Those that are friendly toward me shared with me years after I came out to them that they 'guessed' or 'weren't that surprised' by my sudden revelation, but I take comfort in the fact that they at least acted surprised in the moment so that my big news still felt big. I would learn later that even my Grandmother had begun to ask around. Those unfriendly to me, who I will call assholes, would shout ‘faggot’ at me on the street or across the food court at the mall. I wasn't always sure that they were talking to me, but it seemed like the shoe fit and I was ashamed all the same.
However, it was those people who had a vested interest in me and my life that were willing to go to the land of denial; mainly consisting of my family, a few really close friends and myself. If I look back and think about life, I guess I would have to say that I always felt out of place, but that isn't really much of anything out of the ordinary. Many of people feel on the outside for many of reasons and I can’t really say that my reason was completely tied to being gay, but I don’t think it helped matters. It wasn't until the lovely hormones hit that I began to think that something was up. I often remember sneaking down to my brother’s porn stash under his bed and looking not at the women, but all the men. That was my first clue.
And with that clue began the terror. There were no gay people that I knew, nor was I really aware of any. The only one that I can think of was Billy Crystal on "Soap" and his character Jodi wasn't even a great representation. I also was keenly aware of the jokes that were told about the 'homosexuals' because I had heard them many times at the parties my parents threw. I’d heard these jokes for as long as I could remember, but it wasn't until my teen years that I stopped and understood that they were talking about and laughing at me. These horrible people in these jokes and stories weren't strangers, they were me. And so my trek to Denial Island began.
I tried to pretend that I wasn't gay, and that I just really liked Shaun Cassidy's music and hair and dream eyes. I also ignored that weird feeling that I had around Harry Hamlin's arms and chest while watching "Clash of the Titans". But my body would tell me differently and it became clear that I couldn't really just ignore who I was. I was gay. I was one of THOSE people that I had been warned about, the ones that hung around Loring Park and were less than.
This crushing understanding came to the front of my consciousness just as the AIDS crisis was starting. Where there wasn't a gay person on TV before, now there were talks about dead gay people. At first no one knew how AIDS or HIV was spread but we were told the disease was airborne, or it was waterborne, and you could totally get AIDS from a toilet seat. Any great panic buttons that existed in the population’s minds meant that’s how you got AIDS. And I was convinced that if I honestly came out as gay, within minutes I would get the AIDs and I would die.
When I look back at the 80's, it was such a weird time. Thoughts of death seem to plague our house. For my brother, I can remember him greatly upset over the fact that we were going to die in a nuclear war. In 1983, "The Day After" movie hit and it seemed to hit my brother like a ton of bricks. We were all going to die by nuclear war, according to him, and at the time it seemed very likely. So much of our media was telling us that Russia was going to kill us and we were going to destroy Russia. Hell, even Sting got into the picture and sang a song about all of us children dying. Watching my brother take the burden of being freaked out by nuclear holocaust seemed to let me off the hook for a while. I felt that since he had it all locked up, I didn't have to worry about it really. That was his death scare and I had mine.
I got to worry about AIDS.
But worse than AIDS was the crippling loneliness I remember in my life from that time period. It’s an odd feeling to be a part of a world that you are convinced hates you, or would hate you if you ever told them the truth. The message of hatred was re-enforced just about every where I turned, and I knew that if I told anyone – my world would be over. Growing old, love… these were concepts not meant for me. I was that other thing, that dying thing. The pressure was very heavy on my young shoulders and one day, it was really just too much. I remember thinking that it needed to end. I didn't have a future anyway, so why not just end it early and be done with the whole mess.
I want to say that in that dark time, I found this wellspring of strength. That even though I knew that there was a gun in the house (my father had used it many times to kill squirrels and other unwanted rodents that plagued us from time to time), my own will to live stopped me from committing the act. But I can't. I just remember, as I was searching the house while I was alone, thinking "Man, I bet it's going to hurt". And that thought ran over and over in my head, until I was more afraid of the physical pain than the emotional one, and so I stopped looking and decided to just get on with living already. It wasn't much of a change, but it was enough of a change in my mental state that I decided to move forward. And I was 15.
Over then next few years, I would meet some people that would give me hope for my future, and still others that made things so much worse. I settled on the idea that I would tell people that I was bisexual, because being half attracted to women was better than not being attracted to them at all, right? And wasn't Elton John bisexual? My mother still loved his music, so maybe there was hope for me. While that phase wouldn't last and would be finally killed by my time in college, it got me through.
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