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A Friend of Dorothy

I’m 65 years old, the eleventh child of a clan-based Irish Catholic family. When I was growing up in the 50’s was all about being disgusted and hating myself based on how society looked at me and other queer folk. I perceived myself through the lens that society prepared for me. I thought I was psychologically sick, morally sinful, legally criminal, socially a pariah, unemployable, and unfit for military service (an important factor in post-WWII America).

In spite of this, I had a boyfriend (sexual partner) from the time I was 11 through 15. Sometimes we double-dated, then we’d drop the girls off and go make out in the car. When we were 15, he suddenly left town. His mother sent him to a boarding school and he didn’t even say goodbye. We had been best friends since fourth grade. It was devastating. I don’t know to what degree his being queer had to do with his sudden departure, but I’m sure it played some part. We talked years later and he said his mother thought he needed more adult male influence. His father died when he was 10 years old and he had been living with his grandmother at the time he was shipped off.

I turned in on myself and was determined to become “good” which meant not queer. All this was in the setting a very small town (population 500) in Kansas. In the 11th grade at the time, I thought I was well disguised as straight until I decided to run for Student Council president against two other candidates. An effigy was hung right where all the buses unload in front of the school and there was a whispering campaign that suggested that I was "that way." This came at a time when I was under lots of stress because my mother was hospitalized with severe clinical depression and undergoing shock treatments in a city about 150 miles from my home. That fateful day I had planned to take the day off from school to visit my mother so I hadn’t seen the hanging body.

My father, however, had eaten breakfast at the local diner and came home and told me I had to go to school for an hour. I argued that this would make no sense to go just for an hour and that’s when he told me about the effigy. I went and it was terrible. No one talked to me. All students were given a talk by the superintendent about how this was over the bounds of acceptable campaigning and was cruel and senseless. That didn’t help me a lot as everyone kept staring at me. No specific students were identified (though they were well known) and no apologies were given. I worried all 150 miles to Wichita where my mother was hospitalized that my secret was out.

After that, at school I was given the silent treatment by all the boys. Trays of food were dumped "accidentally" on me twice. It was high school hell. I begged my parents to let me go away to school the following year. My father made a deal with me that if I finished school in my hometown than I could study at the college of my choosing. So I stayed, acted as if nothing had happened and burrowed into my closet. I was going to be normal. I was going to have girl friends. I was going to be somebody, but I was not going to be me.

I chose to go to the University of Notre Dame. It made sense as a good Irish Catholic boy but no sense at all as a gay boy. During my freshman year I researched "homosexuality" at the school’s library and found three books: "1,000 Homosexuals" by a psychiatrist who claimed to have cured 1,000 men of their sickness. Another book whose title I don’t remember was along the same line and the third book was "Boys of Boise" about a "homosexual ring" of men in Boise, Idaho. These men were "outed" through the newspapers when caught in bars or public restrooms and then forced to tell on other men. It concluded by telling what happened to these men: jobs lost, suicides, many had to move away to other cities, etc.

Well, I thought maybe I could find something in the current literature that wasn’t so negative. I went to Psychological Abstracts where I looked up “homosexuality” which said “see sexual deviancy,” and listed a few articles—non positive. I thought I take another track and went to Sociological Abstracts where I looked up "homosexuality" and found "see perversion." This was 1961. This search for information only reinforced the door to my closet.

I tried to be good, which meant not queer, but I only got lost farther and farther from my true self. I excelled in my academic work, I was popular, I dated occasionally, and generally learned how to be a very good non-person. I finished with an honors degree in philosophy and went to law school. Thought I also excelled in law school, I knew by the end of the first year that law was no answer for me. I knew that if I was the best lawyer in the world, it would not be enough to make up for being gay. I would not be happy no matter how I excelled in the world. What would make me happy? Nothing! Depression was already well established in my psyche and soul. I finally reasoned that if I couldn’t be actively queer, then I should be celibate and join the priesthood—PERFECT CATHOLIC LOGIC.

