Unnecessary Evils

When alone,  imagining my closeted brothers and sisters, I sob.

I sob from the depths of my soul and I ache.

The closet is a torture chamber that has no place in the modern world,
and yet I see more and more shutting themselves in; cloistered, dark,
separate, devastated, removed. It is as an epidemic; perhaps the new
epidemic that will destroy our tribe.

The only safety the closet offers is that of illusion and ill-met gains.
Temporary satisfaction. Hollow, seeming victory at the price of self.
It is a tribute to the wants of others, paid for with the loss of one's
own life and happiness.

Especially here in the south, this Biblically-devastated, tortured
strip of land where ignorance reigns supreme, and the dual life is a
cherished commodity. The constant game playing, the refusal of
self, the denial of needs, the self-deprecating belief systems....
it's an unseemly drama of Faustian proportions. This is another
level of Dante's Inferno.

The sharpest knife is the doubly (or is it triply?) fake betrayal
of turning on one's own; that those who could have been the key
of one's release and joy, now become the target of one's bile
and vitriol, all while seeking the grace and mercies of the company
of those who hate us (yes, us!) most.

It is the bitterest of ironies that those super-stars of high achieve-
ment and cunning--who hide their own desires deep--ingratiate
themselves to the establishment which has the power to crush
us all. They rise to positions of power, where in turn they sell
out the rest of us in order to procure their own esteemed seat
of continued well-being.

Over-achievers, desperately seeking compensation and acceptance
for their perilously self-destructive efforts to fit in. Assimilation
and conformity do offer much, sense their attainment requires you
rid yourself of conscience and soul, anyway.

We truly have the power to be anything, in this day and age,
and still we gladly sit in darkness while we are the only ones
who hold the keys to our prison.

Is this what 40+ years of protest and defiance has led to?

Is this the best the evolution of queer men and women can hope for?

Please, somebody prove me wrong.

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