I want to write about something else I realized this weekend.

The gay community is fucked up.

Okay, that’s a rhetorical flourish. By “the gay community,” I mean the gay community as I and many others experience it, which is through bars and chat rooms.

(I want to point out that the gay blogging community is different. Gay bloggers for the most part seem to like each other and get along well. We have our own little family here on the Web.)

I experienced such an overwhelming sense of togetherness and brotherhood this weekend with my fellow males. We all had the music in common, and we sang it together, and we felt close to each other. We were a big family. For me, it was so emotionally authentic. It was the realest emotion I’d felt in a really long time.

But of course, that makes perfect sense, because nobody wanted to sleep with each other.

And then I came home, and I turned on my computer, and I thought about the chat rooms. And the bar scene. And I realized that I’d just returned from a world where men treat each other with affection and laughter to a world where men treat each other like shit.

How many times have you tried to say hi to a guy, only to be ignored (online) or coldly dismissed (at bars)? And how many times, despite having good hearts, have we done that to other people ourselves?

I guess that’s what happens when you’re looking for your next fuck as opposed to your next friend.

And the sad thing is, I didn’t even realize the abnormality of it all until I returned from my weekend. I’d accepted all this crap as normal! I’d accepted it as unfortunate, yes, but normal. But it’s totally not normal. In fact, it’s laughable. The shirtless smooth chiseled men on the pages of HX? Laughable. Guys who shut the chat room window on you? Dorks. The Roxy? Ridiculous. The conformity? Contemptible. Why do we put up with this crap? Why does a hugely visible segment of the gay community do this?

When I sang in those men’s groups in college, nobody cared what you looked like, or how much you weighed, or how tall you were. It was all about who you were as a person. Basically, if you weren’t an asshole, you were accepted.

Male bonding is a good thing. But gay men — in many situations — can’t seem to do it. We’re afraid of each other. We retreat into our little self-protective bubbles, stare at each other like little baubles.

No wonder so many gay guys have self-esteem problems.

We’re in a SHAFU here. Situation Homosexual All Fucked Up.

Again, I’m talking about only a segment of the gay community. There are other ways to meet guys — volunteering, cultural activities, blogging!

But I do wonder if it’s something endemic to gay identity itself. Or even endemic to the nature of sexual attraction.

This is going to be another rhetorical flourish, but guys get along better when they’re not concerned about sleeping with each other.

I still feel strange and disoriented from this past weekend. It doesn’t help that on Saturday it was 80 degrees and sunny where I was, and now there’s snow on the ground. Oh, and we’ve had a time change. I don’t know what year it is, what month it is, what hour it is.

I feel like my entire life since the summer of 1999 has been fake. Like all the people I’ve met have been mere figments of my imagination. I’m all confused. Everything at UVA just feels like it was more real, as I’ve said.

Vacations can screw you up. Or change you, at least.

In March 1998, during spring break of my second year of law school, I went on a weeklong tour of the South with the Glee Club. It was during that week that I fell hard for a guy for the first time in years, and I realized, at last, that I wanted to be gay again. I was 24. I hadn’t felt like this since before I’d gone back in the closet at 19.

When I returned to law school, I felt all out of alignment — dislodged, like I’d gone over a big pothole. A puzzle piece warped by the sun, unable to fit back into my proper position. I couldn’t sit still, and I couldn’t participate in my law school identity anymore — I could only hover over it, observe it; my inner motor was racing too fast, faster than the speed of life. I bought Edmund White’s The Beautiful Room is Empty and devoured it. I was feverish.

The events of that spring break set off a whole chain of events that led to my being an uncloseted, sexually active gay man.

I feel a bit like that warped puzzle piece again. Things don’t feel quite the same as they did before the weekend. I worry that as the days pass, it will all fade away, and I’ll forget everything I learned, become complacent again, once more let my dissatisfaction whisper around me so softly and diffusely and not-immediately-painlessly that I accept it as part of The Way Things Are and forget that it’s fixable.

It’s like in “Afterlife,” in which Buffy has just returned from the dead and is faced by an incorporeal demon that she can’t fight until her friends magically give it solid form. (“Buffy” is always minable for psychological allegories.)

I want these thoughts and feelings to remain in solid form. I want to remain concretely dissatisfied with the current state of my life. I want to remember that things don’t have to be this way. I want to remember how this weekend felt. I want to remember who I used to be. I want to remember what I need to do.

I’m back.

I had such a wonderful weekend at UVA. On Saturday it was hot and sunny. I got color on my face and sunburn on my neck.

It was the 10th anniversary of AVP, the Academical Village People. It was our Decademical. I saw lots of old friends. We reminisced. We ate. We rehearsed. And we alumni all got up on stage and sang — first with the current group and then by ourselves. We sang Aerosmith’s “Angel.” “Billie Jean.” The Back Street Boys’ “Everybody.” “Footloose.” It was a blast.

And I’ve come back a different person.

Or, rather, I’ve reconnected with a long-lost part of myself.

I’ve re-learned things.

One, I’ve remembered how much I loved being part of a brotherhood.

Our weekend festivities ended yesterday with a brunch. About 40 guys — most of the 15 current members, and a majority of the alums who hadn’t already left to catch flights or whatnot — sat in chairs in a circle, and each of us had a few minutes to talk about himself and his memories of the group. I laughed harder than I’d laughed in a long time. I laughed so hard that tears came into my eyes.

And then — two hours later, after we’d all spoken — we all stood up, put our arms around each other, and sang a slow 40s-style barbershoppy song called “Softly.” As I sang, I looked around the circle at all these guys, all of us, singing together. And tears came into my eyes again.

And there are SO many cute guys in the group now.

But — sex seems so foreign. Singing with these guys, with my brothers-in-song, performing with them, just being with them — it was so much better than sex. It was more real. It was more me.

And now I know why it took me so long to come out of the closet. It’s because for so long, being part of a brotherhood was enough for me. It was what I wanted — what I’d always wanted: to be one of the guys. And I was one of them. And they accepted me.

And I wanted so much to be one of them, I wanted so much to be like them, that I hid my difference.

It’s so much easier to be part of a group of guys than to be part of a couple. It’s so much easier to lust after them and not actually have to do anything about it. And it’s so much easier to be the same as everyone else, to be accepted.

It’s so hard to be different when all you want is to be one of the guys.

And there’s another thing I re-learned.

I’d forgotten how much I love to sing. But not just singing. I’d forgotten how much I love to bust out and perform. To rock with nothing but your voice. To express yourself. To expend energy and be artistic not just in an introverted way, which is what writing is, but in an extroverted way, which is what singing and performing are. There’s nothing like it. It’s been so long.

I love to perform. I get a visceral pleasure from it. I did it in high school, I did it in college, I did some of it in law school. I want to do it again.

But I think I’m living in the wrong place. I couldn’t make it as a performer in New York, could I? I couldn’t possibly. This place is too big.

I’m daydreaming now — it’s just a daydream — but I’m daydreaming of moving to a smaller town, someplace quieter, slower, less expensive, someplace with less competition, someplace where I could have a solid group of friends. Maybe live with a bunch of them, or at least live in the same building. Instead of being alone all the time. I don’t want to have to take the PATH train anytime I want to hang out with someone. I don’t want to live in a place where everyone is so busy all the time.

So, I want to perform again.

And I want to be part of a brotherhood again.

I want to live a life where I’m so busy with things that I enjoy, where I’m so busy doing things that fulfill me, that I don’t have time to think about things that don’t matter.

Everything was so much more real back then. Everything was so much more emotionally real back then.

I need to be that guy again.

I need to be me again.

I’m back.