WTF: Boys Beware!

When Wally got into the car with the mustachioed man wearing sunglasses, Beav felt all creeped out, so he wrote down the license tag number on his Nifty notebook . . . later on, after Wally had been released on probation, he beat the Beaver's ass good for being such a snitch . . . .

Actually, I never saw any movies like this in school; in the Deep South, think it would have been way too outrageous to show something like this even as a warning.

But you younger gays need to understand how far we've come in just one lifetime: when I was a kid, this was all anybody knew about "homos": shadowy figures lurking in the background of the imagination, waiting to do something awful, something unspeakable. A horrible, revolting, terrifying specter.

Nobody was out. Hell, nobody could be out, given this level of mass hatred.

And when that awful day came that you put it all together and realized that you - yeah, you - were in fact that nasty, despicable thing - there was nobody you could talk to about it, nobody you could tell - not your teacher or your preacher, not your best friend, not even your parents. Oh God, especially not your parents!

Finally, after the umpteenth grilling by his parents, Wally broke down and admitted the revolting truth: "Yeah, right, okay, I am a pervert, so what?" Then a wave of remorse washed over him, as he fell to his knees with tears running down his cheeks. "Mom . . . Dad . . . I'm sorry . . . I'm so sorry." June covered her face in horror, while Ward reached for the telephone. . . .

Wally wrote contrite letters every week from reform school, begging his parents' forgiveness, but they never wrote back. They had their own problems - June's nervous breakdown, Ward's alcoholic binges, the screaming arguments that had all the neighbors talking, the DWI's, the unpaid bills, the weeds that began to sprout in the once-immaculate lawn . . . but Beav seemed to take it all in stride. In fact, he was secretly very happy: at last, he had the whole bedroom to himself and could beat off any time he liked. . . .

You guys who grew up later, when homosexuality was at least not a totally forbidden thought - when at least you knew there were millions of others like you in the world - and somewhere, a place you could be yourself, and that was okay - be glad, be very glad.