MY ADVICE is that you should talk to someone else. What, are you kidding? You want me to dispense advice about coming out, as if I had a short clue about what you should expect? As if I were an authority on The Gay Lifestyle, or Bear Culture, or any other kind of culture for that matter? The only culture I know about is the sourdough starter that I store in the hallway heater closet, and even that is due for a feeding.
All I know is that I'm gay, and that I've known it for forever. There's a word for it, when a little boy can't wait to be dropped off at his baby-sitter's house because he knows that her gentle, bearded husband will let him putter around the garage while he repairs his VW Microbus. There's a word for the barely suppressible glee a boy feels when he learns that a newly-transferred (and handsomely mustached) gentleman is going to be his fifth grade teacher. There's a word for those furtive, sidelong glances in the boys' locker room in high school.
The word is "gay". There are others too, of course. If you're a clever little boy, you learn to hide it. If you're even cleverer, you learn to deal with it.
Okay, so I'm not that bright.
people get what they deserve
time is round and space is curved
honey have you got the nerve
to be Queen Elvis?
I WAS 23 years old and working in a photo lab in Campbell, California when one of my co-workers asked me if I was gay. It was the first time anyone had asked me the question, but it was a subject on which I had meditated often, so I was able to answer it immediately.
It's kind of a loser question, you see, because it doesn't matter what the response is. If a gay man says he isn't, he lies. If a straight man admits the truth, the suspicion is still there. If a gay man admits the truth, the relationship changes.
A straight man will never lie and say that he's gay. I'm sorry, it just doesn't happen. The circumstances do not exist.
Is this cynicism? I do not think so. Of course the relationship changes when a gay man admits the truth, despite what we'd all like to believe. If it were not so, we would not ask the question. We ask it because we need to know how to talk to that person, how to relate to him. The question is even worse when it's coupled with the requisite, "I'm just curious; it doesn't matter," because it does matter. It shouldn't, but it does. I thought about this often, and it occurred to me that this was a good enough answer. "It shouldn't matter" sounded like the carefully considered response that it was. It was as honest as I was prepared to be at the time. It carried the slightest whiff of admonishment, but it also left the question open-ended so that whoever asked me could draw his or her own conclusions.
So when my co-worker asked me if I was gay, I promptly blurted out, "God, no! What made you think that?" Then I went to lunch and congratulated myself for handling the situation so well.
ACADEMICALLY, IT ALL SEEMED SO EASY. I was gay. I knew it. I had contemplated the depths of my gaiety for years, and let me tell you, they were deep, and gay. I was fairly sure that, when someone eventually asked the question, I would be able to answer with some measure of serenity. So why did I choke when it finally happened? I panicked because of a funny little side-issue I didn't foresee.
I thought she was calling me effeminate!
Like most men, I had trouble separating my sexuality from my masculinity. To question one was to question the other. That's why some men are reluctant to display any qualities that our culture deems "feminine," like being nurturing, or gentle, or being able to pick up one's own socks. They're concerned that, if they show these qualities, someone might think they're gay. (This is also why men hunt for sport. There can be no other reason.)
I, however, had it the other way around. I was more concerned that she looked at me and saw an effeminate man, than I was concerned that she thought I was just plain gay. It galled me that she might find my behavior affected. That does not appeal to me. To each, his hang-up.
Is it any wonder that we make this connection? What does Hollywood show us? What do the media show us? Gay men are effeminate, period. Thinking about coming out? Here's your pair of Topsiders and your pastel sweater, Mary. Tie it around your waist. I knew that I was buying into a stereotype, but the problem was that, at the time, it was a prevalent and heavily-ingrained one, with no visible alternatives. I had nothing to which I could compare the generalization. All the gay men I knew (or, more accurately, I knew I knew) were raging queens. All the men I had witnessed coming out had transformed from being generally "straight-acting" (an interesting euphemism that I always thought meant "closeted" whenever I saw it in the Metro Personals) into big, swishy caricatures of their former selves. Any news medium shows us the same. Whenever any kind of Gay Pride event takes place, the network news folks aim their cameras at the leathermen and parade divas, and ignore the regular guys like myself.
[A quick aside: I have nothing against leathermen or parade divas. I think they're fabulous. It's just that my dress-up days are pretty much over. I'm turning into something of a cranky old fart.]
So I reacted badly. To be openly gay was to be a swishy femme, and I didn't want to join that club. I paid for that mistake by staying closeted for another couple of years when, in hindsight, I was perfectly ready to come out.
I MOVED, AND THEN MOVED AGAIN, ending up in Willow Glen. My life consisted of playing the guitar (I sucked exponentially,) playing SEGA while triumphantly stoned, eating Ben & Jerry's, and doinking around online. I wasn't accomplishing much, and so I made myself one of those promises that we make when things get particularly aimless and empty. I was ready to come out, but I didn't want to make a huge production of it. I promised myself that I would tell the truth to the next person who asked me if I was gay. That seemed like a quiet, casual way to go about it. I knew that the gossip mill would take care of spreading the info around, and I would merely verify the rumor.
Naturally, it all got screwed up. The next person to ask me was an online friend who had no business wondering if I was gay. We had never met! Did my BBS posts seem particularly gay? Was I perhaps a little too prone to flaming? (Sorry about that.) How did he come to wonder about my sexuality?
The answer seemed perfectly clear at the time. Obviously, someone put him up to it. It had to be an online friend that I had actually met in person, which was a short list of people, and it didn't take long for me to winnow that list down to one. I decided that I would still admit the truth to him, but I was going to have fun flushing out the culprit at the same time.
Yes, I'm an amazingly petty and superficial paranoiac. I'm working on it.
I came out. I was blunt about it. However, I made it very clear that I did not want him to spread this information around. I told him that if anyone else asked me, I would admit the truth, but that I didn't want a sudden influx of online attention just because I came out. I thought all of this would ensure that he would immediately tell the one person who put him up to confronting me about it, and then that person wouldn't be able to resist asking as well. I gave them a week.
And what do you know? The bastard never told a soul. In a way I wish he did, because it would have saved me about five years of grief.
see that man that mows his lawn?
he'll hang in drag before the dawn
some are made and some are born
to be Queen Elvis
SO THEN I FELL IN LOVE, earnestly, for the first time, and hard. It's true what they say about song lyrics making sudden sense when you're in love. Here's what happened.
I moved again, this time to Mountain View, which would be the Willow Glen of the Silicon Valley if Willow Glen weren't already. Silicon Graphics was just a short drive down the road, as were Moffett Field, Lockheed, and the Ames Research Center. I used to lie awake at night wondering if, from orbit, anyone would be able to see the glowing hole my home would become when the bombs came.
Yes, I'm obsessive and cynical. I'm working on it. Onward.
I quit getting stoned, and quit playing SEGA. Withdrawal was rough, but both Ben and Jerry were still there for me. So was the online community, with whom I'd gotten quite cozy. I had joined an online science fiction club long before, and had gotten more and more active in it. After a couple of years of yammering online, and after a long session of bemoaning the fact that we had never physically met one another, a huge group of us fans decided, because we were all clearly and dangerously insane, that we would host a science fiction convention in Nipomo, California.
We were doomed. We should have just met up at Denny's. Science fiction fans are, by definition, awkward, delusional corndogs, and it did not occur to any of us that in order for it to be successful, we should probably have chosen a convention site that had the vaguest chance of drawing actual attendees. You've never heard of Nipomo? Neither has the rest of the planet. The logic behind our decision will elude me until I drop dead of old age and/or bewilderment.
We got to meet each other, however, which was a good thing. I'm still in contact with a handful of them. Specifically, I got to meet Richard, who was an online friend from New York. Richard and I had gone so far as to call one another occasionally, and a friendship was already brewing. We were everything that the other was not. He was educated, confident, gentle, and a brilliant source of advice. I was funny.
We met, and our friendship continued to grow. I was quite charmed by his intelligent, easy-going nature. He wasn't shy, but he had the confidence to stay quiet and calm all the time, which I had never seen before. I decided that I liked that about Richard. I decided that I liked a lot of things about Richard.
The convention ended prematurely. We had run out of Rent-a-Cop money, and the enchanted convention fairies who usually look after abysmally clueless science fiction dorks decided not to answer any of our wishes for provision, so we had to shut it all down. Everyone went home. Richard traveled up the West Coast to visit an old college buddy of his. I drove back to Mountain View, back to my dismal apartment, back to my less-than-satisfying job on the graveyard shift, duplicating videotapes. When I got in, I found that I already had e-mail from one of the club members who was not able to attend.
How was it? What's everyone really like? Did you have fun? How did Richard hold up?
We were all concerned for Richard. Richard had major health problems, and we weren't sure he would make it to the convention at all. He made it okay, but he didn't look very good, and I explained this in my response. I explained that he just seemed tired all the time, and that his arthritis was giving him constant trouble. I told him how bad I felt about Richard's problems, that Richard was a great guy, and that he didn't deserve all the medication hassles, and the pain, and the frustration that he had to deal with daily. Then I surprised myself by bursting into tears, right there in front of my little Macintosh.
I had fallen in love with Richard, quite simply, and it bewildered me. I hadn't meant for it to happen— I hadn't wanted it to happen. Maintaining a friendship can often be difficult enough without that kind of weirdness, I knew, but against all my wishes and intentions, there I was, blubbering in my living room because it hurt me so much that Richard was in pain. I felt helpless and stupid. I hadn't cried in thirteen years. Ah, love!
There was no way I could tell Richard what was really happening. I'm sure our friendship would have ended. He wouldn't have reacted in disgust, or in anger, or terminated the friendship abruptly, though. He would have found it convenient, I think, just to drift quietly away. I couldn't have that. Our friendship meant more to me than acting on whatever feelings I was having at the time, and I resolved to maintain that friendship.
And so I began the long process of silent pining that we've all gone through at one time or another. It turns out that I don't handle silent pining well at all. I stopped taking care of myself. I lost weight. Because I worked nights, I had put aluminum foil on the windows to block out all light so I could sleep during the day. I slept too much. I rarely left the dark, stuffy, foil-wrapped baked potato comfort of my tiny apartment.
I never broke down and wrote bad poetry about him, though. I'm proud of that. I cried occasionally, and was unpredictably moody, and I often wondered at the overwhelming unfairness of it all, but I never sank low enough for poetry. We can all be thankful.
ABOUT A MONTH AFTER THE CONVENTION, I got a call from Richard, who was still visiting his college friend in California. It turned out that they were only a couple of hours away from me. Did I want to drive out to visit? I grabbed my guitar, jumped into my pickup truck, and was on the road within minutes.
This is how I met Joe, and his wife and daughter. Richard and Joe had gone to college together, and then the Army brought Joe to Monterey. I liked him okay. We spent the day eating barbecue, drinking beer, pounding on our guitars, and generally being pleasant to one another. I visited twice more before Richard finally had to pack up and fly back to New York. Joe seemed like an amiable sort, and he played guitar well. I decided to maintain contact with him after Richard had gone home.
I do not believe in fate, or even karma. I'd like to believe in fate, but I know that it would only make me lazier, and I cannot allow anything into my life that would make me even lazier. This is also why I do not have cable. However, consider this: two months after meeting Joe, I lost my job. All my prospects had dried up, I had grown somewhat distant from my friends (graveyard shift will do that), and I had decided that I was quite sick of the heat and crowds of the Silicon Valley. I got a call that same day from Joe. His housemate had found a place with his girlfriend, and he was moving out within a month. Joe knew it was a weird and sudden question to ask, but... did I want to move down there, and rent the extra room?
The answer was yes.
it could break your mother's heart
it could break your sister's heart
coming out's the hardest part
when you're Queen Elvis
I FOUND WORK IN MONTEREY, and moved to Prunedale, a.k.a. "Prunetucky," or "The Prunedocks." Prunedale, California is where felons hide and wait for the statute of limitations to run out on whatever it was that they did. Prunedale is no-shoes, no-shirt, and overalls country. They have a general store, and one traffic light. When the bank opened its new ATM (with a ribbon-cutting ceremony, no less,) the townsfolk gathered festively, and lined up to use it. It was so much faster than the one by the mall in Salinas! And lookit! It told you to have a nice day!
What the clever reader will notice, however, is that the only way I could have known about the above conversation is if I was right there, in line with them. Truth is, I loved Prunedale. It was quiet. At sunrise I would brew a pot of coffee, and play guitar on the porch while watching the pink morning fog seep through San Miguel Canyon.
My guitar-playing still sucked. You can't have it all.
Prunedale didn't quite know what to make of me, though. I looked the part, to be sure, with my propensity toward flannel, jeans, and boots. I'm even missing a tooth, which turned out to be a prerequisite for residence there. The moment I opened my mouth and spoke, though, brows would raise or furrow. I'm shy, and pretty soft-spoken. This is not what a small town expects from a man who is 6'4" and roughly the shape of a Frigidaire with a gut. I think maybe they expected football stories, but I'm no good at small-talk, and Prunedale is a town of small-talk, niceties, and neighborliness. It would be Mayberry if it weren't for the barn-cellar meth labs. I was sorely misplaced there.
Eventually, it had to happen. Homogenous towns like Prunetucky are ill-equipped to handle soft-spoken freaks like myself, and it didn't take long for people to start wondering about me. Finally, during a beer-soaked, jangly blues afternoon gathering, one of Joe's friends asked me if I was gay, within earshot of Joe and his family. He asked it, not because he was curious, but out of malice. This was one of Joe's skinny, dope-weasel friends, who would forever nurse a little-man complex. He didn't like me. It took me about one second to realize that my present security could come unraveling molto rapido should Joe and his wife hear an answer that they didn't like. My answer would also get reported back to Richard, and our friendship would end.
I told him no. Did he want me to be? This got him off my back, but it also made things more difficult for me, eventually.
Sometimes we get to choose what we regret. The trick is to recognize when it's happening. It did not occur to
me to trust Joe and his wife to be sensible, accepting people. Had the circumstances been better, or had I not
been so worried about losing my admittedly spurious friendship with Richard, I might have been honest. I'm not
going to continue to punish myself for it, but I do wish that I hadn't lied to them.
So now I had a lie to support with a new group of people, which is always a lot of misspent energy, and you'd
think I'd have learned not to do it anymore by then, but there I was, affecting machismo, belching in public,
hauling post-storm burlwood from the beach at Rio Del Mar back to Joe's workshop, and generally feeling like a poser
dickhead. None of it worked though. People still had their suspicions, and I kept getting asked. A
friend at work asked me The Question, and, amazingly, that same day Joe admitted to me that he thought I was gay
when we first met. He wasn't even able to tell me why he thought so. I pressed him on the subject, but all he was
able to tell me was that I was soft-spoken. Okay folks, evidently soft-spoken = fag. If that's true, then those
ACT-UP people are the straightest on earth. Joe's response frustrated me, and what's worse, it wasn't even really
accurate, because one of his friends knew I was gay before I had even spoken to her. She took one look at
me wrapping a gift at the kitchen table, and she just immediately knew. She whispered in passing how nice it was
to finally have a gay brother in Prunedale. What's up with that? It was time for some introspection.
OUR PIANO TUNER WAS A DYKE, or at least I think she was. If she had greeted me at the front door with her hand outstretched and had said, "Hi, I'm Elizabeth and I'll be your lesbian piano tuner today!" I would know for sure, but she didn't, so I don't. I suspect she was a lesbian, but not because she wore boots, faded denim overalls, and had That Haircut. All these things are superficial. Come to think of it, I have That Haircut. The reason I suspect that she was a lesbian is because she had all those things, and also a little rainbow triangle sticker on the back of her Westfalia. Joe got along with her immediately. He showed her to the piano in the living room.
After removing the kick-board and front panel and tinkering around inside for a while, she stood up, dusted off her hands, and announced that the bass wires were rusting, and would need to be replaced soon. They would hold a tune, but tone-wise, they were already dead. Joe and I absorbed this.
Joe said, "If I oil them, will it slow down the rust?" He sounded hopeful.
She shook her head. "It won't slow it down at all. It's like..." and here she paused, trying to conjure the right metaphor to explain this to two bearded, flannel-wearing dudes. Finally, "It's like putting Bondo on a rust-spot. The car still rusts underneath; the Bondo only hides it."
Joe and I nodded our enthusiastic agreement. She could have been quoting Chilean tariff policies from 1952 and I would have agreed just as cheerfully, for all I know about Bondo.
As the Duckhills so eloquently sang, I don't like to do boy things.
Joe has his tools. His garage is festooned with rotary grinders, SkilSaws, monster C-clamps, and many things that I can't even name. He even has an adz or two. He had to have them. He would have died without them. If his wife had not allowed him to collect all of these things over the years, she would have been arrested for spousal abuse, at the very least.
Needless to say, he never uses any of them, with one exception: his drill press. He owns an enormous drill press with a bit as big as my fisted arm, and he'll happily drill though anything-- wood, brick, major appliances, lawn gnomes, the dog-- all day long, and still be frisky at bedtime.
Richard has his knives. He's a proud collector, and any mention of collectible knives makes him vibrate with giddy, nervous energy. All you have to do is whisper "Damascus boot knife," or "Persian fighter" to him and, if you look closely, you can actually see thin streams of testosterone squirt out of his pores. He has garnered knives from all over the world. A few of them even look decidedly extraterrestrial. Most of them were hand-made, and all of them were expensive.
Richard never uses his knives though. He enjoys them, to be sure. He takes them out, and oils the blades and locking mechanisms. He polishes them lovingly. Then he wraps them in cotton and stores them in a drawer, for months at a time.
This is so totally Freudian to me.
My brother Lauren was absolutely devoted to his car for years which, quite frankly, I didn't understand at all, because the damned thing never functioned for him. I spent entire holidays sitting next to his car, talking to his legs, while he puttered underneath.
One Christmas his wife bought him an expensive shirt— a silk original. At those prices, shirts cease to be shirts. They become chemises. Anyway, the thing was beautiful: an understated pale mocha, unadorned, and tasteful.
And there it sat, tastefully, in the box on his lap, after my brother unwrapped it. He looked at it. We looked at him. The tissue crinkled softly.
"I like it. It's nice," he tried. The only reason he got to sleep in his own bed that night is because there was already one Keller boy konking out on the couch.
Sue's father, on the other hand, is perfectly fluent in dude-speak. He got my brother one of those... those... I don't even know what it's called, for crying out loud! He got one of those long, flexible cable things that have a plunger at one end and a pronged grabber at the other. It's designed to pick up small objects from inaccessible places. They cost about four bucks at Kragen. My brother actually giggled with delight as he uncoiled it from its plastic wrap, and he spent the rest of the afternoon merrily dumping woodscrews into his beloved car's motor, just so he could pick them out again.
I couldn't be bothered. Cars are for getting me to and from work. Power tools are for getting me hurt, or dirty at the very least.
And knives? Knives are for boning chicken. Knives are for paring and cutting up apples for pies, or apple butter, or cinnamon apple syrup. Knives are for slicing, if you're very careful, a single cake layer into three for a torte. Brush the tops of each layer with liquid— strong coffee, liqueur, or a thin syrup— to reduce unsightly crumbs. Use a light filling between the layers, like sweetened whipped cream, or a chocolate or hazelnut mousse, both of which will lend easy volume without weighing down the dessert and do you see what my problem is? I get excited about baking, for goodness' sake.
That's not all. I get pretty jazzed about sewing too. God, I'm really opening up to you right now. I'm not just talking about hemming the occasional pair of jeans. I've made shirts, trousers, and bathrobes. I've made jodhpurs. Right now I'm considering reupholstering a couple of chairs in the living room, but I haven't found the right fabric yet. I haven't tried quilting, but I'd love to learn whitework (not candlewicking, though.) Yes, I'm totally lost to the dark side.
But all these things are not immediately apparent. You have to know me a while before you learn about my secret shame. I was more interested to learn how someone could instantly conclude that I was gay.
I started asking around, confronting everyone who had asked me if I was gay. I was coy about it. Why did you think I was gay? I'm not offended. It doesn't mean anything; I'm just curious.
Joe told me that I was too soft-spoken, and shy.
Jeff said that I was too loving, that I was too interested in how other people felt.
Niki felt that I was too quiet.
Dianne opined that I was too sensitive.
Kate often encouraged me to grow a spine.
Steve explained that I might be a wee bit too introspective.
This was all purest Corinthian horseshit. The general consensus seemed to be that I was an extremely passive human, but this hardly counts for much in the sexuality department. We all have friends who are passive unto flat-lining, friends that we would never suspect are gay, and we also all know aggressive fags. Passivity and aggression have about as much to do with one's sexuality as affected effeminacy/masculinity. They're part of one's sexuality, surely, but they don't define it— and they certainly don't act as indicators of sexual preference.
I was a blip on everyone's gaydar, but no one knew why. My friends tried earnestly to explain why they might think I was gay, but the truth was that none of us— least of all, myself— could describe this intangible thing that was tipping everyone off. I gave up trying to figure it out. However, I did not stop trying to convince everyone that I was straight. Other things were at work on me by this time.
gettin' blowjobs from the press
oh I'm jealous, can't you guess?
I'd never fit inside your dress
Queen Elvis
RICHARD WAS AN ORDAINED BAPTIST MINISTER. Oh, didn't I tell you that? I may have forgotten. Sort of throws a wrench into the works, doesn't it? Richard and Joe attended a private Christian college in upstate New York together, and then Richard continued his studies to become a minister, while Joe joined the Army.
This is another reason why I dared not breathe a word about my sexuality at the time. It's one thing to admit to one's homosexuality; it's quite another to admit it, and that you've got a thang for an ordained minister. What kind of sick fuck are you, Matthew? I was a bewildered one, believe me.
He was my first thought in the morning as I reached for my pack of cigarettes. He was my last thought at night as I snubbed out my last cigarette in the dark. (Yes, I smoked in bed. I also ran with scissors as often as I could arrange.) I called him more often than I could afford, and I awaited his e-mails with jittery impatience. It was pretty disgusting, really, and I have no idea why people didn't see it for what it was. I had a crush on a Baptist minister.
And then, miraculously, overnight it seemed, it was over. As I puttered around the house one rainy February morning, sipping coffee, I calmly realized that I didn't love Richard anymore. That was all there was to it. All my days and nights of pining had finally spent themselves, and I was done. I wasn't sad at all. Richard and I were merely good friends.
ONE NIGHT, WHILE CHATTING ONLINE, Richard and I somehow found ourselves on the subject of faith in general, and Richard asked me what I believed in. I don't know, maybe he maneuvered the conversation adeptly, or maybe the whole thing was innocent, but he had never asked me before, and I felt compelled to tell him the truth.
I told him that I did believe in a God in a vague way, and that I thought Jesus was pretty cool, but I also admitted that I had huge problems with churches. I didn't trust them. I told him about some pretty bad experiences that I'd had in various churches while I was growing up. I told him how I felt that people were kind of doomed to get it wrong, that the Bible is far too open for interpretation, and how I felt that people, honestly believing that they're doing the right thing, can do amazingly cruel damage to themselves, and to others.
Richard actually seemed to approve of my answer. He had trouble with some churches too, and agreed that people can be destructive in the name of religion. We continued talking. He asked me if I had gone as far as actually reading the Bible. I admitted that I hadn't, and immediately felt hypocritical. I had spent a good part of my life deriding Christianity, when I had no real idea what I was talking about. I agreed to read the Bible, and a couple of other things that Richard suggested.
And that, folks, is how I became a Christian, and how I entered into one of the most unhealthy periods of my life.
THIS IS THE REAL WEEPY AND LIKE TRAGIC PART of the story beginning, my brothers and only friends. I'll try to keep it as brief as possible, and then get back to being ornery.
I read the Bible. I read a few other things that Joe and Richard suggested. I started attending church along with Joe and his family, which was, frankly, agony. I dislike crowds. I felt hypocritical "speaking Christian" along with everyone else, especially since none of them spoke that way outside of church, and so I refused to do it, which went toward making me feel like an outsider. While I enjoy some hymns and gospel music, Contemporary Christian Music is shit, and the church I was attending fancied itself progressive. We always ended up listening to and singing horrible faux-funk songs and bad Joe Walsh rip-offs with lyrics about mustard seeds, and being in the belly of a whale, and what have you.
This was not Christianity, as far as I understood it. To me, Christianity was extremely personal. I was much more interested in developing a relationship between myself and Christ. Christianity was about sincerity. Churchgoing was almost a distraction from that, because I kept seeing so much that I didn't want to emulate. I couldn't understand why people prayed the way they did, as if God couldn't understand clear English, or wouldn't be inclined to listen if we spoke to him the way we spoke to one another. That bothered me. Other things bothered me.
My sexuality bothered me. I started to see it as a barrier between myself and happiness. The more I read and the more I learned about Christianity, the more I felt that my own homosexuality was something of a test. God was not punishing me. God was testing me. He wanted to see how I would deal with this problem, this deeply personal flaw. If only I could find a way to smother, obliterate, or simply remove my sexual preferences, and replace them with heterosexual urges or a clever facsimile thereof, everything would be fine and Jesus would accept me. Maybe I'd even start feeling comfortable in church.
That I was a liar was not a problem.
That I was delusional was not a problem.
The problem was sex. The problem is always going to be sex.
I prayed about it, often, which is what you're supposed to do. I prayed for strength. I prayed for courage. I prayed for guidance, for signs, and for my burden to be taken away from me. I couldn't handle my own sexuality. It was a dark, filthy secret, one that menaced me constantly: in church, in bed, out with friends. I prayed for hours at a time, in the dark, carpet burning my knees, saying anything, admitting any ugliness, trying to purge myself of the badness, hoping that sex would go with it. It felt like a process of hollowing myself out, like scraping the tar out of my smoker's lungs. I wish I were kidding about this. Eventually I started begging God to kill me, right there, to stop my heart, or to send a clot to my brain, because no matter what I said or did, I was still gay, and I couldn't find a way around it.
I went online, and wrote an e-mail to the friend to whom I had come out. I told him that I had been kidding, that I wasn't really gay. I concocted a lame story about how I had done it to prove a sociological point, or some such nonsense. He didn't believe me, but I didn't care.
I also went and told all of our mutual friends that I was not gay, just in case he had said something to them. For some strange reason, none of them expected this news. I did not think that I was being hypocritical, denying my sexuality. I felt that I was taking sensible steps in dealing with a difficult problem.
I started dating women, or two women, really. I reasoned that if eventually I were able to perform the sex act with a woman, the rest of the relationship would be no problem. To my thinking, the more often I performed the act, the more natural it would seem to me over time, and this would be how I would conquer my homosexuality.
The first woman lasted two dates. I didn't even kiss her. I think she quickly realized that I was wasting her time, and she moved on. I still feel bad about this because I really liked her as a friend, and I lost that.
The second woman was Marie.
everybody must get stoned
all together all alone
babbling beside the throne
of Queen Elvis
I WORKED for an over-the-phone interpretation service. Marie was a Spanish interpreter, living in Pittsburgh. She and I both worked the graveyard shift, and often traded niceties during the night. Eventually we swapped e-mail addresses, and started writing to one another at home.
I liked Marie. She was a well-traveled, logical woman, who tended toward frankness in conversation. She shared my love of music, and my love of cooking. We always had loads to talk about.
She sent me her photo, so I sent her mine, albeit grudgingly, because I am so unconfident about how I look. She didn't like my beard, and she called me to say so. Yuck. Furry. Dirty. Gross. Shave it off. I liked arguing with Marie. I thought about removing the beard, but ultimately it stayed put.
We decided that we would co-write a cookbook. It would be called Unethical Cooking, although we couldn't quite agree about what that meant. She thought it meant that all the recipes would have odd combinations of ingredients, like putting raisins in tamales (which, I later learned, is not all that uncommon a practice out here in California.) I thought it meant that every recipe would have butter or cream or chocolate in it somewhere, and screw the bathroom scales. We eventually came to an uneasy truce, and started testing recipes and writing them down.
I was courting her. It was the absolute opposite of what had happened with Richard. I hadn't wanted to fall in love with Richard, and I had fallen hard. I didn't have any feelings toward Marie, apart from friendship, and I was deliberately courting her to start up a relationship. The reason I wanted a relationship with her is because I didn't know how much longer I was going to last. I didn't know if I was going to come out of the closet, or kill myself, or go insane with frustration, but I knew that sooner or later, something drastic was going to happen.
I was preoccupied with sex ceaselessly, but not in the fun, healthy way that others enjoy. I kept thinking of the future, twenty, thirty years ahead. Would I always be preoccupied with sex? Would I ever have relief? I read a quote from someone (I can't remember his name) who said that he was always thinking that in ten year's time he would lose interest in sex, and then he would finally be freed of that distraction so he could concentrate on his work. The gentleman was seventy years old when he said this.
I wanted to be in a relationship with a woman as quickly as possible because I didn't want to spend the rest of my life lonely, and because, quite frankly, the sooner I was having sex with a woman, the sooner it would seem normal to me, and the sooner I would be okay with God.
MARIE AND I TALKED OFTEN ABOUT RELIGION. I learned early on that she was a Jehovah's Witness, which was a group of people I knew next to nothing about. I mentioned this to Joe one day. Joe did not approve. That was the day that I found out that Jehovah's Witnesses and the general Christian community Do Not Get Along. Joe gave me a book or two to read, and a coworker offered me a book, all of them about how Jehovah's Witnesses are misled, unwashed vermin in desperate need of guidance and help. Each book explained in clear detail just how Jehovah's Witnesses have it all wrong. I absorbed all of this, and resolved to give Marie the support and help she needed to see the truth. Marie became my "project."
Of course, it turned out that I was hers. The next time I started talking about religion with Marie, she immediately noticed the change, and knew that someone had gotten to me. She retaliated with literature of her own, including a big leather-bound Bible. I read what she sent to me, and discovered that Christians, in general, are unlearned, tyrannical traditionalists, needing patient de-programming. Marie explained to me enthusiastically, point-by-point, how Christians have it all wrong.
There is so much ill will and rabid bad-mouthing on both sides of the fence, it's impossible to see how either group is supposed to help the other. It's like a psychotic, righteous pep-rally. Where was the love? Where was the tolerance? What all this bickering accomplished was to plant seeds of uncertainty within me. I just wish they had germinated faster than they did.
IN THE INTEREST OF BEING COMPLETELY HONEST, I have to mention that about this time is when I discovered Bears online. It wasn't even an accident. Joe and his family had just driven off to the airport for their vacation, and I settled down, alone in the house for the first time with my new Macintosh. I cruised over to Yahoo! and searched for "hairy chest," like a good Christian. Yahoo! told me about The Hairy Chest Page. The HCP introduced me, quite politely, to Carl Hardwick.
My pants exploded.
The war that I was waging in my heart had just gotten messy.
IN DECEMBER OF '95, as a blizzard gathered itself to knock out New York City, my plane touched down in Buffalo with nary a shudder or skid on the icy runway. It was the first time I had flown in nine years, and I was thankful for the uneventful landing. The moment I stepped out of the airport, my mustache froze. I had never experienced cold like that before.
Richard was waiting for me in the parking lot. The plan was to spend a couple of days with him, and then meet up with Marie. She was driving up from Pittsburgh. Everyone was understandably excited.
The night before Marie was due to arrive, I asked Richard how he felt about homosexuality. I wanted to know if he believed that homosexuality was caused by environment. Richard said he didn't. He thought that people didn't necessarily have a choice about their sexuality, but that they did have a choice regarding what kind of lifestyle they led. Choosing to lead a gay lifestyle was the sin, he said, not the condition of being gay. I agreed with him.
That morning, I awoke to knocking at the front door. Richard and I had massively overslept. He threw on a bathrobe and bumbled downstairs to entertain Marie while I hurriedly brushed my teeth in the shower, which is a trick that all bearded men eventually learn. By the time I got downstairs, I was more-or-less fresh.
I don't want to go into great detail regarding meeting Marie. There really isn't that much to tell. We drove to a restaurant for breakfast, and then drove to Niagara Falls where we spent the afternoon. Meeting her was awkward, but not much more so than meeting anyone else for the first time. However, my initial nervousness never went away. I spent the day feeling the same way I always felt in the Principal's office in grade school, worried that I might say something wrong, wanting it to be over. I didn't think of the present moment. I thought of the future, of how I would someday feel comfortable with her, of how I would finally have someone to spend time and grow old with. I was quiet most of the day. It eventually ended in Richard's driveway with my giving Marie a dutiful peck on the cheek, and her driving home. I flew back to California at the end of the week.
Back at home, things got weird. Joe was worried that Marie was leading me astray, and he stepped up his efforts to get me to attend church more regularly, which frustrated me deeply. Marie and I finally admitted to one another over the phone that we were interested in a relationship, which both elated me and filled me with dread. I spent more and more time online, reading about Bears and downloading furry porn. I rationalized this with God and myself, thinking that when I eventually tried to have sex with Marie, I would need to visualize something that would arouse me. So whenever I was home alone, I would fantasize about having sex with Marie while whacking off to online Bear porn and praying to Jesus for forgiveness, all at the same time.
I was, to put it succinctly, just a little bit bonkers.
SIX MONTHS LATER I was back in Buffalo. Again, Marie drove up from Pittsburgh to spend a day with me, and again, I was never able to feel comfortable around her. I dropped her off at the end of the day, and then heaved myself a heavy sigh of relief.
It wasn't going to work out. We were just too different. She was a Jehovah's Witness, a minister's daughter, devout and proper. I was a great big sloppy fag. She kept talking about how we needed to reconcile the differences between our faiths if we were going to continue with our relationship, especially if we ever intended to have children, and I kept thinking about what it would be like to blow the truckers passing us on the highway. I flew back to California and finally quit smoking.
Marie knew something was wrong, but she couldn't figure out what it was, and I wasn't communicating. I suppose not knowing made her insecure, and that insecurity made her angry, because she started getting mildly abusive. She didn't like my parents, even though she had never met them. She thought they had done a poor job of raising me, although she seemed satisfied with the result, as if I had somehow turned out to be a decent human being despite their influence. She didn't like the company we worked for, or my coworkers. She didn't like my friends. She thought I could do better. She resented Richard, because as far as religion went, Richard had my ear, and she didn't feel that he should butt into business that she didn't think was his. She resented that I would not consider visiting a Kingdom Hall so that I could learn more about Jehovah's Witnesses. She disliked my taste in music. She outright hated the movies that I liked.
This was perhaps the earliest indication that things were seriously out-of-whack with our relationship, apart from the whole dick thing. I had seen Schindler's List, and had recommended it to her. When she finally got around to renting and watching it, she immediately telephoned me to tell me what she thought.
She was furious. She couldn't believe that I would recommend filth like that. How could I? And how could Spielberg trivialize such a delicate subject?
I honestly did not understand what she was talking about. I thought she was angry about Spielberg's liberal use of creative license, but I wasn't sure. I asked her to explain. It turned out that she was offended by the nudity and the swearing. She couldn't understand why a film about war atrocities and concentration camps would have cussing in it. It wasn't necessary. The nudity wasn't necessary. It was gratuitous filth, included only to titillate. It was there to give thirteen-year-old boys in the audience something to snicker at.
It was reactions like this one that made me eventually realize that even if I had been dead straight, things weren't going to work out between us. I began to learn to keep my opinions to myself, because I knew that I would only get into further arguments with her. This lack of communication, in turn, made Marie even more vicious with her own criticism. I stopped answering the phone, and she would leave frustrated messages on my answering machine.
Something had to give, and the wrong thing finally did. I packed my things, said goodbye to Joe and his wife and daughter, and moved to Marina, California. I moved in with a coworker and her boyfriend. I got a dog.
Marie, of course, disapproved. She couldn't believe my poor judgment; I might as well have moved into a brothel. I absolutely dreaded my ringing phone. The moment I heard her voice on my answering machine, I would erase it. She never had anything new to say. She was only full of criticism, and reminders of my past mistakes. She started calling my housemates on their phone line, and demanding to talk to me. She would tell me how much I was hurting her. She would often use the phrase "cuts like a knife." I must have heard that phrase 400 times. It became something of a joke between my friends. Whenever anyone stubbed a toe, or got hurt in some other trivial way, we would ask, "does it cut?" and the proper response was, "like a knife!"
My vacation was approaching, and Marie wanted me to come out there again. She felt that we had a lot to work out. I told her that I wanted to visit with friends in Los Angeles, and that I already had plans to stay with my brother for a while in San Diego. She insisted that I break those plans, and fly out to Pennsylvania. She was angry that I couldn't take a few days out of my vacation to spend some time with her. I ended up flying out to Buffalo for a week, but I didn't tell her that.
So she flew out to California. Four days of hell. Four days of apologizing, of explaining myself, of pretending. My dog ran away while Marie was visiting, and she got angry when I told her that I wanted to write up some reward posters, photocopy them, and post them around town. She didn't want me to spend time on anything but her, since she had gone to all the trouble of traveling to California. This was her time. My dog could wait.
On the last night, I took her out to dinner in Carmel. I hate Carmel. After dinner, she wanted a midnight stroll along the beach in the moonlight. It rained. Have you ever stood on a rainy beach in the dark, holding hands with someone you were pretending not to loathe? It was just about the nadir of my entire life.
As we stood there in the rain, I told her that I didn't think things were going to work out between us. I wanted to remain friends, but I didn't want a relationship anymore. She thanked me for being honest. Then I made a huge mistake at the end of the evening. I kissed her goodbye. When she got home and started calling me again, it became immediately clear that she hadn't heard a word I said. All she remembered was that I kissed her.
I had to call her and explain everything again, as if the first time wasn't painful enough. I told her that I didn't want a relationship. Things had gotten too difficult. I was tired of apologizing all the time. She finally got it. She cried. She asked me what had gone wrong. I couldn't explain.
I received an e-mail from her. She told me that my ending our relationship was a classic example of how children of divorced parents react to commitment. Because I had never been shown how to have a successful relationship, I felt doomed to repeat my parent's failures. She told me that I wasn't even conscious of the decision that I had made. Marie was willing to give me another chance, though. She was not ready to give up on our relationship just yet. We were soul-mates.
I wrote back to her and told her that I really wasn't interested in a relationship. I resented her bringing my parents into it. She wrote back, angry. Why was I doing this? Obviously I still loved her; why was I deliberately hurting her like this? I told her that I didn't love her. She wouldn't believe me.
This stretched on for weeks, and then the weeks became months. My housemates wanted me to break off all contact with her. Richard wanted me to do the same. Marie would not believe that I didn't love her, and she couldn't understand why I kept hurting her. It finally got to be too much. In late July of '97, I ended all contact with Marie. I wrote a letter to her, reiterating everything, and telling her that since she refused to believe that I was not interested in a relationship, and since she was only interested in hurting me back, I had no choice but to stop communicating with her entirely. I asked her not to e-mail, write, or call me anymore. It was one of the most confrontational and painful things I've ever done.
To put it mildly, Marie didn't react well. I was flooded with a deluge of vitriolic e-mail. I deleted it. She began calling me at work. I had Caller ID, and wouldn't answer her. She would leave voice mail for me which I deleted at first, and then started saving because corporate security took an interest in her behavior. Her voice mail was strange. Her voice was weirdly inflected. It took us a while to figure out that she would write out what she wanted to say, and then she would recite it over the phone so that she would be sure not to forget anything. We could hear her turning pages in the background.
She would call other departments and have them transfer her over to me so I couldn't see her phone number, or
she would call my extension directly, which bypassed our Caller ID system. Neither worked. She started calling
from payphones, or from her parents' or friends' houses. It got so ridiculous that corporate security had to
confront her and explain that they would press harassment charges if she continued. She finally stopped calling
me at work, but she kept calling me at home, and sending e-mails and letters.
SHE NEVER GAVE UP, EITHER. To this day, she's still trying to contact me, still trying to patch things up. I eventually moved again, this time to Pacific Grove, which is the Monarch Butterfly Capital of the Known Universe. Look it up. When Marie learned that I moved, she called Richard and pressed him for information. I had sworn him to secrecy, but she cried over the phone for a long time and eventually he broke down. Once she had my address she flew out here and rang my doorbell for hours while I read in the bedroom. I had to sneak out every morning and travel a circuitous nonsense route to my car, paranoid that she might be hiding somewhere along the way. It turns out I was right to be paranoid. The one morning that I walked directly to my car, she was hiding in the bushes around the corner from my front door. She was all bundled up in a winter coat and mittens, with a Styrofoam cup of coffee. God only knows how long she had been out there. I put my head down and strode to my car, with her chasing after me, crying, "why do you hate me?" It is, so far, the last I've seen of her.
I still get the occasional e-mail.
THE UPSHOT OF ALL THIS is that it finally—fucking finally — dawned on me that all of this pain, to myself, to Marie, to Richard, to our families and friends, could be avoided easily if I would just be honest.
That's always the answer, isn't it? It's all we hear, our whole lives. The problems we try to avoid by lying are nothing compared to the grief we get when the lie comes back around to kick us in the hinder. And we never only hurt just ourselves. Why the hell did it take so much, and so long, for this to sink through my head? Maybe it was weakness, or lack of confidence. Maybe I need outside approval too much.
Or maybe it's basic thickness. You're reading the confessions of one dense bruin. Please forgive me. I'm working on it.
two mirrors make infinity
in the mirror you and me
find out just what love could be
Queen Elvis
Circumstances have forced me to be trite now. I resent this. I fancy myself a somewhat capable writer, and as such, I recognize that I should not be in the business of propping up stereotypes or clichés. However, it turns out that real day-to-day life is loaded with clichés. This was one of those occasions.
I was torn. If I was ever going to be happy, if I was ever going to pare away the bullshit and live a simpler, healthier life, I knew that I had to come out of the closet. However, I was a Christian, and I didn't know how to reconcile those two aspects of my life.
Then, one morning, despite the fact that I put no stock in oneirocriticism, I awoke from a dream with the answer. I had a decision to make, and simply— tritely— it was this:
Be honest.
Be happy.
Love God.
or
Lie.
Be miserable.
Learn to hate God.
Now, don't rush into this decision, but... which would you choose?
The moment I decided what I wanted to do, things started happening very quickly. I started writing to, and chatting with, online Bears, getting my courage up. By this time I had visited every darn NetBear Homepage on the Resources for Bears list, and had gotten quite comfy with the concept (or, at least, my concept) of Beardom. I finally had a group of people with whom I identified! Yay! I was excited.
My first conversation with a Bear scared the shit right out of me. It's funny in retrospect. The conversation went something like this.
"Um, hi. I think I'm a Bear, but I'm not sure. I'm still closeted, and kind of shy. I'm looking for support. Are you a bear?"
"YEAH. TELL ME YOUR BIG AND HAIRY SO I CAN BEAT OFF AND THEN GO DO LAUNDRY."
I let out a little squeak, and immediately closed my connection. I can't blame him, though. What else is IRC for?
The following week, I talked briefly with Seumas Hyslop, who was very friendly and supportive. After that, I started talking to Chris and Dan, who turned out to be sterling gents. They are my total heroes. For their initial, and continuing, kindness, I inflict upon them homemade strawberry jam as often as I get around to making it.
AND THEN, HAVING HAD ENOUGH, on February 19th, 1998 (Jeudi Gai— and that's the last time I'm telling that joke,) twenty days after my 30th birthday, I came out. At first I told only people that I knew would have no problem with it. I was still scared, and I wanted to practice. At work, I wrote an e-mail to Dianne, filling the entire page with, "blah blah blah blah". Toward the center, near the bottom, in tiny letters, between blahs, I wrote, "I'm gay." I could hear her laugh across the room, and she wrote back, "Shit. That's great! You are so funny." I did the same thing to Sheri, and she wrote back asking me to tell her something she didn't know.
Kate's reaction was the best. "Oh my God, finally! I was wondering when you were going to get around to it." Then it dawned on her. "This means that you're going to need candles! Do you want to go to Pier One with me tonight?" As if I suddenly had taste, or something.
Niki already knew, and her husband Jeff (my old songwriting partner) had the most honest reaction. "FAG! There, that's out of the way. When are you coming down to visit?"
Brett's response was just as straightforward. "Jesus Christ! Who else?" In his defense, three of his long-time friends had come out to him in the previous two months. I couldn't help but be amused.
Others were more difficult for me. Naturally, Richard was going to be a tough one, and so was my family. I couldn't have given a twink's downy pube-hair what my sisters thought, but I cared deeply for Mom and my brother. Each time, before I picked up the phone, I would rehearse my little speech, the one about acceptance and how nothing had changed, and I would prepare myself as best I could for an outburst, or anger, or rejection, or whatever.
And I was robbed, every time. I was robbed of my big drama queen moment. My speech went undelivered. They all took the news well. I didn't lose a single friend.
Imagine my dismay.
people get what they deserve
time is round and space is curved
honey have you got the nerve
to be Queen Elvis?
IT'S 2:53, SUNDAY MORNING, November 29th, 1998. I'm sitting here in the dark, with the monitor brightness turned almost all the way down, so Dan can sleep. I can hear him softly snoring. He's been my partner since April. I met his parents a few days ago, for Thanksgiving. They're fine people.
In a moment, when I'm done here and I turn off my most recent Mac, I'm going to sneak into bed as quietly as I can, which admittedly ain't that quiet, and snuggle up behind him. If history is any kind of indicator, he's going to whisper, "hey, Mamoo," snuggle back, and then fall asleep again. I'll eventually nod off, warm and happy, and when I wake up, I'll make us breakfast. I think I'll make nut pancakes with apple syrup.
SHOULD YOU COME OUT? Heck, I don't know. That's really up to you. All I can do is tell you that I'm far happier, now that I don't have to lie anymore. That burden has been lifted from me. I look back and I see that, as far as relationships go, anything bad that happened to me was a result of my own dishonesty. That lesson should have been an easier one for me to learn. Ah well.
I can tell you that I have never met a soul who regretted coming out. I can tell you that every day I'm reassured that I made the right decision for myself. I've met several wonderful men, and one man special enough to invite into my life. I found love, and some measure of peace.
I also found out about Bears, a discovery that helped me decide to come out in the first place. I don't know if I'd have had the courage to come out if I wasn't sure that I had found a group of people who would accept me. They seem like a good group of men. They're friendly. It also helps that, around them, I get to be the tiniest bit handsome, which is something I've never gotten to be before. (Shhhh! Don't tell anyone.)
But I don't feel qualified to give you advice, because strangely, I don't feel like I've had enough experience to do so. Experienced people have gone though hardship; I haven't. When I came out, not a single thing went wrong. All the people who loved me before, love me still.
You don't want to take advice from someone like that, do you?
Good luck.
Good night.
Woof.
-Matthew
PS. I got better on the guitar.
Lyric to Queen Elvis by Robyn Hitchcock. ©1990.
Last updated 24 March 2003
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