’s doors in the darkness of the street waiting and watching working up my courage enough to enter its seductive labyrinth once more.

I figured something was wrong with me for wanting this desire and I began to see a counselor, not sure if I was trying to talk myself into or out of this sort of encounters. I vividly had that in my notes as well because I had to somehow come to terms with what was actually happening to me. I remember a lot of fear and dread. I remember becoming overcome with desire to explore this within myself but completely needing to reject the possibility. It all didn’t quite feel right, but sometimes our bodies and minds work in opposition with each other with the flesh often winning over and allowing the mind to either succumb and retreat. It never seemed to get easier. Was I to become a lost soul?

So eventually this night of the beginning of March in 1982, I made that leap that would somehow change the course of the life and give a new meaning to me existence. Once I connected with another man in an actual encounter, my fears were waylaid and the doubt overridden. Once bitten, I know what I wanted and continued to seek this partner. Was it love, or lust, or just an open denial of what I had been? A few days later I enter a note into the journal, “I am really starting to enjoy being with Mark and gay sex is very interesting.”

Double Edged Sword

Today I begin to move into the last phase of this project. Hard to believe I am two thirds of the way through it. Wow what an adventure it is becoming and it’s amazing where it’s been in such a short time. My focus today and probably this upcoming week is on creating a website; but I am having great difficulties trying to figure out where and how it needs to go. I have been looking for templates but am not finding anything I really like that I fit into and I have been working with Adobe’s Dreamweaver to see how I am able to modify or create my own, but that is proving to be difficult as well. I have decided to call in an expert who can help me figure it out. So this afternoon’s about meetings to get started and see what I can come up with.

Actually my brain is completely fried and I am having a hard time focusing at the moment.

My head is spinning with so many ideas and possibilities but the truth of the matter is do I have access to what I need living and being here in Montana to make it happen? It seems simple enough right! But Montana is still a place where people are reluctant to expose themselves, especially for art, and though I have been fortunate to photograph them in the past, it is always a major scramble to meet and photograph someone new. I have already created a body of work but it remains stagnant if I am not able to continue the exploration and grow in the process. I cannot spend the time I need seeking new explorations if I am so wrapped up in trying to figure out the business and marketing end of this process. I feel like I am being cut by a double edge sword of where to best use my resources. Now that I am beginning to meet people who can and are willing to help me move to a new level I am faced with the question: Can I do what is necessary to make it happen and still maintain the work? Or do I continue the work and slowly allow things to evolve along the process and possibly lose some of those connections that are willing to help now? I can see where I could very easily become lost somewhere along the way. I know it’s not going to all happen at once and I really don’t expect it to. It seems the creation of art itself is the easy part, but making something of it becomes the complicated part. I keep reminding myself to take a deep breath and take it one step at a time. Perhaps I am allowing people to influence me far too much. It seems since I have been home, this is all becoming so complex, it’s almost like I can taste the dream, but can I really get there and remain true to what I started? I am beginning to wonder if moving to the next level is where I really want to be. Today it’s just overwhelming.

Memory Of The Senses

I am still a bit completely out of whack and trying to get myself back on track. Taking a couple of weeks away from the studio and other work seems to have just put me a bit behind in some areas and this week is mostly about getting caught back up. It still amazes me how much I manage to accomplish within the course of the day. I spend about three hours gardening in the mornings, then photography all afternoon, sometimes squeezing a little nap in before heading off to spend my five hours at UPS in the evenings. Everything seems to be part time in my life and I have been a good one for juggling all this. The gardens seem to be one of the places of my greatest joy. After seeing such extraordinary gardens in Paris, I am totally inspired with some new ideas. I really see, what an extraordinary design I have put forth in some on my own spaces. A garden is like a living sculpture that is constantly evolving and changing. Something new blooms every day. Fortunately here in Montana we actually have winters and so you really see the evolution of the entire garden process with each distinctive season. Yet it allows my winters the freedom to focus back on creative photographic projects. The gardens become my time and space to reflect on myself, dream and plan. It’s my daily breath of fresh air and becomes a renewal of my spirit.

I do not mean to come across with mostly negative intent in doing this Naked Man Project. I particularly feel quite healthy and balanced and after this past trip. I am definitely coming to a greater understanding of who I am currently and where I have been and yes there are issues that I am still dealing with. When I reflect on the past, it is that a reflection, and a sort of remembrance, as was yesterday’s post. I believe the past is the key to what makes us what we have become today and that everything we learned springs from our wealth of experience. But I think there are great lessons and insight to be gained by understanding the history of who we are. Part of my mission with this Naked Man Project was to give a true reflection of my time and history as I have lived it. To be a young man, growing up on a cattle ranch in the mountains of Montana, who turns out to be gay and creative is remarkable feat in and of it self. And yes there have been major pitfalls and obstacles to over come to get to this place where I exist currently. This is my experience! I have given myself one year to explore this identity and somehow come to some understanding of where I currently stand, but part of the fact remains that it is still a chronicle of a man becoming a product of his time, living in an era of the greatest changes of the gay movement which has been extraordinary the past 30 years in it’s evolution. And yes I see what an extraordinary part of it I have become and continue to be. It is my objective in my imagery to redefine the way we look at our selves in the sexual/sensual self. To see the body and it’s soul in a positive light. We tend to live in a world of exploitation, where the self-image is completely compromised, and so much of our culture has such an unhealthy outlook on who we are. I know this because these are the issues I have spent my own life dealing with, first hand. But we cannot ignore, nor should we forget, the history from which this all springs. I now see how the Naked Man really is the exposure of myself and the discovery of identity, and the way I have viewed this change. I will and want to delve into that past to take you there first hand.

