There are only a handful of days until this year is over. My friend Richard gave me a bootleg of Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys’ legendary unreleased album, Smile, and all night I’m haunted by Van Dyke Parks’ words: “Over and over/The crow cries uncover the cornfield/Over and over/The thresher and hover the wheat field.” Tossing, the words repeat and repeat: “She belongs there, left with her liberty/Never known as a nonbeliever/She laughs and stays in the Won … Won … Wonderful.” I shiver, tossing and turning, fever-dreaming of my past, flipping through memories like recipe cards.
Heading to my house, my friend B and I are walking along; this is 40 years ago in Teaneck, N.J. B likes girls just fine, probably gets along better with them than I do, but he knows that boys sexually excite him, or at least he thinks they do. He wishes this weren’t so: He’s already marked in so many ways, he doesn’t need another burden. He is tall, flowing, loves art and dance, but nothing more than the over-the-top, defining gesture, the stunningly inappropriate, loud public comment. Now he’s wondering who he is and who he is going to be. In the middle he stops to assure me that I have nothing to worry about because he finds me so totally unattractive. I wasn’t worried.
B is enamored of his pain, of being an artist, so constant distress is one of his main ambitions, but the heat it’s causing him comes out of his eyes. Late adolescence is like being swept along by drowning waters erupting from within anyway, but deep down he knows where he’s going and is ready. We both know he’s gay; we’re both in denial of some sort; we both think talking about it is somehow sophisticated. We keep walking and talking.
Months later, his sister takes us to a party in the cellar of a friend’s house. Everyone is dancing gloriously; the music is so hot. Clumsy and uncoordinated in general, I’m not dancing; if I tried in this crowd, they’d call for medical help, convinced I was having a seizure. B and I are part of a very socially unskilled, emotionally off-keel group. His sister is far more social and popular, hanging with, among many others, the Isley Brothers, who live in our town. I’m just hanging back in the corner, watching, soaking in everything. Fortunately, this isn’t the last of these parties to which I get invited.
The only other white person there besides me is a girl in our class. She is outrageous, doing some kind of dirty dancing, fluid, rhythmically losing herself in the music, surrendering to the bass, thrusting, swinging, moving.
Later she will tell me that she is going to kill herself when she is 21. She is wearing a very short skirt. We are friendly but don’t really know each other. I wonder if she might have sex with me. A girl who talks about killing herself in half a decade might well have loose morals, I think. This is something I’m not proud of, but it never crossed any of our minds that she meant it, and it was a time when raging hormones had taken control of almost all the machinery, besieging and denying the brain, which wasn’t very mature under the best of circumstances. In pursuit of that goal, we become better friends. I never even make a pass, but we do spend a lot of time talking music and politics.
Sometime later, a few years after it happened, I find out she killed herself.
Still thinking of B. He really didn’t want to be gay, but was, and that defined his life. Let me clarify: Everything about the gay lifestyle, whatever that may be, appealed to him, matched his sensibilities. He didn’t want to love men. It would upset his parents and sister; he felt he would lose some control over his life. But he did love men. Those many decades ago, those I knew who were gay were often saddened, wanting out. It’s been a long time since I knew anyone who felt that way.
It never occurred to me that it was a lifestyle decision. I really didn’t think about it. Like the rain, like being slightly dyslexic and awkward, like the football players being more popular, it just was. I loved B, though he was difficult. I was as difficult, but this never occurred to me.
In 1968, I moved to Boston to attend Boston University’s two-year college (my grades weren’t good enough for anything else). I lived in the dorms the first year, but some friends and I took an apartment close to campus the second. One of my roommates, Michael, had a sister, Carol, who used to come visit us; she was wonderful, smiling, loving Michael, so much fun to be around. We’d go over to Cambridge to visit her sometimes, though she lived in a pretty intense, radical activist commune. Very politically committed, she had started in SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) but was at that point part of the Weather Underground.
