WELCOME TO THE CLUB
Hi listener (and reader),
As I promised in my about page, I will be writing a blog post for each of the songs in my first EP, Rainbow Catharsis. I’ll try to be completely honest and vulnerable with you, even if it doesn’t come naturally to me. Why doesn’t it come naturally to you, you may ask? I lived a long period of my life trying to deny and hide who I am, and fit into the molds of what I thought was expected of me. This experience left a deep mark in me, and that’s why it’s such a challenging exercise to write these words to accompany my first song, WELCOME TO THE CLUB. But, I started working on this EP not only to launch a music career: I did it also to get rid of some deeply-repressed and long-held emotions about periods of my life before and during coming out that I did not discuss too much, even with my close friends. And I cannot do that in the standard 3-ish minutes of a pop song.
I don’t think my experiences are unique at all, but until you share these with someone else, they feel artificially lonely. It makes sense to feel alone in something that you are not willing to open about to others. Only by opening up, and by listening up, you will find that there are others going through the same things you are. Some people are never able to get to that point, so I’m very glad that I’m writing these words, because so many hard moments had to happen for me to be here today. I’m not just talking about coming out, but also about taking the very scary decision of pursuing art.. Music was something I always loved, but chasing after that dream was scary to me back then when the things I wanted to sing about would make me a target, and the things I could sing about were shallow to me.
It would be great if people who are not in the LGBTQIA+ community are here, and if you’re one of them, I salute you, because your presence means you’re curious to learn about others’ experiences with being in and coming out of the closet. Yet what I would really love is that someone who is maybe in the same situation I was is here: someone who is in the closet, and in a relationship that they don’t know how to navigate, trying to deny themselves of an authentic and truly happy life just to please others. I hope my words and my music can inspire you to go through a process of self discovery and acceptance, wherever that journey takes you, and however long it takes you. I’m here for you if you want to leave a comment <3
So, if you’re still there, let’s talk about my long-term straight relationship, because that’s what this first song is about.
PART 1 - The Beginning
I don’t want to linger on where it all started, but quite early in my life I realized I was attracted to men. Not late enough to have a clear and rooted identity and not care about others perception of me (which could have helped me come out quicker), but also not early enough to have an unapologetic gay kid behavior that would have made people go, “of course you’re gay, there’s no closet to come out of!”. My realization came around the time where I already cared too much about fitting in and not letting other people down or be perceived as different. The consequences, you will hopefully read and listen to with time.
I attended catholic school and grew up in a country where hypermasculinity is celebrated and where being called gay or the Spanish equivalent of the F-word was the worst thing a male teenager could say to another one. It wasn’t used sparingly, and could be thrown out at the slightest show of feminine energy or sensitivity. As I just mentioned, I realized I was gay late enough to “know” this was something I had to hide, and whenever I would let my guard down, the comments would flow in. No one called me gay daily, but it was the easy joke to mock me for my fleeting episodes of unrepressed femininity. And I hated it with all my heart. So coming out was never an obvious outcome for me after my gay awakening. I was convinced that if I wanted to continue feeling the love of those around me, I had to put up a façade. It didn’t matter how much it would hurt me but, at the end of the day, it would keep me loved, and that’s all I wanted.
I’m not an avid reader because of my ADHD, but my friend lent me this book called The Velvet Rage which every gay man should read, because it has done wonders for my self-awareness and acceptance even years after coming out. In there, the author says that we are convinced something is wrong with us and we don’t deserve love. This quote really stayed with me after reading it:
“It was this early abuse suffered at the hands of our peers, coupled with the fear of rejection by our parents, that engrained on us one very strident lesson: There was something about us that was disgusting, aberrant, and essentially unlovable. ”
So when you are intrinsically convinced that nobody will accept you for who you are, and when you are mocked for the few instances where you show yourself without filter, you commit to a life of performance. Do you like the manly man, the lady’s boy? I’ll definitely try to serve that up to you. It’s easy to keep the performance up at the beginning - if you realize you are gay at a young age, but it all became so much harder when I became a teenager and I could see all my friends around me starting to feel attraction for the opposite sex.
