Dear Boone Grove High School Librarian,

Dear Boone Grove High School librarian,

I feel rather sheepish coming to you this late in my life with an overdue book. OK, not overdue, stolen. A book I stole from the library 47 years ago when I was in eighth grade. My husband and I are cleaning house, setting my affairs in order. Today we started going through my books—I have a ton of them—and the race is on. Doctors tell me I have maybe two months left to live with pancreatic cancer.

One of the books I pulled from the shelf today was Wolf Brother by Jim Kjelgaard. I smiled when I found it, set it aside. I want to return it to you with my apologies.
Kjelgaard’s novel spoke to me back when I was a gay boy who did not then know he was gay. A goody two shoes, good church boy who worked in the library’s AV section, helping set up audio visual equipment for various classrooms. A bookish lad, shy, withdrawn, introverted, teased. Teased for what? For being gay, awkward, naive, stupid, foolish. For being a prick, a prig. A boy who identified with the main character in Wolf Brother.

It’s the story of an Apache youth who returns to his people after years in a white man’s boarding school. He gets caught up with a band of his people who refuse to remain confined to the reservation, choose to pursue freedom against overwhelming odds. The Apache are branded as cutthroat savages, hunted mercilessly. The boy earns the name Wolf Brother when he befriends a lonesome wolf cub and vice versa. This unlikely pair play an important role in the novel, come to each other’s rescue, are able to escape, eventually help carry hope back to the tribe. Wolf Brother serves as an example of how to make it through.

What spoke to me in this tale? Perhaps it was echoes of a boy who is on the outside, whose world is falling apart, who must find his way through tribulation and trial, anger and prejudice, make a way for himself and a life for those he loves.

Throughout my life is not Wolf who has been my totem, my spirit animal guide, but Bear. Bear came to me in a recurring dream throughout childhood. Time and time again he chased me around and around and around the garage at our house on Highway Two. It was always the same dream: me, running pell mell in terror, the bear hot on my heels. I would wake up sweating, panting, scared.

The dream came back to me after I'd come out as a gay man in mid life. Had left a wife and three small children, was living by myself in a ratty apartment in a building soon to be condemned by the city. Sleep was hard in those days. Eating was hard. Putting a life together was hard. Then Bear showed up to terrorize my night dreams.

I was angry, but had the wherewithal to say, I cannot go on like this. I will not. The next time this dream happens, I'm going to turn and face the bear. The dream came again with Bear chasing me around my parent's garage. As I ran through the pine trees I could feel its hot breath on my neck, slap of pine tree needles in my face.

I turned to face the bear, plunged my hands deep into its fur, yanked its face up towards mine. (My skin still gets goose pimples when I think of this.) I looked that animal straight in the eyes. It was me I was looking at. I was the bear. I was running from myself.

I realized I had always been running from myself.

I swore then to walk alongside Bear, rely on his power, strength, courage, wisdom. He has reappeared to me since. Never again in the dream chasing me. But whether in waking life or in the liminal world of sleep, I pay attention when Bear shows up.
After coming out I met and married a man whose animal totem Wolf is different than mine. Yet he understood and embraced the concept of an animal spirit guide. We share many similarities. Dave grew up on a farm in rural northwest Ohio; I grew up on a hobby farm in rural northwest Indiana. We share core values: simplicity, integrity, compassion. Value the unseen as much as the seen. Live without TV, cell phone and until recently internet connection. He's retired now after a long stint as chaplain with hospice. (I signed up for hospice yesterday.)

In partnership with this Wolf Brother of mine, I learned to live outside the rules of society. We made our way as two gay men in rural Indiana against blatant opposition from the legal system, religious system, society at large. In 24 years together our lives, our love has served as an example for others. They’ve told us so. I am grateful.

Grateful, too, for a story that spoke to me those many years ago. Grateful for the way I embraced the story, lived it, made it my own. My thanks to you for the lifetime loan of this book are long overdue.

Sincerely,
Bryn Marlow, Class of ’77
Boone Grove School
Home of the Wolves

Flying Lessons from an Unlikely Angel

    "The world had been sad since Tuesday." Gabriel Marquez grabs my attention with this line in his short story, "A Very Old Man with Enormous Wings." The sad world expresses itself with ash-grey skies and sea, three days of constant rain.

     During the downpour the parents of a newborn baby find an aged man lying face down in their backyard. His bedraggled wings are stuck in the mud. They’re amazed at first, but then. . . . well, the man is ancient, bald, nearly toothless. He speaks what they guess is Norwegian. They take him for a shipwrecked sailor—until the wise woman of the village points out the obvious: he has wings; he must be an angel.

"Club him to death," she says.

    They lock him in the chicken coop instead and call for the priest. He finds the winged man suspect. The old geezer smells terribly human and doesn’t understand Latin, the language of God. A crowd gathers. Curiosity-seekers gawk and jeer. Pilgrims pray and petition. The homeowners fence off their yard and charge a nickel admission. The line stretches as far as they can see.

    The angel ignores them all. Eventually, the visitors and villagers lose interest, distracted by some new wonder. The courtyard falls silent. The angel’s hosts don’t mind. They’ve made enough money to better their situation.

    His eyes rheumy with age, the angel wanders house and yard, bumps into posts, seems not long for this world.

    Then one day the wife sees him attempt flight. He careens about the yard, crashes into the shed, ploughs into the vegetable garden. At last he lifts off. She breathes a sigh of relief, both for herself and for him, watches until he becomes a small dot on the horizon.

