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.