SOMETIMES THE WAY OUT IS IN

What raises your hackles may not even ruffle my feathers. We're all different. But we share this: there are times when personal growth requires we face our fears and step into them.

A month back, my husband scared himself when he seriously considered attending a weekend quilting class. He spent long years seeking to squelch his creativity. Since coming out 15 years ago, he has sought to nourish this aspect of self. He has taught himself to sew and quilt. The opportunity to receive formal instruction appealed to him, but he resisted. He would be the only man there, feel out of place, obvious, in the spotlight. He put off making a decision until after the registration deadline had passed. Whew.

Me, I faced fear recently when I signed up for a 10-week intensive writing class with two female instructors. I felt energized by this opportunity. I kept talking about it to my husband and to anyone else who would listen. I had big plans. Was going to do great work. Dive into scary places. Write into my vulnerable spots. Just you watch. Can't wait for the course to begin. Bring it on.

I suspect my husband heard my nervous energy for what it was. When I get afraid I can get verbose. This helps me pretend I feel more confident than I do. Behind all the words, I was afraid I would be shown up, fall flat on my face, have nothing to say, once again be outed as an incompetent blowhard.

That first day of class a nighttime dream woke me up to what was going on. I pay attention to nighttime dreams. I find them instructive. They do an end run around my conscious mind, offer me a peek into my inner life. May I relate this one?

I enter a small one-story house. Along with two other men I get on an elevator that will take us eight floors below ground level. Before we even press the "down" button, the floor of the elevator begins to shake and tilt.

"I don't trust this!" I shout. I fling myself up onto the half-wall that surrounds the elevator shaft. My companions follow suit. The bottom of the elevator drops away; my stomach goes with it. A black hole gapes below us. We three belly-straddle the wall; our feet dangle over the abyss. I feel panic, intense fear.

We worm our way to relative safety on the floor. Two women enter.

"Mind the hole!" I yell, even as one of them steps right onto the emptiness, walks across to us.

"We know the hole there," she says.

I awaken, feeling a mix of fear and relief. Respect, too, for what dreams can reveal. I don't know what you make of it, but I see this: Here I am, first day of a writing class with two female instructors and the opportunity to go down deep within, and I dream of a house with a downward passage and two women who safely navigate the abyss.

Message to self: I may be prating on about how excited I am to plumb the depths, but there's a threefold part of me that's scrambling to stay safe, prefers playing the worm to plunging in. I'm running scared. Afraid I won't be good enough, won't have anything to say, won't like what I do have to say. I fear what I might learn about myself, that I may have to act on it.

Message to self: there's also a two-part feminine energy within me that knows this interior landscape, can handle it. Now there's a confidence booster.

Out of the dream comes this way forward: rather than talk about my big plans, I can face my fears. Rather than worm-crawl the perimeter, I can run at what scares me, jump in, plunge 80 feet down, see what happens before I hit bottom. I can start writing. Just do it.

And I do. I write into what absolutely scares the bejabbers out of me. I do good personal work, learn more than I want to about myself. Find it's true, what I've been told: "Write into your deepest fears; that's where the energy is."

The sign-up date had passed, but my husband called anyway. Any chance he could still sign up for the quilting class?

"Love to have you," she said.

He went. This week he finished piecing together a queen-size quilt top in the shoofly pattern, a traditional Amish design. Now begins the difficult work of hand quilting the whole thing. One step, one stitch at a time, he tells me. One leap, one headlong plunge into fear.

^{This essay appeared in The Community Letter, April 2011}

URHO AND ME: TWO PEAS IN A POD? TWO GRASSHOPPERS ON A STICK?

Every March 16 when I was a teen, my mother and I went all out. We strung streamers in Nile green and royal purple from doorways. We feasted on liver pudding, cranberry whip and other Finnish delicacies. We exchanged homemade greeting cards. We donned purple and green ribbons; clothing in that color combination was hard to come by in the 1970s. I made posters for the wall, grasshoppers holding signs that read, “Hoppy St. Urhoʼs Day.ˮ

I carried my celebrations over to school. Shoving my Finnish heritage in the face of anyone who stood near was one way I tried to explain myself. I knew I was not like others; St. Urhoʼs Day gave me opportunity to celebrate my being different, to pretend this quality was rooted in my ethnic heritage. The rest of the time, I used being the best-ever church boy as lid and lever to repress any hint that I was attracted to the “wrongˮ gender. I did not wish to know this about myself.

At the Christian college I attended I roomed with a man who was as rabidly Swiss as I was Finnish. We got into a knock-down-drag-out wrestling match when he stole my Finnish flag. On March 16 I made a big poster, “Proud to be Finnish,ˮ and plastered it over his bed.

