Looking Back: 2012

Sometimes, in that gray twilight between sleeping and waking, you think of the bad things that happen in the world, and have gone on happening since the first recorded history, and will keep on happening no matter what anybody says or does: the madhouse of human existence.

And you think of all the grief and sorrow that people have had to bear, and the anguish and the unanswered prayers, and the pain and the hurt and the injustice that haunts mankind's existence everywhere, and always has.

And then you think of those who seem to live a charmed life, with all they need and want, and every wish fulfilled. It's not the fat cats and the millionaires you think of, whom you never see except in reports from faraway places. It's the people you pass on the street, or down the block, or distant relations, not one whit smarter or prettier or wiser or more moral than you - in many cases, quite a bit less so - and yet, they ease through life as if they have a genie in their pocket to grant all their desires.

But your lips do not move to form a protest - no one would listen. Nor can you even ask why - because you know there is no answer. Not even prayer helps, because the last answer is that now we darkly know, but then we shall see clearly, in another life where all will be made right.  You hope so.

But it is cold comfort on this gray and drizzly morning, 36 degrees outside. And yet you do find some scant cheer in making yourself remember the happy moments interspersed with all that has gone wrong. You think of carnivals, and roller coasters, and catherine wheels, and understand that all is in perpetual flux, now happy, now sad, now merry, now pained. For no particular reason that you can ever fathom, nor anyone else. Life is what it is, a fun house, a madhouse, a charnel house, by turns. All you can do is enjoy the good times when they come, and not wish for more when they end.

Because the world is going to keep rolling on along in its usual helter-skelter way, no matter what you think about it. So there's no point complaining. It does no good, and nobody wants to hear it.

This past year has been one of good news for the gays, one might even say an annus mirabilis in some ways. It's good to look back now on how far we've come in the last twelve months - and in the forty years or so since I first put together the words "gay" and "me."

First, a review of progress on marriage equality in these United States:



The Washington Blade has compiled a collection of articles on the top national stories of 2012.

And from Towleroad, a list of the fifty most notable "coming-outs" of the year. Most of them, your Head Trucker doesn't recognize, but the more out, the better.

So that's the way it goes, up and down and round and round. And the clock keeps ticking all the time, with a fine indifference.  Hope all you guys have a good New Year. Enjoy what you have while you have it, and savor the sweetness while it lasts. What more can anyone do?

Pieter Claesz, Vanitas with Violin and Glass Ball, ca. 1628