Tag Archives: Sexuality

Someone Saved My Life Tonight

1 Reply

Joe My God is a blog that I read most everyday. It’s an enjoyable read, definitely geared for gay men. Not so much erotica, but reports and stories that I find appealing. He lives in New York City. I believe he has hundreds of readers.

Last night in one of his open threads, he asked when was the first time you went to a gay bar, the bar name and what year. I responded as follows:

1981 Feathers in Bergen County NJ.
Didn’t speak with anyone, no one spoke with me. Probably ordered a soda. I was pretty much into Punk and New Wave at the time so I wasn’t into the disco. Which is the main reason I don’t go to gay bars. Not a fan of house music these days.

Everyone else’s entries were all positive experiences. Mine, while not necessarily negative set me apart from gay culture once again. It is true, I rarely, if ever, go to gay bars. It’s mainly the music that puts me off, and also the fact I am generally the invisible man when I go. Bartenders tend to ignore me. I prefer a mixed scene anyhow, not so segregated. Gay, Straight, Black, White and everything in between is fine by me.

I almost posted this on Joe My God following my original post.
Interesting side note. My brother who’s straight, liked the same type of music, Punk/New Wave and we both started going to this place in Hoboken called Maxwells. Seeing great up and coming bands from all over the world for $5.00. At the time Maxwells was listed as a Gay/Straight bar and it really was. Rock geeks and gays and lesbians all there for the music. It was also known in Hoboken as ‘that fag bar’. Flash forward a few years later, my parents are on vacation. They meet some people from Hoboken and my mother mentions that two of her sons go to a club called Maxwells. The Hobokenites told her it was a fag bar.

This was before I came out to my family. My mother was distressed but I think the concept of gay and straight people able to mingle was a new concept to her. The subject didn’t sit well with her and it was never spoken of again, though I did have my mother come to Hoboken to have brunch at McSwells but by that time I was out. I don’t know what she expected but I do know she enjoyed herself.

Feathers was the first gay bar I ever went to, and I haven’t been back since. The first gay bar I had contact with was a bar called the Bell, in Hackensack NJ. The Bell used to be a rock and roll club or a disco, that my siblings occasionally went to. At some point in the mid 70’s it turned into a gay bar which put some people off. I was androgynous then, pre-pubescent.

Though when puberty hit and I knew I was gay, there was nowhere I could turn, no services available for a 13 year old boy in north New Jersey. Definitely could not talk to anyone I knew about what was happening to me. The confusion, from living in a straight world and hearing queer and fag and dyke jokes all the time and finding out those jokes were about me, was crushing and on top of that was the shame. I believe I had a slight nervous breakdown the summer of 1976. I kept it quiet.

The only thing I could thing of doing was to call the Bell. I was alone in the house that day, every one else off at work. I was left climbing the walls that summer day. At wit’s end I called the Bell in the middle of the afternoon. Some guy answered the phone, either a manager or someone setting up for the evening. I poured my heart and soul out to this stranger on the other end of the line.

How I didn’t know what to do, what I disappointment I was to my family, how I didn’t want to live like that. It seemed like we were on the phone a long time, maybe an hour I think. Whomever it was, they talked me in off the ledge. Someone I never knew before or since. Obviously I eventually came to grips with my sexuality and as out of step I was with the rest of the world before that, I was definitely marching to the beat of a totally different drum from then on.

I wonder whatever happened to the guy who answered the phone. I wonder how his night went. It must have been a heavy trip for him to listening to the anguish of a 13 year old boy coming to grips with his sexuality. He could have just brushed me off, hung up the phone and continued doing what he was doing.

Perhaps he did for me what someone might have done for him when he was coming of age, or perhaps no one was there to help him out back then and took it upon himself to give someone support that he never got for himself.

Just something that struck me as I read Joe My God.

Words

Leave a reply

I wrote this last night after I posted.

I was just reading a blog that mentioned a young gay entrepreneur in Manchester, England. This young man was able to secure a business grant at the age of 18 to run and maintain a website designed to break down walls and remove labels on race, sexuality for young people. He mentioned that his sexuality caused him major problems, being brought up to think that being gay was wrong and horrible. That struck a chord in me, and a righteous chord at that. I too, like many others, grew up in a house with a loving family. Some people don’t, I know. But included in that loving atmosphere, however dented, was an very strong anti gay vibe.