When my children were born, I often sang them the Finnish lullaby my mother sang to me. Theyʼd have to get used to having a father who was not run-of-the-mill. I hoped theyʼd like liver. And church. My wife and I took them to Sunday School, Sunday services, Wednesday night prayer meetings and more.

From my earliest years, religion had helped me make sense of life, of who I was, where I was headed. My religious faith and Finnish heritage were part of me, blood and bone.

No one was more surprised than me when I came out in middle age, in mid-marriage, in the midst of the religious, conservative rural Midwest. Identifying as gay helped me understand why I had felt so different all my life. This was insight of a depth not offered by my ethnic background or religious upbringing.

Who was I? How was I to know? One after another, I watched the touchstones of my life topple.

Down went my identity as husband, every-day father to my children, church leader, church member, employed professional, good son, beloved brother, tacit believer in the legal system, qualified renter, upstanding citizen, acceptable person.

I came to see myself in new ways, as a member of an oppressed minority, part of a creative wellspring of people who as long as life have lived on the fringe, outside the pale, and added to the richness and texture of society. This on a good day. Some mornings I swallowed whole the message that I was outcast, other, a worthless piece of crap, repulsive, dirty, loser, liar, sick-o, sinner, a threat to my children.

Talk about identity crisis.

Who am I, anyway? Who are you? Are we all and only what and who we say we are, who others tell us we are? What comprises our identity? I live these questions every day—Sundays, Wednesday nights and March 16 included.

I never thought Iʼd identity as anything other than Christian, never dreamed Iʼd live outside the churchʼs embrace, yet I have developed a deep mistrust of organized religion. I thought my Finnish roots would always be front and center. But itʼs been a long time since I made liver pudding, waved the white flag with the light blue cross, bought another grasshopper figurine.

According to legend, St. Urho drove the grasshoppers out of the vineyards of Finland, saving the grape harvest and securing a name for himself. In Menaga, Minnesota stands a huge statue of the fearsome saint, a grasshopper speared on his pitchfork. I have often enough made pilgrimage there. The town holds an annual St. Urhoʼs Day festival parade. Some participants dress up like the saint; others go as grasshoppers.

Saint Urhoʼs story parallels that of Patrick, who reputedly drove the snakes out of Ireland, and for good reason. Folks in northern Minnesota dreamed up the legend of St. Urho as a kind of spoof. Why should the Irish have all the fun? The story caught on—any excuse for a party, for ethnic pride, for another mid-March celebration in a cold climate.

Even as Iʼm wearing my purple and green sweater this March 16, Iʼll wonder to what degree St. Urho and I are constituted of the same stuff. How real are we? How useful the identities we attach to ourselves? How long-lasting?

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, March 2011

THE POWER OF ONE

By the time I met him, Orville had mellowed. Years back he'd had a flash pot temper that went off without warning. As a child, my husband Dave ran scared of his dad's anger, always kept his guard up.

Orville was in his mid-80s when Dave came out. "You're my son. You're always welcome here," Orville told him. "Just don't bring any of your friends around."

At the time I counted myself one of Dave's friends. He and I had formed a mutual-survival pact. We'd agreed to companion each other through the coming out process, shared a six-month lease on an apartment.

Despite his dad's instructions, Dave soon invited me to accompany him on one of his regular trips to visit his father. I agreed to ride along. "He may not invite you in," Dave said. Fine by me. I'd heard enough stories about the old man's temper. I'd sit in the car, no problem.

To my surprise, Orville did invite me into the double-wide trailer house straightway. To my delight, he never looked back. He always welcomed me. I'd ask him about the good ol' days; I'd laugh at his jokes. He laughed at mine. He could hear the pitch of my voice easier than Dave's; I became the designated megaphone during regular visits to the house and later, the nursing home.

Dave's siblings had a harder time with his coming out than did their dad. I think they didn't know what to do with him (let alone me) and preferred to keep their distance.

Many a time Dave and I wished Orville would put his foot down, assert in his role as patriarch, "We are a family and no member of this family will be excluded from family gatherings." He never spoke these words; I think everyone involved lost something as a result. Only now after his death at age 97 have we taken tentative steps towards acting as a coherent family unit. I wish he were here to see it. I wish he had used his influence to make it happen.

In small ways and large we all of us exert influence on the world 'round. Even when that world falls apart, we may have more influence than we know.

