esrosedotblog

Does this still exist?

Outward Bound I mean.

Yes. It does.

Now, down to business. I only pulled that title out of my ass for another purpose.

Today is National Coming Out Day!

It also happens to coincide with our officially sanctioned California Prop. 8 Marriage in 2008.

Happy anniversary to us.

Admittedly, we have several anniversaries. The first is April 1 when we met. Actually somewhere near that time. We chose the Fools Day date for obvious reasons.

I am not sure that we chose this date to marry because of the NCOD significance or not. I will ask my spouse. I know it had something to do with getting the family travel all aligned.

By the time we got married, or could get married, we had been together for almost 22 years.

Veterans.

As far as coming out is concerned, it has been a long steady process and now, I figure, no one I know thinks I am a heterosexual. My friends tell me that there could be no doubt. I exhibit all the "stuff".

It is funny but there is still a part of me, and I think many older gay men, that still fears being outed. We hid so long that it became second nature.

I could hardly pass today. Even if I wanted to. But there is still some lingering worry I might look gay. They drill this shit into you pretty early and it stays very late.

Labels: coming out, gay marriage

A tough decision at any time.

With gay people, the coming out stories are always the first thing we hear once we get to know one another. Always. Always.

It is a form of building credibility. It is a form of honesty. And above all, it is how we demonstrate that we are all our stories.

Gay people discovered this early.

I am never too tired or too bored or too distant to hear a coming out story.

And to tell mine.

Coming out is so important. It is at least critical to mental health. But further to reduce and eliminate the terrible biases created by established religions and others who fear us more than life itself.

It is so crazy.

So, most of all, we do it for the bigots and the closed minded that they might, through personal example, learn about who we are and who they are also. A closed mind, a mind that hates is a sick mind. It should be treated with compassion and grace. But there are limits, eh?

Tim Cook of Apple made this decision for himself and shares it on Colbert.

Labels: apple, coming out

This is a charming film about a young gay man coming out to friends and family.

Jitters (2010)

It turns out that Iceland isn't much different from any place else.

This kid is very sweet and his coming of age is not smooth but it is not hazardous to his health either.

This is from the DVD collection. The thing I like about it is that every trope of a teen romantic comedy is present with two boys instead of the usual M/F combination.

The whole effect is that Iceland is just a small town on a national scale. There are bigots of course but mostly they are provincials. Our hero has been away to school on student exchange and in the process he kissed another boy on the last day. Who was also from Iceland. Simple story. They want to get back together at home.

It is a part of our collection and hence is a 5 out of Netflix5.

Labels: coming out, films, gay films

I love this video.

As one who waited for the world to get ready, I can attest to the fact that enough of it has always been ready to take the plunge. All in their own time.

No regrets for me.

Labels: coming out

For a glimpse of why one person came out and a clue to the rest of us.

As usual, there is a complex background for this decision.

Some people think because there are so many open gay people are around that the individual is sheltered and can feel comfortable going through this process.

I do not think this is the case. We are still less than ten percent. We do not want, initially, to be gay. Mostly.

That changes fast incidentally when we can have the good fortune to have our first gay experience.

For a gay man, there is nothing like this. I suppose straight men have similar awakenings but for a gay man it is a series of revelations that involve much more than the sex part. Which is so fantastic in and of itself it becomes well worth it to explore the rest of it, the culture, the fellowship, the life, as well.

Very smart. In the intelligence sense.

Labels: coming out, gay films

We will all come out eventually.

Everyone everywhere sooner or later.

Some will just start by being a kid that has two dads or moms.

I think that this commercial may be only in Canada but even so, well, it is just overwhelming. Teary to the end.

I suppose that some fringes will think this is awful.

Let me tell you, it is wonderful!

General Mills.

We use Cheerios! Have forever. That makes it even better.

I love the three little Cheerios in the milk at the end.

Labels: coming out, gay couples, gay parents

One of my best clients has done the right thing.

