The Shattered Closet

In a couple of recent posts, I have been attempting to describe my experiences and mindset during my many years in the closet. In the wake of the Lord Browne resignation from BP, Andrew Sullivan has a great column in the Sunday Times of London (see the Timesonline at http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/andrew_sullivan/article1752275.ece) that does a good job in describing Lord Browne’s apparent mindset and my own back then. The pertinent quote is as follows:

“Try to think of it from his perspective. Think of the world that the 59-year-old Browne has inhabited in one lifetime. When he was a teenager, homosexuality was literally unspeakable in polite society. British authorities were injecting the great Alan Turing with hormones to “cure” him of his orientation just as Browne was leaving primary school.

For the first 19 years of his life Browne could have been imprisoned for a relationship with another man. During his formative years of adolescence, Browne learnt what every gay boy or girl had to learn at the time: if you do not keep this a terrible secret you will perish.

Even after being largely de-criminalized in 1967 the culture remained a strong force sustaining the stigma that Browne internalized. In the 1960s and 1970s it was far from easy for an ambitious scientist and businessman to have a life – that is, a mature relationship with another man – while having a serious career. The secrecy and fear that were soldered onto a gay man’s psyche were not as easily detached from the world as a piece of Victorian legislation. And as the gay rights movement first blossomed as a countercultural force, it did not easily include Browne and his ilk – Establishment, mannered, private men and women. . . .

Gays are a unique minority because we are almost all brought up as if we were heterosexuals in heterosexual families. We learn what it is to be gay from the general culture we imbibe as children and teens. As it changes, gay kids change. And quickly.

The difference between a culture that can safely mock “the only gay in the village” as comedy and a culture that would have beaten that gay to a pulp five decades ago is a vast one. And yet we have forgotten it so easily. A gay man who has lived through each of those decades is not in such an easy position.”

One of the commentors on Andrew’s article also had insightful remarks the power of denial and of the self-imposed closet:

“These influences on behaviour are difficult for heterosexuals to understand and even many gays (particularly gay rights radicals and younger gays) have little time or patience for understanding how one's formative experiences can create a glass (or in some cases, concrete) closet of one's own making from which it becomes impossible to break free due to - by adulthood - fundamentally ingrained psychological and behavioural traits.”

While I am not as old as Lord Browne, I am more or less of that generation and can identify closely with some of the societal and emotional constraints that kept him feeling that he could not truly admit parts of his life. Here in Virginia, until the Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas in 2003, homosexual sex, even in the privacy of one's home, was a felony. I will continue my posts about my own experiences and, perhaps if I am successful in my narrative, the mindset of that shackled me and, I suspect many others.

Surfing

The wind and waves did not allow me to get out surfing. Sustained winds of 25-35 knots today have turned the waves and shoreline into a washing machine of wind whipped spray and chop. Anyone folish enough to venture out will get beat and surely not get any good rides. Just to prove that I am in fact a surfer, here's photo taken down at Cape Hatteras.

My Closet Years – Part Two

Picking up where I left off, in the fall of 1974 I started law school at the University of Virginia’s School of Law. At first it was daunting, since everyone was in the top of their undergraduate class, and there were plenty of Ivy League grads. The first semester “Paper Chase” hysteria was compounded by the fact that a new law school building had been built (in fact it was not yet completed), so for the first semester only first year students had classes in the new building, although the library was complete. Among my classmates was George Allen, former U. S. Senator for Virginia, Evan Thomas (who was hot in law school), now with Newsweek and the author of a number of books, Congressman, Randy Forbes, and Cynthia Kinser, now on the Virginia Supreme Court.. Many other of my classmates have had likewise distinguished careers.

