Homophobes are the ones who demand an explanation for homosexuality.

There are so many things in life that we accept without demanding an explanation. People generally don’t spend a lot of time inventing theories as to why they like going to the beach. They just do. And they enjoy it. It’s important to them. They look forward to it. They plan for it. They don’t pay quacks to tell them why or help them get over “unwanted”, “broken” vacation desires. But some people demand an explanation for homosexuality.

A former straight homophobic friend of mine told me about her son’s friend whom she thought might be gay. It made her terribly nervous that her son was friends with this boy. This kid spent the night at her house when he was 14, and she went into detail about a conversation she had with him late that evening when everyone else was in bed. And she apparently asked a bunch of nosy questions that were none of her business. He ended up telling her that when he was younger he and one of his cousins used to engage in sex play, and suddenly the 12-year-old cousin was turned into an evil child molester and the “abuse” this kid supposedly suffered was the “reason” he was attracted to boys.

That’s exactly how the nonsense starts. My former friend demanded a reason why this kid felt the way he did, and she got it. And she made it clear to him that the only why she was going to let him off the hook was if he played the victim. He figured that out fast.

When I read about all of this--she explained the encounter in a letter--I was horrified. She had earlier accused gay men of molesting boys in order to turn them gay, but she had revealed herself to be the molester. She wasn’t worried about that kid. She took that late night opportunity to quiz that 14-year-old boy about his most private and intimate feelings, and to plant the idea in his head that those feelings were the result of abuse of some kind, because that’s what SHE wanted. That wasn’t for him. It was for her. And who knows what kind of lasting damage she did to him that night.

The Unicorn Boys

I now know that I was born a unicorn in an environment where unicorns weren’t merely unappreciated, but their existence wasn’t even acknowledged. I had the fundies on one side and the rednecks on the other. Both insisted that boys and men live inside a box known as traditional masculinity. As a result, my passions were repressed. I can remember clearly how frustrating it was when I was asked to list my interests because I couldn’t think of any. This is because I wasn’t really allowed to have official, overtly stated interests, and that’s because if I did, they would have been outside the box. At the time, I didn’t realize this and thought that perhaps I was a boring, dull person who had nothing to offer.

Eventually it dawned on me that I was interested in many things. I just didn’t know to call them interests or that a person could enrich his life by pursuing those interests. I liked movies, theater and stories. I also liked photography, art, architecture, interior design, antiques and fashion.

So I love this picture. Sure, the boys are cute and easy on the eyes, but what I like best about it is they are presented as unusual boys, as unicorn boys, boys who would be dazzled and delighted by a chandelier. I look at them and know that I was never really alone.


My eyes gave me away.

I ran across a picture earlier that has been on my mind.  It wasn’t a very good picture or else I would have saved it and shared it.  I looked at it for a few seconds and decided I didn’t like the colors, I didn’t like the cloths, I didn’t like the dingy, depressing little room, so I scrolled past it rather quickly.  But I did pay enough attention to what was going on in the picture for it to register and to make an impression on me.

A rather slight young man in his late teens was sitting on the floor with his back against the wall.  Another young man, this one more athletic, hunky and perhaps a bit older, was standing beside him with his back turned.  The boy standing appeared to be looking out the window, and the boy sitting on the floor was looking at his friend’s bottom.
 
The boy who was sitting had such an expression of longing on his face, and was also tinged with sadness and maybe even a bit of fear.  I immediately related to the emotions I was picking on this young man’s face.  Of course even now I find myself looking at certain young men and experiencing longing mixed with sadness.  And sometimes I’m afraid that I’ve looked too long and made myself noticeable.  But thirty years ago, the longing was powerfully intense.  I had to look at certain guys.  I had to drink in their beauty.  I had to.  But at the same time, I knew I couldn’t get caught.
 
Of course we’ve all been attracted to people who we can’t have.  But there’s something deeply frustrating about not being allowed to try to have them, for it to be catagorically forbidden for you to act on your desires always, no exceptions.  It’s humiliating when you’re not even allowed to admit to your attraction to anyone, ever.  I lived in fear of being found out.  Ostracism, relentless teasing, bullying, threats, rejection by my closest family members and friends, and even physical violence, they all seemed like very real possibilities.

I was caught looking once while in high school.  It was during summer break, and my sister and I went to the mall and watched a fashion show.  One of the boy models struck my eye, and I couldn’t stop watching him.  It was hard not to watch him since he was onstage.  The mall was not in my hometown, and I didn’t recognize the boy, so I assumed I would never see him again.  I assumed that it was safe to look at this pretty boy in his pretty new clothes.  He was, after all, part of a fashion show.  He was inviting people to look at him, and so I didn’t pass up the opportunity. 

Later, my sister and I were milling around a gift shop in the mall, and much to my surprise the boy from the fashion show came into the shop.  He was with a coupe of other boys who were also quite attractive to me.  I tried to sneak glances.  I did my best to be discreet.  But there was something about this boy that really made him stand out.  I guess I was obvious, and he noticed me looking at him.  He caught me several times.  Our eyes met several times. 

After a few minutes, my sister and I left, and I assumed that this gorgeous creature was gone for good.  But as luck would have it, he turned up at my school a few weeks later when the fall semester began.  And he hadn’t forgotten me.  Nor did he have any intentions of giving me a break.  For the next two years, he taunted me every time our paths crossed.  He was a popular boy, and he was always with friends.  Every time he saw me, he would make a point to tell his friends how he had once caught me looking at him.  They would laugh with derision, and there was often homophobic epithets hurled at me.

