Life as a Sexual Exile

In the summer between my sophomore and junior years in high school, a classmate of mine named Gary Raye was sent home from his summer camp after he was caught in the same sleeping bag with another boy. Word got around in school that fall and from then on Gary was almost universally snubbed, taunted in the lunchroom and greeted in the locker room with cries of "Gay Raye!" I don't know whether he was actually gay or not, but the day he was caught in that sleeping bag, Gary became a sexual exile. I was an exile too, but my alienation was achieved more slowly, more subtly; it seemed at the time as if everyone around me, even those I loved the best, were carefully and unwittingly chipping away at my heart.

In the early 1970s in my home town of Grants Pass, Oregon there lived a middle-aged man named Rodney, who was notorious as the "town faggot." Rodney's family was friends with mine, so one Christmas Eve at my grandmother's house I was introduced to him. I trembled with fear as I heard his name. This was the loath some man I'd been warned about? He seemed as harmless as my grand-father. In fact, he seemed nicer than my grandfather.

After Rodney left the room my mother hissed, "Do you know who that was? That was Rodney!" The look of distaste on her face was overwhelming.

"You just tell me if he ever gets near you," my father warned. "I'll be after him with a shotgun!"

Later my mother reflected, "You know, Bob, if you ever turned out like that, I'd still love you." There was a thoughtful pause. "Of course, I wouldn't be able to respect you."

Without knowing it, my young, liberal, pot-smoking parents were teaching me to be a bigot, and what's worse, a bigot against myself. From the very moment that I began to become aware of sexual stirrings within myself, I realized with horror that those erotic feelings were directed toward men, or at that point, boys. I valiantly tried to change my ways. I read Playboy, I talked dirty with the guys, I even got a girlfriend and made out with her at the drive-in. But it was no use. I was fooling everyone but myself.

Slowly, while carefully guarding my secret, I became accustomed to the idea that I would lead my life as a "misfit." By the time I was seventeen, I'd managed to pilfer a few Playgirl magazines to indulge my fantasies, and one day my mother discovered them. My parents were shocked, scared, even ashamed. I was signed up for counseling at the Josephine County Mental Health Program: perhaps it would not be "too late." After three months there I got fed up with being asked to believe that I had talked myself into being gay, when for years I had been trying to talk myself out of it! I told my mother I wouldn't go anymore and that there had been no change. The subject was not brought up again, but after every date with a girl I faced the same inquisition: Do you like her? Did you kiss her? Do you think you'll go out with her again? I understood that it was only parental concern, but it was humiliating.

My admission to Harvard seemed like a godsend. Three thousand miles can give a lot of privacy: an opportunity to learn what it really meant to be gay, and to find out whether I could live that life. Partway through freshman year I had a fiery emotional involvement with a guy who lived in my dorm. We were both immature and it ended with a lot of hurt feelings, but I'd learned that sex with a man wasn't dirty, in fact it could be tender and fulfilling, and even more important, I'd seen that I could care deeply for a man, give my love to him, and live a fuller life for it. Slowly I began to "come out" to my friends, and if they were shocked at first, they usually saw that I was still the same person, and came to understand that homosexuality is just one aspect of a total person.

Back home word spread like wildfire. My entire family, from my grandmother to my nine-year-old sister, knows I'm gay, and I am very lucky. They try hard to understand, and what they don't understand they try to accept. But still I am a sexual exile. When I visit Grants Pass I am started at in the street. My parents' friends stand back and regard me as if I were an exhibit. If I go to a party among old friends, I face whispers and pointing fingers. If I tried to make my home there, I would probably end up like Rodney, alone, ridiculed, feared.

But in a sense I am an exile here in Boston as well. As a gay person I can legally be denied my home and my job. In the eyes of society I am a second-class citizen, barely tolerated but definitely not accepted. Examples are numerous of police refusal to aid gay people being harassed or beaten; in fact, harassment of gays, by police is still widespread. Any simple demonstration of affection or even simple acknowledgement of gayness can lead to verbal abuse or physical threats--and these I have encountered at Harvard on many occasions.

Significantly, the same attitudes which exile me from their world render many "straights" prisoners of their own sexuality. My father, aware now of what coming out has meant for me, confides his frustration at being unable to express affection for his closest friends. The roles that society has forced upon him have kept him from being as expressive and family-oriented as he might have wanted to be, and have prevented my mother from pursuing the career that I know would have been so satisfying to her. Obviously, something is seriously wrong with a society that keeps large segments of its population in emotional and behavioral chains. The resolutions to the problems are complex, and will not come easily but the benefits would be great--greater freedom for all of us, both men and women, straight and gay, to express our total personalities more fully. And the lives of all the people like Gary Raye and Rodney the faggot, who attempt to express themselves despite the adversity, would be a lot easier.

Robert L. Rothery works on the Lesbian and Gay hotline. He is a junior concentrating in English.