Exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness with DON KILHEFNER

Did you ever have the experience of thinking you were dating Prince Charming only to discover he was really Peter Pan? One of my favorite scenes in Peter Pan is when Wendy coerces Peter into playing house with her — Wendy as the mother, Peter as the father, and the Lost Boys of Neverland as the children. After playing for some time, Peter becomes increasingly worried and agitated and finally blurts out: “We are only pretending Wendy, right? We are only pretending I’m a father [adult]?”

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? You have probably noticed, and maybe even in yourself, that gay men generally are not growing up—aging but not maturing. There is almost a complete lack of understanding that there is an adult stage of gay development and what that means. When I dialogue with gay 40-somethings, it’s like talking to twentysomethings in consciousness and behavior. We pay a high price for gay men refusing or not being expected to grow up; it is having a very destructive impact on the community, particularly on our young people who need gay adults present in order to thrive and develop.

What does the term “growing up” mean? It specifically refers to the transition from youth to adulthood where boy psychology is replaced by man psychology—moderating narcissistic self-absorption and self-promotion, finishing what you start, assuming civic responsibility, and living a larger life with passion and compassion. Later, when an adult transitions into being an elder in the community, the direction of growth reverses. This is what James Hillman, the distinguished Jungian psychologist, calls “growing down” and refers to “soul making.”

Let me tell you a true story that illustrates the critical need that youth have for adults in their lives. Several years ago I knew a 42-year-old, gay Catholic priest who taught a course on morality to eighth graders in a local Catholic school. He would go to classroom in his Abercrombie-ized wardrobe more appropriate to a twentysomething, played video games with his students, and generally spoke and behaved like someone about 20 years younger than he actually was. Midway through the school year a three-person delegation from one of his classes approached him with several requests. First, they wanted him to wear his priest attire to the classroom; second, they didn’t want him to play video games with them; and, third, they wanted him to act his age. One member of the delegation reassured the priest that they liked him, however, he said plaintively: “We need a priest [adult] much more than we need another friend.” I bow deeply in the direction of those students.

It is generally understood that elders tend to the spiritual well-being of the community and its welfare seven generations yet to come. Adults are responsible for its material well-being. Largely, adults provide for the economic vitality and physical survival of the community. Adults tend directly to the well-being of the young, protect the village, make sure certain ceremonies are performed, initiate young men into manhood (adulthood), and pass on to youth practical information and lived knowledge (mentoring). Adults should care about themselves and about something larger than themselves, especially the state of the community or the tribe. From the vantage point of over 40 years of frontline work in the gay community, I suggest that it is the gay adult that is now largely missing from the community picture (along with conscious gay elders) and his absence is having serious, negative consequences to our communal and spiritual evolution. Youth are the dreamers whose imagination is essential for future hope and progress. Youth cannot fulfill its role if adults are not fulfilling their role and adults cannot fulfill their role if elders are not fulfilling their role. Psychology, anthropology, history, biology, myths, fairy tales, and life experience tells us that that’s the way it is.

Let me speak briefly about two important adult roles that are not being fulfilled in the gay community and which should be done largely by adults:

Blessing the gifts of the youth: For most youth today, the TV set is the babysitter, the video game and cell phone are the playmates, and the computer is the mentor—none of which will bless his gifts or even give a hill of beans about them. When I was in the seventh grade in a small, rural Pennsylvania high school in the 1950s, Mrs. Klein, my social studies teacher, whispered in my ear one day: “Donnie, you are a very bright boy, very intelligent, and if you did your homework, you would get nothing but As on your report card.” At the time I was getting Cs, Ds, and Fs. I thought I was stupid and was thinking about dropping out of school at the end of the eighth grade. Mrs. Klein’s blessing of one of my gifts changed the course of my life. There are tens of thousands of gay youth out there waiting—indeed, longing—for the blessing of an adult, but it rarely comes. What I see in my community-building work and clinical practice is that the gifts of gay youth, the future of our community, are going largely unblessed, unsupported, and unmonitored today by community adults. It saddens me to say the only attention gay youth often get is when they are preyed upon by carnivorous adults for sex.

A few years ago an intergenerational group of gay men provided a highly successful model to the community of one way that blessing can happen. Over the course of a year we rounded up the best creative talent of gay teenagers and early twentysomethings we could find and put on a sold-out show at Barnsdall Gallery Theatre titled Stand Up and Shout: Voices of the Next Gay Generation—a blessing ceremony for gay youth. Also, in my next Edging Out column I will talk about a unique and pioneering workshop for young gay men here in Los Angeles called “Father Hunger: The Union of the Son of Promise with the Father of Achievement.”

Mentoring: Adults do mentoring with youth; elders do eldering with adults. If you are 45 years old and looking for a mentor, I respectfully suggest that something developmentally is wrong; at that age it is expected that the eldering, not the mentoring, process should be commencing. Mentoring involves helping youth in developing their gifts over time, securing self-sustaining, meaningful life’s work based on those gifts, and modeling the role of an adult so it can be passed on to those who come after them. Mentoring might also involve helping youth grow up—using anger constructively, setting boundaries, containing impulsive instincts, dealing with sex, drugs, and loud dance music issues, courting and relationship assistance, and learning stealth.

The bottom line is that a mentor must love young gay men, take a genuine interest in their growth, listen much, much more than talk and advise, and do large amounts of suggesting, supporting, and encouraging. The relationship is never sexual—there is too much of a power differential. A sexual relationship betrays the trust inherent in the mentoring process. We must move away from giving gay youth the message that their only value is in the commoditization of their beauty and youthful bodies. They are the future of our community. Without adults present in the gay community little mentoring goes on and we become more impoverished as a people.

In closing, let me ask you this: Do you really want to be a facelifted 50-something man wearing a T-shirt that says “Catcher,” hitting the dance floor in Palm Springs? Does that sound satisfying to you? If you don’t grow up to be a gay adult and begin assuming real adult roles in the gay community, who will?

Don Kilhefner, Ph.D., played a pioneering role in the creation of the Gay Liberation movement. He is also co-founder of the Gay and Lesbian Center, Van Ness Recovery House, Gay Men’s Medicine Circle and (with Harry Hay) the Radical Faeries. Don is a Jungian psychologist in West Hollywood and can be reached at donkilhefner@sbcglobal.net.