Shame on Me
(written for STEAM Magazine)
by Gavin Geoffrey Dillard

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"Gavin," Scott O'Hara said over the phone, "I'd like you to write an article for Steam."
"Sure, Scott, anything you want."
"On shame."
"Oh..."
"You're the most shameless person I know."
"Oh. Thanks... What about shame?"
"You know, write about shame in relationship to sex. How it affects your
sex life, good or bad. How it affects your life, for better or worse. Gimme two-to three-thousand words."
"Sure, Scott. Love you."

But, I thought after hanging up, What's shame got to do, got to do with it?

Then I thought, What {{is}} shame?
So I did what any god-fearing poet-turned-essayist would do: I consulted the {{Oxford.}}
Uh-oh ! Two pages of fine print before we even end up with the various forms and compounds:
{{shamedly, shamefaced, shamefast, shameful, shameless, shapely...}}
Let's just fly with the rudiments:
"The painful emotion arising from the consciousness of something dishonoring, ridiculous or indecorous in one's own conduct or circumstances, or of being in a situation which offends one's sense of modesty or decency."
Cool.

Well, I still didn't see what that would have to do with sex. I started looking up other references. Biblical segments weren't very poignant or interesting. And alas, nary a poem by Edna St. Vincent Millay or William Blake. I know {{I}} have never written a poem about shame. I can think of at least three disco-era songs with shame in the title‹but let's leave the pabulum to the Madonna fans.

* * * * *

So I began searching the memory vaults for {{painful emotion arising from the Consciousness of something dishonoring, ridiculous, or indecorous.}}

How far back do we want to go? My memory goes to the womb and beyond...
I remember, as an infant, that my mother used to make vituperative remarks
whenever I sported an erection in bath, diaper changing or in bed.
In grade school, shame was incurred whenever one's skivvies weren't tight enough to conceal
that cumbrous desk-edge erection that simply would not bend, fold or go away.
By junior high, the most shameful of all experiences was the murder-provoking hard-on during shower
or lockerroom time. Many were destroyed or obliged to change schools.
All of that altered with adulthood and the advent of an active fay society. The first time I had grown-up sex
I was 15 and David Dalton reached through the half-opened zipper of my sleeping bag to sheath my bludgeon
in his mature 22-year-old palm. I wasn't ashamed; we got a house together. In fact, there seemed to be a
window of about six years in which shame did not exist for me. Perhaps this was the reason that marriage came to bore me to tears.
Then one day I decided to cheat on Dalton with my sexy Bahá'í theatre-design teacher, Mr Cavendish.
I got us as far as his designer bed beneath the giant {{Follies}}
poster with the crack in its head. Mr. Cavendish was built, 30, railing within his own vitriolic Bahá'í quilt
of guilt, and when I held apart those tree-trunk legs and thrust my sallied shofar against the safety latch
of his as-yet-unpunctured blossom, I found that even my youthful testosterone surge was no match for the iron shutter of religious suppression.
I felt {{shame}}. Shame that I could {{not}} have sex. Shame that I was {{not}} erect.
And the more I tried, the more disgraceful became the laxity of my condition. Shame had a new meaning.
A few years after I was asked to make my first porn flick, {{Track Meet.}} I discovered the joys of trying
to achieve and maintain a boner in the presence of chattery "talent," hysterical queen directors-on-a-budget,
a smelly and snorting crew, endless technical difficulties, raging "fill lights," and uppers, downers, and toxic inhalers that weren't necessarily on cue.
Shame refers to {{erections and non-erections}} at inappropriate times.