Procter & Gamble Comes Out Strong For Same-Sex Marriage, Proves Inclusion Is Good Business

I forget the details but I was out there. They didn't seem to care.

I remember that I got a lot of positive support from certain people but the corporate backdrop was decidedly positive and I never felt out of place.

Of course, I never talked about it in a training but it was pretty clear to most people at the time and they were happy to be in on it.

I know for a fact that I trained a lot of gay men and women in the groups I led. Proudly.

Big companies, a lot of them, get a bad rap. This should not happen really. Dumb ideas about capitalism and all that obscure the fact of big companies in our economy and society and they can be and are a driving force for good.

I loved that the P&G-ers called it "the soap company". True enough. But Google the company and be amazed at how many companies are actually a part of the big picture.

Socially responsible. Personally supportive. I trained many of their trainers and remain friendly with a few of them today.

Labels: big business, coming out

Today's movie was about the negative side of coming out. The opposite of the optimistic and happy film I saw yesterday.

Forgive and Forget (2000)

This is a very well made film with a good story and it is a bummer. It dashes all the feel good hopes that other coming out films tend to depict.

Things do not go very well when the highly closeted working man David decides to come out on a true confessions television show.

He asks all his friends, his family and his best friend to watch. What was he thinking?

Actually, I think that he is not surprised by the results but they are disappointing to say the least. No one thinks that it is OK. No one.

I suppose that many gay men experience just this kind of reaction.

They are not as well armed as this young man but he is disarmed nonetheless. Nothing will ever be the same for him. At least that is how it feels to me.

On the other hand, what is the price of living a lie? Listening to homophobic bullshit all day long from one's dad or realizing that his best friend cannot handle it.

I suppose I could watch all the positive films but it is good to have a dose of reality every once in a while. Or, an alternative view of what happens.

Sometimes there is rejection and heartbreak and a total starting over. But isn't that what we are after anyway? There is no end to the closeted life except to end it without reservations or expectations.

This is a very courageous film and it shows how one's acceptance of one's self is not always welcome in this world. Or the world we have been living in.

The forgiving starts with me and then, if possible those around me for even doing the unforgivable. Not easy. But very freeing.

This is a 4 out of Netflix5.

Labels: coming out, gay films

It is gay pride weekend here. We don't celebrate it when everyone else does, around the middle of June. June is the beginning of the dead season here in the desert so the gay resorts who are the ones supporting the festival see that date as a lost business opportunity. The first weekend in November is the beginning of the "season" here and so it is also the weekend that we will be the proudest of being gay. I am not too cynical about this. I wouldn't much be involved if it were in June around Stonewall time. It is not that I am un-proud. I am proud enough of my gay life and the gay "movement" as it has evolved so quickly in the last several decades. There is a huge difference today in every realm of gay rights. For example, it is hard to find much "coming out" literature or movies or other activities which highlight this momentous event from all our lives. Most gay people now are quite familiar with the existence of other gay people at an early age. Television, movies, school. The news. There is certainly an adjustment to the way we are brought up which is still resolutely heterosexual. They don't know how to bring up a gay baby after all. But it is a smoother path. No one pays much attention to their parents anyway. Besides, sexual identity is not a matter of rebellion so much as a recovery from the inevitable influence of the same false values that young straight people have to contend with particularly if the family is religious or strongly traditional. Now, the gay twist almost eases the path for gay kids. Personally I am proud of my earned identity as a gay man even though I have been gay from the beginning. As basic as my other genetic stuff. The way I acted it out was different throughout my life. I became actively homosexual, really did it, as a college student and then tried to put that aside and to have a conventional life as a straight man. Such were the Fifties. Hard scrabbling for a gay boy. While I had a great time with a great woman with great kids and am still proud of that too, it became inevitable that the gay gravity would bring me back to my own reality. I had to make a second life, this one out in the open. Much sooner than I planned, I met a man that I wanted to share my life with and so I went from out and about to out and in a relationship which, as it turns out, was a model for many other gay men. I speak proudly as humbly as I can about that. We started to work on the marriage thing very early together and finally were able to get married and to still retain our families on both sides. It was hard work but we had the advantage of loving family members and friends. Now, here we are not so much marching in a rights parade as to basking slightly in the pride of having made it up and out of the old, now more passé social ostracism that a lot of gay men had to endure. Proud. And, most of all, happy. And I don't much "buy gay" which is what I see a lot of gay pride celebrations have become.