I had a run in with the boy in question the very last day of school before I graduated. I had to hand in a paper to my biology teacher, and I had to go into his room while he was teaching another class. While I was standing there beside the teacher’s desk, I heard someone call out my name. When I looked toward the class, I saw the boy sitting in the back. He and several of his friends were giggling and mouthing words at me. I didn’t bother trying to make out what they were saying. When I left that classroom, I thought to myself how glad I was that this bullshit was over. I never saw him again after that day.

It had all hurt so much.  My sin had been finding this boy attractive, and he reacted to that by ridiculing me regularly for two years.  So not only could I not have what I wanted, but the object of my desires detested me.  He wanted to hurt me, over and over again, for years.  And his relentless desire to punish me inspired more aggressive bullies to target me.  I ended up being shoved in our crowded halls daily between classes by invisible hands, pushed, punched, and knocked into lockers, and a few times almost knocked to the floor.  I was called names, and I was physically threatened.  And all because I found a boy attractive on a sunny summer afternoon when I was sixteen.    

Dan Cathy, Christianist hate, and the stupidity of CNN's Erin Burnett and friends

Earlier this evening while eating my dinner, I turned on the Erin Burnett Show on CNN. I usually turn on CNN while eating. I don’t know why. Habit, I guess. Or maybe I’m punishing myself. Maybe CNN is like my version of a hair shirt. And Erin Burnett is especially irritating to me. She comes across as rather dim and flip.

Tonight she orchestrated a little discussion about the Chick-fil-A story, and she and her producers managed to come up with a slightly different slant. The question was do politicians have the right to tell Chick-fil-A that they can’t open up a store in their prospective towns. Never mind that no one has denied Chick-fil-A anything, and never mind that so far the only thing that’s happened is a few politicians have rattled their sabers. CNN and Burnett decided to create a segment in which Chick-fil-A was made out to be the victim.

The background information that they supplied did include a brief reference to Dan Cathy’s remarks about how his god would smite us if we were nice to the gays, but after it was mentioned, the comment and the depths of hostility which it conveyed were quickly dispensed with. It was much easier for Burnett and CNN to pretend the story was just about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something that even President Obama did until very recently, as Jeffrey Toobin pointed out.

They simply glossed over the fact that Chick-fil-A has been giving millions to hate groups for years. And so of course they never mentioned that these hate groups spread the most vicious lies about LGBT people--they’re sick, diseased, prone to molest children, out to recruit children… They never mentioned that these hate groups support “ex-gay” and reparative therapy, even for young people and minors who are still financially dependent on their families. They never mentioned that these groups want to criminalize homosexuality. They didn’t say anything about these groups’ efforts to export their hate to Africa and other regions of the world. Burnett and her “analysts”, Jeffrey Toobin and some other smirking bobblehead, pretended that it was all cut and dry, very simple. For them, it’s all about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something even President Obama did until very recently. (Somehow I missed hearing about how Obama warned that his god would smite us if we disagreed with him, or how he had given millions to hate groups.)

Toobin went so far as to suggest that the politicians that objected to Chick-fil-A coming to their towns didn’t have a leg to stand on given that Chick-fil-A released that statement a few days ago assuring that it didn’t discriminate. The statement was rather bland, passionless, and not very convincing, and it was released by the company to quell a growing impression that Chick-fil-A was in business to financially support hate, but the statement was good enough for Toobin who insisted that the story was all about Dan Cathy personally opposing marriage equality, something that even President Obama did until very recently.

Burnett pointed out that some companies vocally support marriage equality, like Starbucks and Goldman Sachs, and she asked what if a town wanted to ban a company that was supportive of marriage equality. She then claimed if one was okay, then so was the other. Now there’s some sophistry that will make you want to beat your head against a wall. Someone should point out to her that in the real world the two sides of this debate aren’t equal, and that ordinary mortals don’t have to throw out their convictions in order to appear “balanced.” Ordinary people are allowed to say one thing is right and the other thing is wrong.

And of course not one openly LGBT person who knows something about this story was given a chance to say anything.

Obviously, this is just one story, and it’ll most likely fade away in a few days, but the way CNN and Burnett handled this story represents a pattern. Burnett and her friends glossed over important details. They dumbed the story down. They didn’t ask for the opinions of LGBT people. And Burnett and the other two sat there and talked about it with shit eating grins on their faces, suggesting that this was all for entertainment anyway, it’s not very important, and they are far more wise than anyone else, and their opinions far more important because they’re on television.

What will it take for them to actually do some in depth reporting on LGBT issues? What will it take to convince them that the campaign to destroy us here in this country and around the world isn’t taking place for their amusement? Their ineptitude is only surpassed by their callous disregard for how these stories impact the lives of LGBT people.

　

I think religions are human institutions that reflect the cultures in which they were founded.

I think religions are human institutions that reflect the cultures in which they were founded. They may in some way represent the authentic spiritual experiences of its members, but I don’t think they’re an unalloyed expression of anything divine.

I think that if there is a god, that god would transcend our reality, having created it. All of this talk about what a particular god “wants” or “thinks” is anthropomorphic. If someone speaks metaphorically in those terms, I might relate to what’s being said, but if the person saying those kinds of things means them literally, then I find the comments unfathomable.

As Annie Dillard said, “Whatever we say about God is untrue, for we can only know creaturely attributes, which do not apply to God.”