Queer jokes, gay bashing (verbally) went on. Racial jokes were made as well. I too was brought up by my family and my Catholic schooling taught that being gay was the absolute worst thing a person could be. So imagine finding out on your own, that you are what you were told was disgusting and immoral. Imagine finding that out at 14. No one to talk to about. Run to the encyclopedia, run to the dictionary and reading that you’re abnormal, a deviant. A lot, not all, but a lot of heterosexual people ask, ‘why make it a big deal about being gay?’

Because it will show that things we were told about ourselves when we were growing up was wrong. Sometimes murderously wrong, sometimes suicidally wrong. Education could be the solution to this epidemic of ignorance, but then you have certain sections of this country dead set against any positive portrayals of gay life. Or it goes so far as to not mention gay people at all. In a society that’s ever changing, it’s not changing fast enough. And it’s not just this country, it’s the whole world.

About 15 years ago when I was working at Skyline Studios, there was this young man, Roget Romain who had a deal to do some downtime production work. He worked with some up and coming artists in hip hop. It was a cool studio and a lot of times I would hang out after I was through working. One night I was with Roget and my friend Miriam who was working as an engineer. We were getting jazzy. I was as I am now, open about my sexuality, but not in your face about it. The three of us, hanging out, listing to dub.

Roget wanted to ask me a question about being gay. I was open to it and gave him a green light. First off, the main question, ‘When did I decide to be gay?’ I think it was the first time I was actually asked that, and I had no set answer. Me, being me did say this, ‘When did you decide to be straight?’ He was taken aback. ‘I didn’t decide to be straight. It just happened. It’s how I am.’ I had to ask, ‘What makes you think it wasn’t the same for me?’ I think most questions about gay people, can usually be answered by changing the gender of one of the subjects.

Roget then moved into sexuality. ‘How can a guy take it up the ass? How can a dude suck a cock?’ I asked him ‘Do all the women that he’s been with, do they all like to suck cock? Do they take it through the back door?’ ‘No, some do, some don’t.’ ‘Well there you have it. Not all gay guys like to do this, some do, some don’t.’ It was fun to just hang out with an open minded young man, maybe I planted a seed in his brain. Cracked open his door of perception just a bit I like to think. There is no shame in being gay, lesbian bisexual or transgendered. Some people see it as a frivolous lifestyle choice.

There are many good and great things about being LGBT, but there are some battles that come along with it. Some kids when they come out to their families, they are out on the street. Abandoned by parents who’s child they loved one day unconditionally, now repulsed and shamed by something that was out of anyone’s control. They would prefer to live the life of a lie. In the closet. Get married, have kids, and fuck around on the side.

About 12 years ago I answered an ad in the Village Voice, met an older guy at a bar in the Village. We didn’t click sexually but had a good chat over a few pints. He was married, hadn’t had sex with his wife since 1980, has three kids, all grown more or less. He was gay. For some reason I was filled with righteousness that night, telling him that he’s getting up there in years, living a lie. Do you want to go out the same way? You’re doing more harm than good to yourself by living this way, a shamed existence, shamed by yourself.

We parted ways, and I gave him a kiss as he was about to get on his way to Penn Station. He was surprised and probably the first time he was ever kissed by another man in public, on a street corner. I gave him my number and asked him to keep in touch. He called a few days later. He told his wife, she was filing for divorce. Two of his kids were fine with it, one had a problem. But he was glad he did it.

He felt free.

I’m just so tired that people need to be told this. I know the five of you that read this irregularly are somewhat enlightened but I just wanted to get this off my chest. Preaching to the choir, perhaps. But I guess it has to be told, over and over, one way or another. And while you may be enlightened, the majority of the five of you aren’t LGBT (at least as far as I know) and you wouldn’t really know, you couldn’t walk in our cha cha heels. Like I wouldn’t know how it is to be anything or anyone else, other than knowing how it is to be me.