Don't Parrot. Pop!

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it’s an inferior replacement for discovering one’s own path and authenticity.

Anyone who’s read my writings through the years knows I’m a connect the dots sort of person. I read, hear, watch, or listen to something, or am amid a deep conversation, and unexpectedly two or more things connect in my head in ways that elicit greater understanding, or at least validation of what I already know or believe.

I mentioned this book before but reading it has conjured a number of those connect the dots moments worth mentioning. Today I was continuing to read Happy: Why More or Less Everything is Absolutely Fine (paid link), by Derren Brown, a book so good I’m savoring it slowly, and a quote by John Stuart Mill he mentioned immediately resonated with me.

This is the quote in which Mill was encouraging people to concentrate on self-realization and personal freedom rather than blindly following the levelling spirit of capitalism that prevailed at the time, and I contend is still with us in greater force today.

He who lets the world, or his own portion of it, choose his plan of life for him, has no need of any other faculty than the ape-like one of imitation. He who chooses his plan for himself, employs all his faculties. He must use observation to see, reasoning and judgement to foresee, activity to gather materials for decision, discrimination to decide, and when he has decided, firmness and self-control to hold to his deliberate decision … Human nature is not a machine to be built after a model, and set to do exactly the work prescribed for it, but a tree, which requires to grow and develop itself on all sides, according to the tendency of the inward forces which make it a living thing.

Paying attention to how quickly we who live and play on the outskirts of traditional sexualities and relationships often fall into conformity and sameness isn’t a new realization for me. In “Being Yourself” I discussed how erotic and relationship adventurers look to others for how to be and act.

…it made me realize is that many active sex-positive people, kinksters, nonmonogamists, and polyamorists are looking for templates or step-by-step guides to be whoever it is they are or want to become in those realms.

At the risk of beating the proverbial dead horse, let me again encourage you to resist the temptation to parrot others and consider that an identity, sexuality, or relationship worthy of you. Rather than parrot, I’d like to encourage you to pop. Pop like a burst of color. Pop like a book so good it beckons to be re-read. Pop like the person who walks in the room and everyone takes notice not because of their beauty or garb, but because there’s something unique about them.

Don’t parrot. Pop!

I fully understand there is a reason for much of the sameness in the leather and kink worlds. Dressing alike gives us a connection. Configuring our erotic relationships alike bonds us to others doing the same. I’m not naïve to the power of being connected to people powerfully and indicating that with how we identify, dress, present, play, or interact.

That said, I don’t believe that’s ultimately the way to sexual or relationship happiness. For me, expressing what’s unique about me and witnessing others doing the same is powerful and expands the various sexual and relationship adventurer communities to new and beautiful heights.

And I don’t need to understand someone’s self-expression to honor and celebrate it.  There are countless kinks or ways of sexually being in this world I don’t understand at a visceral level. That’s not important. What’s important is that I honor that if it’s important to someone else, I should give them the space and respect to be whoever they want to be.

I’m 70. I’ve been in the leather scene since I was 17. That’s a long time to be indoctrinated into whatever sameness has bonded me to my fellow gay leathermen brethren over the years, especially when we were a relatively tiny underground movement of mavericks. That served its time well and I regret none of it.

I’ve also followed certain versions of nonmonogamous or polyamorous styles of relationships my entire adult life. But even there, I’ve often described or mentally configured my relationships to parrot the few category buckets acceptable at the time. Those categories are useful for discussion. They’re not as useful when it comes to describing or managing our own individual relationships.

If we equate parroting others as a type of normalcy, this quote that I’ve used often applies.

Normality is a paved road: it's comfortable to walk, but no flowers grow on it.

– Vincent Van Gogh

Despite me saying all this, when you see me out and about in any the leather or kink communities, I’ll probably be dressed in my same boring manner. That’s more because I’m somewhat lazy when it comes to how I dress, not because I consider the look so iconic that it must be celebrated above others. When I see someone dressed differently, in a way that resonates with them, I hope I’ll never be the stodgy old curmudgeon who judges them harshly. If you witness me doing that, you’re welcome to tell me to chill out.

Same goes for people with intimate relationships (or no intimate relationship). I might describe myself as a polyamorist with a long-term nesting partner, a collared submissive, a boyfriend, and numerous men in my intimate family circle, but those are just words. The truth is I hope I never kowtow to the latest polyamory verbiage or trends just to fit into one of those boxes. I hope you don’t either.

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