Aunt Phyllis Sets The Record Straight by Gary Cottle

I think a lot of gay boys dream of having an Auntie Mame, someone who is more sophisticated and worldly than their parents and willing to show them things they never dreamed existed. But if you were a gay boy from the south who came of age in the ‘80s and you had a fundamentalist minister for a father, what you really needed was an Auntie Phyllis. Luckily, I had one of those. I was never really close to my Aunt Phyllis when I was a child. She only came around occasionally, and she seemed to make my parents nervous. Aunt Phyllis was almost twenty years older than my mother, she wasn’t big on church talk, and she was often pretty blunt. I was a little scared of her, but she turned out to be my fiercest ally.

When I was fifteen, I invited this kid home from school. I had been secretly crushing on him for about a year, so when the opportunity to help him study for a calculus exam came up, I took it. I didn’t plan on doing anything but help him study, and I certainly never dreamed he had any feelings for me, but when we were alone in my room, there was this moment when we started looking at each other with soulful eyes. Before I could even think about what was happening, we were kissing. And I mean right on the mouth. I was shocked and terrified, but I was also thrilled. It was wonderful to be kissing him. That was more than I ever hoped for.

But the best moment in my life was quickly followed by the worst. My mother, who usually respected my privacy--I was a very good kid who never gave her any reason not to--must have sensed that something was going on between me and my friend, so she barged into my room just in time to see me, her first born son, the one who was expected to take over my father’s ministry some day, lip locked with another boy.

She didn’t say anything right then. She just looked at me with horror and disgust and quietly shut the door. That’s how I knew I was in serious trouble. My friend freaked out and left immediately, leaving me alone in my room. I was too frightened to even peek out the door, so I just sat there for two hours. When it was dinner time, I got up the nerve to face whatever it was that was coming my way. I left the sanctuary of my room and made my way to the table. That’s when I discovered that my place had not been set. My father didn’t look at me when I walked into the room. He remained seated at the head of the table. My mother, who was arranging bowls of food on the table, didn’t look up. My brothers and sisters didn’t look up. Finally my father told me to return to my room and that he would talk to me later. Oh, shit!

It was dark by the time my father paid his visit. He still wouldn’t look at me. He just sat down on the edge of my bed and told me what a disappointment I was. He said I had sinned against the Lord and invited the Devil into my heart. Dad went on to say that he would consult some of his colleagues about an exorcism, and he warned if that didn’t work, he would have to ask me to leave his house.

The next Saturday, I was left alone. An old man from our church had died, and Mom and Dad went to comfort his family. I don’t remember exactly what my brothers and sisters were doing, but they were out. I appreciated the time to myself. But then the doorbell rang. It was my Aunt Phyllis.

I was surprised to see her, and the first thing I told her was that my parents weren’t home. If Aunt Phyllis thought this was rude, she didn’t say so. Instead, she walked on in like she owned the place and said, “Good. I came to see you.” She then went into the living room, plopped down in one of the chairs, lit a cigarette and told me to have a seat.

“I understand that there was a bit of drama over here a couple of days ago, and that suddenly I’m not the only black sheep in the family. Well, kid, I’m here to tell you a few things about your family. You’re old enough now to know, and considering what happened, you need to know. What I’m about to say might turn things upside down for you. You may not be able to look at some of the members of this family in quite the same way again. But believe me when I tell you, I don’t mean to break your heart. It’s just that your parents have the Jesus bug so far up their asses it ain’t funny, and you need to know the truth before they smother you with their holiness. I know you love them. I love them, too. But they’re not nearly as perfect as they like to pretend, and they don’t come from perfect people either.”

For the next half hour, I sat there in stunned silence as Aunt Phyllis explained a few things to me. She told me that my Great Uncle George was never in a sanatorium. He never had tuberculosis at all. That was just a story that had been passed down because no one wanted to admit that he had been sent to the state penitentiary for armed robbery. My grandmother--Mom’s and Aunt Phyllis’s mother--got herself hooked on sleeping pills and ended up killing herself with them when I was still a toddler. Uncle Tommy, Mom’s and Aunt Phyllis’s brother, used to abuse my Cousin Tammy when she was a teenager, and no one knew for sure if the daughter she had when she was seventeen belonged to her high school boyfriend or Uncle Tommy.

I thought I would pass out, but Aunt Phyllis assured me that what she had revealed was only the highlights. And she said that my father’s family wasn’t exactly the most pious people around either. She said that my great grandfather supported his family by selling bootleg whiskey, and word had it that he had a few girls working for him, too. My grandfather was, in Aunt Phyllis’s words, a no account drunk who died from cirrhosis of the liver when my father was still a boy.

“There was still enough left from the whiskey money for your grandmother to support your daddy and his brothers. She even had enough to leave your daddy a significant legacy. The home you live in and your daddy’s church was paid for with money that came from running booze and whores.”

Aunt Phyllis saved the best for last. She told me that my mother was “wild” when she was a teenager and got herself “knocked up” when she was sixteen, and rather than tell anyone, she secretly had an abortion. Aunt Phyllis drove her to the doctor herself. And when I was five years old, my mother almost left my father because he was caught cheating on her with the church secretary.

“They used church money to shut that woman up and get her out of town.”

She went on to say that I shouldn’t think I was the only one of my kind in the family. She told me that her sister Helen wasn’t really an old maid at all. She had been living with a woman for the past thirty years. And Aunt Phyllis informed me that her own son had “went for men.”

“I know I’ve told you a lot. I wanted to knock a few people around here off their high horses. But I’m not trying to make myself out to be no saint. I don’t know what you are and what my Charlie was is a sin or not. I ain’t no preacher. But I know in my heart that the way I treated my Charlie when I found out about him was a sin. It wasn’t my place to judge him. Nevertheless, I wasn’t a mother to him the last year of his life.” For the first time, Aunt Phyllis’s voice cracked as she admitted, “I was a bitch. He disgusted me, and let him know it at every turn, and finally he couldn’t take no more and hung himself in that old maple tree in our backyard.”