When Dave came out, his world opened in many new ways. At the same time, the world his wife had been accustomed to turned suddenly on its head. Family dynamics shifted in the wake of their divorce. Their three adult children muddled through as best they could, provided support to one or both parents as they were willing and able. Holidays were celebrated in duplicate; a daughter's wedding gave rise to some tense moments.

Who knows how long this state of affairs might have continued. With plans underway for yet another daughter's wedding, Dave's former wife decided to take action. "We are going to be a family and present a unified front to the world," she said. She was as good as her word. She began by inviting Dave out for a meal to talk matters over. During their conversation her cell phone jangled. It was one of the kids calling to ask how she was doing.

"Your father and I are on a date," she said. Well. That news lit up the family hotline in nothing flat. Their parents were talking. And laughing together. Mom must be serious about being one family.

She was.

Leading by example, she enfolded both Dave and me into the wider family. We hugged, discussed wedding particulars, hung decorations together. We stood side by side in the receiving line. In the several years since, this one family has celebrated holidays and important events together, welcomed the arrival of two grandchildren, weathered job losses, medical issues and moves—the stuff of life, and for all of us now, the stuff of family life.

This past December I looked at the faces lit by the Christmas tree and thought, those kids' mother gave them back their parents. She gave me a family. What a gift.

My former wife and I took a different tack. Upon my coming out we parted ways and have remained east and west ever since. She found solace and refuge in a system of religious beliefs that left no room for a continuing relationship with me. Our three sons soon followed in their mother's footsteps. Now adults, they remain estranged from me.

Amazing, the power, the potential, of one. Of anyone. Of you, of me. And what shall we do with our power? Squelch it? Use it to build up or to tear down? Ours is the weighty responsibility—and amazing power—to choose.

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, February 2011

TO LIFE, HAMMERING AT THE DOOR

"Our culture ignores the power of initiation. Uninitiated boys become lost men leading unfulfilled lives. The male initiation experience we offer makes a difference."

This was the official spiel and I was skeptical. I'd come to the graduation ceremony to honor a friend's successful completion of the male initiation program offered by a non-profit organization. I didn't come to be sold a bill of goods.

Then one by one the 30 new initiates stood to speak. Man after man described the recent weekend event as the most powerful experience of his life. I listened intently. That evening I reserved a space on the next initiatory weekend, still some months away. it couldn't come soon enough for me.

I had a vague notion the venture would include drumming in the woods. What else, I didn't know. I didn't care. I wanted whatever those 30 men had found. I set out with anticipation.

What I did not anticipate was boot camp. As soon as I and my fellow initiates set foot on the wooded site, we were ordered about, offered no explanations, extended no sympathy.

We languished in cramped dark quarters. We were yelled at. One instructor played good cop; two dozen more acted bad ass. We received scant rations, cold showers, little sleep, loud lectures. One unexpected experience after another kept us off-balance.

At last, our resistance worn down and our bodies worn out, we were herded into a darkened enclosure. We were told to sit on the concrete floor and keep quiet.

Off in the woods began a distant drumming, accompanied by men shouting and chanting in unison. The noise grew closer, louder, more intense. It erupted right outside the rusty doors of the metal hut in which we waited. Then came a loud rapping. Someone, something wanted in. I was convinced that whatever or whoever it was, it held the power to change my life. My heart raced. My hands shook. My breath came in gasps. I thought the top of my head might lift off. As the chanting reached a crescendo, the man next to me elbowed my ribs. I heard his dry voice: "I'm not buying any of this, are you?" At that moment, the ribbed steel doors of the hut were wrenched open.

For me, that whole weekend was tinged with a sense of possibility, magic—and déjà vu. In condensed form, it echoed some of my coming out experiences of six years earlier.

Coming out remains the watershed moment of my life, the reckoning point that divides the B.C. and A.D. of my existence. It changed the course of my life. It threw me off-balance and held me there whilst a deep reordering took place in my psyche.

I came out at age 34. It remains the single most scary, painful, destructive, instructive, exhilarating and wonderful experience of my life. I will never know what it is to give birth to a child, but I will always remember giving birth to myself.

And I will always wonder, 'why did it take me so long to get there?'

Part of the answer rings in the dry voice at my elbow. For years it was my own arid withering self-talk: "You absolute loser. You sin-sick reprobate of a worm scudding to hell. You little dog turd. Don't you know men are supposed to be attracted to women? Can't you pray a little harder? Can't you control your thought life any better than that?"

I admire young people who come out early. I feel jealous of them. And rather stupid. How could I not realize I was gay? How many clues were staring me in the face? How many chances to come out earlier did I miss? How many times did life come roaring up, rapping at my door, ready to teach me about loving and accepting myself—and how many times, unwilling or unable to face my sexual orientation, did I turn away?