I joined the Dominican novitiate. I became rigorous in my struggle against any sexual thoughts about men. By the end of the first year, I could no longer tell hot from cold when I ran water over my hands. My body was totally desensitized. Numb, I sought psychiatric help. I left the seminary and entered a psychiatric ward and underwent shock treatments. Nothing helped much and for about four or five years I was in therapy. My therapist’s viewpoint was that there was nothing wrong with being queer, it was just that it meant a lonely and miserable life, as he put it, "seeking the perfect penis." That wasn’t what I was looking for. I rather thought I would like to find the perfect man whatever his penis was like. I suppose I should be talking about coming OUT rather than HIDING OUT, but it’s important to realize how deeply closeted I was and how far out OUT was.

I managed to get into a Ph.D. program in philosophy at Vanderbilt University. But it was difficult for me to concentrate and focus. I was deeply depressed. I dropped out of grad school and went back into therapy. It was agreed between my therapist, me and my family that I should not focus on school, but rather on something more "artistic." This took the form of opening a flower and gift show. It was during this time I met a few gay men, enjoyed furtive sex and reinforced my sense of guilt for being queer. After three years I decided to sell my shop and return to graduate school. I had befriended the local Methodist minister who thought I would benefit from taking classes at St. Paul’s School of Theology in Kansas City. I told him I was gay and asked if that would be a hindrance. He assured me that only an honest search for the truth was required for admission. St. Paul’s, the most liberal seminary in the Midwest if not the country at that time, turned out to be the perfect place for me. I wanted to know how I might be queer and spiritual at the same time. Once of the requirements the school had for first year students was to have dinner in the home of a gay or lesbian couple. I sweated through much of the term trying to decide how to come out.

It was an exciting revolutionary time and I took a class in Revolutionary Theology. My classmates included a married couple from Mexico who’d been student radicals and had fought in the 1968 uprising, then were deported to Argentina before ending up at St. Paul’s. Another student was from Jamaica and heavily involved in the Black Power and anti-colonial movements, and another was the campus leader in feminist theology. In this context I took my first steps out. The whole class was supportive, open and challenging. It was a very good beginning. I knew it was time to get OUT.

With too many ties to the local Kansas City community, I started looking elsewhere for a gay supportive place to live. I read an article about a woman named Nancy Wilson (now a leader in the Metropolitan Community Church) who was studying as an out lesbian at Boston University School of Theology (BU).

I submitted a last minute application and headed to Boston just three days before classes were to begin. I had not yet been accepted, but I camped outside the office of the registrar for three days and at 4:50 p.m. on the day before classes were to begin I was accepted.

Boston has eight major seminaries loosely affiliated through the Boston Theological Institute. One of the benefits for students from this affiliation was that one was able to take classes at any other instruction and students had free mail service to all students in all eight schools. I too this as an opportunity to mail out a notice to every student in all eight schools about the formation of the Boston Theological Institute Gay Alliance. I came out with a bang! The first meeting was held in my dorm room and about 40 people showed up. I was ready to break the doors down, but what most of the students needed was a safe place to share their experiences and concerns. So a support group was formed which continued through my three years at BU.

I was exploding outrageously out, OUT, O-U-T and I wanted more. I joined the local Boston Gay Speakers Bureau and spoke to various groups twice a week. It was wonderful, even the most hateful audience was an opportunity for me to defend myself as an out gay man. I also spoke to the entire first year classmates at BU School of Theology. I prepared the classroom with a blackboard filled with the usual anti-queer epithets: Homo, cocksucker, dyke, sissy, lesbo, manwoman, etc. I began with a little story about a friend who one day greeted me with, "Hi cocksucker." "Don’t call me that," I responded. "Why not, you do don’t you?," he remarked. "How would you like it if I greeted your girlfriend saying, "Hi cocksucker," I retorted. "You wouldn’t do that would you?" "Of course not, but she does, doesn’t she?" I answered. The point you see is not what I do or you do but who we love. It’s a matter of love. They began to get the message from someone they knew not just as gay but a fellow student who was more like them than different.