Aunt Phyllis cried at this point, but my head was spinning and I was lost in all the things she had said, so I didn’t react. I just sat there. After a moment, Aunt Phyllis pulled herself together and continued. She said she regretted the way she had treated her Charlie. She said she was foolish to act the way she did. And she said she would have to live with the fact that she drove her own son to kill himself for the rest of her life. Then she paused. I thought she was going to cry again, but she didn’t.

“Well, I need to get going. I just wanted you to know these things. I know I’m not taken very seriously around here, but I know where the bodies are buried, so I have some influence. It seems the angels have seen fit to give me a second chance to do the right thing, and I’m not going to miss it. You can rest assured that you’re safe. I can’t make your parents accept who you are, but I can see to it that there won’t be any exorcisms, and they won’t dare throw you out of here until you’re ready to leave. And if they give you too much grief, you come to me.”

That conversation took place thirty years ago. In time, Aunt Phyllis and I become close friends. I lived with her the last year I was in high school. And I stayed with her off and on throughout my twenties. I was there by her side when she died of lung cancer. She told me that I had become like a son to her.

My father left the ministry and became a real estate agent. He and my mother separated for a while, but they got back together. Eventually their religious beliefs softened. My husband and I visit them a couple of times a year.

Photographer and subject unknown
Fictional short story by Gary Cottle




Losing my religion?

Some have said that they’re sorry that I was “robbed of my faith” by people who tried to foist a fundamentalist doctrine on me when I was young. I appreciate the sympathy, but I don’t feel like anyone robbed me of my faith. This sentiment seems ethnocentric to me and based on the idea that we are naturally drawn to Christianity unless something gets in the way. Since billions of people in the world are not Christian, and since human history stretches back thousands and thousands of years before the advent of Christianity, I just don’t think that human beings are Christian by default. Christianity is simply the religion that is most common in our society, but there are more things in heaven and on earth than are found in Western Civilization. Also, who said I don’t have faith? Just because I express doubt and refrain from dropping the name of Jesus into conversations on a regular basis doesn’t mean I don’t have my own beliefs. I have my own way of looking at religion and spirituality, but even though I have certain feelings, hopes and dreams, I don’t talk about those things as if they’re facts. For me life is a mystery, and it’s important to me that I regularly remind myself of the deference between what I believe and what I know.

The circumstances in which I was raised helped me become a critical thinker. I couldn’t trust the adults around me to explain the world to me. Much of what I was told seemed off in one way or another, so I learned to silently question what I was told, take things with a grain of salt.

If I was robbed of anything, it was a sense acceptance and safety. It seemed like the people around me weren’t really interested in me. They simply demanded and expected me to conform. And I felt like I was in danger of being rejected, thrown out, tossed away, even physically abused if I was too demonstrative of just how different I was.

If I were to relive my childhood, I would want to have more friends and more adults in my life who would express to me that they appreciate me, adults who would regularly encourage me to be myself. That’s what I feel like I missed.

Liam's Hero

This is an old photo of Liam and Jacob. It was probably taken more than twenty years ago, back when men like them had hope for the future. It seemed like it was only a matter of time before they could get married and live openly without fear. But the economic collapse, followed by an energy crisis and a steady increase in the frequency of extreme weather caused the American people to become desperate. They began voting for leaders who projected images of strength and certainty, and over the years rights that once were taken for granted crumbled and died.

It was in the early days of the transition that the people lost the right to have consensual sex, and it wasn’t long before homosexual relations were once again illegal in every state. Anyone who wasn’t heterosexual was treated like a diseased criminal.

Liam and Jacob moved to a new city. They had to get away from anyone who knew they were a couple. However, they continued to live as roommates. Since many couldn’t afford to raise a family or buy a home, it seemed reasonable that two adult men would live together in order to share expenses. Liam and Jacob were thankful that they could stay together at least.

But then one day, Liam was arrested while at work. One of his coworkers had been caught soliciting another man in a restroom, and in an attempt to secure leniency, he ratted out fellow gay men. It just so happened that this coworker and Liam had a brief encounter before Liam met Jacob. Liam did not remember the coworker, and the coworker never revealed to him that they had met before, but the scared man did give the authorities Liam’s name.

Jacob was also questioned, but he pretended he had no idea that his roommate was interested in men, so Jacob was not sent to one of the camps. About a year later, Jacob heard that Liam had died.

Jacob sank into despair. He considered taking his own life. He missed Liam, and he felt guilty because he lied about the nature of their relationship when Liam was arrested. He felt like he had betrayed Liam.

One day he went to the park, and he succumbed to the temptation to go into the men’s room with the intention of finding a man who wanted to have sex. Jacob knew the dangers, and in part that’s why he did it. He secretly wished to get caught and dragged off to one of the camps.

But Jacob wasn’t caught. Instead he met a man who was part of the growing resistance movement. The man asked Jacob to join him. After some consideration, Jacob agreed to become part of the resistance. It would give him something to live for.

It turns out that Liam was still alive, and he was unexpectedly allowed to return home. He had been blinded while being tortured, and a bureaucrat took pity on him and signed his release papers even though technically he wasn’t eligible for parole. The man who volunteered to lead Liam back to the apartment was actually part of the resistance, and he informed Liam that Jacob was scheduled to leave the very next day.

Jacob was shocked to discover Liam in the apartment when he got off work. Liam explained to him what happened, and they made love for the first time in five years. Jacob decided he couldn’t leave Liam, so he never told him anything about the resistance. Jacob went to bed that night thinking he was going to spend the rest of his life with Liam.

