in my last entry I mentioned that a Straight therapist got me to my first Gay Bar. I was early twenties. Scared and filled with anxiety.
The therapist told me about a gay bar down the road and offered to take me. I was shocked and somehow ashamed. Maybe I should have said 'yes' to him taking me and this is what I think ?? Jonathan Alpert 'might' offer his clients. Give them real life experiences so that they can go forward. But, I ended up going anyway.
So why am I whinging all these years about this? And, I love whinging.. and others interpret this as 'blaming others' or 'not being happy'. And for the analysts: my mother was a whinger and never happy.. so I could spend hours debating this rather than getting on with it...
Firstly, I'm shocked and disappointed about my therapy;
Secondly, I live in hope that someone else might read all this and think to themselves.. shit... I need to change my therapist or the way that therapy is happening to me...
In hindsight... it would have been great if the therapist, that wanted to take me to the gay bar (and please let's not discuss whether he was s closeted bisexual married man with five children and I was actually saved from him by me going by myself in the end).
The hindsight is.. I needed more of this.
A lot more of this.
A parent, in a perfect world, a carer, a grandparent.. .might... seeing a child struggling and do some follow-up. Not intruding but enquiring - as hard as it might be. So the therapist helped me to get to the gay bar and in all honesty I cannot remember if he did enquire about 'what happened, happy, not happy, talk to me'.
Me being me.. probably shut up shop and said nothing or felt to embarrassed to talk about the visit.
What did happen was that I managed to 'pickup/be picked up' by a man twice my age... here I was thinking I would get fucked - after all.. silly as it sounds all these years later... and at that point forty plus years ago and in my mixed up, confused, naive mind - weren't homosexuals males who liked to be fucked? It's crazy hey.. now I'd say: that is fucked man.. ANYWAY, I go back to this mans place and I end up fucking him. I went home happy. I never saw him again BUT our encounter lived on. I go hair lice from him. I nearly went mad. "what is this itching?" Then I remembered something I'd read in a magazine about head lice etc.
Of course I immediately went to a chemist and bought some treatment to get rid of these things AND to make it worse.. my mother was visiting me in a couple of days and I would offer her my bed to sleep in.. What a nightmare... what a dirty little homo I felt like... disgusted at myself.. of course, now I can look back and it helps to type this out... that I didn't go out to deliberately catch lice...
But my point is... all these things, need to be discussed with the therapist. He told me this, but I couldn't get past my embarrassment and the question is: whose responsibility is it? mine or the therapist? my expectation, in a perfect world, would be that the therapist 'follow-up' on these things... like a good parent might.... Rather than a belief of 'we have talked about that, he has done it and that is it...... '
Forward and 2022... I think if you are visiting a 'professional' it is there job; their responsibility to care enough about their clients, patients to delve into these situations...
The therapist told me about a gay bar down the road and offered to take me. I was shocked and somehow ashamed. Maybe I should have said 'yes' to him taking me and this is what I think ?? Jonathan Alpert 'might' offer his clients. Give them real life experiences so that they can go forward. But, I ended up going anyway.
So why am I whinging all these years about this? And, I love whinging.. and others interpret this as 'blaming others' or 'not being happy'. And for the analysts: my mother was a whinger and never happy.. so I could spend hours debating this rather than getting on with it...
Firstly, I'm shocked and disappointed about my therapy;
Secondly, I live in hope that someone else might read all this and think to themselves.. shit... I need to change my therapist or the way that therapy is happening to me...
In hindsight... it would have been great if the therapist, that wanted to take me to the gay bar (and please let's not discuss whether he was s closeted bisexual married man with five children and I was actually saved from him by me going by myself in the end).
The hindsight is.. I needed more of this.
A lot more of this.
A parent, in a perfect world, a carer, a grandparent.. .might... seeing a child struggling and do some follow-up. Not intruding but enquiring - as hard as it might be. So the therapist helped me to get to the gay bar and in all honesty I cannot remember if he did enquire about 'what happened, happy, not happy, talk to me'.
Me being me.. probably shut up shop and said nothing or felt to embarrassed to talk about the visit.
What did happen was that I managed to 'pickup/be picked up' by a man twice my age... here I was thinking I would get fucked - after all.. silly as it sounds all these years later... and at that point forty plus years ago and in my mixed up, confused, naive mind - weren't homosexuals males who liked to be fucked? It's crazy hey.. now I'd say: that is fucked man.. ANYWAY, I go back to this mans place and I end up fucking him. I went home happy. I never saw him again BUT our encounter lived on. I go hair lice from him. I nearly went mad. "what is this itching?" Then I remembered something I'd read in a magazine about head lice etc.
Of course I immediately went to a chemist and bought some treatment to get rid of these things AND to make it worse.. my mother was visiting me in a couple of days and I would offer her my bed to sleep in.. What a nightmare... what a dirty little homo I felt like... disgusted at myself.. of course, now I can look back and it helps to type this out... that I didn't go out to deliberately catch lice...
But my point is... all these things, need to be discussed with the therapist. He told me this, but I couldn't get past my embarrassment and the question is: whose responsibility is it? mine or the therapist? my expectation, in a perfect world, would be that the therapist 'follow-up' on these things... like a good parent might.... Rather than a belief of 'we have talked about that, he has done it and that is it...... '
Forward and 2022... I think if you are visiting a 'professional' it is there job; their responsibility to care enough about their clients, patients to delve into these situations...