I had great support from peers at BU, some faculty and many in the gay community. This was 1973, just four years after Stonewall. Finding other gays was not difficult. In fact, the first night I was at BU I went to an evening service at the chapel and afterwards met a guy coming out of church. We became lovers and that drama lasted about three years. It was a time filled with excitement and possibility. The Gay Academic Union was just in its second year and I attended two national meetings in New York. I remember walking into the dance held the first night in a warehouse disco and being overwhelmed by the beauty of a huge dance floor filled with man dancing with men, women with women. It was electric. I met a beauty the first day, a medical student at Cornell and we danced half the night away and made love the rest of the night. I moved off campus and shared an apartment with an out student from the Museum Art School. I became a regular member of a gay-straight ministerial alliance and met older gays—we were indeed everywhere. However, this was also a time of great social struggles in Boston and the National Guard was called in to keep order over school busing. There was a lot of conservative backlash to civil rights and change. So being out and gay was still a challenge and speaking to many different groups a bit courageous. At least I felt it was at the time.

I remember my first Gay Pride Parade. There were 6,000 people marching through the streets of Boston shouting "Gay Pride, Gay Rights." The parade route had policemen stationed all along the way. It seemed more than natural to wonder if they would really protect us or join those gearing on the sidewalk.

Through political activities, like testifying before a state Senate committee in favor of a host of bills granting increased rights for gays, I met the most interesting group of gay and straight friends. The feminist movement in general and women friends in particular became stalwart supporters and allies. We were all trying to identify who we were and how we could be more truly ourselves. Four women friends and I created a support group called "Pentageist" (five spirits). We were all struggling with issues of identity and spiritual growth. Our aim was to meet regularly and share our experiences, especially psychic and spiritual experiences. The group was fabulous and 30 years later we are still friends.

I fell in love (shat support that can be) and out of love (what growth that can be). There were tangled webs of adolescent sex and romance, becoming friends if not partners. And there were partners. I moved from Boston to San Diego to be with my first real lover since high school. He was General Manager of the San Diego Ballet . He lost his position a year later and together we decided to move to San Francisco where I have lived since.

Dino and I lived together for five years in an "open" relationship, but mostly monogamous. I had an affair with a mutual acquaintance, a young man who I worked with. Over time we became a ménage-a-trois. Then a year later I found myself odd-man-out. Twenty years later they are still a couple (and one of the nearly 4,000 gay couples to get married in 2004).

In 1975, I finally came out to my family and did it via a Christmas letter to my mother (my father had died four years earlier) and sent a copy of the letter to all my siblings. I didn’t want her to feel she was alone with a secret with no one to talk to. Ironically the post office managed to get the letters to all my siblings delivered before Christmas, but not my mother’s. None of my sibs said anything until Mother got her letter the day after Christmas, then they had a good talk among themselves.

My mom called the day she got the letter and said, "I’m only sorry that you had a secret for so long that you felt you couldn’t share. How can I help?" Within a week I got two letters back from family—both from brothers-in-law. The first was totally positive, "Appreciate your honesty, that’s what’s most important. We shared your letter with the kids (four boys in high school at the time), and you are always welcome in our home. The second started with, "you have to understand we are mid-western folk and this is all new to us. Your sister is quite upset and asked me to write this letter. It will take us some time to let this information settle in. In the meantime we would appreciate it if you would not tell our kids (two boys in high school)." It then concluded, "You are always welcome in our home, and your friends are also always welcome." I was blessed. Not everyone who comes out to family gets such positive support.

I haven’t been in the closet since, at least not intentionally. I no longer wear the "I’m queer get used to it" sign on my sleeve. I’m no longer the crusader on the speakers circuit. I’m just me, part of which includes the fact that I’m queer.

Living with Depression

Depression has been part of my life for as long as I can remember. My mother was severely depressed. Several of my siblings also have chronic depression or are experiencing late onset depression. Being gay certainly added fuel to the fire; depression added to my struggle to accept fully who I am.

Depression for me is closely allied with feelings of "not belonging." Trying to attain recognition as an artist and earn a living added to this struggle. However, I now see strengths these same difficulties have brought to me. Being a queer artist has provided me with a strong sense of the outsider and this viewpoint has given me a strong sense of compassion. It has enabled me to see things outside the "normal" framework of society. I am open to new experiences, new ways of seeing the world, intimate relationships, family, home, peace, love, what it means to be spiritual. If I had been straight I would be the biggest mess imaginable. Heterosexual men are burdened with a kind of numbness that doesn’t demand them to question the status quo. (Thankfully, not all, but very many.) I see how I was primed to be the perfect little gentleman: white, male, American, educated, middle class, bright, successful. None of these would have required me to question the society, church, family, or world in which I live.