    End of story. And the beginning of its impact on me.

+ + +

    We human beings have such a messed up relationship with the divine. Sure, drop an angel in our laps and we’ll take notice—then take advantage or try to turn a profit. Soon enough our attention wanders. Magic unfolds beneath our noses and we count it beneath our notice. We’re messed up, indeed.

    Or maybe not. Maybe we’re simply human. T.S. Elliot writes: “‘Go, Go,’ said the bird. ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’”

    The birds I live with keep driving this message home. Every day my pet chickens present me with fresh eggs—the stuff of miracle and mystery. Yet I take them for granted.

    You’ve seen the inside of an egg. Nothing magic there. A yellow ball of pus sailing a translucent sea of snot. Mmm. I’ll have mine over easy, please.

    But put a fertile egg in our home incubator—as we did this spring—and 21 days later a baby chick emerges. Mouths open, my husband Dave and I watched life literally unfold, take a deep breath, start kicking about and knocking into things.

    This little winged miracle has since lost its luster, become just another chicken in our home flock. Another mouth to feed and water, another bird to lock in at night. Another reason to clean out the coop.

    Chicken shit happens. And human kind cannot bear too much reality.

+ + +

    I might as well have been a Norwegian castaway dropped with a thump into the middle of my very straight, very conservative church-going family. It wasn’t wings but horns they thought I’d grown when I came out as a gay man. What to do with me? Club me to death? Call in the priest? Lock me away? They tried everything they knew.

    Not until my wings grew strong enough, not until I could unfurl them, careen about the place, finally take flight . . . not until I became a dot on their horizon did my true nature show itself.

+ + +

    Maybe that’s how it is for each of us—we are born with tattered feathers, thrash about, run headlong into walls. Only when we recognize the reality of the divine within, the miracle of our being, only then are we able to cut loose and fly.





Image: Louis Tiffany's window, "Angel of the Resurrection" (1904), Indianapolis Museum of Art, compliments of Wikipedia

WHAT’S WITH THESE LITTLE BITE MARKS ON MY NECK, ANYWAY?

  

 “Do you want me to make you anything special for your birthday?” Dave asks.

     “Yes,” I say, “cake.”

    His mouth falls open.

    “With ice cream. And hot fudge.”

    “Are you serious?” he asks. My husband’s expression, his entire body language shouts, I’ve been waiting all year for this!

    We decided to avoid sugar and artificial sweeteners this year as much as possible. The no’s started on New Year’s Day. No cake, no cookies, no candy, no chocolate chips. Worse, no ice cream.

    Amazing the prepared foods laced with sugar: bread, snack crackers, red beans, creamed corn, dried fruit, light mayo, marshmallows. Many others. 

    We’ve changed our eating habits. No coffee creamer. No dry cereal with any taste. We now dress salads with oil and vinegar. For dessert, bananas—or apples, almonds, plain yogurt, muffins made with fruit juice concentrate instead of sugar, and so on.

    I’ve been resolute. (Dave calls it stubborn.) I’m like that. Once my mind clamps down on an idea I’ll face hell and high water before I let go.

    Of late I’ve met Count Chocula’s gaze without flinching. Told the Nestlé bunny to get lost. And shed 30 pounds since January. This strengthens my resolve.

    So my birthday request surprises Dave. “What kind of cake do you want?” he asks.

    “Something light,” I say, grabbing a vintage cookbook. “Here: Dorothy’s Fabulous Oatmeal Cake. But just a half-recipe, please—one layer.”

    A few days later Dave unveils his masterpiece: a nine-inch round cut in half, stacked two layers high, slathered with coconut-pecan penuche. I forget to breathe.

    I want that cake. I WANT it. It surprises and shames me how much I want it. Want all of it. Am prepared to face down anyone who’d dare stop me, even Dave.

    I’ve forgotten sugar has this effect on me.

    My intense craving reminds me of a gruesome passage I read, maybe in one of Anne Rice’s vampire novels.


    Two sexy young men fall for each other. Their love is doomed. Not only does medieval society forbid such relationships, a vampire wants one of them as his new boy toy.

    The vampire stakes his claim during a bloody necking session. The youth resists the older man’s advances, then refuses to embrace his own fateful transformation.

    The young lovers are imprisoned separately in a castle dungeon. Jailers ply the one with food; they starve the other.

    Crazed with hunger and a thirst he’s never known, the boy toy collapses against his cell door. It opens. He wanders a dark corridor, senses a warm-blooded animal presence ahead. His lips pull back from his teeth. He snarls.

    He nearly flies down the hallway, attacks, eats, drinks. Only afterward does he realize he’s killed his lover. No matter. The transformation is complete. He is vampire.




    Eying my birthday cake, I can relate.

    Desire is the thing with teeth. I know this. Although I’m a novice when it comes to erotica, I can devote hours looking at pictures of sexy men. That photos still fascinate me my friend Jim finds quaint. Like most gay men I know, he prefers online videos.

    “A magazine with nude pictures used to excite me,” he says. “Now it’s passé. I’ve been desensitized. It takes more and more extreme images to get me off. Some nights I spend two hours surfing for the one video that will do it.”

    He pauses. “And you know what? It’s dampened my desire for one-on-one human contact. The men I meet in real life never measure up to what I can see online.”

