"Unless one has access to a person's innermost thoughts and desires, it is inaccurate to define a person who has had sexual relationships with men and women as lesbian or gay. Such rigid inaccurate categorization is a vestige of a time of a rigid, straight/gay binary opposition that was both wrong and stultifying"
--gay writer John H. Clum from his book, Something for the Boys, Musical Theatre and Gay Culture
"...Homosexuality is a way of life that I've grown accustomed to. I have the same feelings as anyone else. It just so happens that I like my career so much that I'd like people to remember my music and not my personality."
--Johnny Mathis, from Celebrity Q & A, Us Magazine June 22, 1982
Isn't it funny how sometimes, if you don't grow up around a certain kind of people, sometimes you develop ideas about them based on the opinions of the people closest to you.
I remember seeing Little Richard on TV when I was a little kid. Mother said he was "fruity", and I could hear the disdain in her voice. I remember looking back at the TV at this Black man with the long, processed hair pulled all up on top of his head like Woody Woodpecker, and all the mascara on his eyes and lipstick, and I could tell it was lipstick even on a black-and-white TV. Being only about 6 or 7 at the time, I thought it was all pretty funny. I was much too young to consider any sexual connotations to it, so I basically grew up believing that if a person was "fruity", that meant that you were a man who wanted to dress up like a woman. At any rate, you saw them on TV but rarely any place else.
As such, I never really thought any more about it. The adults in my world back then were worlds away from those seen on TV. So was I. Tall skinny blondes in mini skirts saying "sock it to me", "fruity" people and middle-class households run by men were practically a figment of the imagination. Didn't see any of that in my world. In my world reality was rather limited. I knew that white people did exist, because a few were my teachers, but I also knew that they tend to cause a lot of trouble in the world, and that some of the older black kids and also some of the adults were unhappy with them.
Some TV, however, was supposed to be regarded as truth. Like Sesame Street. And the news. I could see that there was a war on TV every night, I could see Dan Rather talking about ti wearing a funny hat with leaves on it, but it wasn't a TV show. I knew this was something real, because I could hear anger in the songs on the radio, and that the songs had to do with what was on TV.
Some TV was entertainment. Like Flip Wilson. Ah, now that was different, a Black face on TV every Thursday night. His guests were also people you'd never see in my world. Some were people like my Mother used to talk about. And Flip Wilson himself in a dress and makeup! Flip Wilson wasn't "fruity", Mother said. He didn't dress like that all the time. He's just being funny.
Oh. I thought being "fruity" and being funny was the same thing!
Seeing Elton John on TV again recently reminded me of how I was to learn the difference. I remember when I discovered the music of Sir Elton. It was the summer of 1972 and as an eleven year old I had recently been ripped from my native culture and the sweet soul music I grew up with and was transported to a part of the United States where they played little else but country music. It was the whiny kind of country music, too, not the more melodic "New Country" or "Alternative Country" that's heard nowadays.
As far as I was concerned, Oklahoma's capital city was a cultural wasteland. None of my new Black classmates knew any of the songs I grew up with, and of course my White acquaintances were equally oblivious. The poor souls never even heard of Soul Train, because it had never shown on TV down here. God. Back home, when Mother went off to work at night and I had the bed to myself, I had the radio to comfort me and talk to me. How long was I going to last here, without my music? I thought I was going to die before Christmas.
Well, as luck would have it, my older brother found an "album rock" station while looking for the loud stuff, like that god-awful Hendrix my brother worshipped and that I had no appreciation for as a pre-teenager who hadn't yet begun guitar lessons. No, this stuff sounded almost like, well, classical, except it was easier on the teenage soul. These were melodic songs made up of core vocals and long instrumental "groove breaks" in between, not unlike the old Motown songs in structure. Only thing was these songs lasted five minutes or more! 1972 was also the year the Midnight Special first appeared on television, so I could satisfy my new fix every Friday night at midnight. I became a connaisseur of the stuff! There was Jimmy Spheeris and "I Am the Mercury" with that war whoop toward the end that made me jump back from the stereo every time! And then there was one that went, "White Bird in a golden cage on a winter's day in the rain, white bird just sits in her cage growing old...white bird must fly or she will die..."