If one is severely clinically depressed it is not something you are likely to change alone or even live with some degree of sanity. My advice is to find a therapist that will help you be fully you. Try several if you have to. Ask friends for help. Ask family for help. Ask anybody and everybody for help. YOU NEED HELP. I’ve been lucky to have friends and family who were there for me when I needed them. I’ve been in and out of therapy in and out of depression all my adult life. I’ve had lots of therapy, some good and some not so good. I’ve been in consciousness raising groups, confrontational encounter groups, studied philosophy, psychology and sociology, had shock treatments, five years of hypnotherapy, etc. You get the picture. Help never hurts---in the LONG RUN. Bad help can be devastating in the SHORT RUN. Eventually you either kill yourself or you are so miserable you have to take old defenses that keep you from being you and get up and try again. Depression is part chemical, part psychological, but fundamentally it is the sane response to one’s attempt to be other than oneself.

There are medicines (traditional and non traditional) that can help. They do not eliminate the depression, they only make you sane enough to struggle through and hopefully help to get you in touch with your true self. I have tried many medications. Some worked well for a time, then I had to shift to something else. I keep trying. If your therapist thinks your depression can be overcome with medication alone, get another therapist. I am currently on a combination of four different medications. I am only recently out of the big dark chasm once again and functioning pretty well again. I’ve begun to paint, write and play again. Over the past few years I was unable to do any of these things.

In late 1998 my depression became overwhelming. I have just been through the most difficult time in my life. Thought I had come to terms with many issues in my life (childhood, parents, fears, etc.), depression still plagues me. I reached the end of my rope in January of 1999, wrote my suicide notes and was cleaning things out so as not to leave too much of a mess for others when I finally reached out again for help. It has been a terrible kind of hell, but I have had wonderful support once again from family and friends. I now see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Art

There is a direct connection in my life as an artist and being gay. At the age of 10 I was drawing a lot. I was specifically interest in design and women’s fashion. With seven sisters that seemed quite natural to me. One day I was playing with one of my sisters and her girlfriend "Pete" and we were talking about what we’d like to be when we grew up. I said a "dress designer" to which Pete replied, "Oh you don’t want to be a dress designer. You know what they all are." Well, in fact, I didn’t know what they were, but I did know that whatever it was I was that too and it wasn’t safe. I stopped drawing that very day. After that, even art class in school I finagled ways of getting out of art. This wasn’t difficult in rural Kansas of the 1950s where art was not considered important. I was allowed to do some extra study of important things like history or writing, anything, but art.. It was yet another way of saying being myself, being gay, being an artist was not okay. I remember in college spending a great deal of time in the art museum and looking at student art projects, but quite literally, it never occurred to me that I could be an artist.

It was not until 1985 that the possibility of creating art entered my consciousness. My high school sweetheart had become a sculptor. I had always had an artistic bent (I’m definitely a fabric queen), and had always been interested in interior design (in the gay DNA I suppose), and enjoyed very much my flower shop. What more can I say? But I never considered myself as an artist, never considered creating art as a way to make a living.

I was working as a systems consultant at a large mortgage company in 1985 but I wasn’t happy. It was only a way to pay the rent. Then, at a party I was introduced to a psychic and I decided to go for a reading. The first question the psychic asked me was, "Are you planning an exhibit?" "I’ve nothing to exhibit," was my first thought. She said, "I keep seeing you exhibiting your art. This is very important." I couldn’t see any connection and so we discussed love, money, happiness—the usual psychic reading stuff. Two days later I got a call from her. She said that usually she doesn’t remember a reading but something had been bothering her since my reading and she needed to talk to me. She said, it wasn’t on the tape of the reading, but it was very important and could I come back to speak with her.

