I Never Would Have Believed…

The Stonewall bar form Christopher Street Park

The older I get, the more often I find my conversations include the phrase “Forty (or ten, twenty, thirty) years ago I never would have believed that today I’m…” I suppose this is a quite natural phenomenon of aging. Things change. What was once unusual is common. Life takes us places and provides us with experiences that we couldn’t have imagined in our naive youth. Our personal history converges in circles of unexpected complexity. The convergence of retrospectively unbelievable circumstances was quite multilayered for me personally this past weekend. Let me explain.

Twenty years ago I never would have believed that the president of my country would include the Stonewall riots along with the civil rights movement as examples of American history to acknowledge and take pride in as President Obama in did in his second inaugural address. This is the government that fifty years ago carried out policies that systematically rooted out, shamed and fired gay people from it’s agencies as unfit to serve their country. Now the president was acknowledging an event considered a major turning point in the movement to change those policies. I thought I could never be prouder of this president. 

Ten years ago I never would have thought it possible that the President of the United States would declare Christopher Street Park and the area around it a national monument. For almost half a century this area has been a rallying cry and gathering place for LGBT people to protest, mourn and celebrate. What happened here in June of 1969 was not big news much beyond the neighborhood at the time. Most of the people who decided to fight back against the police who raided a gay bar run by the mafia that night remain anonymous to history. They would not have believed that their angry reaction to the indignities they suffered at the hands of the police that night would be the spark to ignite and unite a movement that would create positive change in so many lives many years later. This is history that always mattered to me as it has come to matter to LGBT people around the world. As a community we have always honored all those who had the courage to speak up and fight back that night. Now that history is not honored just by my community. It’s honored by my country as well. President Obama’s list of accomplishments in support of LGBT people is so extraordinary that this almost seems like just icing on the cake, but I think over time it will have just as significant effect on our community as marriage equality and ending sexual orientation discrimination in the military.

Park rangers prepare for their talk about the Stonewall riots.

Ten years ago I never would have believed that I would be standing in Christopher Street Park  listening to a National Park Ranger talk about the Stonewall riots and the early 20th century history of the oppression of LGBT people in our country. A small diverse group of people listened as he spoke just as they would have to a park ranger at Ellis Island, Federal Hall or any other historic monument or park overseen by the National Park Service. In the group were many young men and women, some presumably gay for whom the Stonewall Riots are distant history from long before they were born. That they and many generations after them will be able to come here to learn about and celebrate this history is amazing. The government agency that just a few years ago would have denied employment or fired any employees that were found to be gay, now is charged with preserving and interpreting the history of the LGBT equal rights movement for park visitors at a National Monument! LGBT folks who just a generation ago were marginalized by their government as second class citizens without equal treatment under the law — whose open expression of their sexuality could get them arrested, beaten up or ostracized by their families — can now come here and feel part of the American experience as previous generations never could have dreamed of. This is huge and made me more deeply proud to be an American than I ever have before.  

Six years ago I never would have that thought that I would know so much about what a national monument is and how important they are because of my experience as a volunteer with the National Park Service (NPS) at another of New York City’s national monuments, Governor’s Island. When I started volunteering for the NPS on Governors Island it was just something useful to do with my time as a retiree. I had a modest interest in history, but it was mostly an opportunity to be outdoors in a pleasant place and have interaction with other people which is something you miss when you retire from going to an office everyday. Over the last five years that I have been doing it however it has become much more to me. I have become more interested in the history of my city and country and what it reveals about our present. The more I learn, the more I want to know more and I’ve discovered that the best way learn new stuff is to share what you know with others. I found I really enjoyed interacting with visitors to the park and answering their questions. When I started leading tours of Castle Williams and Fort Jay just as the park rangers do it was especially gratifying. When I had a very engaged group who asked questions that I could answer I felt useful and appreciated in a very special way. I understand why many of the park rangers seem to enjoy their jobs so much. Now I’m excited about our newest National Monument, Stonewall, because in the future I may be able to expand my NPS volunteering in a new direction and be part of how this important place and history is preserved and presented. The possibility of someday standing in Christopher Street Park wearing my NPS volunteer badge and telling visitors about the early history of the LGBT movement and the Stonewall riots is a very exciting prospect for me to contemplate. The Park Service has made a great start but is just beginning to figure out how they can best interpret this history for the public and I intend to be involved as much as I can.