    Another friend tells me he stopped watching internet porn after hearing a TED talk about how pornography zaps the power of the imagination. He abstained for three months.

    I’d probably last three days. My steadfast refusal to get wired is in part, self-preservation. If we had internet access at home I fear I’d turn vampire. I forget that eye candy, like ice cream, is best enjoyed in moderation. Desire bites the hand that feeds it. Sometimes the neck.


Image credit: detail, Temptation of Saint Anthony, by Grünewald

The Uses of Enchantment

    The spotlight hits the shiny silver tinsel curtain. Out steps the master of ceremonies. He leers at us with thick mascaraed eyes, gender-bending costume of tight black pants, black army boots, tightly laced corset, white tank top undershirt. I know this character. He lives inside me and has for a long time.

    “Wilkommen, bienvenue, welcome…" he sings, “Fremde, enchantre, stranger.” It's our local civic theatre’s production of the stage musical Cabaret. The setting is the Kit Kat Klub in Berlin. The Nazi Party is coming to power and the main characters are oblivious. Life is a cabaret, after all.

    For the audience, too. In an oily voice the emcee tells us, “Leave all your troubles outside. Here, life is beautiful." And so it seems. Singing, dancing, laughs and love stories muffle the drumbeat of approaching horror.

    It comes as a shock to us watching, the first appearance of the swastika, that black-on-white-on-red symbol. We cringe when we hear the Nazi Party’s anthem sung with gusto, watch others go on with their lives as if they haven’t a care in the world. We know what they are not able or willing to see. It’s playing out before our eyes. And theirs.

    As the evening progresses, the emcee’s role grows more and more sinister. Grinning his death mask grin he openly mocks Jews, throws a brick through the window of a Jewish shopkeeper. For most of the play the main characters act like nothing out of the ordinary is happening. As the close, Cliff, a writer from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, decides to write a novel about his experience: There was a cabaret and there was a master of ceremonies in a city called Berlin, in a country called Germany, and it was the end of the world. I was dancing with Sally Bowles and we were both fast asleep.

     “Life is a cabaret, old chum, come to the cabaret.” Sally doesn’t fool us with her celebrated song. It’s obvious to us her life is anything but a cabaret. It’s unraveling. Hitler’s reach extends to the doors of the Kit Kat Klub. Death, destruction and doom are in the offing. We know this. What to do with our knowledge, that’s the question.

    One dance number includes a Rockettes-like kickline. We have our hands apart, ready to clap and cheer—but the performers finish with a Heil Hitler salute and goose-step off stage. Into the awkward silence a man behind me asks, “How are you supposed to applaud that?”

    We audience members are not innocent bysitters; we’re implicated by what we know. We know life is no cabaret—not for them on stage, not for us in our padded seats. Yet we act like it is. Here we are at the theatre, forgetting our troubles for an evening. 

    What are we avoiding?

    The emcee—the whole show—keeps telling me something I already know, a message that came mixed in with my baby formula: it takes a lot of work not to see what's in front of your face, not to hear what's being said, not to know what you know . . . but if we all work together we can make it happen.

    With concerted effort, I grew up unaware I am gay. My family valued denial and avoidance as coping mechanisms. Too few years ago my parents worked hard to ignore the cancer then ravaging my dad's body. His "sudden" death genuinely surprised my mother.

    Denial permeates our culture and our country’s politics. Elected leaders vie to lead the parade of their constituents pooh-poohing the latest bad news. The call to avoidance is everywhere. Pretend. Deny. Escape.

     How well I know it. Almost every day an oily voice deep within promises a comfy chair, speedy internet connection and plenty of eye candy—easy entertainment to numb the gritty pain of living fully alive.

    Bienvenue stranger.

    Stranger? He and I are old friends.


photo credit: Otto Dix, Metropolis 1928

Proof positive

The Goodwill store is crazy busy—half-off sale today, storewide. The checkout lines stretch from here to next Sunday. My husband Dave saunters over. I signal I’m ready to go.

Dave gestures behind him. “See that man way over there, next to the guy in the red coat?”

I scan the crowd.

“He’s in the far checkout lane, towards the back.”

“White shirt and bow tie? College age?”

“That’s him. I was walking past and he stopped me. Said, ‘You spoke in my social work class last semester. I want to thank you. You changed my life.’”

“Really?” I take another look. “How cool. Great. I’m glad he said something to you.”

“That’s for you, too. For both of us. We both would have spoken to that class.”

Dave’s right. We’re often asked to address social work and psychology classes at area colleges and universities. We go as the featured couple or as co-participants in panel discussions. We tell our coming out stories. We talk about what it is for us to be gay in this time and place. We answer questions. Any more, students are generally receptive.

“I wonder which class it was,” I say. “I don’t recognize him. I wonder what he heard that made such an impact. I think you should go over and ask him to elaborate.”

To my surprise, Dave agrees. He’s bolder than I and more socially adept. I tag along. He taps the young man on the shoulder. “We were wondering: could you say a little more about your story?”

Joe College obliges, and as he starts talking I’m able to place him: The Man With the Crotch. Drop-dead gorgeous, dark eyes, Adonis face, olive shirt unzipped to offer a tantalizing glimpse of his chest, tight red jeans, stylish leather shoes. Devastatingly handsome. I wanted to spend the entire period looking—no, gawking—at him. I restrained myself. Whenever I addressed the class I avoided looking his way for fear I’d babble. Not easy to do. He sat directly in front of me, legs spread wide. When I wasn’t talking, I looked down.