Andre Gregory is a moderately well known stage actor and a not so well known occasional film actor He, most notably, appeared in a reality film with Wally Shawn a number of years back. They had dinner together. Neither Shawn or Gregory got over its success and they continued to work together over the years. And still are. The biopic Andre Gregory: Before and After Dinner made by Gregory's wife is a bit pretentious and, in the early parts of it, boring and not very illuminating. Somewhere in the second half, through Gregory's monologues, we hear the story of his father and how Dad influenced him so much. I am a sucker for this kind of thing and sort of enjoyed it even with some of the posturing and over exposure. I am glad I saw it but once is enough and when someone's wife has made a film about them it might be best to take a pass. A 2 out of Netflix5. I did watch to the end and did not FF. Even when I wanted to. I did RW a few times to recapture parts where I found I had dozed off for a bit and lost the thread. Not good. Dozing or the problem picking up when something doesn't quite get across.

Labels: coming out, films, gay identity, gay life

IF THE SHOE FITS

This is pretty good.

The Best Little Boy in the World—That's Me

And me.

When Andrew Tobias' book came out a lot of us identified immediately.

This guy's story is a lot like mine.

Growing up queer is not easy. I knew when I was four. Or, I should say, I knew something.

I adored other little boys especially at the beach and in intimate situations like sleep overs. I remember the moment in time when Dick Higbee and I got our feet wet and my mother made us take our shoes off and go barefoot. Zing.

I wasn't much interested in dolls. But I was not at all interested in hunting, fishing, sports (either watching or doing) or any other "boy" things. All cultural tags.

Later I enjoyed watching sports, wrestling, track, swimming, because the boys/men took their clothes off to do the sport.

I caught on that I was different from my Dad. I scared him. He backed off. He removed a lot of his touching. Of course, that increased the yearning.

I can honestly say that I had no friends without the spark to it.

But. How to hide this? Be smart. Or act it. Be a brain. Be precocious. My mouth kept me out of fights. Often got me into them too but I could defend myself with the verbal barb.

I excelled, deflected attention from that thing, almost unconsciously. I cultivated my iconoclasm and my introversion.

I went to college and within weeks was taking afternoon showers at the campus pool with another kid like me. Awakenings ensued. But it was hard to have a relationship. As it happens, I now know that almost all of my college friends were gay.

I couldn't face being out out even though I was now a young man with some experience so I got married. And had kids.

I am very happy that I did. My life, as it turns out, has been full of gifts as a direct result of being the best little boy.

Eventually, of course, it all fell apart. A house divided will not stand.

Brick by brick, sometimes as a collapse, I took the hidden part of me and brought it to the surface.

I came out, I got an adolescence (in my late thirties), a met some nice men and finally turned that skill of meeting, being comfortable with myself into a gay life. I got a husband. One who could even be a kind of step father to my kids.

It is sad that people along the way got hurt. This hiding hurt me too. But the payoff has been enormous. Finally I am a fallible male human being who desires the complete company of other male humans.

The hardest part of coming out is coming out to ones self.

The over achieving? Not sorry about that. I built a business, made some money, got a professional reputation, wrote a book or two. Nice.

Oh. Later in life I got to be something of a jock too. A runner. I competed. I went to the gym. Still go. It kills me that right now I am banned from working out because of my urological "condition". This will pass and I will go back to my gym rat friends some of whom happen to be straight.

If, in the unlikely possibility that you are just like me and this guy in the article, take courage. Sooner or later you will reach the same point and it will be all right. Sooner is better though.

