I have begun to get comments and e-mails from some of you folks who are reading this Blog, and I want to thank you for your positive comments. As I have said, I write this blog as a means of self-expression and a way to comment and vent on politics and those who seek to make gays permanent second class citizens.
One of the things I do want to talk about further is my days in the closet and explain how I moved from that point on to being out and openly gay. In prior posts, I have described growing up Catholic and a conservative area. That area was Central New York, and I attended a junior/senior high school with a total of 750 students in grades 7 through 12. Everyone knew everyone’s business. Our little Catholic parish was equally bad, with all the families knowing one another, and all the kids attending the same school system. In this setting, as a teenager strongly attracted to other boys – there were some gorgeous guys, notwithstanding the small size of the overall student body – there was no way one could be anonymous and overlooked. I felt much like the main character in the book, “The Geography Club.” Even worse yet, two of my sisters were cheerleaders and part of the popular clique. Thus, I felt even more pressure to be popular, go out for sports and not be the “faggot” I knew I was secretly in my heart. In retrospect, I believe I was more popular than I thought myself to be at the time, and my prowess as a snow skier (and our belonging to the Thunderbird Club, at Song Mountain, which has a private lodge and lift. http://www.songmountain.com/pages/trail_map.htm) definitely helped as I have mentioned before.
Starting college was my chance to re-invent myself. I started out attending Syracuse University, but even there in 1970, being gay was NOT that acceptable and those guys who were openly gay were the subject of frequent negative gossip. Moreover, with the university so close to home, I felt I had to continue to “hide my secret,” be straight and did the natural thing: I joined a frat house. Socially, the fraternity allowed me to socialize more and come out of my shell. The down side was I soon found I had terrible crushes on a couple of my fraternity brothers. Finally, I decided that I needed to get away from Central New York. On a lark, I applied to the University of Virginia and got accepted as an out of state student. Visiting UVA in early April, with flowers blooming and the beautiful university grounds, it was like going to Oz versus Kansas. The drab, bleak landscape of Central New York at that time of year could not compare. Needless to say, I decided to start anew in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Along with transferring to UVA, I also transferred to the chapter of my fraternity at UVA and to my horror discovered the UVA chapter was full of guys from wealthy, “Old South” families. The atmosphere at UVA was anything but gay-friendly, even though my class was the first co-ed class and guys greatly out numbered the female students. I repeated the cycle of soon falling head over heels for a couple of my frat brothers, one of whom was drop dead gorgeous and looked like a young Brad Pitt. Just having him talk to me in his aristocratic Charleston drawl on whatever the subject might be and him looking me in the eyes made me nearly have heart palpitations. Obviously, such attractions were not conducive to turning myself straight.
At this time UVA the student body was about 40% Catholic, so there was a very active university parish that I began attending, believing I could turn straight if I really threw myself into religion. In time, as I tried to “pray away the gay,” I began to go to daily mass whenever possible (this continued all the way through law school). Soon, I was involved in the parish college student group, went on retreats, and attended many functions, all the while refusing to admit in my heart that I was gay. The upshot was that once again I developed a terrible crush on one of the other male members. In time I was desperately in love with him, although I doubt he ever knew it. This unrequited love continued until we both graduated even though I was dating girls somewhat regularly – having a date was always expected for parties at the fraternity, even if they had to be imported from one of the women’s colleges within an hour radius of Charlottesville. Looking back, a number of these girls were interested in me, but between battling to suppress my secret and being overwhelmed with Catholic guilt and fear of sex, these relationships went nowhere. On graduation, I started law school at UVA and the saga of the closet continued as I will describe in a future post.