How much life I must have missed out on! Or maybe not. Maybe the time wasn't right. Maybe I was not psychically strong enough to face the truth of my sexual orientation. Maybe a deep inner wisdom whispered, "Not yet, not now." Maybe that wisdom is still at work in me.

Maybe life is forever knocking at my door, wanting to come in and shake things up, offer me chances to grow into more life. Maybe I can trust the process as it unfolds, take one step at a time, be gentle with myself even as I honor my current understanding, knowledge and awareness. Maybe all of life is one long initiation into itself. To which I say, "L'chaim!"

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, January 2011

WE'LL TELL YOU WHAT'S ACCEPTABLE, ALRIGHT

It was one of those glorious wet snows. Huge flakes frosted the tree branches, carpeted the ground, plastered white-out all over the vehicles in our driveway. My husband Dave and I were headed for town that Saturday morning and I was out of the house first for once. Not enough time to make a proper snowman, not really, so I quick fashioned a dinky one, rolled up three mini-snowballs using the fluff accumulated on the rear windshield of the car. It stood all of nine inches tall. Fine twigs served for spidery fingers and a whispery nose.

While Dave puttered in the house, I played in the snow. I started with a fist-sized snowball beside the driveway. By the time I'd rolled it past the tire swing and over to the redbud tree, it was thigh-high and had left a widening trail of green grass and dry leaves. I rolled another, then another, stacked them atop each other, and packed in additional snow to hold them in place. I hurried. This was no cool young rocker dude. This was a stout middle-aged fellow in a pale white jumpsuit spotted with crinkly brown beech leaves.

My husband waited in the truck whilst I armed the snowman with two sticks and nosed both sides of his head with two more. I wanted two-faced Janus to preside over our yard. I tilted his roadside nose up to give him a spirited air. His private face I turned downward so he could admire the sizeable genitals I fashioned on that side of his body pointed away from passersby.

In less time than it takes to tell I had brought two snowmen into being. In turn they had brought me simple pleasure both in the making in their taking their place in the white world. Dave and I left for town and I thought little more about them. But they weren't finished with me. They yet had lessons to offer.

I eyed Janus when we returned. How like me, this man of snow! On his public face, an upbeat expression, arms held high as if to embrace the world; on his private side, a raging hard-on and thoughts hot enough to threaten a total melt-down. How like me, this man of snow! Creature of a season, temporal, his hold on life so tenuous, of such short duration. How like me, this man of snow! His pale skin flecked with blotches of dried leaves, one arm larger than the other, cracked in the head. Imperfect but with his own quirky sense of humor and sense of self.

On Sunday afternoon I winced to see he had toppled face-forward, smashed his penis into the ground. The mini-snowman atop my car fared better and on Monday morning made the trip into work intact.

There, I learned I had violated a law I hadn’t even known about: men shall not make cute little snowmen and put them atop their cars. If they do, they certainly shall not leave them perched there for the others to see. This message came at me in various ways. Several of my coworkers made a point of alluding to the little passenger. One asked, "Did you get attacked by Frosty on the way into work?" My supervisor was surprised to learn I myself had made the snowman. "I thought one of the guys put it up there on your car," she said.

I then understood she'd seen it as probable harassment. She wasn't the only one. That night a gay friend phoned me. "The guys at work giving you a hard time?" he asked. "I drove by there today and saw somebody had put a little snowman on top your car."

Dang. And here I thought he was cute.

The message to me—and to how many others—is endlessly enforced: Thou Shalt Conform to Gender Roles. You are a man, therefore you will like what men are supposed to like. You will act as we expect you to act. Cross the line and you set into motion a whole lumbering societal machinery; it's aim: crush individuality, maintain order and control, minimize resistance.

A landmark study published this fall reports that 41 percent of transgender persons surveyed have attempted suicide (compared to 1.6 percent of the general population). What does this say about our society? Some of us, more than others, pay a high price to live as individuals, lead lives of courage, say yes to the heart's deepest leadings.

Courageous or not, conformist or quirky, our lives are soon over. We all of us are made of snow. Already we are melting. My advice: Play. Create. Laugh. Love.

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, December 2010

TO THE BITTER DREGS

The following Thanksgiving story features ups and downs, pathos, passion, more than a hint of extramarital sex, murder-suicide and a surprising plot twist. It sounds like a Hollywood movie—or maybe like life itself. I've fleshed out some details with period research and my own imagination.