But the next morning, Liam informed Jacob that he was going to live with a beloved aunt who would gladly support him and look after him. Jacob objected, but Liam informed him that he had important work to do. He reminded Jacob that most in the country had forgotten what it was like to be free. And he asked Jacob to think of the kids out there like them, kids who were growing up without hope, kids who were afraid others would find out the truth about them.

“You have to do it for them, Jacob,” said Liam. “We were together for over twenty years, and by some miracle, we were given one more night together. So let’s not be selfish. You know it would only be a matter of time before the police came for us. And it would be for the both of us this time, not just me. We may have been able to pretend that we were roommates back when I could see and earn an income, but now I’m a convicted pervert, and they’re going to know the only reason another man would take care of me is because he’s a pervert, too. So go, Jacob. Try to regain some of what we lost. And if our lives together can’t be salvaged, try to give the young ones a chance at happiness. You have been my love since the moment I laid eyes on you, but if you do this, you’ll be my hero, too.”

Jacob sat there in silence for a long moment. He somehow managed to let go of the dream of growing old with Liam for the second time. Finally he kissed Liam, passionately at first, and then more gently. Then he left his blind lover sitting there on the edge of their bed and marched off to war.

Photographer and subjects unknown
Fictional story by Gary Cottle 

I remember Mom

When my mother was well, she often displayed a high level of emotional intelligence. I’ll give you an example of what I mean. As we all know, when people live together, they often get on one another’s nerves, and they take pot shots at each other. And sometimes people become irritable and they take it out on the person closest to them. Well, I have to admit that I can be very irritable and fus...sy. Sometimes my skin will just crawl and I’ll want to get out of myself. I can’t get comfortable. Everything seems to rube me the wrong way. When I’m like that, the least little thing will annoy me. And when my mother was around, I did my fair share of complaining about all the noise she was making by rocking in her rocking chair too much or chatting too much. I would snap at her, but rather than become defensive, she seemed to always know that I was just in one of my moods--at least when she was well. And sometimes after lecturing her about how it was a great bother to have to put up with her, she would say in this quiet, comic voice, “I know. I’m a bad sort.” It never failed to crack me up and defuse the situation.

I really miss her. Living with her when she was experiencing a breakdown was hellish, but when she was well, there wasn’t a kinder, sweeter person on earth. There is that old saying that guys--straight guys that is--want to find a girl just like dear old Mom. Obviously I don’t want a girl, but I think if I found a boy like dear old Mom, someone kind and gentle, someone who knew how to handle me when I was grumpy, someone who didn’t take my crabby remarks personally when I was in a snit, I think I would be a very lucky guy.

ABC News Live 9/11

I watched this last night and remembered what it was like for me the morning of September 11, 2001. I didn’t tune in until after the Pentagon had been hit, so I had a lot to catch up on. It was shocking enough to learn that planes had deliberately hit both towers at the WTC, but to watch them collapse one after the other was horrific. But I think what really made me nervous was learning that every single nonmilitary airplane in the whole country was ordered to land as soon as possible. That suggested to me that things were out of control and our government didn’t yet have a handle on what was happening. Then came the news that government officials were being scurried off to secret locations. Air Force One flew around in the air for hours with the president on board as if no where was safe. That day it seemed anything could happen, and it wasn’t until that evening before I could believe that the worst was over.

I was surprised to hear Osama Bin Laden’s name mentioned several times. I guess back then I didn’t have a clear understanding of who he was, so the name simply went over my head, but apparently he was a suspect almost immediately.

BTW, I miss Peter Jennings. Until we got cable when I was 8 or 9 years old, we only had two channels, PBS and ABC, so I got into the habit of watching ABC News. I grew up seeing Peter Jennings regularly, and he became anchor when I was a teenager. I trusted him to tell the truth as he knew it, and thought he was very sharp and perceptive. So many of the people I see on TV news these days seem so dim in comparison.

My imaginary high school boyfriend and the story I was going to write about him.

I first started thinking about becoming a writer back in high school.  I loved the way stories took me out of myself.  I loved the way they helped me see life in different ways.  And I loved how they helped me connect to others, helped me see things from different perspectives, consider things I would normally overlook.  Even the most cruel and evil villains are driven by something, and if you know their story, you can understand them, and their villainy becomes tragedy, a tale of an otherwise good and decent person who went wrong after experiencing something that might sour any one of us.  A good story is magic.  A good story can help us make sense of life, and I was a confused, scared, lonely kid who felt left out, so I guess I hoped writing would help me find my way.
 
A lot of story ideas popped into my head, but they never went anywhere.  I could consider them for a few minutes, but then they would fizzle out.  The first idea that took root and stayed with me for a number of years dropped into my conscious mind during my senior year of high school.  I was aware that graduation was looming and that everything would be different afterwards, so I came up with a story that centered around graduation. 

I imagined that I had a secret boyfriend who went to school with me.  He wasn’t the hottest guy in class or the most popular, but I knew how kind and sincere he was, and I could relax when I was alone with him.  He was my Ponyboy.
 
We always played it cool when other people were around, especially at school.  Most knew we were friends, but we didn’t let on that we were even that close, so it would have been a shock if anyone found out we were lovers.  We met in private…along country roads outside of town, in the homes of recently deceased relatives and local parks.  As graduation day got closer, we began to talk more about what we would like to do once we were free to leave town.  We decided that we should run away together, and in the spring of 1984, we worked out the details of our plan.
 