After class, Dave and I compared notes.

“He’s so cute.” (We both knew who I was talking about.)

“Adorable. I just wanted to stare at him.”

“Me, too. In fact, I did stare. At his crotch.”

“Do you think he’s gay?”

We thought we’d never really know, but here we are, getting it straight from the source.

Not that it’s been easy for him. He grew up in foster care, was told to hide his sexual orientation—“otherwise you’ll never be adopted.”

Indeed, his family of origin severed all ties with him when they learned he’s gay, booted him back into the foster care system. Eventually the couple he calls his grandparents adopted him.

“And they’re fine with my being gay. They love me, as do my amazing friends.” He turns and points to a motley crew of students behind him. They look our way and grin. They’re a diverse lot—race, gender, body type. All friendly.

Good. He surrounds himself with supportive people.

He says what meant so much to him when we spoke in class was the obvious love Dave and I share. “I was right there with you, crying when you cried, listening to every word, seeing two men who really love each other. You guys changed my life.”

My mind flashes to Bob and Bruce, Larry and Larry. Early in our coming out Dave and I saw separately in these two couples proof positive that long-term gay relationships do exist and can be richly rewarding. Knowing this gave us something to shoot for, confidence we could.

I hope that’s where Joe College is now—buoyed by hope, poised to call into being then will into reality a love-filled life.

“Can I hug you guys?” he asks.

Zowie.

Sootprints in fnow

Kevin Payravi, Wikimedia Commons

    We live so much of our lives without telling anyone. But not when we walk through a snowy landscape.

Several inches of new snow fell last night and I’m taking advantage of the afternoon light to traipse amongst the trees. I can see by the deer's cloven hoof prints the place it leaped the fence. There’s the rabbit’s dash-dash-dot and the raccoon's little paw print. Here a mouse scrimshandered a thin line atop the snow, then tunneled down under. (Such a little creature to face the great winter.) The squirrel's bounding trail of double dots connects one tree to another, then explodes in a mess of dirt and torn-up earth where it retrieved a buried nut from the frozen ground. Great galumphing footprints behind me testify to my own passage through this little piece of the world.

Traces of my presence—and yours—are not always so visible as footprints in snow, though they may linger after we’ve passed.

Recently my husband Dave and I watched the 1970 film "The Boys in the Band.” We'd heard of it but never seen it on stage or screen. The show opened Off-Broadway in 1968. Says playwright Tony Kushner of Angels in America fame, “...it certainly started a new era in American drama, and was an immense contribution in American literature because it’s so unapologetically gay.”

The action centers around nine men at a birthday party. It's funny, sad and suspenseful all at the same time. The friends trade vicious cut-downs almost as a matter of course. This put me off on a first viewing. Why must they be so negative towards themselves and each other? I've watched it four more times, however, and come to appreciate its humor, heart and snapshot of pre-Stonewall gay life.

In one scene the embittered Michael confronts his college roommate about the latter's reaction to a mutual friend’s coming out.

 “You couldn’t take it, so you destroyed the friendship and your friend along with it,” Michael says. "To this day he remembers the treatment and scars he got from you."

This line sticks with me. Even today, the coming out process for many LGBT people is fraught with peril and littered with former friendships. This was true of my experience. My life has been shaped by a society that had no place—no word, even—for someone like me. I carry the scars of my late parents' eventual and lukewarm tolerance of me. They were unable to fully embrace me as their son once they learned I am gay.

Yet others trail healing in their wake. When I came out at 35 my grandmother was 90 years old and the one person in my family of origin who accepted me without reservation. My mind goes to this scene:  Dave and I sit with Grandma in the church she's attended for nearly 60 years. The pews and paneling are of ash; the aisles carpeted in red with tiny flecks of black. Frosted glass windows discourage daydreaming. Today is Communion Sunday. Grandma learns Dave and I will not be offered the sacrament. Incensed, this little white-haired lady puts away her usual smile and marches up the center aisle, leading Dave and me out of the building.

This memory of my grandmother’s show of support nurtures and sustains me years after her death. As she well knew, people do not remember what you do or say, so much as they remember how you make them feel. Grandma made me feel like a million bucks. No, she made me feel loved.

Love. Such a little thing to arm ourselves with as we face the great cold. And best shared with another—person, animal, plant, planet. For no matter how many our footsteps upon the earth, our trail is soon ended. A few generations pass; the snow melts and all trace of us is gone.

A funny kind of love

    His invitation to celebrate Thanksgiving pulls me up short. I read it again, then once more, then squint at it and read it aloud. “We would love to have anyone—everyone!” It’s from my one-year-younger brother. He posts it to the private Facebook group for members of our extended family.

    But he doesn’t mean it, not the way it sounds. Anyone, everyone? He can’t mean it that way. He’s inviting my husband Dave and me to Thanksgiving dinner?

    It's been years since Judas (not his real name) and I spoke to each other. He leaves my occasional letters unanswered. Except for funerals, he boycotts family events to which I am invited. Not that there are many. I’m the black sheep of our family. The rest of the flock is afraid I shed. They don’t want dark ringlets of wool all over the davenport. They take their cues from our Bible-thumping brother. He preaches in the type of church we five siblings were raised in—one that excludes gay people from fellowship.

