I’m going to pause in my progress of coming out (and finding sex) to back up a little. Here is the post about my father…
I fully believe that I am on this earth because my father
knew how to type.
You see, Dad was drafted into World War II the moment
he graduated from high school in 1944.
He was 17. He suddenly went from
being a soft-spoken, small town boy who loved his dog and worshipped his mother,
into being fast tracked for basic training.
Fortunately for me, somewhere early on, he told his Sargeant that he
knew how to type—something that many men didn’t do in the 1940’s—but he’d
braved being the only boy in the class during high school, wanting to learn how
for college. He completed his basic
training and really didn’t see the combat that the rest of his unit did. The war was winding down and he was told to
start typing discharges—and his would be the last one he’d do.
Both my brother and I heard this story—and took a tying
class for college. What we didn’t hear
about for years and years were details about his being in war-torn Germany and helping
open the concentration camps. At 18. I can’t imagine.
After the war, Dad went to a small religious
affiliated school on the GI Bill. He stayed
in the dorm—and his roommate became a life time friend. Oh, and he met my mother there, too.
Remember the post where I came out to my brother and
we were talking about Dad and his porn?
One of the things that came up that night was Dad’s college
roommate. We went to dinner at his house
in Detroit, just before my brother graduated high school. Dad’s roommate lived openly with another man
who was from central Europe. Even I, in
my early teens, could tell they were partners not friends. That night of my coming out, my brother told
me that the European had followed my brother to the bathroom and started to
come on to him. He quickly shut the door.
After my telling my brother about the porn novels (and
their evolution from straight to gay) there was another story we shared that
night. Back in high school my brother
asked to take the family car for the night.
Fine—but it needed gas and Dad told him to use the Sunoco credit
card. Being helpful, I got up from the
table and went to Dad’s wallet (where he always left it on the buffet) and
pulled the only plastic card I saw in there and handed it to my brother. He blanched and said I had the wrong one, and
got up to find the correct card. All
those years later, my brother told me I had handed him my dad’s membership card
for the gay bathhouse that had branches in both Detroit and Toledo. (Dad choosing the Toledo branch.)
There was little that was overt, but with Dad teaching
at a high school 30 miles away—it gave him a lot of time away from the
family. We can see now, he was obviously
bisexual—with two sons to prove it. It’s what men did before Stonewall—and what
some still do. ‘I can quash these
feelings by getting married.’ We think
of someone like Oscar Wilde as gay. He
wasn’t—he was bisexual with a family…
Did my mother know?
I can’t say for certain. At
first, I doubt it. Twenty years in,
maybe. What I do know is that they loved
each other. They were best friends. True soul mates.
There was an incident in the late 1970’s. I was home from my first year of college and
we got a call from the police. Dad had
been picked up and was at the police station.
Mother, her voice shaking, asked why, for what? The officer’s answer was: “I’d like him to
tell you.”
Dad came home shaking and my mother not believing a
word he had said. He had stopped at a
rest room in a public park (that was notorious for gay sex, I soon learned—though
I never had any luck there). He told
some story about how the police were looking for a car just like his—and it was
all a huge mistake. I am sure he propositioned
an undercover officer. I made myself
scarce as they talked it out. By dinner,
there was a wary truce. The porn books disappeared
from under the front seat of his car. He
was home a little earlier each work day.
I believe he still had ‘some time away’ after the
arrest. There was a man, who became a
family friend, who stopped just short of telling me he and Dad had a relationship. I do believe Dad stopped altogether the moment
the ‘gay cancer’ was all over the news.
Much of the strife between father and son of my brother’s
coming out was not that my brother was gay—but Dad was afraid that it would out
him as well. Though it was never put into
words.
I mentioned the loosening of my mother’s tongue as she
fought memory issues. The other thing
she told me, after the tale of my coming out of the womb pissing, was the fact her
mother did not want her to marry Dad. “But
darling, he’s so obviously a mama’s boy…” 1950’s speak for well, you know…
*
There is another wrinkle here. My mother’s only brother was a hell
raiser. He got a girl pregnant in high school
and had to marry her. Soon a divorce. Another marriage and divorce a decade later. He was a military nurse and went to Vietnam
for a long tour. He came home and drove
up to see my brother at college. He
arrived outside the TKE house in a loud convertible, blaring the latest disco
song of the moment and wearing a flamboyantly colored faux fur coat. He had found men. And loved it.
He eventually married a lesbian in a marriage of convenience to fool the
military brass (at least on paper…)
I should also mention that the two children of dad’s
only sister, my cousins, have both married and had children. In the next generation, there are for sure
two gay men and I am pretty sure a budding lesbian.
So, you know that nature vs nurture debate…I totally
believe there is a recessive gene somewhere for our gayness. And I got it from both sides…I didn’t stand a
chance…
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