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.
About six weeks ago, I stumbled across this Facebook page, called Gay New York 1970’s and 80’s.
Actually, Facebook pages have a been a great addition to my life. If you haven’t checked it out yet, the Dull Men and Women’s pages are the most brilliant thing to be on social media in years.
It’s posts about the dull things we do in our lives, like watching paint dry.
Seriously, a guy posted a week or so ago about working in a paint factory and his job was to make sure the paint matched the sample.
Brilliant.
However, the Gay New York in the 1970’s and 80’s is a very, very, very close second.
The page is a walk down memory lane for anyone who lived in NYC during the heyday of the 70’s and 80’s.
For some people, that might be considered the heyday of crime, prostitution, and drugs in Times Square.
For a lot of people who lived there, especially for gay men and women, it was a time of awakening.
Sexual freedom. Gay liberation. Life before AIDS.
The Stonewall Riots had occurred in 1969. Although, the gay rights movement had been around for decades prior, it WAS a turning point.
In the early morning hours of June 28, 1969, the gay bar Stonewall Inn was raided.
It was mafia owned, and therefore usually considered untouchable. They were typically warned of coming raids and appropriate steps were taken.
On June 28th that didn’t occur, the police arrived unannounced and started arresting folks.
Because of a breakdown in communication, the paddy wagons were slow to arrive, and a crowd began to gather outside. Soon, there were more than 500 people gathered on the street in front of the bar, the police were outnumbered 10 to 1.
The crowd was unruly from the get go.
Folklore has it, that a lot of the tension came from gay men, who’d attended the funeral and memorial of Judy Garland, who’d died only days before.
Some say it was the trans women and drag queens that started the fight.
Other say, it was years of mistreatment that started the push.
No matter who is right, the truth is, the crowd began to taunt the police.
The police were used to being paid off, so the crowd threw coins at them. Then a lesbian, was manhandled out of the bar. Stories of trans women being accosted inside the bar spread.
One thing led to another and the crowd became disruptive.
And violent.
Bricks were thrown.
Then, Garbage cans, garbage, bottles, rocks, and bricks were hurled at the building, breaking the windows. Witnesses attest that “flame queens”, hustlers, and gay “street kids”—the most outcast people in the gay community—were responsible for the first volley of projectiles, as well as the uprooting of a parking meter used as a battering ramon ton the doors of the Stonewall Inn.
The police barricaded themselves in the bar.
Then back up arrived.
“I had been in enough riots to know the fun was over … The cops were totally humiliated. This never, ever happened. They were angrier than I guess they had ever been because no one else had rioted … but the fairies were not supposed to riot … no group had ever forced cops to retreat before, so the anger was just enormous. I mean, they wanted to kill.”
The riot police formed a line to push the rioters back.
The rioters formed a kick-line and began to dance and sing further humiliating the cops.
The police became violet and began to beat the dancers with night sticks.
The riots continued for several days. With the crowds growing more each day.
When all was said and done. Things had changed.
The following year there was a gay rights march on the anniversary of the riots. Within two years of the Stonewall riots, there were gay rights groups in every major American city, as well as in Canada, Australia, and Western Europe
Many years later, on the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots the president of the United President Barack Obama declared June 2009 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Pride Month, citing the riots as a reason to “commit to achieving equal justice under law for LGBT America.”
This brings me to the gay flag. It was first flown after the creator Gilbert Baker met Harvey Milk. The original flags were flown first in 1978.
After the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay person to hold political office in California, the demand for the flags grew.
The flag has been flown during the month of pride for decades. It has also gone through transformations as it now includes the trans community making room for the entire queer population.
This is a long post about us hanging a gay pride flag outside of our home.
In 2020, in South Portland, a number of homes, displaying the flag got hate mail. The letters were insulting, threatening, and totally uncalled for. There were enough of these letters sent, that it made the local news.
I saw the report, and told Adam that we needed a flag.
Here’s the thing, I had a sticker on my car back in 1995, but that’s a whole other story.
But for the most part, we aren’t really rainbow people.
But suddenly the community is under attached.
And I wanted to be supportive.
So, Adam ordered a flag and we hung it on our home.
And we’ve flown it each summer for the past four seasons.
Then, last fall we had work done on our garage. And we had to take down the flag.
And we debated all winter about whether to put the flag back up.
Adam had been pushing back, as it doesn’t work in the old location, and we didn’t want it on the front of the house as it didn’t work with the aesthetic.