PART 2 - TRYING TO FIT IN
When boys my age started to feel excited about the prospect of truly blossoming into that “lady’s boy”, that “manly man”, to me that’s when the dread started. I didn’t want that. At least not with a girl. I kissed around, yes, more to keep the heat off me than anything else. To explore, sometimes with the delusional conviction that what I had could be cured, and that I would straighten up as soon as I found a girl I liked. Initially I didn’t feel okay bringing someone else into my mess. I wanted this whole lie to be a one man’s show and I didn’t want to hurt anyone. It’s one thing to keep up a façade, but it’s a completely different thing to have to involve someone else in it.
Around this time, the dark thoughts started to happen. What if I don’t continue? Giving up seemed like an easy choice. I had started to filter my behavior and try to act straight so early in my life, that I believe I was able to avoid at least 90% of the bullying openly gay teenagers go through, but this made me think that coming out was absolutely impossible and only the worst consequences could come out of it. My subconscious had irrevocably been wired to believe being gay as the worst possible thing, worthy of taking one’s own life. I couldn’t fathom being different, ridiculed, bullied, or to be a disappointment to my parents. I knew my mind could not take it at the time. Knowing what I know now about my mostly happy gay life, I can’t help but feel so sad that those thoughts ever crossed my mind.
What could I do to avoid that scrutiny and that talk behind my back that I was always convinced was happening? What was the only step forward I could take that would convince others, and hopefully myself, that I was straight and that would keep those dark thoughts away? I had to betray myself and bring someone else into my mess. Otherwise the questions would start popping up: “Why isn’t he dating anyone?” All these scenarios were playing in my mind and I was trying to control the outcome for every single one of them. For a while, I hyped myself up, trying to convince myself that this is what I wanted and that being gay was a choice. The moment I was in my first relationship it would all be okay, and this “phase” would be over. Everything was better at that point than the prospect of coming out, because I was still deeply in denial, and because coming out or being outed was almost synonym to death to me.
PART 3 - FOUND A GOOD FRIEND & CALLED IT LOVE
I wasn’t haphazard about my choice of partner though: I decided that if I would find a girl, it would be a girl that “ticked” all the boxes to me: someone who was interesting, someone who was caring, an open person. If I thought that I could cure my gayness, I had to do it with a lovely girl who was worth keeping . But in retrospective it means I really brought down someone with me that was the cream of the crop. I feel the guilt of having put someone’s romantic life in pause for almost two years, because I didn’t want to have with her what she wanted to have with me.
I still remember how we met through mutual friends, the date where I asked her to be my girlfriend, and a lot of the times we’ve spent together. We holidayed together, I was deeply intertwined into her family’s life and she was in mine. I actually did love her, but it was a friend’s love that I was trying to morph into romance. Ultimately, I have to admit that even though I have a lot of fond memories, everything was performatic and it was stemming from my deep denial of my sexuality, and I was totally not in control: from the emotional side, I was avoiding any kind of deeper conversation about us as individuals and us as a couple; and from the physical side, I couldn’t find it in me to be intimate. There was always an excuse for not wanting to have sex, or for not chasing an increasing level of intimacy that for natural couples should just happen. The relationship that was supposed to save me, cure me, and make me directly and indirectly loved ended up burdening me mentally and hurting me as well as another beautiful person on the other side.
PART 4 - I CAN’T BE PART OF THE CLUB
Eventually this lack of intimacy and honesty started to weigh down on the relationship, and this is what led to her breaking up with me. It’s not that I was brave enough to call it quits and tell her about my sexuality. If this is where my coming out journey ended, then there wouldn’t be any EP. It’s sad to admit it, but I was glad that it ended even though I cried a Iot. I think I cried because I felt sad, yes, but also because I felt some deep sense of relief that she would be able to move on with her life. Some tears might have even been relief that I was finally free from this situation for which I couldn’t find a way out, even though I had dragged myself and someone else into it. And this relief, at the same time, was contaminated with the terror that there would now not be any sort of way for me to avoid rumors about me. I know probably not many people were gossiping, but that idea was always in my mind and controlled my actions and behaviors. One thing was for sure: I would never be in a straight relationship again. It didn’t work out. There was nothing to cure, only something to accept.