Meanwhile, my life in the closet continued and, true to form, I soon had a crush on one or more of my classmates. My first year, I lived in a large house with eleven other guys I had known to varying degrees from my undergraduate days, one of whom was a major crush interest. Twelve guys sharing eight bedrooms and three bath rooms led to frequent occasions of seeing each other in the shower and so forth. Seeing my crush interest (who I will call WG) in the shower left me almost dizzy – he was so gorgeous and a sweet guy. When he started dating a girl from the parish college group, I was green with envy. WG graduated at the end of the year and basically left my life forever, although I can still see him clearly in my mind. Socially, I still was involved in the frat house scene and often socialized with undergrads or friends of two of my sisters who were also students at UVA at the time.

As first year progressed, I moved on and eventually had another object of unrequited love in the form of one of my classmates (MP) who ended up being one of my roommates during my second year of law school. First year was very stressful and at numerous times I thought of dropping out as did MP, since both of us had been somewhat pressured by our fathers to go to law school. Talking about our feelings about law school and other things, MP and I became very close. The fact that he was 5’11”, had beautiful dark blues eyes and dark hair, was a former college swimmer, and had the looks of a model obviously did nothing to dissuade me from becoming increasingly infatuated. The long and short of it, we helped each other to remain in law school and spent much of the following summer together since we both had summer jobs in the same city. At times I so wanted to share my feelings with him, but was too afraid of losing his friendship to take the risk. Sometimes looking back, I wonder what would have happened if I had done so. My other roommate second year was equally beautiful, except he was blonde. He likewise was and great guy and I was not lacking for gorgeous surroundings that year.

It was during my second year of law school that I met the woman who would turn out to be my wife. On Fridays, Graduate Student Happy Hour (with $0.25 beer) was the spot one found out what parties were going on for the weekend. Along with one of my law school class mates, one Friday in September, my friend picked up a girl from Charlottesville and I was saddled with having to be the date for one of her friends. One the way to the party hosted by some law students (where we saw future Senator Allen from our class, who was quite the party boy) we stopped to buy some beer and my friend’s date said sheepishly that “she might get drunk.” No truer words were ever said. She got completely inebriated and, to this day, I do not believe I have ever seen a woman so drunk and out of control. My friend soon was trying to act as he’d never met her and did not know her. Meanwhile, her friend and I had definitely NOT hit it off and she ended up picking up another member of our class who she ultimately married.

It was during this disastrous dating adventure that I met my wife to be and ended up talking to her most of the evening. She was beautiful, smart, and better yet, not a law student. I was definitely impressed – or as impressed as a closeted gay 23 year old male (who is still a complete virgin) can be by a woman. Most of the night she stood with her back to the fall since moments after entering the house, she was bit on the butt by a second year law student who now is a member of one of South Carolina’s most prominent law firms. Our next encounter was once on one of the University buses as I was headed to the frat house for a road trip to a local women’s college. I did not even sit with her in my preoccupation with getting to the frat house in time (my car was in the shop and I was running late) before the chartered bus pulled out. Then we met again at another law school party sponsored by a guy in my class who wanted to get people dancing to disco music. After that, we began dating and made a great pair dancing together. We even went to a law professor’s costume Halloween Party as Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Indeed, we had fun together and I fell in love with her to the fullest extent a closeted gay ever could.

Never, ever did I let out anything about my secret track record of same sex attraction and crushes on other men. My religion, my family, and society (especially in Charlottesville and conservative UVA) made fully admitting these attractions even to myself something that just could not be. Throughout law school, I continued to attend daily mass and try as hard as I might to “pray the gay away.” If nothing else, the Catholic Church is without rival when it comes to instilling guilt and the hope that somehow God will work a miracle.

After graduation from law school, my former wife and I got married in New York City in a full blown Italian wedding. I remember as clearly as yesterday standing up on the altar as she came down the aisle and thinking to myself, “can I do this.” Due to my religious brainwashing, I told myself that, yes, God would get me through it and that I would be able to suppress my same sex attraction forever. Given my history of crushes on guys, I should have known, I guess, that such thinking was delusional. However, the desire to be what was expected and to deny what I knew deep down somewhere within me was simply too strong. After getting married, we lived in Mobile, Alabama for four years and – as I will describe in another post – the same old attractions soon arose.