The gays are more about aesthetic than pride.
For me, it’s about the kids in the neighborhood.
To my knowledge we are the only gay couple in the area.
Statistically, I know that’s probably not true, but in our area, it’s all families, with two straight parents.
I want the 15 year-old that rides their bike by our house to know that queer people exist. We are proud. We live out loud. And they have nothing to fear.
So today, Adam was talking to our neighbor across the street about their American flag which they hung to push back from the coopting of the American flag by conservatives.
And he realized we need to fight back with our own flag.
When I got home today, our pride flag was flying proudly.
For my whole adult life, whenever I tell someone a story that involves me saying the words, I’m gay, the person I’m talking to will stop me and say, Wait! What? You are gay??? Seriously???
And it’s been true no matter the time in my life.
In Atlanta.
In grad school in Kentucky.
In grad school in San Diego.
In Cincinnati,
In NYC.
At my last 12 jobs.
And it happened today.
I said something about being gay, and an employee interrupted the story and said, Wait!!! What? You are gay? Seriously??? I had no idea.
And before anyone suggests she didn’t know; she has met Adam.
She has waited on him.
I’m pretty sure my having a boyfriend would have clued her into the fact that I am indeed a homosexual.
A server asked a single gentleman, who was waiting for the rest of his party, what she could get him to drink, and he replied, “I think I’ll get a f*ggy drink tonight, so make it a cosmo.
She was taken aback to say the least.
She asked me what she should do or say, I said, if he doesn’t say anything else inappropriate, just pretend that that’s not what he said.
Since nothing else offensive came from him, I’m choosing to believe he said something else all together.
However, as a rule, most f*ggy men I know, prefer bourbon to cosmopolitans, just so you know.
I started at Bennigan’s and quickly proved myself to be good at the job. The staff seemed to like me and I got along with most everyone.
As I got to know more people, I became aware that all but two of the male front house employees, were gay.
Two very butch, very masculine bartenders, who didn’t seem to mind that they were surrounded by gay men.
I mixed right in, but at this point in my life, I’d only ever told one person that I was gay. A woman I worked with at Wendy’s named Tammy. We sat on the curb at three in the morning, talking about life, and I confessed my deepest, darkest secret.
So here I am in the middle of a bunch of gay men, still pretending to be straight.
And for the most part everyone bought it.
Or so I thought.
Turns out that all the gay men thought I was gay.
All of the women thought I was straight.
Rumor had it there were bets floating around.
I played the straight game as best I could. Keeping my head low, and trying to not be obvious.
Fast forward to the first week of December. One of the servers is having her first annual Jewish/Christmas party.
What is that you ask?
It’s a party thrown by your co-worker, Stacy, who is Jewish, and her roommate who is not.
Fun fact, when I met Stacy she was the first Jewish person I’d ever met. Georgetown, KY was not known for its plethora of synagogues, and kosher delis.
I am invited to said party, as is most of the rest of the staff.
I get there and am hanging out with everyone, and flirting with Stacy more than I should.
To be honest, I’d flirted with her for a couple of weeks. It truly was not being malicious. I was just protecting my secret.
If you grew up in a small town in Kentucky, where you were called a f*g on the bus every day of the school year, you’d know why the secret was so dark and scary.
If you went to a conservative Baptist college you’d understand why the secret was so dark and scary.
Although, it turns out there was a LOT of gay people at my college, but most of us wouldn’t reveal this secret, till much, much later.
It was also the late 80’s, and people were starting to die, from what we had just discovered was an illness called AIDS. It was not a great time to be coming of age.
Back to the story.
As the night went on, I ended up making out with her. And if I remember correctly, may have even given her a hickey.
In her kitchen, next to the stove. I can still see the room in my head.
The night progressed, and I became a little tipsier, and a little less cautious.
And the next thing I knew, I was on my way to Duane’s apartment, where we made out in a hot tub, in the cold.
The next day I did the walk of shame showing up for my lunch shift, in the same clothes I’d worn to the party.
The cat was definitely out of the bag.
Everyone knew.
Bets were won and lost.
And Stacy didn’t speak to me for a very long 6 months.
If not longer.
Eventually she stopped hating me and we became the best of friends, and for the last year I spent in Atlanta, she was my bestie.
We are still in touch. I visited her in October on my road trip.
I’m sure she’ll tune in today for the next episode in this saga.
She may not know this, but her acceptance of me, paved the way for my acceptance of myself.
I'd Like to Speak to the Manager!!! 