Happy New Year! — Resolution

Happy New Year to all my readers.

I never make New Year's resolutions, but this year I'm making one, only it is not anything new. It is summed up by the words often found in scripture: "Do not be afraid." My retreat director last March pointed out that I was "always looking over [my] shoulder" for fear somebody would figure me out, and that fear inhibited my actions. Actually, I had already begun to do things I'd have been too afraid to do before I began blogging and met people I liked on the internet — I had begun meeting some of them irl. But the urging of the retreat director has persuaded me that I should overcome that fear and live as I want to. I'm not planning to do anything I believe is wrong, but I hope to continue the sort of doing things that are perfectly legitimate that I've recently been blogging about and to live without the constant fear that something I do will out me. There is a limit to it: I'm not going to come out where I live and at my church. But if I can develop close friendships with guys I like, I'm going to do it, because it's what I should do, and it's perfectly alright; and if somebody figures out that I have a homosexual orientation, oh well, I'll deal with it as best I can.

Reflecting on Rothenburg

The main thing I think my experience with Stefan and the Junge Schar tells me is that it is possible for a closeted gay man to have satisfying friendships with straight guys. It's obvious that most of the people I've mentioned genuinely like me. If I lived there, I have no doubt I could be in a close friendship with some of them. Just knowing that they like me is very affirming.

On my most recent visit, most of my conversations didn't get beyond the stage of "It's great to see you. It's wonderful being back," and the like. It was only after I left that it occurred to me that I should have asked people something like, "What's been going on with you since the last time I saw you?" Then we'd have had better and longer conversations. But I never was a skilled conversationalist. Next time I'll know better.

Why haven't I made many close friendships at home, if I could make such a good start in Germany? Maybe I felt freer, less guarded, there somehow. It does seem to me that if I had handled things differently here, I could have developed some close and enduring friendships. But I spent so much time for so many years in local government that I didn't have much time for socializing. In addition, it took me a long to accept my orientation. For a long time, my natural shyness was exacerbated by my lack of self-acceptance. I felt safer in non-social settings.

I've never felt that I needed to be in a sexual relationship to be happy. I think my life so far has in fact been reasonably happy. I've had a generally satisfying career with plenty of friendly acquaintances; I've been involved in activities I've enjoyed. But I have been a loner, and if I had managed to develop a friendship with someone here like the one with Stefan, it would be even better. Of course, my life isn't over yet (as of the time I'm typing this) so maybe I can still make improvements.

Getting back to Rothenburg for a moment: their calendar of celebrations is really impressive. They have a festival of several days at Pentecost, then there's the Imperial Free City Days in September, another celebration in October, and a Christmas festival. It's a great place to be. Of course, I've only been there during these festival times, and if I lived there, the routine life would be something quite different from these peak moments. But I get the impression that the culture is still different from here. I think I could really enjoy being one of the regulars who meet at the pub.

Out at College — Not!

     A couple of weeks ago Gauss Jordan made a post titled "Out @ College – Recapped" in which he told of a weekend at his old alma mater (I think he graduated about 5 years ago) with a bunch of friends from his college days. Over the course of the weekend he came out to them, and they were cool with it.

     It got me thinking about how things have changed since the early '60's. No doubt if someone were to come out while still in college today, in most cases the reaction of friends would be similar to what Gauss Jordan got, although maybe the wider community would not all be so welcoming. But I asked myself what would have happened if I had come out to all my friends in college, and the answer is that I think it would have been a disaster. I did come out to a guy I had a crush on who was pressuring me to room with him and demanded an explanation why I wouldn't. And I came out to a gay guy in the class behind me who had latched onto me. And I came out to the priest I went to to try to get help. But that was it.

     There was a guy who got elected to Student Council freshman year, who had effeminate speech mannerisms, and he was consistently mocked in the weekly campus paper. He dropped out of the college after the year was over.

     One of my friends asked my roommate sophomore year, "Do you think Naturgesetz is queer?" and the roommate answered, "No. He's just not interested in girls." Well I wasn't queer in the sense of having sex with guys, but I was in the sense of being interested in them; and I don't think people would have been comfortable around me if they had known that. I'm sure I never would have been invited to the Bananas' reunion that I wrote about last year

     And if I had come out to them five years after graduation, I don't think they'd have been as cool with it as Gauss Jordan's friends. Maybe it was something they suspected, or knew at an unconscious level. But it was not something to bring out into the open.

     Today, if an occasion arose, I might actually tell the ones I've been in sporadic contact with, and I think they'd be okay. But those of you who are under 30 are really lucky to be living at a time when large segments of society are accepting of homosexuals. You don't have to come out unless you want to, but you don't have to stay in the closet either. You can get support if, like me, you believe that you ought to remain celibate. There are groups that help you deal with issues that you face. And if, despite my advice and urging, you decide to enter a sexual relationship, you don't have to skulk around in the shadows.