3:00 AM Musings

It’s 3:00 AM and I am at my office rather than go home (my office is minutes from my house) and face a fight with the b/f. I went out to The Wave and danced to lose myself in the music. I find it a sort of catharsis to dance and let the music take control. Saturday nights are pretty packed and somewhat erotic with all the cute guys dancing, sometimes shirtless. I so want a stabile relationship in my life, but it seems elusive.

Everlasting Love

I have too much drama in my life at times. One of my goals in coming out of the closet was to find a stable everlasting love with a guy. Am I looking for the unobtainable? Sometimes I wonder.

Blogging Unites Us

I hope people will check out the links on my page. As Greg at Evviva Male has noted (http://evvivamale.blogspot.com/), blogging unites us gays and provides an outlet for those still in the closet or those living in less than gay friendly areas. Each of the blogs I have linked to seem to have authors who have brains, are aware of current events, and good taste in hot guys based on the photos on their blogs. In fact, it was reading The Pink Elephant (http://pinkelephant2closets.blogspot.com/) that spurred me to get back to my own coming out story. The photo above is from http://salsaparapecar.blogspot.com/ Some of the other links are to great news sources.

I would also recommend Family Acceptance (http://www.familyacceptance.com/) as a good reference to parents who are trying to come to terms with having a gay child. I asked my own mother to look at the site after I came out to my parents almost five years ago.

Going Out

It's Saturday night and it's our usual night to go out and dance and I get my cadio workout. I love to dance at a local club - I like to imagine what the women from my old neighborhood would think of me now. :) Usually there are alot of cute guys.

My Closet Years - Part One

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.

Weekend Eye Candy

Thank goodness, it's the Weekend!! I hope to go surfing tomorrow if weather and waves permit. To celebrate the beginning of the weekend, here's some eye candy.

Closing of Center for the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ

My friend, Wayne Besen, the Director of Truth Wins Out ( http://truthwinsout.org/) released the following press release on the closing of James Kennedy's anti-gay organization, Reclaiming America for Christ. I am pleased that I may have had a small part in helping this to happen. Here are Wayne's comments:

Failed 'Ex-Gay' Poster Boy Michael Johnston Helped Lead to Theocratic Center's Demise

MIAMI BEACH - Truth Wins Out today rejoiced over the downfall of the Center for Reclaiming America for Christ, a political arm of theocratic-leaning Coral Ridge Ministries. In 1998, the Center, which was then led by anti-gay activist Janet Folger, gained notoriety by leading a divisive national advertising campaign that featured so-called "ex-gays." The Center's influence quickly declined after its "ex-gay" poster boy Michael Johnston was caught in a 2003 sex scandal.

"Today we celebrate the demise of one of the most insidious anti-gay groups in America that incited intolerance by pumping out virulently anti-gay propaganda," said Truth Wins Out's Executive Director Wayne Besen. "The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ bet the bank on the 'ex-gay' message, and by doing so, bankrupted their credibility after their rising 'ex-gay' star crashed and burned."

The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ featured Michael Johnston, an HIV+ "ex-gay" leader in a million dollar print and television advertising campaign in 1998. In the notorious TV ad, Johnston's mother, Frances, used convoluted logic to explain how homosexuality led to her son contracting HIV. In a full-page print version that ran in the Miami Herald, Johnston is shown as a young boy blowing out birthday candles under the headline, "From Innocence to AIDS."

In August 2003, Johnston's claims at sexual conversion collapsed. Michael Hamar, a Virginia attorney, contacted Besen to say he had a client who had been having an affair with Johnston, not realizing, at first, Johnston's true identity as a prominent ex-gay figure. Besen was also introduced to another young man who claimed to have had unprotected sex with the ex-gay leader. While in Virginia, Besen was shown a video of a man that looked eerily similar to Johnston having unprotected sex with several men. Hamar's client signed an affidavit swearing the man was Michael Johnston.

What Wayne doesn't mention is that the Center for Reclaiming America continued to market videos and books featuring Johnston right up until the moment the Washington Blade story broke.