    His invitation reads like the title of a children’s sermon: “Thumper Invites Black Sheep for Thanksgiving Dinner.” Has he lost his mind? Or has he changed it?

    I’m guilty of pickling in formaldehyde people I haven’t seen for years. I expect high school friends to look just the way they did when last I left them, and to hold the same opinions and beliefs. I expect my favorite college professor to appear in a wrinkled green suit with a narrow black tie, rap his knuckles on the table as he talks to me. I’m surprised almost every time I reconnect. People have moved on in my absence, grown more wrinkled, wiser and dear.

    What if Judas did have a change of heart, does indeed mean to invite me for Thanksgiving? Ooh, that will upset my applecart. I’ve convinced myself I am the bigger (and better) person because I reach out to him from time to time, am willing to overlook his offenses. But it’s easy to be noble in a party of one. Maybe he’s calling my bluff.

    I could ask him if “anyone—everyone” includes me. Sure, I could. But do I want to? He testified against me at my child custody and divorce hearing. Do I want to open myself to outright rejection again? And what if he says “Yes, come on over.” Do I want to sit down to table with him?

    Maybe we could build bridges, set an example for the wider family, recapture some of what we had as kids—those long talks when we were supposed to be asleep, when we were marooned in the wild cherry tree, closeted in the clubhouse in the garage’s rafters.

    I email him privately, keep my tone neutral, my words few: “May Dave and I join you for Thanksgiving Day?" I leave it at that.

    So does he.

    A month passes. His silence rankles. What do I want? Not for him to change. There will be no miracles here. I want common courtesy, the decency of a reply.

    My follow-up email elicits a direct response, a first in over 15 years. For this alone I am grateful. Judas writes to inform me that no, I am not welcome in his home; the invitation was not family-wide. He’s doing what he believes God wants from him. He’s sure I am doing what I feel is best. He signs off by twice saying he loves me.

    A funny kind of love, this, wrapped in religion and dubious convictions.

    But some of my own convictions are suspect: Chickens are the most intelligent life form on the planet; Horseradish is the secret to the good life; When in doubt, sing.

    So my brother says he loves me. Well, well. I happen to think love is our only hope. I’d like to believe it is enough.

A prayer to the god of new beginnings

True to its deep nature, again this spring the world burst into bloom all around the farmhouse where Dave and I live. A small woods borders our house on two sides. In drear months we see the houses north of us. Come spring, however, the trees begin to green. First, soft yellow-green fuzz and a smattering of sea foam on the woodland floor. Then we go to bed on one night and wake up to windows shuttered with leaves a hundred shades of green. Bye, bye, neighbors. See you in November.

Meanwhile, we feast our eyes on an ever-changing array of color. My retiree husband has a green thumb. (Mine’s flame orange; I manage to kill even cacti.) Dave has fashioned garden spots across our yard, filled each bed with perennials that bloom variously throughout the growing season. Something flowers from early spring to late fall. Weekdays, if the weather is decent, we lunch outside when I come home over the noon hour.

June 6 this year marked the thirtieth anniversary of my wedding a woman, and the start of a long chain of events set in motion by this decision. My mood was somber, my thoughts heavy that Thursday through the egg salad sandwiches, carrot and celery sticks, and chocolate cake Dave had prepared. Our shared meal over, I nosed the car onto the road. A moment later I braked, stopped waving goodbye and instead beckoned for Dave to come look. Smack dab in the middle of the road stood two newborn fawns. Little dinky things, no bigger than a minute. Brown and caramel-colored, their sides dotted with rows of white. Spindly legs, big eyes and ears. Their mother stood at attention on the other side of our farm gate, head held high, ears forward.

I watched a long while, then eased the car forward; I had to get back to work. The twin fawns ran toward the gate. One edged up alongside the fence; the other panicked and stopped in the clear, threw its legs akimbo and tried to bury its nose in the dirt. I slid by, marveling all the while. One can live long in such moments, witness to wonder.

So. When I went out to feed the chickens the other morning I found two sparrow hatchlings fluttering against a windowpane in the barn. Their parents had made a nest in the rafters near the poultry quarters. These young’ns had tried their wings, knew enough to want the blue freedom of sky, but hadn’t mastered the trick of flying up to the opening at the top of the window frame. I thought they might scatter at my approach, but they they stayed put. I raised the glass. One immediately flew out and perched on a low branch. The other beat against the pane even as it lifted. Exhausted, the little bird finally dropped to the sill, found open the way of escape. It landed on the ground in the tall grass. I listened to the two of them twittering.

I breathed a prayer to the god of headlong flight and new beginnings. “May you fare well,” I said aloud and thought of the dozen or more gay men whose coming out I have been privileged to witness. For me, there is no moment so holy, no movement so fraught with portent as when one is coming in/out to oneself, saying “yes” to what is, to life, to wholeness and being. Facing the unknown, answering a call deep within, no guarantee of success, but a decision nonetheless to live true, real.

May we all be so brave and responsive. May we all in season answer the call to burst forth, wobble, run, spread wings, perhaps even fly.

This essay appears in the July issue of The Community Letter
Photo credit: bigpenguin2000@flckr.com

Pride Day in the Midwest: Absolutely divine

Getting to Pride this year took some doing for my husband Dave and me. A late-late-night drive home after a school reunion hours north on Friday, an early morning, then the hour-and-a-half drive south on Saturday. The parade had already kicked off when we arrived. We criss-crossed streets to head it off at the pass, catch as much as we could. 