We would go to our graduation ceremony, and then we would tell our families we were going to one of the graduation parties.  But instead of going to a party, we would meet at a nearby state park, one of our favorite rendezvous points.  And from there we would slip quietly away from all of those who didn’t understand us, those who shamed us, and those who would judge us for loving and needing each other.

I tried writing this story a number of times.  I even attempted to write it a few times after I went away to college.  That germ of an idea really resonated with me.  But I guess I could never make it work because I didn’t really know what it was like to have a boyfriend, and the possibility of having one seemed so remote that I couldn’t imagine the details.  I also couldn’t imagine what we would do after running away.  Where would we go?  What would we do for money?  Would we go to college together?  Would we be out?  Or would we continue to keep our relationship secret?  Back then the idea of telling people I was gay seemed impossibly scary.  Would we eventually contact our parents?  Would we tell them we were together? 

So many plot points tripped me up.  I had hoped that simply by getting started that the answers would come to me, but they didn’t.  I lacked the vision, and deep down, I don’t think I really believed there were any sweet and adorable boys in this world who would love me so much as to want to run away with me.  Eventually my high school years receded into the past, and my dream of having a high school boyfriend faded away.
 
But my dream of having  a high school boyfriend never completely disappeared.  I can still see glimpses of him now and then.  And I’m older and I feel a lot more sympathy for the young man that I used to be.  I believe that he did deserve a boyfriend, someone sweet, cute, adorable and sincere.  Maybe one day I’ll write that story for him and give him the happy, romantic ending he wanted.

Will I ever be an artist?

"Will I ever be an artist? Not a mere dabbler or dilettante. Not just someone who picks up a brush now and then and produces something derivative and forgettable. Will I create something that stands out, something that distinguishes me from all the rest? Something that will make them remember me? Or will I be an art student my whole life? Is that enough? Do I have to make a mark? Can’t I just appreciate what others have done? Is it pride that makes us think we have to accomplish something, something important? What if I simply observed and took it all in…with the aim of getting through it without doing much harm? Maybe someday a thunderbolt of inspiration will hit me and I won’t be able to resist making a splash. But can I really force it? Can’t I be significant without being great?"


Photographer and subject unknown
Little fictional story by Gary Cottle

Shame on the bigots who run The Boy Scouts

I’m really disappointed that the Boy Scouts have decided to continue to discriminate against LGBT people. I think the kinds of boys that are often attracted to the Boy Scouts are the ones who aren’t so much into roughhousing, boys who aren’t necessarily into competitive sports, boys who like a bit of structure, boys who like an environment were cordiality and thoughtfulness are appreciated. A lot of gay boys are like that, and I think the Boy Scouts have provided many gay boys with an opportunity to feel like they were one of the guys. And now the bigots who run the show have once again told a group of boys who want to feel like they belong that they’re defective and unworthy. Of course most of the younger boys are unaware of their orientation, but a lot of boys figure themselves out by the time they’re ten, eleven, twelve years old. Most of them won’t come out that young, but they’re old enough to be aware of the discriminatory policy. They know if they were honest, they’d be rejected. They know they’re not really wanted. The adults in charge are telling these boys that they’re not valued. And this is what these adults call leadership? This is character? Shame on these people. 

July 15, 1997

Back in the late 1990s, I was living in an apartment on High Street in Morgantown, West Virginia. Because of my mood swings, depressive episodes, suicidal tendencies, post traumatic stress disorder and social phobia, I was already on Disability Social Security. By the time I was 30, I was already very familiar with regular doctor’s visits, various medical tests, getting stuck with needles, taking massive amounts of medication, and hospital stays.

Morgantown is the home of WVU which is where I went after I graduated from high school. For a time I dreamed of going on to graduate school and becoming a philosophy professor. I also dreamed of becoming a writer. But by the time I hit my mid twenties, it looked like the only thing I was going to become was a professional psychiatric patient. The reason I stayed in Morgantown was because I was familiar with the place, living there provided me with independence, it was the most liberal town in the state of West Virginia, I was too scared and too poor to move, my parents lived a few hours away, and WVU offered great medical services.

By the spring of 1996, I was very isolated. I was no longer in school by that point, and most of the friends I had made while attending WVU had moved on. I stayed in my apartment most of the time. And when I did go out, I didn’t talk to people. I watched a lot of movies on video--the local public library rented them for a dollar--and I read books. The internet was already quite popular, and I knew this would be a good way for me to connect with people, but I just couldn’t afford a computer. So I was stuck. I couldn’t figure out a way to get out of the rut that I had fallen into. But that May, something happened that made me realize my life was about to be turned upside down.

One night I had dream in which I saw myself in a hospital bed. That image startled me so much that it woke me up, and I was so disturbed that I felt the need to sit up for a while in the living room. It was while I was sitting up that I came to believe I had a brain tumor. I don’t know what made me think this, but I knew it was true. I just knew it. But I wasn’t ready to face it, so I stopped going to the doctor.

For nearly a year, I avoided the inevitable. I knew in the back of my mind what was wrong, but I pretended I didn’t know. Then I started noticing I was having a hard time hearing my parents when I talked to them on the phone. I had always held the phone up to my left ear, so I never thought to switch sides. Holding the phone to my left ear with my left hand seemed the most natural way for me to talk on the phone, so I stuck with that.