The breakup coincided with my first departure from Argentina to Berlin in 2016, and this departure was the immediate trigger, even though we initially said we’d continue dating long distance. I lived in Berlin for a year back then, and made many of my closest friends there. Specifically, living in Berlin allowed me to be exposed to my first happy gay lives: unapologetically queer friends that, without even knowing it and just by being themselves and living freely, helped me start untangling that huge fur ball of trauma and self-loathing that I needed to cough up. I attended events and lots of parties where being gay was the norm and celebrated, and all of these events also started slowly chipping away more and more of my mental barricade. But no, I didn’t come out in Berlin either, even after all of this. This goes to show how deeply in denial I was, and all of the several layers and layers that I needed to get rid of in order to be free. Because I came to understand that it wasn’t about others accepting me: it was myself that needed to accept my sexuality, and that would take the longest. We’ll peel another layer of the onion soon, when I release my second single.
PART 5 - WHAT I’VE LEARNED
For a long time after coming out I didn’t feel fine discussing this stage of my life, as if discussing it would somehow diminish my gayness. There’s this concept of a golden gay, one that has never had relationships with a girl. How do you call a golden gay who was almost 2 years in a heterosexual relationship? The shame double whammy was too much for me! Additionally, I didn’t want to be perceived as evil. I know I’m not evil, but I thought everyone would perceive me as such for having been in a relationship with someone that I wasn’t in love with. The guilt was intertwined in all the memories of my past relationship, and I found myself wanting to people please my gay circle, after all the years of restraining myself to please my straight circle.
I still feel those feelings of guilt, of shame, of having hurt someone that didn’t deserve it. And sometimes I still beat myself up about it. But with time I added a layer of compassion on top of it, like a little band aid that made me realize that I am not the only one to blame. Or that “blame” is not even the right word to use here. Just unfortunate circumstance and heteronormativity. We still grow up in societies that really push queer people to the limit of their mental capacity, forcing us to be the worst versions of ourselves at times, instead of nurturing us to grow up freely. So we do what we can with the tools that we have, and our survival mode kicks in in more ways than we can think of. For me, this relationship was a survival mechanism. It’s going to sound so strange to someone who wasn’t in the same place, but I’m sure any gay men or any queer people who are reading and who also were in an heterosexual relationship are slightly nodding now.
WELCOME TO THE CLUB - apart from my first song - is my way to grieve this relationship. It’s my apology but also my explanation (before I would’ve called it my excuse, but I don’t like using that word anymore). I didn’t want to hurt this beautiful girl, yet with the few tools I had back then, this felt like the only path to receiving love and acceptance, which to me was equal to staying alive. Feeling accepted to me felt like everything, and the more I tried to belong to this club of the boys, the more miserable I was making myself in the process. I played with this analogy of being let in into some sort of club on the song as well, and I hope the Berlin nod at the end isn’t lost to you. You build this image that you are straight, that you have a girlfriend, that you are following the path everyone else does, only to realize once you are “there”, that the positive feelings that come from being accepted for doing something that is not authentic to you are really ephemeral.
It took me getting into the club to realize how sad it is to present a façade where you are always performing for some non-existent camera. And it’s specially sad when you are forcing someone to perform with you. I’m glad she got tired of me early enough, and that I finally had the chance to give her her heart back, and let her regain the independence that I was not strong enough to give her back at that time. She is such a nice person to whom I haven’t spoken in many years (since breaking up, actually!) and I hope she is really happy because she deserves it. She deserves to be looked at by someone the way I look at the cute boys <3
And without further ado, I hope these lyrics now make sense to you:
i feel the guilt of having stolen
the heart off someone who needs it
i didn’t know that there were rules
back then my feelings were just business
i was the villain of your story
but the victim of my own
i thought that i was running to you
but i’m running from the world
and i know that it might sound cruel
to admit it wasn’t love
i wish i didn’t take it further
wish that you had told me no
i did what i had to do to survive
i didn’t know if i’d make it alive
and if you’re feeling the same kind of pain
your heart is broken but all i can say is
welcome to the club
i don’t know what to say to you
should i be asking for forgiveness
were you pretending just like me
like all is well then for a minute
you’re confused by the strobe lights
how did we get here
so tied up by the way
that they told us to be
could you ever forget
the me that you knew then
who would break everything
just to hear the boys say
welcome to the club
i couldn’t wait to be inside
but where am i
how did i get dragged to this club
why is the music here so loud
here is your heart my darling
please just take it back
one last dance and then i’m out
no i can’t be part of this club
one last dance and then i’m out
no i can’t be part of this club
we both know why this won’t work
nobody has to take the blame
all these clouds around our name
ain’t no rainbow in the end
you need someone to look at you
the way i look at him
just imagine how it’d feel
like a party in berlin