One caveat. A lot of things a homosexual young man fears, he fears appropriately. The family, the co-workers, the community are not going to break out into cheers for a gay man breaking out. Some will be angry. Others will try to harm you. Some will cut you off, never to be seen again.

Too bad. Can't be helped. The way of the world.

Somebody will not like you and will be your enemy for something. Let it be the real you and not some "idea" of who you are.

You will be making a lot of new friends. And some of them will be happy to sleep and play with you too. Not a fringe benefit incidentally. Years of doing without can be compensated. Live and learn.

Labels: coming out, gay liberation, gay life

HERO

Says it all. Period.

He will be the first but not, by any means, the last.

The arc of freedom bends slowly but surely.

Labels: coming out, gay sports

COURAGE IN THE LIMELIGHT

I like this "article" a lot.

Portman: Coming Out

I like the family and what I have read about it.

It is quite a surprise to find out your son is gay especially if your "gaydar" is not well honed.

My parents "knew" for years and were so afraid of it that they couldn't deal. Of course this was the 40s and 50s.

When I came out to them I had a family and all the signs of fitting the standard model of straight adulthood in America. The one size fits all paradigm.

I didn't even get to tell them that I was gay. Someone got to them before I did.

No blame, my fault. But I was afraid. Afraid of them, afraid of rocking the boat, afraid, afraid, afraid.

And when the gay cat leaped out of the bag all their previous worries about me were finally realized. And even though they tried, there was no way the cat was going back into the bag.

It was a tough couple years.

Eventually, especially when they met John (he and my Dad bonded over the naval veteran thing), it all quieted down.

Before he died, my Dad and I had a fine time talking about it and being happy and his being happy about my obvious happiness.

You can't beat happiness as a sign of a good life well lived.

I think that things are better today. It may be easier for kids to be themselves and for parents to "see the signs" and get the fuck over their own stuff about it.

I had already taken care of some of the worries. I had the kids, the grandkids. I was happy and not soliciting blow jobs in alley ways and mens rooms in Boston. Well not that way exactly.

I was in some danger because I was out out. Not halfway. You can still get your ass kicked for that. But then I could get my ass kicked for a lot of things. Being an addict and drunk wasn't the safest of life positions. But they didn't know that.

And so on.

Sooner or later we all have to grow up. Good for this kid.

Parents have to realize that they need to do some growing too. Good for the Portmans.

Labels: coming out, gay rights

OUT ON THE FIELD

Yes. MIT has a baseball team. Yes. There are a lot of gay people at MIT.

It only figures that the old Venn diagram would overlap sooner or later.

Ballplayer Gets Big Hit Coming Out

Great. Great when anyone comes out. Great when an MIT student comes out. Great for ball players when any athlete comes out anywhere.

There were a lot of gay people at MIT when I went there. I was one, right, huh?

Then there were the others that I found through some trial and error during my time there.

MIT had the first gay student group. Anywhere. Good beginning.

I interviewed at least two open gay guys who wanted to attend.

Sure, there are gay engineers. Sure there are engineers who can play good softball.

Labels: coming out, gay rights, gay sports, MIT

WRONG TEAM

This is a great coming out story.

My Celebrity Love Triangle

I think that his is fairly common. There must be a psychological term for it. Something more than "denial".

Many guys I know had the same. Celebrity couples were a particular target but, as it happens, dating a girl or being friends with a girl because of her boy friend is just the same.

I did it.

I woke up.

I now have all that I ever wanted or, actually, everything that I didn't realize I could have, with my husband of 37 years.

I like what he says about the realities. Sickness, health, fights over the dishes, breakups over things that hardly seemed important in hours. All that.

No airbrushing.

Still, it all starts with being on the right team so you get a chance. A lot of guys did not. Have not yet.

I am so happy for young men and women who are so much closer to finding their way than we were in my time.

Labels: coming out

IT IS NEVER OVER

We sometimes think that coming out is a matter of telling people you are gay or if not that then just being gay.

This is a short sighted view.

Coming out is a process that is life long.

First, simple knowledge is not enough. A living breathing gay life is illuminating and illuminated by being gay 24/7 and not pulling any punches.