As I envision it, this particular Thanksgiving starts out as have many others at the Thompson residence, that big place in the town's better neighborhood. The kitchen hums with activity. That's some good cooking you smell.

The six kids will be arriving soon, along with their families. Thanksgiving has a way of shining a spotlight on family. Mrs. Thompson wants to have everything ready. Oh, it's not as if the President were coming. He and Mrs. Coolidge are upstate this weekend, several hours northeast of Big Stone Gap. Big honor for Virginia, hosting the vacationing First Couple for five whole days. The President read out the traditional Thanksgiving proclamation a few days early this year to allow him to get away from it all.

That's what John Winton Thompson wishes he could do—walk away from everything. Instead, the very walls seem to be closing in around him. He feels trapped, desperate. And all because of that Catron woman.

Rosa Bishop Catron moved to town a couple years ago, lives alone in a little house down by the hosiery mill. Been married three times, has three sons (three that people know about). She's quite the character. Ask almost anyone in town. Young, too. At 41, Rosa is 14 years his junior. She makes him feel like a kid again. Or did at first. Today he feels old, terribly, terribly old.

And angry. Very angry.

He fingers his pistol. How could he have let it come to this? As former deputy sheriff of Wise County, he once swore to uphold the law of the land. He knows rules. He's about to break a whole lot of them.

I wonder how he leaves the house this morning. With a goodbye to his wife? A promise to be back in time for dinner? He won't make it. For John there will be no clink of glasses around the laden table, no clattering of plates. No happy family gathering, no feasting, no giving of thanks. Rather, the taking of life.

Here's what the Virginia Post, Wednesday, December 5, 1928, has to say: "TWO DEAD FROM DRINKING POISON HERE THURSDAY, John Thompson Forces Catron Woman to Drink Drug and Then Poisons Himself — Both Die Within Few Minutes.

"John Thompson, 55, former deputy sheriff of Wise County and road contractor, and Mrs. Rosa Catron, a resident of the district around the hosiery mill here, are both dead as the result of an affair which occurred Thursday morning at 11:00 o'clock in which Thompson is said to have forced the woman to drink a deadly poison at the point of a pistol and to have taken the remainder of the deadly poison himself.

"Thompson it is stated went to a local druggist Thursday morning and purchased forty cents worth of strychnine and a bottle of Abbott Bitters. Upon being questioned by the drug clerk, he declared that he intended to poison some rats. He then went to the home of [Rosa Catron], and according to her story told just before she died, poured the drug into the bottle and told her to drink it. When she refused, she said, he drew a pistol and threatened to shoot her. She complied and drank a part of the poison. He then told her what she had taken whereupon she rushed of out the house to the home of a neighbor where she told her story as doctors worked over her in the half hour before her life was gone.

"Thompson was found in the Catron house dead as the result of drinking the remainder of the deadly drug.

"According to the woman, Thompson and she had been acquainted and had quarreled for reasons not disclosed. Thompson is survived by his wife and six children while Mrs. Catron is survived by three sons."

That's the official story. Now for the plot twist. According to genealogist Brenda H. Reed (weberiteheresy.com), members of the Catron family believe Rosa killed John, then drank the brew herself.

Who knows what really happened. That's life—not knowing. That's life—ups, downs, passion, love, loss, wonderful moments, elusive truths. We all die in the end, that's life, too. Yet we're called to give thanks. The most contented, gentle angry person I know is a gay man who looks life full in the face, as it is, and without flinching, with deep sincerity, says, "thank you."

This essay appeared in The Community Letter, November 2010

SLOWING DOWN

Had you asked me if I was “driven,” I would have said, “No.” Had you asked my wife or our three young children, they might have given a different answer. They might have mentioned my long hours away from home, the nights I slept on my office floor, the way I’d pack the kids off to the grandparents’ whenever a major deadline loomed at work.

Had you asked if I was running from something, I would have given you a blank stare. I kept busy to avoid seeing how unhappy I was and why.

My frantic pace ground almost to a halt when I came out to myself and to others as a gay man. Voicing this realization cost me my wife, my children, my friends, my employment, my church membership, and my religious beliefs. I went from a desk job at an evangelical Christian college to making biscuits at a fast-food restaurant just off the interstate.

Five days a week for over a year I watched the sun rise with a co-worker. She’d motion for me to join her — “You got to see this!” — and we’d peer at the oranges, pinks, purples, and blues of the broad Indiana sky, often sticking our heads out the drive-through window to get a better view. These moments reminded me that the world presents itself anew every morning; just as night follows day, day also follows night. With this in mind I begin to rebuild my life.

This article appeared in The Sun, Issue 418, October 2010