When I wrote my personal piece for Instinct’s coverage of National Coming Out Day, it was very therapeutic. It made us all reflect on the catalysts that made us be our true selves. My catalyst was a broke heart after I had jumped into my first same-sex relationship head-first, heart-first. It didn’t work out since only one of us was mentally ready for commitment at the time. But how does one deal with a broken heart, being dumped, things not going as planned, or just a bad dating experience?
Enter comedian Michael Henry. We’ll call him a comedian, but I think he’s my long lost troubled twin soul. He recently shared a short film Fertilizer about how lovely it can be to date in the gay community.
Michael’s character is dumped and he takes to social media/writing to share his woes. Surprise (sarcasm), not many care when it’s about something close to the heart, so he switches his writing focus away from his feelings and gets more traction by writing about tops, bottoms, sex, and unemotional things.
I’ll stop there and let you see where his character goes. Does he embrace the app? Let it be? Will he find life after lo… Oh Cher!
Ok, the lighting on fire thing was a little WTF! But the rest was spot on. I love Michael’s ability to just tell it like it is. Well, actually Ben Simpkins wrote, directed, and produced this short film. Thanks, Ben, for knowing what we all have been going through out here.
I reached out to Michael for a comment about the title, Fertilizer. He stated:
The filmmaker titled it. I think it means that something can start out as shit but it is actually fertilizer for something nice to grow.
Going back to my coming out story, I can now look at it as a huge pile of fertilizer, well, not the story of being cheated on, but as a catalyst that helped me come out. That break up helped me grow as a gay man. But unfortunately, it lessened my ability to date as a gay man as it constructed some roadblocks in my head and heart, leading me to not to trust, something I have not overcome, something that may have made me lose some great guys along the way.
How do you view your past relationships? Break ups? Previous partners?