One singer in particular held my attention. He sounded a lot like Jose Feliciano in the early days. Except this was piano music, but I'd never heard piano like this before! And such strange words: "No man's a jester playing Shakespeare...on the throne room floor.." The song was called, "The King Must Die". It was a song by a relatively new British performer: Elton John. In fact, it was from his self-titled, first American release from a couple years earlier when he was 22-years old. The words were by his exclusive mouthpiece Bernie Taupin. I'd never heard music like this before in my life. I was saved! They played whole albums at night after midnight. I remember listening to the radio just staring at the speakers open-mouthed and transfixed just as if I were watching TV. This was so different from my Jackson Five records, I was amazed. (Records are what music used to be played on..hard plastic discs with grooves...when done listening to them I used to roll them on the floor for added entertainment.) But my horizons were broadening, and my mind was opening...a little. Even then I could appreciate the sheer beauty in songs like Madman Across the Water, "I can see....very welll...there's a boat on the reef with a broken back...and I can see it very well.." with its ominous attitude that kept growing in a crescendo that was downright frightening when the stereo was turned up high enough...
I became an instant Elton John collector. I collected every magazine that had so much as his face on it. I bought all of his albums as soon as I had collected sufficient allowance money (and at ten cents a week, it was a challenge, but you could buy a brand new record for less than $5 in those days. Compare that with the $12-$18 bucks kids have to come up with nowadays.) By the end of the 70s I didn't have enough money for a car, but by golly, I had a top notch Elton John record collection and scrapbook!
Then one day Rod Stewart spilled the beans about Elton John's sex life...and after learning exactly what that meant from my older brother, I did what I think any teenager would do after such a revelation. I kept my records..I wasn't so disgusted that I was prepared to throw the music away, but every single magazine article and poster got tossed. It was more than I could handle. It was gross.
I guess most kids tend to be rather homophobic. "You have to be carefully taught..." a song in the South Pacific soundtrack says. How true that is. You become brainwashed. I had been carefully taught. I remembered Sanford and Son. I remembered Little Richard and his makeup. Liberace and his glitter. Then I thought about Elton John and his big glasses and his big shoes and his feathers and his wigs and such...of course. He was a "fruit", and now I knew that being a "fruit" had to do with a little more than one's taste in clothes.
It really is sad to grow up intolerant..and I think organized religion is more to blame for intolerance on all levels than anything else ever created. In so many ways, a person's relationship with God is so fulfilling, but I believe that when some people get together, like the Catholics and the Baptists and try to tell people who to hate, then I believe that religion is the worst thing ever invented by man. To think of the wonderful music that would have been lost to me if I had thrown away those records. And I knew better than that, too. I myself grew up in an atmosphere of intolerance, and oftentimes from within my own family.
Luckily it's the kind of thing that one can change. As carefully as one is taught intolerance and hate, one can be just as carefully taught to love and be accepting. Education is the key to understanding and acceptance.
I had a gay co-worker once and didn't even realize it until after he left. Actually, I didn't realize it until after he DIED and I read his obituary, and made note of his next-of-kin. Wow! This guy was as normal-seeming as you could get..I mean, he seemed trapped in the early 80's fashion-wise but otherwise....Sadly, this young man educated me in his own way. I learned that there are decent people out there who are civil to you and deserve civility in return, who don't exactly do things the same way you might.
I learned that there are people who have a problem with labels, and justifiably so. They don't want to be known as a black such-and-such or a gay such-and-such or a bisexual such-and-such or biracial, etc. Sometimes, it's not a matter of being ashamed of being either, it's just that limitations are implied. In that case one can educate oneself to be sensitive to the needs of the individual. You can call them gays or "bi"s or queers or dykes or homos or lesbos, it's all the same, but if these terms offend, I feel safe in saying "people who have the capacity or inclination to have sexual feelings toward members of the same sex". And caring about someone with those inclinations has shown me that the above-mentioned aren't necessarily the "fruits" my mother used to talk about so derisively. The men don't necessarily go around wearing dresses or makeup, the women don't wear ties, smoke cigars and shave their heads. In fact, they can be anything from pin-stripe suits to blue-collar, and everything in between. Apparently one can be in the life and be quite normal, indeed.
