Growing Up Gay: Ken from Kentucky

"An Endless Tune":  from Kentucky to Florida to Hollywood and beyond.

Bonus:  Jane Pauley interviews Jeanne and Jules Manford, founders of PFLAG, on the Today show, July 6, 1978:

This was about the time I came out to my own mom, while I was in college.  Mama was great, she was immediately supportive, but it took her a while to process it all.  I brought her to a meeting of the gay rap group at school, where a lady who had started a chapter of PFLAG gave a talk, and that helped my mom a lot.  

Times were changing, but in 1978 it was still quite a scary thing to come out to anyone.  There were as yet no openly gay celebrities on TV or in public life, certainly not in the Deep South.  Only Anita Bryant running her mouth about the "homosexual threat" . . .

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Growing Up Gay: Bullied but Unbroken

Insightful story by a woofy guy from my generation who came out in the 70's but led a very different life in the big city:

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It Gets Better: The Mounties

After two weeks of constant internet trouble, the problem seems to have been fixed by a hunky bearish type whom the phone company sent to my house yesterday. Unfortunately, he was straight as a board, but he did seem to know what he was doing; so maybe this fix will last, though I'm keeping my fingers crossed against another lapse of connection.

Meanwhile, here's an It Gets Better video made by Canada's finest. Enjoy.

It Gets Better - San Francisco Police Department

My Trip Down the Pink Carpet

Book and DVD available thru TLA, click the pic

Hey guys, this might be old news to some of you, but if you haven't yet seen Leslie Jordan's one-man show, you sit right down and watch it tonight.  You will love it, I guaran-damn-tee you will - it's that funny, and honest, and sooo true to life about growing up gay in the South.

What's not funny is, when I first came across the film, my first thought was, what a sweet old man.  Then come to find out - he was born the same year I was.

Shit.  Oh well, don't miss it guys, it's a hoot and a holler.  Here's a brief trailer that gives you only a slight taste of Leslie's over-the-top comic talents:




While I'm on the subject of one-man shows, I can also recommend the late Charles Nelson Reilly's Life of Reilly, which also has a lot of laughs, but deals with some darker true-life material too.



Your Head Trucker hates to admit it, but way back in the mid-seventies, when he was doing all those game shows, I had no idea that Reilly was gay - Paul Lynde, yes, Reilly no. I mean, he smoked a pipe, for God's sake!

Spanking the Gay Away

Over at Box Turtle Bulletin, just read this deeply moving seven-part series, "What Are Little Boys Made Of?" on the case of a 5-year-old boy who was subjected to George Rekers' anti-gay therapy - something I wish all my truckbuddies would go check out.  Brings up a lot of thoughts and reflections for me, maybe it will for you, too.

Rekers, in case it's slipped your memory, is one of the big honchos in the conversion therapy movement, a founder of the Family Research Council and an officer of NARTH - and last year was photographed at Miami International after a European jaunt with a rent boy he hired to, um, "lift his luggage."

Excerpt:

Kirk had learned that playing with girls’ toys in the clinic was a bad thing to do, but that lesson didn’t extend to the home. So the Murphy home became the scene for the next phase of Kirk’s therapy with Kaytee set up as Kirk’s primary therapist.

“And so then they set me up with the poker chip program,” Kaytee said, referring to a system of punishments and rewards devised by Dr. Lovaas and adapted by Rekers. Mark and Maris would simply remember it as “the chips,” and they always spoke of it with dread. “Well I didn’t know,” their mother sighed. “I trusted these professionals to know what they were doing, you know?”

She explained how it worked: “When Kirk would do something bad, or play with the doll instead of the train or the truck or whatever, he would get a red poker chip. If he picked up a helicopter or an airplane or did a boy thing, then he would get a blue chip. At the end of the day, I would deduct the red from the blue. And then however many blue chips there were, they told me to give him an M&M for each for a reward. And then I had to keep this all written down.”

They also put Mark on the chips even though he wasn’t under treatment. “I think we put Mark on it so that Kirk wouldn’t feel intimidated,” she said. “It was to show Kirk that big brother was on them too.” . . .