My first reaction was that she told me I had cancer or some other equally tragic news and I had blocked it from my memory. Later, when I arrived at her home she asked, "Do you know what a vocation is?" Well, as someone who has studied in four different seminaries I had some idea. "You have a vocation to be an artist," she said. "It doesn’t mean you have to become an artist, just that you have chosen this life to be an artist."

I was 42 years old and I thought that sounded true. I shared the psychic’s story with an artist friend while visiting her at her studio. She was working in clay at the time and dumped a chunk of clay on a board in front of me. "Make something," she said, so I made a mask. A month later I rented a studio. Nine months later I had my first exhibit and sold 16 pieces in two days (one piece for $1,000). I thought this could be a good way to live and I quit my job as a systems consultant. I went to Italy for two months to bask in the cradle of Western Renaissance art. I returned home broke, had to give up my art studio and decided to try painting in my apartment instead. I started doing temp work to pay the bills and doing painting and drawing with every spare moment.

Deciding to become an artist is most of all acknowledging who I am. I’m no longer the scared 10 year-old boy afraid to "be one of them." It is all part of my continued journey to become me, to be queer, to be an artist. After 20 years I am able to sell my work to help sustain me.

How does this fit in with my recent bout of severe depression? Well, I’m coming out again. I’m coming out of my depression, and coming out strong as an artist, writer, poet. I’m working on being true to myself, my talents, my life journey. It all moves ahead one step at a time.

Singing

For the past 10 years I have been singing what I call "channeled songs." For me this means just opening my mouth and singing whatever comes. I feel it’s all about inspiration whether one calls it the Muse, Higher Self, the Spirit or whatever. It’s really about getting out of my socialized way of believing I am one dimensional. As a seeker of spiritual wisdom, psychological health, peach and joy, I try to open up to what is essentially me.

For the past 40 years I have been doing "automatic writing." This started as a byproduct of my hypno-therapy. Hypnosis revealed to me a richness of experience that could not be explained via all the traditional studies of philosophy, psychology and theology that I had studied.

The bottom line for me is to accept my experience as real even when they don’t fit into conventional ideas about how life should be. I do not take everything experienced without reflection and I believe strongly that one should look at the consequences of experience as a way to weigh their truth and value. Well, one way of expression that has become part of my life is vocalization—singing, if you will. For years I avoided singing, like other expressions of art I hid my desire and ability to sing far behind my closet door. I often sing in what appear to be other languages not unlike what some people would call speaking in tongues. I don’t know the content of these songs and some ask me what purpose they serve if I and others can’t understand them. First of all, they are beautiful and then they release a creative urge that feeds my soul and is pleasing to others. The bottom line for me is to accept my experience even if I don’t know exactly what to make of it.

More recently I have been exploring improvisational singing—in English. I’ve done this with all sorts of groups, small and large. (I should say that this improvisional singing was done in the mid to late 1990s and stopped when I became deeply depressed in 1997.) My approach was to take the first line or phrase someone from audience gave me. Rather than rely on prepared songs used by some improvisional singers I just opened my mouth and let whatever come out. I big risk I think… Some very beautiful, funny ,honest songs have come to me without stopping to "think" about them. I feel it is really a matter of trusting myself and trusting that I will know what to sing. All in all, I’ve not embarrassed myself too much in taking this approach.

Aging in the Gay and Lesbian Community

It’s strange sometimes when I affirm that I’m committed to being me no matter what the pain or purpose. I’m me and that’s great. I’ve been out as a gay man for 30 years and still I get the message from some in the gay community that I somehow don’t belong because I don’t fit their definition of "gay." This seems especially true as I age. Well I say bullshit. I’m me and that means that I am not only queer in my own way (get used to it) but I’m also old (get used to it).