In a sense the project become three fold. While it exposed the past, it still is a growing and learning of my own self and gaining perspective and ultimately the birth and creation of my self-expression. When I first took up photography, I was enamored by the works of Robert Mapplethorpe. In many ways I saw him as a pioneer who was able to unabashedly expose his private world for others to see. He very shockingly showed a mirror unto ourselves and to the world, what we as a culture were too afraid to examine. That time was ripe and he became the product of his time. I remember how squeamish yet enthralling it was to examine his work for the first time when I discovered his books, many years after his death. This was what brought me to taking of a camera and focusing it on my own existence. Please bear with me in the upcoming months as I explore that past and come to terms with my own history. In a sense this is like tending my gardens where the sense memory is re-ignited with a certain touch, a smell, or the color of a flower that connects me to places in my memory. These thoughts reoccur each year, at the same time, in the same place, in the same manner, and are vividly relived each time. I have been doing it for so long, it’s as if the plants and trees that surround me now contain the memory of my life.

Fear Of What I See In The Mirror

Somehow, today, I feel I have completely lost touch with who I am and where I am going with this project. I have spent the past couple of days researching and trying to figure out how a blog actually works. What it needs to have, how to expand it, and how to make it grow. I am finding it’s all way too overwhelming to think about and plan. Have I already been derailed from my concept by the very means needed to capture the concept? It’s perplexing, confusing and downright distracting. I have so many thoughts in the head. It’s swimming with ideas of what I want and need to say. Suddenly there are a lot’s of eyes with their focus on me, responding, recognizing things in myself I have never been aware were ever present. I feel like there is now an expectation. The bar has been raised and as I began to write today become paralyzed, gripped by terror, almost frozen unable to move. Can I live up to the remarkable things others see within me? I have always heard fear is a great motivating factor to get things done, so I guess it’s worth exploring.

When I look in the mirror who it is that I really see? I have never been much of one to admire myself. As a child I was awkward, gangly, and very uncoordinated. I didn’t have many friends and totally lacked any semblance of self-esteem. My retreat was to create a world of my own, a world where I could create something remarkable beyond myself. It’s taken years to get past those painful remembrances of self-loathing and isolation. Of being able to trust in myself  and recognize I was really worthy of any kind of talent. Growing up in a rural sate like Montana, creativity was completely misunderstood because it wasn’t in the norm. It was a non-sustainable hobby that was more often discouraged as sentimental or emotional. Athletics were the suitable substitute to suppress sentiment and emotion; you could work out your aggression on an opponent. My family really didn’t get me. I was that creative black sheep. Though I was involved with plays they never once came to see what I was involved in. I just learned to adapt and was persistent to fulfill my driving desire to create. I never was never quite sure what, but knew I needed to create something, anything as long as it revealed my hidden self and let me express myself.

When I become an adult and began to explore my sexuality, I suddenly found a place where I was accepted, where I did belong. It was exciting and intense and filled with wonder, beauty and mystery. The raw sensual self was allowed to emerge and celebrate the release of all kinds of emotions: love, beauty, seduction and passion. My body was not as disjointed and awkward as I had been lead to believe. Yet I could not see these remarkable qualities within myself. I guess, have always been filled with self-doubt. Through photography, this exploration of myself and working to revealing others I am coming to terms with my own self-image. Why has it taken me all of my life to get to this place of feeling safe and comfortable with my own identity? There are still a few residual temporal insecurities that emerge when I look in that mirror and see a man approaching middle age. Self-portraits have always been a difficult thing for me to create. I have such a different image of my self then what appears in the image. I look deeply into them and ask myself: is that really me? Self-portraits become an agonizing search for who we really are. So many people come into my studio fearful or afraid of what they might discover.  Yet I am a master of discovering and seeing all those remarkable qualities in others, why do I have such difficulty seeing it within myself?

To strip away ourselves and really look at who we are is very unnerving. For some reason when we look in the mirror, all we seem to see is a reflection of our flaws, our imperfections, things we don’t like about ourselves, yet I know if we look deep enough there is a discernible beauty buried deep within all of us. Photography becomes a mirror, and in that mirror of art we can see the most remarkable things.