My parents eventually caught on that I couldn’t hear them very well, and they began to pressure me to go in for a long overdue checkup. I made the appointment and went to see my doctor, my GP that is, not my psychiatrist. I told him about my difficulty hearing. I didn’t tell him that I was sure I had a brain tumor because of a dream I had the year before. The man already knew about my mental health, so I assumed he would just think I was being crazy.  Therefore, I kept my tumor dream to myself. My doctor was sure my allergies were causing congestion in my ears and that this was the cause of my hearing loss, so he prescribed a decongestant. But when I went back two weeks later, I was still having problems with my hearing. (And I knew why, but I wasn’t telling him.) So he had his nurse give me a basic hearing test while he was out of the room seeing other patients. A few minutes later, the doctor returned, and I could tell by the look on his face that the hearing test indicated something was seriously wrong. He told me that I was almost deaf in my left ear. And the fact that I was going deaf in just one ear was the thing that was most alarming. He asked if I had been exposed to any loud noises like a gun shot going off near my left ear or an explosion. I told him no, and he handed me an appointment card. It was five o’clock in the afternoon, and I was to return to the hospital the next morning to see a specialist at 8:30 in the morning. I went home that evening knowing it was all about to blow up in my face. They were about to find my secret tumor, and they would want to do something about it.

After a series of tests that culminated in an MRI, what I dreamed the year before was confirmed. I had a sizable brain tumor on the left side of my head behind my left ear. The tumor had almost destroyed my left auditory nerve, and it was doing damage to my left facial nerve. It was also pressing against my brainstem. I was told that the brainstem was the most vital part of the brain because it was the most elementary. We don’t use our brainstems for brainy stuff like thought and speech. It’s not the magic part of our brains where beautiful art and extraordinary inventions are born. The brainstem is for things like the regulation of heart rate, breathing, core body temperature. In other words, fuck with it, and you die. The tumor had to come out.

I was 31 years old. I still thought of myself as a young man. I was often mistaken for a student at WVU. I was regularly asked what year I was in and what my major was. I still dreamed of going on to graduate school. I knew that my youth was slipping away, but I thought there was still time for me to make something of myself in this life. I dreamed about finding a man and living with him in a nice house somewhere. I was starting to think about becoming a father. But then I found out I had a brain tumor, and I feared the lights were about to go out.

On the morning of July 15, 1997, my parents drove me to Ruby Memorial Hospital, WVU’s main hospital. It was very early, and the sky was still dark, but you could tell that dawn was about to break. I walked from the parking lot into the hospital on my own. Aside from the hearing loss, some facial weakness, and some headaches now and then, which I was used to, I felt fine physically. There was a part of me that couldn’t accept that major surgery was necessary. I didn’t want them to cut my head open. I was terrified that they would ruin me or kill me. And the doctors didn’t sugar coat what they were about to do. They did warn that awful things could happen. I could even die. But the tumor was already threatening my life, so I went into that building, laid down on a gurney and let them do their thing. It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do. I don’t trust easily. It’s difficult for me to ask perfectly harmless looking people for the time of day. But on the morning of July 15, 1997, I allowed strangers to put me to sleep knowing they were going to slice my head open and dig out chunks of something that wasn’t supposed to be there.

I was under general anesthesia by 6:30 AM.  A few minutes later I was connected to a ventilator and catheterized.  And my head was put into a vise.  The surgery lasted about 13 or 14 hours.  Two surgial teams switched back and forth throughout the day.  I didn’t wake up until the early morning hours of July 16. I was afraid of dying on July 15, but on July 16 I hurt so much that I wanted to die. But I didn’t. There was a serious complication a few weeks later that required more surgery. And I didn’t feel like doing much of anything for a year. I had to give up my apartment in Morgantown and move back in with my parents. I lost all of my hearing in my left ear. I had to learn to cope with a constant buzzing sound. I became balance impaired. And the left side of my face was paralyzed. I eventually regained some movement in my face, but my appearance was permanently altered. However, I made it. I survived. And fifteen years later, I’m still here.       

Jerry Sandusky Is The Face Of Conservative Christian Entitlement

Ever since the story of Jerry Sandusky’s sexual abuse of boys broke, a number of Christianists have been trying to claim Jerry Sandusky is a typical gay man and that LGBT rights will lead to the acceptance of sexual abuse of children. It doesn’t matter that it’s not true. It doesn’t matter who they hurt with such accusations. They go on spreading this hateful misinformation in an attempt to demonize gay men. And they wrap themselves up in the Bible and claim to be moral authorities while doing it.

But what is their real goal? It can’t be that they’re truly interested in the welfare of Sandusky’s victims. This crowd regularly claims that the victims of molestation somehow become gay. And since they make every effort to demonize gay men, they in fact stigmatize the victims of molestation. If a boy is molested, he becomes suspect in the eyes of Christianists. And Christianists regularly rail against anti-bullying programs in schools, too. They claim that their right to foster hostile attitudes toward bullied children falls under the purview of their religious liberty. They regularly disregard, minimize and dismiss instances of abuse. They turn a blind eye to the young victims of bullying and talk about their right to tell others they’re sinful. Christianists cry foul every time there is an attempt to protect children. In their eyes, children don’t have a right to housing, healthcare or an education. And yet they want us to believe they’re the ones who care for kids.

Jerry Sandusky has never claimed to be gay. In fact he has been married to a woman for many years. No man has ever stepped forward and claimed he had a consensual, romantic, loving relationship with Jerry Sandusky. Jerry Sandusky is a churchgoing Christian. Jerry Sandusky has spent most of his life as a man of wealth, privilege and influence. Jerry Sandusky was highly regarded and well respected. And who were Jerry Sandusky’s victims? Poor boys. Boys who needed help. Boys who would be especially thrilled to have the chance to go to ballgames, go on trips, and do the things kids who come from wealthier homes take for granted. Jerry Sandusky showed these boys a good time, and then he acted like he owned them. He seemed to think they were obliged to repay him with sex. It seems that Jerry Sandusky felt he was entitled.