What's the deal with Pride, anyway? Sure, I go because we are F-A-M-I-L-Y and this is our statewide reunion. And you betcha, I go to drool over the sexy men. But more, I go looking for God at Pride. Really. Or almost really.

Earth’s crammed with heaven, says the poet, and I suspect she’s right. You can run into the holy most anywhere. Some people claim to find the ineffable in church, others in nature, in an empty bottle, a hot body. A box. Many places.

Me, I see the divine at work in the union of opposites. In the allegedly impossible flight of the bumblebee. Every year in the turn of seasons—even as the world dies a wintry death, new life springs forth. In moments so beautiful, so perfect, they hurt. Times when love means everything and nothing at the same time. When what looks to be an ending proves a beginning. It’s an old old story. The god dies; the god lives; in dying the god lives forever. Blessed be.

Not knowing any different, I intuited my coming out gay as a holy moment, imagined I was standing on sacred ground. Looking back now, I think if ever I lived in the tension of paradox it was then. I was 34, 35 years old at the time, yet I was newborn. It was all over for me; it was only getting started. One day I was exuberant; the next, ready to kill myself. My life was falling apart around me even as it was at last coming together. It was nothing I had done, yet my wife, church, friends, parents, colleagues pointed (or flipped) the finger at me, said it was all my selfish fault.

It was a crazy mixed-up time. Nothing made sense, or if one thing did, it was that nothing does. I caught a glimpse of the big picture with all the clarity of one going over a cliff; what I saw was my feeble attempts at orchestrating life made the least sense of all. Says Annie Dillard, “we are most deeply asleep at the switch when we fancy we control any switches at all."

Oy. I so often reduce people, issues and situations to a series of toggle switches. On or off. This or that. Night or day. Male, female. Gay, straight. Yes, no; us, them; right, wrong. Hot, not. Every once in a while I wake up to what I’m doing and remember earth’s crammed with paradox. Life’s less an either/or proposition, more a both/and.

Both/And? Damn. If it were up to me, I’d have some moments last forever, others I’d squish between my fingers and rub out of existence. Same with people. To embrace the whole of life is to embrace both pleasure and pain, longing and fulfillment, love and loss. And who can do that?

Yet the mystery of life drags us in this very direction. All is one. Mitakuye oyasin. We’re all related, all one family, all one flesh, all one single metaphysical truth.

Across the globe this month, LGBT persons and their allies celebrate what it means to be gay at this present moment, honor those who have come before, look ahead to what is to come. They gather to march and demonstrate, party and celebrate. In a very public way. With joyous abandon. In over the top display.

Pride celebrations bring together people from across the LGBTIQ alphabet soup spectrum, uniting opposites and in-betweens in one glorious if all too short-lived spectacle. I took in the Pride festivities in our Midwest state capital this year and gaped slack-jawed at the creativity, daring and diversity of our community. I marveled at the sheer number of people present. Where do they come from? Where will they disappear to? Like me, many returned to small towns and regular jobs, to lives of quiet courage, to being themselves in a less-than-embracing world.

We are family, and for one full fabulous day this June I experienced it. I embraced the walking contradictions all around and within me. And in the paradox of their being one —our being one—I glimpsed the divine. Such sightings sustain. The flags furled, music silent, the crowds gone home, Dave and I were almost home. As we drove up our country road, ankle-high corn in the field to our left, beans popping up to our right, he turned to me and said, "you know, after spending the day at Pride, I feel less lonely."

Photo credit: Ryan Ready (rufin_ready at flickr.com)

A condensed version of this essay appeared in the June issue of The Community Letter

An Open Letter to My Friend on His Being Outed

Dear one,

I grew up on the farm and was this unschooled: I didn’t know a post-pubescent boy needed to bathe every day in order to be welcomed in polite society. You pulled me aside and had a talk with me about the matter. You were kind, nonjudgmental, and to the point. “We must accommodate to our surroundings,” you said, and excused me to go take a shower. My face burned as I left. 

Although you taught me, mentored me, worked with me over the next few years, we never spoke of this incident again. We discussed many other subjects. I’d ask a question; you’d pause and take a breath as if the matter required oxygenated thought. Then you’d twist your mouth a little to the side and deliver a considered, witty, impassioned response with the kind of nervous energy that characterized everything you did. You were an odd duck. Bold wardrobe choices, fussy personality, fluttery hand movements. Mannerisms today I’d describe as “queeny.” 

Thing is, I think we were more alike than either one of us wanted to know. I think we were both striving mightily to remain unaware of our sexual orientation. I moved away, eventually married. You sent a gift when my first child arrived. We stayed in touch, saw each other every once in a while. I found reasons to ask your help on various projects.

Once, after telling me a good friend of yours is gay, you made a statement that struck me as peculiar: “Of course, I’m always very careful whenever I’m around him and we’re alone.” I gave it little thought at the time. Now it seems telling.

When I came out as a gay man, I was kicked out of my church, marriage, job. No place for me in polite society. You and many other former friends were conspicuous by your absence.

I have my own theory about why you were silent. I’d love for you to correct me if I’m wrong. Here’s my take on it: like me, you grew up in a society and religious milieu that taught gay persons were criminal, depraved, sinful creatures who’d crawled out of some black lagoon. Like me, you repressed and suppressed same-sex attractions. Like me, you turned to church and religion as salve and salvation. Like me, you kept it all out of sight, out of mind until the day you couldn’t do it any more. Like me, you took tentative steps toward learning more, leaning further into territory you’d always considered forbidden. 