Which means there's no real way to tell, is there? There are certain telltale mannerisms, I suppose, and there are those who claim same-sex loving individuals do have a way of picking up on these things. It's just as well, because a lot of them don't really want to say whether or not they are, whether it's simply a matter of not wanting their business in the street, or whether it's a real fear. I can respect that, although in my opinion it's not a very nice way to live. Fear can be so confining. Unfortunately for them, wanting to maintain one's privacy has become a euphemism for "I'm gay and I'm afraid and I don't want people to talk about me." As if it couldn't be found out if one tried hard enough. I can think of a song for that, too: "What I Did For Fear". I believe that education ultimately will alleviate the need for these people to hide.
Sometimes, though, I do feel like there is a tendency among the more politicized gay groups and publications to recruit members to their "club". In their mind, if you did it once, you're in, and it's a life sentence. But it really isn't as simple as all that. As Mr. Clum suggests, it is a terribly rigid yardstick to measure by, especially among people who are no longer alive to say one way or the other; that is, if the parties in question felt in any way compelled to make it anybody else's business.
The thing I don't get is, if the people who claim someone else is a homosexual, and if it's so hard to tell unless they were on the receiving end of this affection, how on earth do they know for sure? I've even read some who say, "well, if they were around today, they'd call themselves gay or lesbian." How do they know WHAT they'd call themselves? Imagine the sheer audacity of putting words in a person's mouth. (Although, some few with poor reading comprehension skills have done so to me on occasion.)
So, ever since I'd read Mathis was gay, I've been reading quite a lot of the gay literature trying to educate myself about people in the life. After all, if it turned out to be true, I wanted to be able to demonstrate my unconditional love and acceptance of him by learning about the culture. There's an awful lot of literature out there to sift through, both online and offline. I have to admit what I know about gay people in general would fit into an ant's navel with room to spare. I know that my church, which I hadn't attended in ages, considers them people to stay away from, and my aunt once said, "I know they wouldn't sit their nasty behinds on MY furniture!"
What narrow minds. I've learned about so many great black leaders, writers, entertainers, like James Baldwin, Alvin Ailey, Bayard Rustin, Lorraine Hansberry, Billy Strayhorn, Barbara Jordan, Rev. James Cleveland, Bessie Smith, Alberta Hunter, Audre Lorde. All of them in the life. All of them were (they all happen to be dead) very normal looking people, fine upstanding individuals with the usual human insecurities and fallabilities who just happened to have had, at one time or another, feelings for someone of the same sex.
But they don't have to be; I mean I'm sure there are total jerks in that culture just on account of their being human beings! And I've also learned that being gay doesn't always mean you have to look like RuPaul, or Little Richard, even the way Elton John used to look when he was younger. A gay person could look like your mother, your doctor, your brother, your teacher. He could look like Johnny Mathis.
A gay person could even look like me.
Dr. Ruth Westheimer, in her column on the internet, says that having had homosexual experiences doesn't make one homosexual! She says it all boils down to which sex one is attracted to and only the individual can know this.
This is what I like about the Internet. The Internet gives us the opportunity to talk with all sorts of people about the "g" word. (Or is it the "h" word?) The other thing that's nice about the internet is that you can visit some of the classier gay sites such as the Advocate magazine's site, www.advocate.com, or Gay.com, and educate yourself a little to what you don't understand.
It gives you the chance to squash some myths, and demystify the whole thing. For example, when you hear about someone close to you or someone you otherwise care about being in the life, it's easy to get caught up in worrying about his/her health. Whether they are going to get AIDS. But, as the saying goes, knowledge is power. With a little education, you learn that not all gays get AIDS or HIV, especially if they are monogamous and careful. You learn that there are 70-, 80-, and 90-year old gay and bi singles and couples who are perfectly healthy and perfectly happy; well, as happy as one can be at that age.
For me, education breeds acceptance. It helps me to see that gays are human beings and not freaks to be made fun of, ridiculed and hated without due cause. Most people don't choose to be in the life any more than they choose to be black or male or whatever, and it ain't nothin' wrong with being either or all of the above. I feel that if you really care about someone and they are in the life, if he's healthy and most of all happy, then they deserve more than lip service. Show him or her the acceptance they deserve. Everybody should be able to be who they are, whatever that is, and have someone in their life who accepts them unconditionally. Too many of us aren't that lucky, but no self-respecting person would have it any other way. Like the song says,
"Whether I'm right, or whether I'm wrong, whether I find a place in this world or never belong, I've got to be me, I've got to be free, what else can I be but what I am?"
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