“If it (the study) was based on the numbers of chips,” Mark countered, “I screwed with those chips like you wouldn’t believe. I used to take some of his ‘whip it’ chips and put them in my pile.” As he said that, a note of pride crept in his voice. His reasons for doing this would prove to be the study’s fatal flaw: the terrible consequences of collecting too many red chips.

Mark took a deep breath and explained, “My goal was to take the beating for my brother.” Mark had long been accustomed to getting into trouble and being punished for it, and so he reasoned that he could take the beatings more easily than his younger brother. “I saw my brother’s whole back side bruised so badly one time, my dad should have gone to jail for it. Of course, he was somewhat carrying out instructions from the therapist. But my dad whipped my bare ass so many times before that, I figured I could take it. I mean that’s the way we got spanked. You dropped your pants, you bent over the bed, and he whipped your bottom with a belt.”

“My dad would come home, and every Friday we settled up with the chips. It was like ‘you go to your room; you go to your room’ and the whippings came on, it was over. And then we started with a clean slate.”

The chips became a system of terror. . . .

Update:  Just found this four-part video report by Anderson Cooper.

Growing Up at Last

Andrew Sullivan posted this note from a reader the other day, and it so stuck in my mind as being so deeply revealing of the profound change taking place amongst us that I had to go back and find it again. The relevant excerpts:

I am a 27-year-old gay man, and consider(ed) myself very post-gay and post-marriage since I came out (late, a few years ago). I thought that if society didn't accept me, I would define my relationships myself, that I would forge a new world, a new type of relationship. . . .

You talk about this [marriage equality] being a generally conservative movement, that it is about people in love wanting expansion of a traditional institution to them. But no one talks about the influence this has on single gay men.For the first time since I came out, I feel forced to look at the fact that I am not just in this for dating, for sex. Maybe if I were older, I would already have an identity hardened against being defined by society, and it would not matter so much. But we are on the way to a world where society will accept my relationships, and I will not be able to use outsider status as an excuse for any behavior. . . .

I waver between a deep gratitude to New York for accepting me, and being spiteful for making me grow up. But I suspect that the former emotion will be the lasting one.

Of course, there always have been and always will be people who don't want to marry, and those who should not marry. Gay, straight, or otherwise. But notice how the opportunity to marry vividly changes the landscape for us.

It would be very interesting to come back in a hundred years for a day trip and take a peek at the outworkings of all this, wouldn't it?

"A Very Isolating Experience"

Via Box Turtle Bulletin, a couple of clips from Exodus co-founder Michael Bussee (- woof -) on what happened when he left that ex-gay outfit, and what he regrets teaching; part of a series you can view in its entirety on YouTube.

First, I can totally relate to his description of being cursed and shunned:



And I understand exactly what he means about "the biggest heresy":



Interestingly, that Stonegate Fellowship Church video I referenced yesterday that Rob Tisinai posted on his blog has now been taken private by the owner; guess the secret of how to turn gay cocksuckers into born-again cuntlickers will have to remain a mystery known only to the saved.

Excuse my language, guys, but this subject really pushes my buttons:  that bullshit theology crucified me all of my teenage years, and came very close to killing me.  I still have the scars.  And they still fucking hurt.

That was the Devil's work, not God's.

The Only Solution Is Love

I'm still planning to finish my series on Becoming a Not-Man that I blogged a few posts of last fall.  It was quite an exertion, writing those; yet through the act of writing, some connections and realizations became more clear.  Beneath the surface of daily life and my homemade diversions, I'm still meditating on those things, and I'll write more when my thoughts are ready to see the light of day.

In the meantime, however, Andrew Sullivan has, eloquently, put his finger on the heart of the matter; and it's always reassuring to hear that these deep, deep wounds have not been suffered by me alone, that I am not the only bloodied veteran of the terrible battle for self-respect - a battle that, unlike Jacob's wrestling with the angel of the Lord, is never truly finished:

It's hard to explain how the gay man's psyche survives childhood and adolescence and early adulthood even in a completely tolerant society. To feel unworthy in the depths of one's being is a wound that takes decades to heal and courage to face. Many young gay people feel it; more to the point, in my view, many young gay people will always feel it - because being different in such a profound way from one's peers as one grows up is inevitably isolating. To live in a world where all the institutions are designed for the other, and to navigate a path through that, is really tough. So, yes, happiness can be elusive or too easily bought.