And then you were found out. 

Way I heard it, you left incriminating images open on your office computer. The cleaning crew spotted them, reported you. You’d long worked for a church-related organization, very religious, very conservative, very small town. 

“We don’t know what we’re going to do, but we’re going to do something,” your employer said. This on a Friday. You had the weekend to think about it. You knew well enough what would happen—you’d lose your job, marriage, church, friends, your standing in the community. 

You didn’t show up for work on Monday.

They tell me there is a moment of euphoria as a person drowns, when all is bliss and joy. I hope you found it. I hope you experienced relief and release. I hope you relaxed into one long moment when all was well, you were acceptable, had nothing to hide, no one to hide from, no one to harm you. 

From a pew at your funeral,  I listened as the preacher said, “We don’t know why he chose to take his own life.” 

I wanted to stand up and shout, “The hell we don’t!” But I kept mum. _We must accommodate to our surroundings._

I used to believe the coming out process, though painful, ultimately liberates. Your fate is not my idea of freedom, your baptism not my preferred mode of salvation.

This letter appeared in the May issue of The Community Letter

photo credit: Ephemeral Scraps at flickr.com

KNOT WHAT YOU BELIEVE

Had you even turned 20, Andrew, before you took to heart your church’s teachings on same-sex attraction? Before you took the rope in hand, snaked it up and over the beam, slipped the knotted noose around your neck? What could you know of death, of life? 

Researchers say that for many people, five minutes or less pass between their making the decision to end it all and making the attempt. Was yours a snap decision, made when you learned your mother had discovered your secret? Or had you been toying with the idea of suicide all along? I can imagine you worrying it like a loose tooth, pushing it back and forth in your mind as I did, weighing its merits as a way of reconciling your being gay with your strongly held religious beliefs.

Seductive, the idea that death would end the pain and torment, free you from never being good enough, from knowing that who you were at the very deepest level was flawed, dirty, sick, beyond redemption. Not that you didn’t try. Not that you didn’t pray. Not that you didn’t fast and flagellate yourself and exercise all you knew of faith. But God did not answer your prayers, relieve your suffering or take away your persistent attractions. And you got the message in countless ways from parents and peers, church and society, that same-sex desire is wrong, shameful, depraved. 

You learned to make the hangman’s noose in Royal Ambassadors, the Southern Baptist knock-off of the Boy Scouts. Did you approach knot-tying with the same fervor you brought to religion? Did you do it well enough that yours was a quick death? From what I read, it’s easy to bungle hanging oneself. The resultant death by strangulation can be excruciating. Three months ago in Oregon an openly gay 15-year-old who'd complained of being bullied hung himself on the school playground. He died two weeks later, after being taken off life support. I can’t imagine his parents’ pain. Nor his. Nor yours.

I remember mine. Morning of my 35th birthday I wrote a suicide note to my wife and young sons. I had a plan. Had tested it. Knew it would work. I’d had all I could take. Believed my death would be best for my wife and children. Soon as they left for town, I was going to take my leave, as well. Like you, I could in no way reconcile my religious beliefs with who I had discovered myself to be.

You directed your last prayer heavenward. “What did I do that was so wrong?” you cried in anguish, tears wetting your face. “Why can’t you love me?” Then you turned and took up the long white rope.

Although I didn't see you die, I did hear your mother's scream when she found your body. The entire theatre audience did. Many of us sat there in silence, stunned. Some of us wiped our eyes. We grieved your death—you who only ever lived in our imaginations. 

You’re a fictional character, Andrew. In a play. You die every time Dell Shore’s Southern Baptist Sissies is presented. Though you’re a work of fiction, you’re an all too real stand-in for LGBTQ youth across this country, across this world, who every day face disparaging messages from friends, family, religious systems and societal institutions.

Suicide isn’t the answer. Killing yourself resolves nothing. If it’s death we need, it’s the death of small thinking, entrenched prejudice, bigotry and hatred. And it’s happening all around us, due to quite natural causes. Even conservative pundit George Will sees it. “Quite literally, the opposition to gay marriage is dying,” he told ABC television’s “This Week.” “It’s old people.” 

Younger people support gay and lesbian equality in far greater numbers than do their elders. Change is coming, Andrew. A new wind is blowing. I wish you were here to experience it.


This essay appeared in the April issue of The Community Letter

AN OPEN LETTER TO MY NIECE ON HER COMING OUT

My dear woman,

You can't imagine the excitement with which your coming out letter was read aloud in our house. Or maybe you can, you who received the cheers of your church youth group when they got the news. We're excited. Not because there's strength in numbers (there is) and one more lgbtiq person has joined the family (you have), but because the benefits of your living out of self-awareness are many, and we’ll all feel them: you, your immediate family, these two uncles of yours, those in your circles of influence.

May you go far. I spent years flailing in repression and denial, trying to move forward through life. I might as well have been swimming the 100-meter breast stroke in mud. How much further and faster you’ll progress buoyed by self-awareness and self-knowledge, carried forward by a societal current moving towards inclusion. The impact of the decisions you'll make, of the support, advocacy, love and nurturing you'll offer the world will be amplified many times over. 

Holy ground, this coming out. Sacred space, the paths by which we come to know ourselves and share who we are—the stuff we are made of—with others.

