Afterhours — From Boots to Burkas

It’s Friday afternoon, you are going blind looking at your computer screen and can only think about getting out and away from work. You love your workmates, your job, and your new friends in your new country, but you really need to see your people tonight.

So how do you find them? How do you dress in this new country, how do you keep safe, or signal (as species do and have done since the very beginning of time) whether you are looking for a mate or simple companionship?

Dress to Impress

These days we are so well-accepted, so assimilated if you will, that often we may think there is something off about us when we don’t feel completely comfortable in a heterosexual environment. Why is it that hanging out with your heterosexual buds just feels, well, lonesome sometimes, like a tiger in a cage even though there is another tiger in the cage next door?

So maybe you resolve to go home, get that flaming pink shirt out of your drawer, shake it out, maybe even iron it and go on out. But what if you run into your work mates, which is highly likely in this small village where you work or the three bars in town that you know of. What will they think? I mean, it’s not like they don’t know you are gay but it’s not something that you talk about. It is part of the assimilation code that somehow it is considered rude to even mention it, just like you don’t talk about the fact that one of your buddies is in a wheel chair. It isolates you and makes you all the lonelier, and it isolates them, too...

Then there are the Doc Marten boots in your closet under the chinos and blue work shirt that you would never wear to your job. You could slick back your hair with gel turn your collar up and party on down the alley. Only if some local teens see you and notice that there is actually a girl under that outfit…well it could be dangerous.

To Stand Out or to Blend In

We haven’t even touched yet on what to wear if you are unfortunate enough to live in a country where being gay is quite simply not OK, illegal, dangerous, or even life-threatening.

These are all the stressors gay people live with every day in addition to the ones most straight people have to manage (and that we manage as well): work, boss, kids, mate. Speaking of which: oh my, the stress on a partnership or marriage if you are together in your new country but neither of you are allowed to go about and demonstrate just the most casual affection for one another. It is even worse if you are gone all day and your partner is at home alone or making their way (incognito as well) through their daily life.

Well, we can talk about this here and we can break the isolation. Share your stories, help your fellow gays, tell each other how you manage, cope, thrive and survive.

Let us hear your stories!

Marcia Diane spends her time writing poetry, short stories, and mentoring others in journal writing groups and online writing groups in Puerto Viejo, MX. Oh and watching the sea rise and fall outside her front door. Before that she ran a therapeutic horse riding program in Petaluma, CA. Afterwards she became a Death Penalty Mitigation Specialist, and a bunch of more ordinary stuff in between. In her sixty nine years on planet earth she has moved thirty seven times and thus is she well suited to be a permanent migrant.