Early-Sixties radical politics demanded that all people, regardless of race or economic class, be treated equally, supporting all struggles of liberation: “The people united can never be defeated!” Left out of this equation were women, the charismatic male leadership mostly indulging in very traditional male fantasies of mythic stature and romantic conquest. Eventually, many women began to question this revolutionary hypocrisy, resulting in a very street, very militant brand of feminism. Distrusting any manifestation of dominant patriarchal ideology, especially as it subconsciously dictated social roles and sexuality, some of these women, including Carol, embraced lesbianism for political reasons.
After not making good enough grades to get into BU, I moved to Vermont to attend a small college that is no longer there (its campus, appropriately, is now home to a school for students with attention-deficit issues). The school was mostly a refuge for rich kids dodging the draft or whose parents were determined they’d get a degree; it was a terrific experience for me.
Hitching down to Boston was relatively easy. Political activities were occupying more of her time, so it was rare to run into Carol, but when we did, she’d seem ever sadder. Some of this was because her filter against any kind of injustice was so inadequate; social conditions at home, coupled with this country’s militaristic activities abroad, were overwhelming her.
I was living in Red House, a farmhouse a mile from campus, hidden away in a small room that other residents seemed continually surprised to discover. Most of the other inhabitants, all from very rich families, were spoiled bullies so insensitive, irresponsible, and out of control that if they’d been raised poor they would have likely been in jail. If they’d come from here, most likely they’d have been members of the Young Conservatives of Texas, but that’s another story. One of them, whose parents had died in a small-plane crash, leaving him very rich, climbed up on a bar table one night, dropped his pants, grabbed his penis, and screamed, “It may be small but it’s potent.” (Which I believe is the YCT motto.)
On campus one day, I run across three women in combat fatigues with painted faces. “Louis?” one calls. It’s Carol. We chat for a few minutes. A gathering of militant lesbian radicals from throughout the region had rented our student union for their meetings and parties. The few minutes we spent chatting, Carol seemed pleased but uncomfortable to see me, though I was just delighted to see her. If this hints at any feminist political sensibility, it shouldn’t. I was oblivious. At the time, I was having a heated correspondence with a friend who had discovered feminism. As hopelessly ill-equipped as I was for the role, my dream was to be the shining knight in some deep romantic adventure. Discovering I was a not-quite-equal partner was disheartening.
Later, sitting around Red House, the gang began to stir and drink (redundant point). A couple of hours and many cases later, they discovered their inner sexual equality, much like anti-affirmative-action racists come to embrace civil rights: “Hell, these women want to be treated as equals, yet here they are having their damn party in our student union and not inviting men.” Working themselves up, gathering some equally drink-addled allies, they decided to make a political move for equality by crashing the party. Some athletes, and very big guys among them — a small mob — headed for campus. Knowing Carol, I waited.
Not much time passed before they returned, the crap having been beaten out of them: Broken fingers, black eyes, bleeding small wounds — they were completely messed up. And in shock as well; not only had these women taken them out rather quickly, but had been all over the place, making out and more with each other.
Turned out to be the last time I saw Carol. She visited Hanoi, contributed a chapter to the original Our Bodies, Ourselves, and as she was driving across the country very late one night, the car flipped, killing her.
Homophobic readers’ eyes probably lit up when I talked about Carol’s consciously deciding to be a lesbian. I always thought it was one of the things that made her sad, not loving women but being in a world where such decisions could be so political. Following beliefs rather than biology seems a desperate strategy. But then, being expected, if not commanded, to go against your inherent sexual orientation because of ideology, family, narrow religious demands, or restrictive social allowances is not just wrong, but insanely unreal. There is something rotting away at the structure of any system or group that so demands.
Damn Richard! The night moves so slowly. Some say they hate the sin but love the sinner, but you know they’re lying. Watch their eyes; listen to their voice. There is no love. Instead, some really believe that homosexual love is a deliberate attack, this love a conscious decision made by one who hates God, religion, society, and morality. Without love, where is God, religion, society, and morality?
“And sunny down snuff I’m alright.” But I’m not. Woody Guthrie’s words are running through my mind:
Some men will rob you with a six gun;
Some with a fountain pen
But I’ve never heard of an outlaw
Drive a family from their home.
Dawn outside the window, I’m thinking that I’ve never known of a gay person who told someone not to love.
This article appears in December 26 • 2003.