Not that being aware, not that being out will free you from hardship, heartache, despair. Life will bring these your way no matter what. But you will be better prepared to meet the challenges head-on, with eyes open.

Your coming out reminds me how far we as a society have progressed and how far we have to go. I was 35 when I came out. In 1995, 22 states had laws on the book that made of us criminals, that defined our expressions of physical intimacy as illegal acts. Mainline religious bodies condemned us to hell. True, the American Psychological Association had removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses while I was in high school, yet my wife readily secured the services of a counselor with a reputation for turning gay men straight, and a medical practitioner who claimed to be able to do the same. Didn’t work.

Soon after I came out to my best friend, he approached the president of the small evangelical Christian liberal arts university where I was employed. “Did you know you have a gay man on your staff?” my friend asked.

“Stop right there,” said the college president. “I don’t want to hear any more.” I was grateful for his unwillingness to discuss the matter. 

Yet look who’s talking now.

Two days before your letter arrived in our mailbox, the president of these United States referenced the gay rights movement in his second inaugural address. He enfolded it into the larger American story of the struggle for human rights, referencing in one breath Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall. President Obama rattled some cages when he said, “Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law; for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well.”

To hear our struggle given voice, our journey made visible, our lives accorded value, all from so elevated a platform—what a launching pad for your coming out. You’ll not be swimming in mud, girl.

All the same, you’ll face some people who will sling dirt your way. Last night, on a long drive home, your Uncle Dave flipped through radio channels. He listened in on a long harrangue about the evils of homosexuality and the subversive influence of gay people. Such voices still pepper our airwaves. May their words not lodge in your heart.

By countless acts of courage and resolve—undertaken in love, anger, sorrow and joy—lgbt pioneers made it possible for all of us who have followed to witness and work for an ever-rising tide of acceptance and appreciation, to continue to call for change. I’m so excited to cheer you on in this journey, to wonder what chapters you and your generation will add to this ongoing story. With your coming out letter you’ve turned the first page.

With love to you, from your

Uncle Bryn

MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH IN SOUTHERN BAPTIST SISSIES

MUNCIE, IN—Southern Baptist Sissies, written by Del Shores and directed by Robby Tompkins, continues its run at Muncie Civic Theatre’s studio space through March 2. The show left me winded. I’m trying to understand its impact on me by writing about it. Too, I grasp at some way to say thank you for the ways theater can illuminate, quicken and confound. I mean these words to convey some sense of my gratitude.

SPOILER ALERT: These ruminations assume you’ve seen the show, and make little effort to conceal plot denouement.




Matters of Life and Death in Southern Baptist Sissies

I've been there, been there in the church when the preacher stands over the closed coffin and says, "We ask ourselves the why question—"why?"—over and over again. His death leaves us with a great sadness and a great many questions. We don't know why he chose to take his own life."

In that moment I wanted to stand up and shout. "Like hell we don't! Some of us have a pretty damn good idea why.” But I kept my mouth shut. I am well-schooled in repression.

We had known each other a long time, the deceased and I. We were not confidantes; we shared more in common than we were willing to admit, even to ourselves. We used denial, repression and self-induced unawareness to shield ourselves from self-knowledge.

Some of his story I pieced together after the fact, some of this is conjecture. I can't know with certainty what was going on inside him. Yet I've lived enough of his story to make an educated guess. He grew up in a church, family and society that told him in a thousand ways, "A man shall not lie with a man as with a woman. It is an abomination." In a small town where everyone knew everyone else's business, he hid as best he could. He prayed, believed, served church and community. Thought it would go away. Hoped it was a phase. Tried to accept it as his cross to bear, the dark angel he had to wrestle to win his way to heaven. Deep down he hated himself. Hated how and who and what he was. Hated the constant struggle. Lived in fear of anyone ever finding out. And then someone did. His secret uncovered. About to be made public. How could he go on? He knew what awaited. He'd seen it before, most recently, in my case: drummed out of town, marriage up in smoke, career terminated, kicked out of the church, left friendless and alone.

He must have panicked. It happened so suddenly, so irrevocably—the discovery, threatened exposure, fateful decision. Did he talk to anyone first? Wish he would have called me. Wish I’d have known to call him. I heard the report on the local news. His body had been found. Damn, damn, damn.

This is where you take me, David W., in your portrayal of the Preacher, presiding at the funeral of the beautiful boy with the deep soul. You look out over the congregation, your face troubled. How can your perplexity be genuine? Yet you almost convince me it is.

 “We ask ourselves the question ‘why?’ over and over again,” you say.

No closed coffin in front of the pulpit, just his framed photo in the center of a funereal wreath. And now what happens? Did you bump against it, knock your pulpit against the easel? For whatever reason, his picture falls face forward onto the floor. By your reaction I can tell this isn’t in the script. A moment’s hesitation and you go on with your sermonizing as if you haven’t witnessed his fall, as if nothing has gone awry. “A troubled young life is gone, and we ask ourselves why….”

Damn you, Preacher. Damn the unfeeling religious system you serve. Damn the ways you represent my own unseeing, unthinking, unfeeling responses to others. Another beautiful life ended, yet another deep soul sacrificed on the altar of power, tradition, institutionalized bigotry and willful ignorance. The accidental tumble his photo takes only echoes and underscores the insidious evil done daily in the name of fundamentalist religious belief. Another one bites the dust and so what. Who cares. Who even deigns notice.