METTA
Metta means loving-kindness–and loving-kindness is just a fancy word for real love. The Buddha taught metta meditation 2500 years ago. I’ve found metta meditation to be very useful, even in the most scandalous places, the most low-down situations. Useful even when I am completely nuts.
I’m looking to incite a queer metta craze. Metta is a perfect accessory for our gay lives, like techno, poppers and fetish gear, like water-soluble lube, like and manhunt and gaydar. Leaving your apartment without metta is even worse than neglecting to moisturize or put gel in your hair. Metta is essential. The practice of love need not wait until you’re proper and respectable– it cannot, must not wait. If it’s only noon and you’re on beer #4 already, if you’ve spent the last six hours jacking-off online, if you’re reading this hurriedly on the way to the baths–honey, it’s metta time. Trust me: I’ve tested this myself. Repeatedly.
I’m not sure I have a right to talk about meditation. I have zero credentials. OK, I did live in a Buddhist monastery, about a century ago. I was always the one chosen to answer questions about masturbation. I’m not exactly radiant with virtue. Nonetheless, here we are. Someone has evidently neglected to lock up the computer. Therefore I will offer a few notes on the practice of metta in sleazy gay bars.
Of course, I’m sure that metta would also work at, say, a piano bar, or one of those places where gay businessmen gather to drink a very dry martini before going home to their husbands to, uh, assimilate some more. Personally, I prefer sleazy bars. Spectacularly sleazy, if available. Places where you can get blown standing at the bar. Places where there’s a fist-fucking party on the first Sunday and watersports on the last Thursday. Red light bulbs, transgender working girls, a sling. Free condoms, lurkers at the urinal, lubricant in a pump dispenser. What a wonderful place to meditate!
Like most guys at the bar, I often sit alone, staring into space. Macho cruise mode: trying not to slouch, trying to look tough and hunky. Do you ever do this? This is a perfect time to meditate. You can keep the same posture and change what’s in your mind. If it’s a bar that shows porno, pry your eyes off it. (For now — we will return to this point, and to porno.) And please don’t worry — if a man comes up to you, begging to be ravished, you may interrupt your meditation at any time.
Give yourself a minute or two to breathe. Notice whatever is going on in your mind: complaints, desire, fog. Usually what’s going on in my mind is: I want him. He doesn’t want me. He wants me. Do I want him? Am I good enough? Shouldn’t everyone be paying more attention to me? Is it too late to do something about my ears? Whatever it is, just notice it.
Traditionally, it should be said, meditation is done without beer. Which is worth trying — but perhaps not in the beginning. Sip slowly.
To start, think of someone you’re fond of, someone for whom you have a soft spot. Imagine that person in your mind. Maybe it’s your Mom or your best friend. Or maybe your Mom is a bitch two-thirds of the time, and your best friend just yesterday spilled red wine on the only decent pair of white pants you’ve ever owned. Try Grandma? Often it’s easiest to start with someone who’s almost a stranger. That guy at Seven-Eleven who winked at you and cheered you up. The coffee lady who slipped you a free muffin. Honey, there are no rules. Kylie Minogue or your dog will do. The point is just to get some love percolating through your sad heart.
When you think of someone, address them in your mind. May you be happy. May you be free of suffering. May you be healed. May you be at peace. These are all phrases commonly used in metta meditation. The point is to use phrases that work for you. I used to say, May you be well — but I couldn’t stop thinking of a pulley and a bucket. Think of a person for whom you feel tender — and love them in your mind.
It’s not really so different from getting turned on. (Buddhist police are coming for me now.) Maybe you weren’t thinking about sex at all until you saw that guy at the gym, the one who struts around with his towel slung over his shoulder, his long floppy penis practicing hypnotism. Then you started checking out random hot pedestrians. By the time you got to the bar you thought, whoa baby, I better have something on the rocks because I am feeling damn friendly toward everybody. Metta is like that. You want your loving-kindness, which started with one person, to overflow and spill toward other friends, then random people, then to the bar regulars you tired of years ago, and finally even to the guy you gave your number to — but the bastard never called.
Sitting right there at the bar, looking cool and bored, slowly look around the room. Find someone who has been kind to you, or someone cute, and in your mind offer him loving-kindness. Think of it as cruising with a purpose. Maybe start with the bartender, if he ever slips you free shots. Is he doing all right? Does he look tired tonight? If it’s a weeknight and the task doesn’t seem too overwhelming, try to offer loving-kindness to every man in the bar. One by one. Be specific. What else do you have to do? A typical night at the bar: you’re there with your vodka cocktail, watching a bareback gangbang video, being totally ignored by the guy that you want most. It’s meditation paradise.
Remember that, just like you, all these men want to be happy. Yeah, and just like you, they’re probably doing a piss-poor job of it. Make a wish for them to be happy. Deeply and truly happy. Wish for their healing. Remember that they’re going to be dead soon, just like you. Ever come to this bar ten years ago? Who’s left? One by one, send metta. For the vicious queen: may you be full of loving-kindness. For the leather daddy who’s been on retrovirals forever: may you be healed. For the jittery dealer: may you be at peace. Be careful not to skip over the guys you don’t know so well, or the ones who are kind of non-descript. Middle-aged in blue jeans: may your heart be flooded with joy. Extend your loving-kindness toward the entire bar, toward all the bars you know, all the drunks and depressed folks, all the addicts, the whole city, the country, the world. May you be happy. May you be healed. May you be safe. May you somehow be remotely all right at the end of this long night.
If it starts to seem mechanical, don’t worry. Go back to someone you really care about, someone who was kind to you. For me, it’s those folks at the soup kitchen, who always called me a volunteer, even though I chopped carrots maybe once a month, but ate there every day. Even if your meditation stays mechanical, don’t worry. What would I normally be doing? Watching Big As They Come for the ten-thousandth time, sneaking hits off a bottle of poppers. Keep practicing metta, even when it’s just words. The point is to increase the love in your heart and start including more people in it. The point is to end up a friend of the whole world. However, it is not actually necessary to sleep with everyone. I often forget this. Sleeping with people is optional.
By the way, don’t forget to include the beautiful men in your meditation. Personally, I have this handicap: I think the gorgeous don’t suffer. Ridiculous, I know. But I keep thinking that, if I had a perfect face, a perfect body and, most of all, an uncut porno mega-dong, all my problems would be solved. When in fact it does not work this way. The horsehung bubble-butt big-bicep washboard-abs crowd is also suffering. I have to re-learn this nearly every evening. This man I see now, posed beside the bar, who looks like he fell off the box cover of Real Hung Straight Marines Volume Eleven — if he was so freaking happy would he really be on coke and using steroids? Would he really have this face like sucking lemons?
Remember to include yourself. Send loving-kindness toward yourself. Make a wish for your own healing, your happiness and peace. You at the bar, feeling a little lonely, with all your bad habits, extra kilos and old hurts. May I be happy. May I be at peace. May I be full of loving-kindness. Traditionally, metta practice started with yourself because loving yourself was easiest. (Insert hysterical laughter here.) I try to sneak myself into my meditation, like a drunk crashing a wedding. Once I’ve thought of lots of other people, I toss myself in as well. Like, oh yeah, and the funny looking guy, whatshisface, may I be free of suffering, may I be joyful, may I learn some social skills which allow me to keep my pants on.
— Jonathan Mack, “Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action – or how to practice love in sleazy bars,” RFD Fall 2010 (click on above link to read the complete essay — long but worth it!)
another eye opens 