What Might Have Been

From Fortune magazine, "Queer Inc:  How Corporate America Fell in Love with Gays and Lesbians" (2006):

Mike Syers, a 42-year-old partner at Ernst & Young, was coming out in a very big way. About 3,000 partners of the firm had gathered in Orlando for a conference last year. A two-minute video of Syers played on giant TV screens throughout the convention center. He sat in the audience watching himself.

"When I started in public accounting," the onscreen Syers said, "I really didn't think there was a long-term career opportunity for me. Being a gay man, I didn't see gay partners." But things were different at E&Y, he said. He felt comfortable and welcomed.

As the screen went dark, Syers's BlackBerry began vibrating. Messages of support poured in. Afterward a partner came up to him to say that his son was gay, and that he would call home that night to tell his son how proud he was to work at E&Y.

E&Y had asked Syers to make the video because he is a leader of bEYond, the company's GLBT employee group. bEYond is only two years old, but it sent 72 people to this fall's Out & Equal convention. It also sponsored the 2006 Reaching Out MBA conference, a gay and lesbian recruiting event that attracted about 700 MBA students to New York. Courting them were Accenture, Dell, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan Chase, Lehman Bros., McKinsey, Merrill Lynch, Microsoft, Target and Toyota, among others.

I almost feel like crying.

Back in 1975-77, after dicking around through most of junior college, I thought I'd finally settled on a good game plan:  I'd become a CPA.  I managed to get an associate's degree in accounting at the college by dint of a year spent packing in all the courses I could carry, then transferred to a university that had a great accounting program, well regarded in the corporate world, where almost every graduate got a job just for the asking.  I even got a job working part-time for a CPA, doing the simpler kinds of balance sheets and tax returns.  I thought I was on my way to a successful, rewarding future.

But after I got to university, although I was doing well in my classes - and studying my ass off, attending extra tutorials and study halls - I slowly began to realize that I didn't fit in.  As far as I could tell all the other guys in my accounting and finance classes were straight as a board; most of them seemed to be the jock/fratboy type, and outside of class interested only in baseball, football, Playboy, and Camaros.

The accounting department was run by a gruff-but-kindly old guy who had made a mint in the corporate world, then retired and started a second career as a professor.  He worked us like the devil in those classes, but you didn't mind because you knew you were getting all the right tools and knowledge for a CAREER - only 18 months away if you stuck it out and took summer classes.  But the old guy had set up an internship program where you could get placed with a major accounting company like Ernst & Ernst - now Ernst & Young - for 9 months of on-the-job training.  It lengthened your schooling, of course, but the up side was that most of those interns subsequently got hired by the companies they'd interned for.

It was all but a sure thing, if you studied hard, made good grades, and measured up to expectations.  And a sure thing sounded great to a 21-year-old guy from a broken home, living in deep poverty, with no rich or even mildly affluent parents to help him along.  I reached out and made a grab at the brass ring.

But the feeling that I just didn't belong grew and grew.  One time, seems like it was early spring semester, there was a big do organized by our department chair at his country club, I forget the occasion; but although attendance was strictly voluntary, you knew it was a good thing to show up and have your presence noted.  So I duded up in my best and most fashionable togs, including the platform shoes and wide tie, and went.  Like a fool. 

Continue reading after the jump.

Also, enter to win a prize; see contest rules at the end of this post.

Update July 2011:  I'm the one in the middle.

Because of course all the other fellas showed up with a date on their arm.  I had no date, no girlfriend, and for that matter no boyfriend either:  nearly three more years would pass before I finally connected with a gay group on another campus and came out.  I was still in deep closet mode at that time.

So I showed up, mingled a bit, drank a couple of Harvey Wallbangers to be sociable - and went home, reflecting on what the future would hold for me in the corporate world.  Already we'd heard from returning interns about what wonderful parties and retreats the big corporations held for their employees from time to time, the golf tournaments, the football tickets, the dances and soirees.  It all sounded very cosmopolitan, a glittering prospect.

But where would I fit into that shimmering picture?  A single man - secretly gay - no girlfriend, fiancee, or wife.  Not into sports or the complexities of automobile engines.  No friends or family in that world to help me bluff it out, either.

I realized it just wouldn't work.  I couldn't keep up the appearance of being straight forever, I'm not that good an actor.  I didn't know how to answer people who asked, "Do you have a girlfriend?" in a way that would throw off suspicion.  One study buddy casually offered to give me the phone number of his girlfriend if I wanted to take her out - I had observed that she was pretty, and I think he wanted to dump her anyway.  But suddenly I was embarrassed to have to say, no I wasn't interested in getting a pretty girl's phone number.  How many more moments like that, all the sudden traps, lay ahead in this future I thought was so right for me?

The end of the story is, after a couple of semesters I was just too intimidated to continue.  Only a year away from a big-time career; but I just didn't think I could pull it off.  I was afraid of being found out, mocked, snubbed, defeated.  So I dropped out.

Eventually I got a degree in something else, and thanks be to God it's been fairly good and I've been able to pay the bills all these years, living modestly.  And who knows, accounting is pretty dry after all, I might have gotten tired of it anyway.

But I didn't see any hope for a gay man in that world back then.  There were no other gays around, not where I lived in the Deep South:  nobody was out.  Most of my time in college, with very rare exceptions, I never saw anybody else in my classes that I even thought might be gay.  It was just me, in the silence of my heart. 

And that made, probably, a huge difference in my life:  the road not taken.  Certainly a huge financial difference:  after all these years, I'm only just now making what accounting grads were starting out making in 1977, adjusting for inflation.  And it's not just the money I didn't make:  it's the opportunity to be a full person, to follow my dreams, to succeed on my own merits like anybody else.  I'm glad things are different now for the next generation.  And about damn time.

Because there's a huge cost to being in the closet, alone and afraid and invisible.  Huge.  That's why we must never go back.

First pic:  self-pic of me just after graduation from junior college.  Would you have dated this guy?

Second pic:  the memorable country club do.  Can you spot the queer in the crowd?

Correct answers get a prize.  You must be over 18 to participate.  Void where prohibited.