When I came out, there was a book circulating in city gay bookstores called The Best Little Boy in the World, which recounted a young gay man's coming out experience with his parents. Some of my gay brethren may recall reading this book. It helped me maneuver the process with my parents. I gave away my copy, wish I had it now.
We are friends here, so I want to share an essay I wrote yesterday on Pride Month with you.
TAKING PRIDE
I knew I was gay in third grade.
There was a kid in my class named Michael who was everything I wanted to be, so, over time, I grew the kind of crush on him that only an 8-year-old can have on another 8-year-old. It wasn’t sexual at all, because we weren’t sexual. It was all about admiration and wishing I was someone else. Someone better.
Michael and I were classmates for 11 years and there was a period in there when we were close buddies. I lost my interest in Michael in 8th grade when I saw him bully another boy, and he couldn’t be dissuaded from it. I tried. He had pushed a boy around whom he had decided was a “homo” — that’s what they called us then. I intervened and was called into question by Michael. Why was I defending this kid? Just then I gave him a good shove, inviting a fight that I must have been wanting for a while. We battered each other’s faces for what seemed an hour, leaving too much blood in the snow, and when that was over we parted forever. While we remained classmates, we never spoke again.
I dated girls in high school, and, after school, believing my homosexuality would magically disappear, entered a couple of long-term relationships with women. During and after college, I moved in with one whom I grew to love deeply, as my family had. She was in my sister’s wedding. It ended abruptly, causing us both great pain. But I was relieved, having come to realize I’d been living a lie and needed to reconcile with who I truly was.
We were a very Catholic family, and over time I recognized the absurd hypocrisy in some of the priests. So there was that crazy bullshit for several years, and then I moved away from the area to hide from everyone, especially myself.
I took a marketing job in Worcester, Massachusetts, which was like moving to Butte, Montana for a kid who grew up in Boston’s tony suburbs. While in Worcester, I noticed the local Chamber had begun a “Worcester Pride!” campaign. I thought, how absurd; what’s all this about pride? In my view, declaring pride showed a lack of pride. If you had to say it, it wasn’t really there.
I eventually met my husband, John. That's his name; not Matt. We’ve been married 10 years; together longer. For a brief time, I was still working in Worcester when we met and we stayed there a few years when we started our own business. I wasn't surprised that John felt the same way about Gay Pride. The idea of it made us both queasy; a bit embarrassed, because while we felt a reasonable degree of pride in who we were as men and a couple, we viewed being expected to say it publicly was a form of degradation.
One year, during Pride Month, I started reading about the history of our movement — about the gay shoulders upon which we stood that had earned us the practical and social entitlements everyone assumed for themselves and we were now enjoying. This started to open our eyes on Gay Pride. From Stonewall to Will & Grace, more than a whole generation had done this advancement work for LGBTQ people. A generation before, we were the unspoken people. Visible but not acknowledged because to see us and accept us conferred guilt on the innocent heterosexuals who admitted us. This is still happening in some places and if there’s one subgroup of LGBTQ that should be ashamed to proclaim pride it’s the phony Log Cabin Republicans.
One of our friends was instrumental in making marriage equality legal here in the Bay State, and a progressive judge made it happen. John and I pondered marriage full-family style for ourselves and ran adoption up the flagpole. Neither of us saluted to the idea of kids, but Mitt Romney was governor at the time, banging the drum against marriage equality, so we decided to get married before he could pull the rug out from under us. And I will tell you, it was the best wedding we’d ever been to — and many of our guests said the same thing. Forgive the bragging, but it was a freakishly great wedding. Something to be proud of. We were two gay guys and our families were coming together for the first time to celebrate our love for each other. The setting was out of a dream — Wayside Inn, Sudbury, Mass. on a warm fall day. A fife and drum corp was outside as our two 10-year-old nephews, both named Sam, stood at the window the way two boys do. Our family doubled that day.
Ten years later, we continue to love each other every day.
Unequivocally, I get the pride thing now — gratefully. John does too. And I have grown to love deeply my brothers and sisters who are standing up for what’s right. It is from within a community of fellow scribes, resisters, LGBTQ brethren and sisters, where I draw my pride and hope, realizing joyfully I deserve to know you all.
