I Wish Being Gay Weren’t the Biggest Part of My Life But I Have No Choice
I’m ‘gay first’ no matter what I’d prefer
Stop with the Identity Politics. Stop playing the victim. Stop pushing your issues into our faces. Why you gotta be so gay all the time?
Recognize any of that contradictory sentiment? If you’re a member of any marginalized minority, you’ve probably heard analogous statements and had to either swallow frustration or attempt conversation. As a gay man, I have to make that choice a lot. Even well meaning friends and family can fail to understand why my LGBTQ identity matters so much.
Can I say something confusing and then try to clear it up with stories?
My gay identity does NOT matter much to me, not deep inside. Falling in love with other guys brings me deep joy and happiness. I cannot imagine a different way of being, so I don’t worry about it. I don’t feel different or strange where it counts, but all my life others have forced strangeness on me.
Can we have some conversation now?
Sitting in a pew as a child
I was nearly 12, happy in church, squished between Dad and Mom as she idly stroked my stubborn cowlick. I was sort of listening to the pastor and sort of dreaming of my baseball-playing boy, a friend I loved and crushed on, though I didn’t understand what I felt, not quite yet.
The preacher was angry, almost shouting, and since he was usually such a kind man, I sat up straighter and paid more attention.
He was shouting about “those homosexuals” again, sneering as he said they should never call themselves “gay,” because their diseased, unhappy lifestyle came from Satan. I shivered. Satan scared me more than anything. I was glad I wasn’t one of those “homosexuals,” whatever they were. I listened hard. And then … I can’t remember the words that finally made me gasp, but understanding came in a flash.
I was one of those Satanic homosexuals. Me!
The urge I’d recently felt to kiss my friend, to hold him tight … that was homosexual. I was one of THEM! I jumped up and pushed past Mom, almost running down the aisle. Dad found me a few moments later in a men’s room stall as I tried to wipe vomit off my face. He pulled out a handkerchief and finished the job, rocking me and whispering. He’d get me home and tucked into bed, he said, and I’d be better in no time.
Escaping conversion therapy as a teen
Dad was wrong. He thought I just had a stomach bug. He had no idea I would suffer for years and that he would unknowingly cause much of my pain. He was the church youth pastor that day and would soon become the pastor of his own church. He would sometimes preach the same angry words that had just forced my breakfast out of me.
I would sit silent.
I couldn’t go to him or anyone. I was alone and helpless in the face of a hatred I could not understand. I locked all the pain up deep inside and thought I’d kept my secret, until a few years later a different pastor dropped a bomb. He wanted to send me to a teen camp that would make me straight — because he loved me and wanted to help me not be homosexual. The church would pay and take care of everything!
I refused his offer. He had approached me a few months too late. I no longer believed what he taught about “Satanic homosexuals,” though I kept my lack of belief very quiet, not that my silence helped. I was firmly, and not slowly, cut out of the life of the church and especially the youth group that was the center of my teenage social life. Still in high school, I experienced cold rejection, engineered by adults, for the first time in my life.
Facing an FBI polygraph and the vestiges of the Lavender Scare
Don’t think my life was miserable at that point, please. I hated the rejection, and I mourned my friends, but I came halfway out of the closet as I learned to navigate a 1980s society that was becoming less homophobic.
In college and later in the military, I hung out in gay bars on the weekends, danced, kissed boys, fell in love, made love, and then pretended to be straight again on weekdays. I never had a serious boyfriend in those days, though, and I never stopped to think that hiding in the closet was why. I spent a lot of time yearning for partnership and joy — a lot of time not realizing why it kept slipping through my fingers.
Then the FBI interrogated me. It wasn’t personal. I held a high-level security clearance and they were making the rounds of U.S. bases in Europe doing routine spot checks designed to catch potential spies and traitors before they could do their worst.
In those days, being gay was an absolute disqualification for a clearance, on the Lavender Scare theory that gay people were uniquely vulnerable to blackmail. Imagine my shock when the agent in charge of MY lie detector test badgered me about being gay. Yelled at me when I denied it. Told me I failed the test. I waited for the hammer to drop for months, scared out of my mind. Nothing happened, but I left the military and a promising national security career the very first second I could. Once again, I mourned my friends and community, feeling the pain of cold rejection.
Losing my home and my city
Leaving the Air Force, as much as I hated to, was good for me. I moved to Manhattan, met the love of my life, and settled down with him. I joined Queer Nation and Act Up, and even though I grieved the horrible losses AIDS was inflicting on our communities in the 90s, I experienced so much love and fulfillment.
After years of rejection, I had finally come home. For the first time ever, I felt like I belonged. I existed as queer in a world where queer was ordinary and expected. I don’t just mean the city. I mean our cozy apartment, my warm little kitchen, our neighbors and friends who often filled our space with laughter and fun as I cooked for them. I saw a life for myself extending up to a mysterious, distant horizon of old age … even as I coped with the sad truth that my partner could not share the future with me.
