History: My Dad

 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…

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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…