Dilemma!

What is a post-modern, urban, gay, left-leaning, reasonably well educated, man of Indian origin who has got used to cosmopolitan American and Indian cities supposed to do when he suddenly finds himself planted in the middle of the rural American Midwest?

Weekdays are fine... theres always enough work to do. Sometimes work spills over into the weekends. But pray, what about weekends when there isn't much work to do.

I read the New Yorker magazine cover to cover. Its usually a good read.

I cook on Sunday afternoons for the week, sending out complex fragrances of cumin, corriander, chilli and spices to do the rounds in my homogenious mid-western conservative Lutheran neighborhood. Hopefuly they will go out as emisaries carrying epistles of love and joy and such unattainable things as universal brother/sisterhood.

There is always the possibility of seeking out the local Indian community (theres one everywhere!). But most of the ones I've met so far seem extremely conservative and usually carry on in languages I don't speak. So I'm scared of them. I don't know why. I have tried to reason why I am scared of what one might consider "familiar ground."

But the truth is that its not just a fear of Desis... I avoid company all together. I am scared of mixing with people. This is strange since usually I have a good record of being out-going and friendly... and have always been surrounded by trustworthy friends and aquaintances ... the closest of whom and my family has been as supportive as they can be (and really thats a pretty good bit) while I went through my coming-out ups and downs. Then why should I be scared now... I should be making lots of friends.

May be its just the fear of so-called "family values" and my apparent "rejection" of such things in the face of my "life-style choice." Maybe I feel vulnerable to meet new people and let them know me, lest I get hurt by their judgement. Of course, in the process I have squarely judged them to be my worst fears without ever having put a face to the "thems".

When I try to put a face I usually come up with the following scary ones:
1. Huge-SUV driving homophobic "manly" white guys who could easily make mince meat of me before I could say "What the Dickens."
2. Righteous middle-aged women with a brood of children with raised eye brows talking about
"family friendly" shows in town... with an "if you know what I mean" at the end!
3. Indian men who are eagerly waiting for their parents to set up their marriages while they visit the local nude bar and talk about the superiority of "Indian culture" and our "family values" (and "Hindutva - damn the Muslims" if nobody is looking.)
4. Indian women, at the grocery store, who will look at you with suspicion if you so much as smile at them, out of courtesy.
5. Of course, then there are the types (across the board) who'll ask "... and how many chidren did you say you have?" Without so much as a "Are you married?"

Ok! Now that I've got all that out of my system... true these are all rotten streotypes and the real world isn't that bad...

I actually do land up having a hearty conv. every once in a while with strangers at the local brewery. Strangers I never meet again. Thats kind of nice, because frankly, the shorter I know people the less I need to explain, the less irritating the heterosexual assumptions and easier it is to just talk about the weather and such other trivial issues. It gives me the "human interaction" during what can easily become - 2 days of silence.

This morning I promised my Mother that "even though I wouldn't get married and do the usual stuff" she could look forward to a lot in my life... "different but fun" My aggressive optimism comforted her, but left me even more harried. I want to adopt a child... but if you do your research, you'll find its terribly difficult for a single man, with no record of any stable relationships to adopt a child without being assumed for a child molester! So when I see the parents with 5 kids... one part of me envies them and another part of me hates them. They can easily adopt (would rather bring 5 more brats in when there are millions unloved) and dont, and they can easily have zillions of babies (which is ridiculous) and do... and society condones it.

Which brings up marriage... not mine... just that people around me, my peers etc., are getting married left, right and center. I love to see them happy and boy do I get to crack some nice jokes. But hey, at the end of the day it leaves a tinge of alienation... a feeling of hopelessness. Of getting emotionally drained from being allowed to only cheer from the sidelines.

I did my usual morning breakfast at V's and got my espresso drink at ML's. Life is a lot better than I make it out to be. Indeed, this is not as much a rant as it is an observation of my social life (or the lack of it). On the positive side, I do have a supportive family, a bunch of great friends all over the world (my most recent is a French woman living in Japan!), I like my job, live in my own place that I am free to decorate as I please and food on my plate.

In times such as this I feel guilty of wasting resources, living by myself in a 2 bedrooom apartment. I could easily take in at least 2 homeless families from Katarina and support them for a while...

Really sometimes I wonder, what more can a man want? Indeed, what more!?