He was dying slowly of a congenital heart defect that finally claimed him ten years after we joined our lives. I expected my pain would be intense, and it was. I expected to grieve his loss, and I did. I did not expect to grieve my home.
I got an eviction notice a few months later. I knew it was coming, but I would not cooperate in my own oppression. I refused to budge until a sheriff’s order got posted to my front door. Then I packed my bags and left, tears streaming down my face.
I left my friends and community again, driven away because I was gay — because our co-op agreement did not allow a shareholder to bequeath shares to anyone except a child or legally married spouse. Since same-sex marriage was not available in New York, I was out in the cold. No question, no appeal, no mercy.
Am I bitter our very liberal, very Democratic New York City board members told me they were profoundly sorry even as they refused to change homophobic policies that forced me out? I’m not merely bitter. I retain to this day a reflex of suspicion, a certain knowledge that my gay identity matters whether I want it to or not.
Being the gay man in Black Detroit
This next story is hard because it touches on sensitive subjects, but it cuts to the heart of identity, so I feel I can’t leave it out. I eventually built a life in Detroit, and I don’t mean the suburbs. I’m talking inside the city limits, south of Eight Mile. For years I lived in Northwest, in a little brick house on a quiet residential street where all my neighbors were Black.
I was writing novels at the time, and I moved to that street because it fit my starving-artist budget. Gay white friends warned me, told me that part of Detroit was far too dangerous. I’d be attacked, mugged, beaten, or worse. Gay Black friends rolled their eyes at the warnings and told me to be a respectful neighbor.
My white friends’ fears were based on false racist tropes about Black people who live in big cities. I knew that, but I can’t say I wasn’t nervous the first time I walked into the neighborhood barbershop. No way in hell was I driving all the way Downriver or up to the rich burbs just to get a quick buzz cut, but I knew the local barbershop would be a critical test of acceptance.
The barber’s eyes widened a bit when I sat down, but he warmed up fast, and over the next few months, he cracked on me and made as many jokes as with anyone else. He’d complain I was trying to school him on cutting white people’s hair, but he did it with a smile. Before long, I was just another face in the shop and on the block, accepted as that eccentric white writer dumb enough to move into a neighborhood most folks were saving up money to move out of.
Seven or eight months later I walked into the barbershop expecting a few laughs and stories, but all I got was cold silence. The barber didn’t look at me, and the guys waiting to get lined up didn’t talk to me. When I thought it was my turn in the chair, I stood up.
“No,” said the barber. “Can’t you see we busy? Ain’t got no time for you today.”
I started to open my mouth, but when I caught several glares, I turned around and walked out. Some of my friends on the block filled me in. I’d been spotted with my boyfriend late one night, kissing him on my porch. Word spread fast that I was gay.
I was no longer that “crazy white writer.” I became “that gay writer” overnight.
The barber had often told me how suspicious he was of white folks, and if you know the history of Detroit, you already know why. If not, please know his suspicions were rational. He knows white Michigan politicians have wielded power for generations to impoverish Black Detroit and keep its people struggling.
The fact that he could accept and befriend me (at least on some level) as a white man isn’t remarkable. Most of my neighbors did that. The fact that he rejected me when he learned I was gay isn’t remarkable either. Other neighbors did too, though nothing like all of them.
The remarkable thing is that my identity as a gay man took immediate and powerful precedence over my identity as a white man. I was gay first, white second, and I didn’t have a choice about it.
I’ve never had a choice about my identity
Look, I’m just me, a guy who who deeply loves my friends, my family, my pets. I love nature. Walking in the deep woods taking in the soft aroma of decaying leaves is spiritual for me. When I close my eyes, I see the people I love. I see the places and faces that bring me joy.
I see faces out of the past too. I see the pastor who made me vomit when I was 11, the pastor who cut me off from my teenage friends when I refused conversion therapy. I see the FBI agent who grilled me and the straight officers who counseled me kindly to leave the Air Force before it was too late.
I see the straight New York liberals who valued their co-op agreements more than they loved me as their gay neighbor and friend.
I see all the straight people in my life for whom my being gay was of primary importance, regardless of whether they saw my gay identity as positive or negative. I’ve never had the freedom to just live. The only way to de-emphasize my gay identity would be to hide, to never hold my boyfriend’s hand in public or kiss him late at night on a shadowed porch, to never tell the truth about who he is to me.
So how can anyone dismiss identity or identity politics? I can’t, because society has never let me. It’s not up to me, it’s up to you.
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James Finn is a former Air Force intelligence analyst, long-time LGBTQ activist, an alumnus of Queer Nation and Act Up NY, a regular columnist for queer news outlets, and an “agented” but unpublished novelist. Send questions, comments, and story ideas to [email protected].
This story is a response to the Prism & Pen writing prompt Will the Real (Queer) You Please Stand Up?