But this is life. It is tougher for many gays than straights, but not always. And this is the human reality: men die and they are not happy, to go all Camus on you. We have to suck it up and deal with it, and realize how insanely lucky we are to be born as homosexuals in one of the very few periods in time when we haven't been targeted for murder or jail or unmitigated obloquy.

I don't think I would have gotten through intact without God, my friends, my family and my husband. The first matters. The double bind for gay kids is that the refuge I believe they need - a loving God to heal and protect them - is actively hostile in many faith communities. And so the internal isolation deepens, even as the search for faith is often the most tenacious among those the churches deem unworthy of it. The temptation to drink or do drugs as an alternative is very strong - and, frankly, not entirely unhealthy in moderation as a way to find moments of transcendence or escape or perspective.

But in the end, the only solution is love. I believe that all love comes from God, but whether you do or not, love is still tangible in the human and natural world. Alas, we gay men have taught ourselves so powerfully how we are unworthy of such love, and afraid of it, that we seek it in all the wrong places or grab simulacra of it we then use to punish ourselves.

Becoming a Not-Man, part 1

FdeF's posts that I linked to yesterday, about growing up gay and terrified by the Church are spurring me to get around to sharing a bit of my history I've been thinking about doing for some time.  I hesitate, first because it's painful to revisit scenes of cruelty and torment in one's life. 

And second, because I really don't want to have to slap some silly-ass, smart-aleck anonymous commenter who might drop in and proceed to preen themselves by telling me exactly where I went wrong in my life, and why, and how, and how much better, oh so much better, they have done, would do, could do, will do.  But I suppose that's the risk you take with blogging.

Anyway, I want to share my story with you guys, my Truckbuddies, triffling as it may be in the scheme of the universe, because by sharing our stories we affirm one another's experience, we validate each other's humanity.  And then too, it's important to tell these stories as a witness to the world, a record for posterity.  To speak the truth, in a world where lies too often inundate and suppress it.

So for whatever it's worth, I'll try to share what was the crucial, defining experience of my life, still to this day.  I'm sure it's pretty much the same story millions of other gay men can tell; this is just my particular edition of it.  If it speaks to you and your experience, I'm glad.  If you're just passing through the Blue Truck, and the story doesn't grab you, and you think you can tell a better one, why then you just keep right on going, buddy, and write your own blog - but don't piss on mine.

This may take several posts.  It's really too late at night here to embark on the whole thing.  So for right now, as a starting point I'm going to post a short selection from a fine book, Becoming a Man (1992), by Paul Monette.  The first half of the book, talking about his growing-up experiences in Massachusetts in the early 1960's, I think most gay men can relate to.  The second half is more about his early literary career, which to me is not quite as interesting.  But Monette is a powerful writer - whose voice is now sadly silent.

Here's the little passage that will serve as an epigraph to my story, just two pages:

The passage ends:  ". . . how sick with confused desire, the carnal thrill of degradation.  The only reality lesson in it for me was not to be recognizably Other."

All Good Boys Go to Hell

Truckbuddy FdeF has written a fine series of moving posts about the religious terrors and tortures of growing up gay in a hateful, homophobic church.  Your Head Trucker was never a Catholic but I was and am a sissy boy; FdeF sounds like my twin.  Go read. 

An excerpt:

Until then, being a sissy meant that I might be a failure in gym class but I could at least be a relatively good Catholic boy. Learn prayers in Latin, imitate the Saints, turn the other cheek. But it became more and more inescapable that who I was, was among the most despised, vile and hated of humans, to be rejected, not pitied. Who I was, deep inside, was a sin. It was not just my sexual release that was sinful; it was my very identity, my being, which was unforgivable.

My religion was singling me out, making me sit on the bench when everyone else was in the game. My religion may as well have been calling me a faggot and making damn certain that everyone knew it. I was unforgivable and pathetic. I could not not sin. I had only a vague sense of this fusion identity; it was like telling a lefty that it was a sin to do anything with the left hand and expecting him or her to be just like all the righties. This reality began to resonate to my very core, referencing every perception, experience, thought.

Can you relate?