The little things count. Every little thing.

Coming Out By Christmas Card

It is not necessary to give punches although some are certainly deserved when some relatives or friends maintain their silence or outright ignore your life. But that is easily remedied. If you gay and they are not in your life they are out of your life. Easy.

Then there are our immediate relatives. Our closest family.

My Mother did not want anyone to know I was gay even though I had divorced my wife and lived for years with my husband John. She didn't want anyone to know that I was an alcoholic either. And, certainly there were a whole list of embarrassments that she did not want "them" to know.

When I was younger this led to my being a sneak and a liar. Later in life it just led me to ignore my mother, consider her forms of love to be irrelevant to my life and, at the end, pretty much not be terribly grief stricken at her exit.

Tough words but what else do you say about or to someone who doesn't want you to be who you are.

Here is a Mom who wants to do it all the way and has found that all the way means just that.

Labels: coming out, gay life, holidays

YES!!!

Without meaning to, John and I were married on National Coming Out Day.

How about that?

Labels: coming out, gay history, gay marriage

NATIONAL COMING OUT DAY

I have been "out" so long that this day passes without thinking too much about it.

There is a belief that one is never fully "out" as a gay person and, for me. that is undoubtedly true.

When I came out in 1976, I moved to Boston, went to the bars, joined gay organizations and marched in the streets in the days when that counted for something.

But I was not completely out, out.

For many years I was out in most of my life but not much in my professional life. There are excuses for this but still I was in there.

When John and I got together 37 years ago we were out as a couple. One could hardly not be. Two of us after all. And John was more militant in that respect than I, taking any opportunity to throw it in the face of anyone who didn't want to see or hear the obvious.

There are, or were, times when I would pass for straight. Rarely though did I ever pretend to ogle the ladies. I didn't lie about my partner. That would dishonor him.

Eventually I lost some accounts because of it. Hello, General Foods Human Resources Department!

And, more importantly, some clients didn't care whether I was gay or not and friendships were formed over it. That is you, P&G. Thanks.One way that I avoided out-edness was not to mix much with straight people. Either socially or with people in my work groups. So an indirect closetedness.

Now, after years of retirement, living in the gayest of cities, I have an occasional challenge in this area. People who assume I am straight. Who never consider that I am gay.

A couple of weeks ago, two guys at the gym who are relatively new, observed how lucky I was to have a couple of nubile young women come sit on bikes right near me. I needed to tell them that while the young ladies were attractive they were not attractive in "that way" with me as I play for the other team.

They were dumbfounded.

We used to have to deal with the bigoted and now it is time to deal with the oblivious.

In the gym I hang briefly with the gayest of men. We touch. We talk "that way". I even kiss a few. I got a hug and a kiss from a guy this morning.

Not that we are being obvious or anything of course.

Straight guys hardly get it about women. When it comes to men they are so clueless it is pathetic.

These guys were nice about it, then a bit distant as they processed the information.

The other morning I walked in on one of the spraying his hair in the locker room with great abandon!

I haven't see hair spray in years. And there it was. I took it in and laughed to myself. Men will be men after all. Gay or straight or, as most men are, in between.

Labels: coming out

COMING OUT AFTER MARRIAGE AND KIDS

This is not my story but it is close enough in feeling and outcome.

"We are all happy now"

Labels: coming out, gay marriage

LISTEN TO THIS

I have never blogged a radio show before. A first. But this is worth it.

Why Are Americans Changing Their Mind on Gay Marriage?

Two former activists against gay marriage have reversed course and are actively promoting gay marriage rights. They are conservatives.

Their experience give us an answer that verifies our contention that the more gay people non-gay people meet, the more the non-gays support "the gays"..

These public activist people met real gay people in the middle of their opposition to gay marriage.

Whenever people meet gay people and gay families they find that there is a human face to a stereotype.

So, it is incumbent on gay people and parents to come out and be available to conservatives.

Labels: coming out, gay marriage, gay rights