I saw this picture today, a teaser for the upcoming season of
Glee and apparently our boy Kurt ends up in a
gay leather bar. Not for the faint of heart let me tell you. Anyway, it got me to thinking about my coming out now over 20 years ago.
I knew very early on that I was, well different, I didn't realize until almost the fifth grade that, that difference had a word to it more than one actually. The teasing started almost immediately, the words damaging: Sissy, Queer, Fag, Faggot, Homo, Fruit the list seemed endless and what precious ego I had left with it. By seventh grade it was sheer living hell. I begged my parents to send me to our church's christian school, I knew the teasing would end for ever. It did the minute I went but it lead to so many other problems, which sooner or later I will discuss I swear.
Of course like every young guy dealing with his being gay I tried not being gay. I even dated a few girls but we never went beyond the first kiss. The minute that kiss happened it was over. By 16 I knew girls were not for me and I ended the charade and stopped dating them. At 17 I lost my virginity to a guy that became my first boyfriend, he would die of GRID (now AIDS) two years later and I never looked back. He though did introduced me to the man who became my lover and that I lived with for almost 3 years who also died of AIDS before my twenty-first birthday.
Needless to say my parents were clueless and by October/early November of 1988 I was back in Ohio and back in high school, because my Christan school education was worthless. That December I was raped by a childhood friend. He was somewhat older but not to much. His parents were on vacation somewhere and he stayed behind to work at his job. He invited me to supper which surprisingly we ate before the next thing I honestly can remember 21 one years later, was my being on the floor a gun to my head and him literally ripping the clothes off me. Years in therapy helped me to try to put together what little I do remember.
"I'm f**ckin going to give you exactly what you deserve you f**king faggot, a good breaking in". I can still hear those words 21 years later. Needless to say I think he just guessed I was gay, he certainly had no proof of it. Also needless to say I wasn't his only victim male or female. I left bloodied, in rags of what were my clothes and never went to the hospital, never filed a police report and didn't speak about any of it.
That spring my brother was on a fishing trip with him and I fainted dead away when my mom told me where my brother was. That kids is when I came out.
G-d almighty it was horrific. The whole truth, nothing but the truth came flooding out of my mouth. The sexual assault, my being gay, my having lost a lover ( I didn't say from what then) and of course my stay at Betty Ford before I came home. I told my mom first we waited almost 3 months before I told my father. It made our relationship even WORSE than what it was before. By fall of that year I had again tried committing suicide, which I think I have written about before.
The family as a whole found out I was gay when they saw me on CNN at the March on Washington during the Colorado Proposition (I can't remember the exact bill) but I was officially out. National and local Newspapers came later as well as local things put me on television with what I was doing with ACT UP (The AIDS Coalition TO Unleash Power) and Gay Pride.
Of course I came out later as well as a Person living with AIDS which was
much harder to do and was more of a strain on my family, considering they are all southern conservative baptists ---OY VEY! I have never regretted any of it. I do regret exposing my parents to the people I knew when I was first diagnosed because for the most part all those people died, and died suddenly. My parents still expect me to drop over dead any minute.
I wish I had the courage to have been as brave as Kurt on Glee, to have had some of those hard conversations I have never had with my father and to have my father say I Love You. Kurt in many ways is making realize who I am again and not to be ashamed of any of it. Sometimes you need to be obvious, sometimes not. If it is a problem a friend used to say "in all reality it is not my problem, its their problem". I mean where would be without our gay clothing designers, hair dressers, florists, interior decorators, police me, firemen and yes even gay clergy. I am what I am no matter what and between you and me I am thankful I have all of you in my life sharing it with me. Until next time, embrace who you are.
As far as parental cliffhangers go, it’s second only to the identity of the Mother on a certain CBS sitcom: Glee has finally cast Rachel’s gay dads, and TVLine can reveal which musically-inclined actors landed the plum parts.