* * * * *

I remember watching my brother masturbate whenever our parents were out
on the town. I thought it was cool, though I didn't really get the point. I finally
tried it myself. When the fluids started to erupt from my inflamed cudgel I
went hauling for the toilet ‹ I thought I might be peeing, and the trail of
tears dripped across the carpet from my bedroom through the hall to the
bathroom made me ashamed.
The same shame was felt on mornings in which I hurried off to school,
leaving behind a crusty puddle on the sheets ‹ hell, Mom did the laundry, what was I to do?
Years later in the midst of all-night orgies, bath-house roulette, and
turning a half-dozen tricks a day, I learned that I had shame associated
with the piddling drop of jaundiced semen that would barely squeak out
of my ingloriously abused gherkin onto some wretched patron's thirsting
tongue. The shame of {{quantity versus insufficient quantity.}}
A decade later, I'm pulling out of some innocent's bums only to discover
that the now-essential latex condom had long since burst and crinkled up
within my pubic pelt, and that my potentially-lethal wad of wads had shot unencumbered within his fertile
colon.
{{The shame of cum; the shame of death.}}
When I was a lithesome kid, it was all I could do to wait for my partner
to bring himself to satisfaction. I had all that pent-up jism bristling within my balls and
the pressure was just too great for PC timing or artfully protracted
ballets.
As time moved along and the sperm had made the rounds, so to speak, it
was often all I could do to get it up and out at all. Sometimes the
available hands and orifices would veritably blister and give out before the
desired results had been achieved.
And now pushing 40, after a number of years alone on the farm and out of
the market, I find that my control has once again waned and that I must
satisfy myself with ejaculations when they happen ‹ not necessarily when I or my
partner(s) would have them to happen.
Shame refers to {{the timing of ejaculation, early, late or not at all.}}
When I was a young popinjay/stud, it was shameful to be fucked by anyone
that I hadn't already fucked (unless, of course, I was getting paid ­ or
too stoned to resist). It was shameful to give in too easily ­ it had to
hurt, at least at first, and you couldn't enjoy it too much or make any kind
of womanly sounds. It was shameful to be too clean, because that meant that
you were expecting (or wanted) it, and it was of course shameful to shit all
over the sheets (unless your partner was too stoned to notice).
Shame refers to {{sphincter and bowel control.}}
Once I learned to drink with a vengeance, I discovered the shame of
hemorrhoids and the pain of sex with same. I gave up alcohol.
As an adult, I've learned to appreciate the all-too-infrequent passive
role as much as I do the at-times-wearisome active role in sex. So why am I
besieged by untidy young waifs who are
looking for Mr-Gooddaddy-Famous-Poet-Thing to hold them down and plunder
their bonny assets? Where are all the irate daddy-rapers - as I had once been? I
find shame in flopping over, huffing and puffing with exhaustion, and saying,
{{Okay Twinky, it 's your turn...}}

* * * * *

If I get too tanned, I'm ashamed because it looks like I was trying to.
If I get too pumped, it looks like I've been spending all my time at the gym
and have no worthwhile spiritual, artistic or intellectual pursuits. If I
use condoms, I feel like I'm being too politically correct and buying into
the erroneous allopathic death-sentence hype. If I don't, I'm afraid that I
am behaving irresponsibly and karma may ensue. If I have sex too much or
toolittle, I am ashamed that I am behaving in an unbalanced manner and my
spiritual life will suffer. I'm ashamed to be too fat, yet ashamed to be
ashamed of being too fat when sick friends are ashamed to be so thin.
When I'm anonymously with a bunch of hunky breeders, I'm ashamed to be a fag.
When I'm with a bunch of quarrelsome queers, I'm ashamed that I a) feel
no connection with these people at all, b) think that being a sexual
minority is a pretty slim excuse for bunching with people to begin with, and c)
am convinced that somewhere in our slumming for identity we've grossly
overrated sex in {{any}} form or for {{any}} reason.
I am ashamed to feel shame as someone who shamelessly flaunts his
shamelessness.

Read poetry in the nude? Easy, as long as the lighting is correct.
Appear naked on the cover of my books? No problem - as long as I'm not
too thin, or too fat, or too pumped, or too underdeveloped, or too old, or
too posed...
My dick's too big, my dick's too small, too soft, too hard, too cut, too
uncut, my sperm doesn't come out straight enough, or with enough force,
my sperm tastes like coffee, I have too many tattoos, I have too few
tattoos, I'm HIV+, I'm not HIV+, my butt's too big, too scrawny, too hairy, too
shiny, too closed, too open...
So, where were we...? Oh yeah, confused...
Shame? I don't know. Let's just say it's something we use to add texture
to our lives (like guilt ‹ isn't that half of sex?).
Shame has been a big motivator in my life, it has implored me to
discover the depths of my psyche: {{I'm ashamed. Why? I'll try it on and see what happens... perhaps if I write a poem...}}

Drag queens, whom I consider the fay community's most quintessential
gift to society at large,make a career out of mocking the world's most {{dishonoring, ridiculous,
and indecorous}} attitudes and activities, specifically designed to offend
all sense of modesty and decency. Hallelujah!

"...Shame, shame, shame ‹ that is the history of man!" quoth Nietzsche
in {{Thus Spake Zarathustra.}}

* * * * *

Yeah, and shame can be a bother, to be sure. But on the whole, I kinda like
it. It keeps me honest ‹ I'm ashamed to say...