Self-Awareness

The first crush I had was in the 8th grade. I didn't know that's what it was at the time, but I developed a crush on a boy whom I had never met or even noticed when he sent a message via a friend of mine to the effect that he "hated my guts." When I found out who he was, I found him attractive. But we went to different high schools the following year and that ended that.

During summers I used to sail, and in spring and fall during high school I was in a sailing club at school. Before high school I developed a crush on another boy who sailed, "Nick." The first day of high school I thought I saw Nick there and kept looking for him. It turned out it wasn't Nick, but "Jack." That crush lasted through high school and was one of my strongest infatuations of those years. Only the fact that I had little chance of a close friendship with him kept it from being even stronger.

BTW, at the time I'm speaking of, I thought of these crushes as nothing more than a desire to have a friendship with the boys involved.

The other major crush, my biggest, was for "Bruce." He rode on the same school bus as me and one morning, to my delight, invited me to join him and a couple of other classmates in forming a "Junto" like the one Benjamin Franklin described in his autobiography. The group got together fairly regularly through the last three years of high school.

During all this time, there was no desire for any any sexual activity with anyone. I just wanted to be with the boys I liked as much as possible. To be as good friends with them as possible. I was completely uninterested in girls, although I did force myself to invite a girl whom I respected and who was probably in love with me to the Junior and Senior Proms.

In the spring of my junior year, when I was 16, the sailing club went to a meet on the Charles River. Between races, "Marty," another member of the "Junto," invited me to run with him on the sidewalk parallel to the river. After a few minutes we stopped and he complimented me on how well I had done. He suggested that I should go out for track in the fall. And then he told me something that now I guess he wanted to say out of earshot of the others. Very cheerfully he told me that he had fallen in love with another of the sailors, a girl named "Ruth," that it was his first time falling in love with anyone, and that he was very happy because he had begun to be afraid that something was wrong with him. And in that instant it hit me: something was wrong with me. 

I was shattered. I was in love with Bruce, not just seeking friendship. Up until then I could just be myself. Now I needed to watch my every word, my every move, lest I say or do something that would let my secret slip. My grades slipped. I had been near the top of my class, and they were still all A's and B's, but with more B's than I would have had in the first three years. I took four years of Latin in high school, with the same teacher for all but the second year. A nice grandmotherly lady. I can remember sitting in her second floor classroom during senior year and just gazing out the window over the houses and treetops toward a water standpipe on a low hill two miles away. It happened that she and my mother shopped at the same grocery store and my mother reported that in later years the teacher asked more than once if something had happened to me between junior and senior years, because I was noticeably different. (I could have told Mom that it was because I had found out I was gay, because I knew that was it, but I didn't think she'd want to hear it. Now I'm not so sure.)

After graduation I tried to stay in touch with Bruce, but I made a fool of myself when he was not as responsive as I wanted. Marty and I exchanged Christmas cards for a number of years, and I attended his wedding. Bruce (and his wife, I think) visited me at the monastery during the time I was an applicant living there (about 7 years after graduation). Jack and I did not stay in contact, but unlike the other two, he continued to make his home here, and I would occasionally see him and his wife jogging in the morning, and we'd exchange friendly greetings.

Bruce returned to town for the 40th high school reunion and has stayed in touch since then, mostly via e-mail, but he and his wife also send me their Christmas letter, with news of their doings and those of their adult son and daughter, and I'm pleased to get it.

It occurs to me to wonder if any of them believe that I am homosexual. None of them is stupid. Back in the last years of the 1950's people weren't constantly questioning people's orientation the way they do now. But at some point, as society's collective naiveté wore off, I think it highly likely that Bruce figured it out. Marty and Jack might not have had the question occur to them, as we have not been in as much contact. But if they have thought about it, I'm sure they consider it possible, maybe likely.

For forty-nine years I have lived with the burden of keeping my secret. I think my main technique has been to be cautious about letting people get too close to me. My attempts at friendship were at best limited successes and short-term as circumstances parted us.

As I reflect on it at all this point, I'm sure that Bruce would not be disturbed in the least to know, or have it confirmed, that I am homosexual. If he lived anywhere near here I'm confident we could be good friends, regardless of whether he knew or not, and I find this thought very consoling. But I'm not at all sure he would have taken it well if he had found out in 1959. Attitudes have changed a lot since then. I think my orientation would not bother Marty or Jack either. But I am most pleased by my conclusion about Bruce.

I still don't want to have sex with anybody, but the thought that there is a true friendship, limited only by distance, unthreatened by my orientation, is very satisfying. And it is only as I write this that I have come to that satisfying conclusion. (Correction: There are a couple of college classmates, from the Bananas, whose friendship is equally unthreatened, but despite their proximity we have not grown close as I think I could with Bruce if he were nearby.)