I was at a California Men’s Gathering recently (250 mostly gay men) and one of the workshops was about aging in the gay community. The age range of the participants was from 35 to 75. It was eye opening to me that the 35-year-olds felt as "over the hill" as the 75-year-old. Indeed the most pain seemed to be experienced by the younger men. They were no longer prime meat. Men stopped cruising them when they walked down Castro Street. We so glorify youth…

The important thing to me is to take a good look at myself and how I see other men my age and older. Do I see them as attractive? Do I imagine myself playing and having a great time with someone my age or older? Do I see men, whatever their age as interesting PEOPLE that I would like to spend time with? In fact, do I cruise men my age when I walk down Castro of Christopher streets? Personally I have come to believe if I want some quick anonymous sex it’s best to hire a hustler. On the other hand if I want to encounter a man in a more holistic sense I need to get beyond their age, the size of their penis, whether they have great muscles, etc. I find it’s more productive to look at a man’s eyes than his basket. I’d advise other older guys to check out the smile and then take a chance. Talk to men who seem interesting. Some are and some aren’t but you’ll never know if you don’t say hello.

I enjoy people: men, women, gay, straight, tall, short, ethnically and materially diverse folks. I enjoy playing, touching, holding, laughing, talking, questioning, creating (though these antidepressants do slow me down quite a bit in the sex department). That’s who I am at 61, but I’ll tell you I’m a lot more fun, interesting and interesting than I was at 21. I try to keep that in mind when I look at other men my age.

I’m shy in lots of ways and it’s difficult for me to reach out and make the first move, but I know it’s often up to me to make the first contact whether that’s calling the guy up, sending an email (that’s a lot safer…). If I find someone attractive I know I have to also let them know how I feel. I hate it, but also know the possibility of rejection won’t kill me, but loneliness might.

Romance

Life’s complicated, isn’t it? I’m not in a relationship that I would term a "partnership." However, I’ve been enjoying the company of a couple of gentlemen callers (as my Mother might say). They are both in their late 60s. One was a Marine fighter pilot and father of two wonderful men. The other, also a father, is a retired school teacher of science. They are both men I admire and enjoy, but neither is my true love. My friend Bill who I’ve know for 8 years is HIV positive but healthy at least until he recently had a heart attack, but is making a great recovery. He loves being a father and his heart attack has brought him closer than ever to his sons (and he’s now a grandfather with 3 grandsons). He’s retired and has taken up acting with a passion. I’ve loved watching him grow in this passion. The other man I’ve only known for about a year but we are becoming good friends and enjoy each other’s company a great deal and I’m learning all sorts of new things about how the universe works from the point of view of contemporary science. I love it.. Quite frankly, sex with them has been the best in my life. It’s fun, exciting, exhausting and satisfying. Here’s to sex with older men!

As my depression is better controlled my confidence and trust in myself increases. I’m thinking about "LOVE." I’d like to share my life in a fuller way than I do now. I look forward to romance and falling in love and making a real partnership with a man. I see it as the next step in this journey of Miles. (I saw those 4,000 couple getting married in San Francisco in 2004 and I realized I’d like to be in that line too.)

Wisdom Comes with Age?

I don’t believe it for a minute. Experience comes with age. What you learn from that experience may or may not bring some wisdom. I tend to think that wisdom is often in the realm of the young who are less confused by experience. Well, maybe not true but I had many words of wisdom when I was a young man and was quite certain about most of them. Shades of Grey are more important to me now than the certainty of Black and White beliefs.

THERE IS NO SHORTCUT TO BECOMING OLDER. I say older rather than old. In some ways I was an old man when I was a very young child, wise even, but limited in my experience of the world and of myself. I see some very wise old children, especially those who face early death from disease like Ryan White. Facing death is a good marker for growth.

Death is the one thing that puts life into perspective. In our culture we tend to avoid thinking, feeling and experience death, yet, it is the one certainty we all face.

Real wisdom is more than experience. Experience without reflection and openness to other ways of seeing life isn’t very valuable. What do we learn? What do we value? How do we appreciate other people who are different than us? Are we happy with ourselves? Do we know how to have fun? These are some markers for me of wisdom.

As they say "Youth is wasted on the young." I too wish I’d known more about me when I was the younger me. I might have been able to accept and embrace being me the gay man, me the artist, me the man without depression, me the happy man. I sometimes believe, but only sometimes, that if I’d known then what I know now I’d have had a lot more fun and given a lot more to my society. But the ultimate truth is I’m who I am because of all my experiences and I like myself more every day. There’s just some things you have to experience—no shortcuts and the more I get to know me, the better life is.

All the best to you on your journey. Peace.