Dichotomy
My life is interesting…at least to me. I have tried to cram in as much as possible in the time I am given on earth and will continue to do so. Sunday night was a typical example of the dichotomy of my life. Between 10 and 11 pm Sunday evening I found myself switching back and forth between Sunday Night Football on NBC and Brothers and Sisters on ABC.
Many of my gay friends understand that I enjoy Brothers and Sisters—not so many that I love football (college football is my favorite). It has been that way most of my life. As a young child I played school with the girl next door and football and basketball with the boys in the neighborhood. In elementary school and high school I continued to play football and basketball. I also took piano lessons, learned how to arrange flowers and loved cooking. One of my very best gay male friends growing up often said, “You would be the perfect husband except for that football fetish.” I never thought of it as a fetish but maybe that is a reflection for a different time.
I was the jock/slacker in high school that happened to also like boys (something I hid very well growing up in middle GA). I often laughed at the lone, out, gay boy in our school that was very much the stereotype. My graduating class had over 2,000 students and we were the largest high school in the nation and he was the only openly gay person I knew. He was a bit too swishy for me. He was the only male cheerleader at a time in central GA when there were no male cheerleaders. He pretty much dressed like the female cheerleaders and that scared me. He was flamboyant and that frightened me. He played in the annual powder puff football game previously restricted to only females. I thought he would do well to “man up.” Yet, he also fascinated me.
We also had the lone out teacher in my high school. He had spent years teaching at the girls senior high school and wasn’t very happy to now have to teach in an integrated school (races and sexes). Like the student in the previous paragraph, this teacher was a bit “feminine.” His clothes were expensive and he wore them well and proudly. He wore sweater vests, colorful ties, bow ties, corduroy and even leather now and then. He also was well known for singing and dancing in the local musical theater. He too scared me. He also fascinated me.
As a young, gay male what I wanted more than anything in the world was a role model or a friend who was dealing with the same issues that I was dealing with. Sadly, all I got were stereotypes that scared me. As I look back a lot of years later I offer these lessons:
1. I wish I had the guts to get to know both the teacher and the student who were willing to be out and proud much earlier than I did (I finally got to know the teacher when I chose to participate in community theater).
2. I wish I had not made fun of them but had attempted to understand them and through that would have probably understood myself a lot better at an earlier age.
3. These two people have had a great influence on my life—far more than I expected over the years and I hope to do the same for others in the LGBT community.
