I Dont

“He didn’t say anything. And then I heard him crying. So I just let him cry. There was nothing I could do. Except listen to his pain. I could do that. I could hardly stand it. But I could do that. Just listen to his pain.”
― Benjamin Alire Sáenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“Sadly, our culture raises man to be strong and silent. Straight or gay, the pressure is on from the time we're very young to become our culture's John Wayne-style of man.
* The more pain I can take, the more of a man I am.
* Showing feelings is for women.
* The more I can drink, the manlier I am.
* Intimacy is sex; sex is intimacy.
* Only women depend on others.
* A man takes care of himself without help from others.
* No one can hurt you if you're strong.
* I am what I earn.
* It is best to keep your problems to yourself.
* Winning is all that really matters.
Where did this stuff come from? It's everywhere in our society from the movies heroes we love to the politicians we vote for. Our culture demands that man fit in a tightly defined role.”
― Alan Downs, The Velvet Rage: Overcoming the Pain of Growing Up Gay in a Straight Man's World

“You know what the worst thing about adults is? ...They're not always adults. But that's what I like about them.”
― Benjamin Alire Saenz, Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe

“I belong to a culture that includes Proust, Henry James, Tchaikovsky, Cole Porter, Plato, Socrates, Aristotle, Alexander the Great, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Christopher Marlowe, Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Tennessee Williams, Byron, E.M. Forster, Lorca, Auden, Francis Bacon, James Baldwin, Harry Stack Sullivan, John Maynard Keynes, Dag Hammarskjold… These are not invisible men. Poor Bruce. Poor frightened Bruce. Once upon a time you wanted to be a soldier.
Bruce, did you know that an openly gay Englishman was as responsible as any man for winning the Second World War? His name was Alan Turing and he cracked the Germans' Enigma code so the Allies knew in advance what the Nazis were going to do — and when the war was over he committed suicide he was so hounded for being gay. Why don't they teach any of this in the schools? If they did, maybe he wouldn't have killed himself and maybe you wouldn't be so terrified of who you are. The only way we'll have real pride is when we demand recognition of a culture that isn't just sexual. It's all there—all through history we've been there; but we have to claim it, and identify who was in it, and articulate what's in our minds and hearts and all our creative contributions to this earth. And until we do that, and until we organize ourselves block by neighborhood by city by state into a united visible community that fights back, we're doomed. That's how I want to be defined: as one of the men who fought the war.”
― Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart