I’d like to speak to the manager!!!

June is pride month.

I thought I’d write some posts about being gay.

Or at least about my being gay.

I’ve known I was gay for as long as I can remember.

Well not gay. I didn’t have a word for how I felt.

I just knew that I was fascinated by boys/men.

Battle of the Network Stars.

The Hardy Boys.

Emergency.

Chips.

Saturday Night Fever.

The Sears catalogue.

The underwear section at Kmart.

And I a crush on a whole host of boys in my grade or older.

I’d list some of their names, but think it’s better if I don’t.

As I said, I knew I liked boys.

I knew it was wrong.

And I knew not to tell anyone this deep dark secret.

I, however, did find a word for how I felt on September 29, 1976.

The TV show Alice had started the week before. It was fun.

Kiss my grits!!!

We tuned in the following week and the episode was about a former professional football player that Alice is interested in who turns out to be gay. She suggests he take her son fishing, then changes her mind when she learns he’s gay.

Drama and discovery occur, she realizes she’s wrong, and eventually changes her mind.

Tommy goes fishing.

In that episode, I learned the word homosexual, which I looked up in the dictionary as soon as the show was over.

Homosexual: sexually or romantically attracted to people of one’s own sex.

Sexually or romantically attracted to people of one’s own sex.

One’s own sex.

That was me.

Gay must mean the same thing.

There was a word for me.

The word for how I’d been feeling.

I was a homosexual.

I was gay.

It would be a while before I did anything with this information.

But it was nice to know I was not alone. There were others like me.

Turns out that week was filled with gay characters although I didn’t really remember them.

I did see the Barney Miller episode mentioned in this video:

This video tells you about that 1976 tv season.

However.

I’ve always remembered this episode of Alice.

I didn’t learn it was the only the 2nd episode till about 10 years ago.

But remember it I do.

For almost 50 years.