In the novel A Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood imagines a world in which the Christianists have managed to “win back America for Christ” in the not too distant future. In her story, the new theocratic, totalitarian state is called The Republic of Gilead, and the “men of God” are the ones in charge. Women have very little say. They are to submit to their husbands and fathers, just as God supposedly demands. They can’t own property, work outside the home, and of course having a voice in government is out of the question. Women who aren’t married and not protected by their fathers are treated like chattel and used for breading purposes.

A Handmaid's Tale spells out in explicit detail what life would be like for women in a Christianist theocracy run by men. And the trial of Jerry Sandusky tells us what life would be like for children.


　


A few thoughts on anger management.

I’ve known some people who have serious rage and anger problems, and I’ve seen how this leads to a lot of self-destructive behavior as well as unimaginably cruel behavior. For instance, I have an uncle who was a very vindictive, mean-spirited man. When my mother’s sister first married him and had a baby, they didn’t have any money, so they would sometimes stay at our house, and my uncle would sometimes pinch my cousin in his crib to make him cry. When my cousin was a little older, my sister and I caught him trying to get my cousin to put sand in the gas tank of our go-cart. Later when I was about 11, I saw him masturbating my cousin in our backyard. My cousin was about 5 at the time. My uncle saw me, and I’ll never forget the sneer he had on his face. He wanted me to see what he was doing, and he wanted to hurt me and his son. My uncle wasn’t sexually interested in his son or me. He was being hateful. I simply put the incident out of my mind for years. I never talked about it. Just like I never talked about a lot of the other crazy things that I saw and experienced when I was a kid.

My uncle is developmentally disabled. He has the mind of an 8 or 9-year-old, and he’s been mad at the world for most of his life. My father told me what it was like for my uncle when he was growing up. He never knew his father, and back in the ’50s, a kid without a father was stigmatized. His mother was also developmentally disabled. My father told me that she used to go to the outhouse without bothering to shut the door, and she was almost always sitting there doing her business as the school bus went by. The kids would laugh and make fun of her, and she would merely wave at them. My father also told me that the kids were mercilessly cruel to my uncle because he was developmentally disabled--the word was “retarded” back then--he didn’t have a father, and his mother was odd and did things people didn’t understand. And he became a bitter, hateful man. His son, my cousin, is also developmentally disabled, and he’s become alcoholic. He’s also had a couple of children by different women--women who aren’t exactly high functioning by the way--and he doesn’t have the means to take care of them emotionally or financially.

Most of my mother’s family was in some way out of it. Many of them were scary people. And my mother suffered from paranoid schizophrenia. I was subjected to fundamentalism from my father’s side of the family. They tended to be more stable, but their love was conditional. Lots of rules. Lots of preaching. Lots of condemnation. I sometimes felt physically unsafe when I was around my mother’s people. Most of them lived in an old coal camp outside of town, and it was a very rough place. I hated going there, but my mother insisted on visiting every Sunday afternoon for years. When I was around my father’s family, I usually felt emotionally unsafe. These people looked for fault, and they would berate you when they found it. So I saw a lot of crazy stuff when I was a kid. And most of it went unexplained. And when I went to school, I was the shy, weird sissy boy. The only person who seemed to accept me and appreciate me for who I am was my mother, and she lived in her own world most of the time.

Of course I had my own anger issues, but it took me a while to deal with it because I spent my childhood braced for the unexpected, and I didn’t have any rational person to talk to about emotions. But I was smart enough to seek therapy the first chance I got, and that saved me. I started listing all of these things that happened to my therapist, and eventually--it took more than a year--she stopped me during a session and bluntly asked me if I was angry. The question took me by surprise because I never really considered it before. Anger wasn’t an emotion I was allowed to have. Anger was defiance. Anger was accusatory. Anger was mean and nasty. I didn’t want to be angry. But my therapist told me that if she were in my shoes, she would be angry. And I learned that you have to acknowledge your anger before you can deal with it.

I can now admit that I was angry, and I still am angry from time to time. I’m even filled with rage sometimes. But I deal with it. One of the things that helps is that I have the capacity to reflect on the complexity of life. I know my mother couldn’t help being ill. I know my father was not equipped to cope with having a mentally ill wife. I know what kind of environment my mother’s family came from--the depth of ignorance and poverty. I know the Bible thumpers in my father’s family were echoing what they had heard, and the judgment game was something they learned and picked up before they had a chance to think about it.

I also know that even though I’m a mess, I’m doing a lot better than many of my relatives. I’m not an alcoholic. I’m not a drug addict. I’ve never held up a store, ran over anyone while drunk, or raped anyone. I’m also still alive, and many of them are dead. (One cousin didn’t just kill himself, he blew himself up along with his entire apartment building. Thankfully, no one else was hurt. Talk about uncontrolled rage.) I know that life is hard for many people, so hard. Unbelievably and unimaginably hard. And I know that much of the time there are no easy answers or simple solutions. I’ve also known people who some might call evil and despicable, and on some days I might agree with them, but I grew up with them, and I caught glimpses of their humanity and the enormous pain they endured, pain no one has ever even attempted to sooth.

Ring Counting Calculus

There’s a cross section of a giant sequoia in front of the Visitors Center in Yosemite Valley. If you study the rings and create a calculus based on your ring counting that guides you in how you live your life, that is your business. If you befriend me simply because you want to convince me that your ring counting calculus is correct, then I’m likely to think you’re a jerk. If you attempt to get laws passed that restrict my basic freedoms and tell others I’m a lowly, unworthy person based on your ring counting calculus, I’m likely to think you’re a dangerous jerk.