One of the things I do want to talk about further is my days in the closet and explain how I moved from that point on to being out and openly gay. In prior posts, I have described growing up Catholic and a conservative area. That area was Central New York, and I attended a junior/senior high school with a total of 750 students in grades 7 through 12. Everyone knew everyone’s business. Our little Catholic parish was equally bad, with all the families knowing one another, and all the kids attending the same school system. In this setting, as a teenager strongly attracted to other boys – there were some gorgeous guys, notwithstanding the small size of the overall student body – there was no way one could be anonymous and overlooked. I felt much like the main character in the book, “The Geography Club.” Even worse yet, two of my sisters were cheerleaders and part of the popular clique. Thus, I felt even more pressure to be popular, go out for sports and not be the “faggot” I knew I was secretly in my heart. In retrospect, I believe I was more popular than I thought myself to be at the time, and my prowess as a snow skier (and our belonging to the Thunderbird Club, at Song Mountain, which has a private lodge and lift. http://www.songmountain.com/pages/trail_map.htm) definitely helped as I have mentioned before.
Starting college was my chance to re-invent myself. I started out attending Syracuse University, but even there in 1970, being gay was NOT that acceptable and those guys who were openly gay were the subject of frequent negative gossip. Moreover, with the university so close to home, I felt I had to continue to “hide my secret,” be straight and did the natural thing: I joined a frat house. Socially, the fraternity allowed me to socialize more and come out of my shell. The down side was I soon found I had terrible crushes on a couple of my fraternity brothers. Finally, I decided that I needed to get away from Central New York. On a lark, I applied to the University of Virginia and got accepted as an out of state student. Visiting UVA in early April, with flowers blooming and the beautiful university grounds, it was like going to Oz versus Kansas. The drab, bleak landscape of Central New York at that time of year could not compare. Needless to say, I decided to start anew in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Along with transferring to UVA, I also transferred to the chapter of my fraternity at UVA and to my horror discovered the UVA chapter was full of guys from wealthy, “Old South” families. The atmosphere at UVA was anything but gay-friendly, even though my class was the first co-ed class and guys greatly out numbered the female students. I repeated the cycle of soon falling head over heels for a couple of my frat brothers, one of whom was drop dead gorgeous and looked like a young Brad Pitt. Just having him talk to me in his aristocratic Charleston drawl on whatever the subject might be and him looking me in the eyes made me nearly have heart palpitations. Obviously, such attractions were not conducive to turning myself straight.
At this time UVA the student body was about 40% Catholic, so there was a very active university parish that I began attending, believing I could turn straight if I really threw myself into religion. In time, as I tried to “pray away the gay,” I began to go to daily mass whenever possible (this continued all the way through law school). Soon, I was involved in the parish college student group, went on retreats, and attended many functions, all the while refusing to admit in my heart that I was gay. The upshot was that once again I developed a terrible crush on one of the other male members. In time I was desperately in love with him, although I doubt he ever knew it. This unrequited love continued until we both graduated even though I was dating girls somewhat regularly – having a date was always expected for parties at the fraternity, even if they had to be imported from one of the women’s colleges within an hour radius of Charlottesville. Looking back, a number of these girls were interested in me, but between battling to suppress my secret and being overwhelmed with Catholic guilt and fear of sex, these relationships went nowhere. On graduation, I started law school at UVA and the saga of the closet continued as I will describe in a future post.
1 comment:
I've read your coming out posts, and I can't help thinking how familiar it all sounds. I went to an undergraduate school near home, and wouldn't have considered coming out there. I didn't join a frat, but I did have a deep crush on my freshman roommate.
I went to law school, and for the longest time I was content to maintain the status quo. I even hoped to find a woman with whom I could develop the emotional connection that you did with your wife, even if I knew I couldn't develop the sexual connection. Luckily for me, or so I hope, things are somewhat different now. Society has become more and more accepting of gays, though it's true we still have progress to make. If I had been going through these things the same time you did, I have no doubt that my story would look remarkably similar to yours.
Also, as you point out, the internet and blogosphere has been wonderfully useful. It's connected me to people who went through the same things I am experiencing, and the support I have found has been invaluable.
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