Lastly, forty-seven years ago when I was languishing the summer away in my parents house recovering from hepatitis that had caused me to leave school, I never would have believed it if someone told me I would discover the possible source of my illness forty years later from reading a history book. The summer of 1969 it was a total mystery how I had come down with a case of non-infectious hepatitis that is usually the result of poor sanitation or hygiene. There were no other cases at my school and I was always pretty careful about my personal hygiene so I didn’t think it was because of insufficient hand washing as my mother seemed to think. In any case it wasn’t serious and I never felt sick. I just had to stay home for many weeks and suffer extreme boredom until my yellow jaundiced eyes returned to normal. Many years later (probably around 2005) while reading Stonewall: The Riots that Sparked the Gay Revolution by David Carter, I read his description of the Stonewall bar and how there was no running water behind the bar and how they washed the glasses by swishing them around in a tub of dirty water. He went on to note that there had been an outbreak of hepatitis among some of the regulars that spring that may have been caused by that filthy water. A lightbulb lit up in my head as I read this. In April of 1969 I was at the Stonewall and I had several drinks there. I had come to New York with my best friend on spring break from college. I was nineteen and thrilled to be in New York on a Saturday night in one of the hottest gay clubs. I had worked several odd jobs to earn enough for the plane fare to New York. I have a letter that my mother had saved that I wrote to her at the time describing everything I did on that trip — well not everything. I didn’t mention going the Stonewall even though that was certainly one of the highlights of my visit. I had been to gay bars before, but the gay bars in Indianapolis at that time were small and unsophisticated compared to the places we went to in New York. The Stonewall had two dance floors and was packed with well-dressed handsome young men enjoying themselves fearlessly. Or so it seemed to me at the time. I was too naive to know that the music could stop abruptly at any time if the police decided that it was time to put the faggots in their place. It had happened before and it could have happened the night I was there. I remember being kind of overwhelmed by the scene at the Stonewall that night. As excited as I was to be there, I was too shy and unsure of myself to strike up a conversation with any of the sophisticated men surrounding me. The friends I had come with were not so shy and I ended up taking a taxi alone back to the apartment where we were staying. My only souvenir from a night at the legendary and future historic Stonewall would to be a nasty microbe that would turn the whites of my eyes yellow three months later. This past weekend I told this story to a group of strangers and two park rangers in The Stonewall National Monument. 

More Innocent Times

Obviously my little brother Mark found this hilarious

I found this childhood photo of me while going through family albums at my mother’s house last year. I’m around eight years old and dressed up like a girl. This wasn’t just playing “dress-up” as we used to call it in 1958. This was what we would view now as full on drag with lipstick, pearls and a ponytail made out of lock of hair my mother had saved (more on that later). My mother had dressed me for the entertainment at the monthly meeting for the cub scout troop to which I belonged. I wish I could tell you that I lip-synched to Patti Page’s big hit that year “How Much is That Doggy in the Window?” and brought the house down, but alas no. Apparently the Boy Scouts of America in 1958 in their publication sent to leaders outlining possible programs for troop meetings, suggested that it would be hilarious for all the den mothers to dress their sons as girls and have a “Funny Fashion Show.” That’s the reason that the “dress” I’m wearing in the photo is actually a burlap feed sack. “Sack” dresses were a fashion statement in 1958. I don’t remember what the other boys/girls were wearing except for the one member of my den who refused to where a dress. They put him in capri pants.

"Sack" dresses were a thing in 1958

Seeing this photo made made me laugh and brought back a lot of long forgotten memories. I was also very surprised to find this photo because I thought that I had destroyed them all when I was old enough to be embarrassed by them at 13 or 14. I remember being quite determined to get rid of all the photos from that day ripping them up and throwing them in the trash. Now I’m glad I missed one and that I can share it with friends and fans who know that playing “dress-up” is something I came back to have some fun with much later in life. In the photo it looks like I was having fun back then as well.

Seeing this photo also made me think about all the issues surrounding gender identity and children which is perplexing many parents these days in ways that would have been unthinkable in 1958. It’s hard to imagine that the Boys Scouts of America we know today suggesting to den mothers all over the country that it would fun to dress their young sons up as girls and parade them around in public for everyones amusement without a second thought about what kind of irreparable damage it my do to their fragile prepubescent minds. Yet that is what they did. 

I was curious to verify that this wasn’t just some outlier den mother in Michigan that came up this idea, but that it was actually something that came from the BSA headquarters. Thanks to the miracle of the internet I found a newspaper article from around that time with pictures–from Salt Lake City Utah no less. I can only presume that many of the “girls” in the picture are just a decade away from being called by the LDS to do their missionary work in crisp white shirts and ties.

From the Salt Lake Telegram, 1957

The 50’s was a more innocent time and I’m sure that there were many parents, particularly fathers, who wouldn’t let their young sons participate in such an emasculating thing. However it did happen and cub scouts all over the country were cross-dressers for a day just for fun without any judgement or concerns from adults about what the experience might mean to their development into well adjusted young men. Perhaps there were some who were psychologically damaged by it and grew up to be wife-beaters or bullies to compensate for the for the shame of knowing they once were forced to wear gender inappropriate attire. Perhaps some of those boys even grew up to be secret cross-dressers living double lives remembering the day it all started in the cub scouts – the day they discovered the feel of silk and chiffon against their skin made them happy. Certainly some grew up to be homosexuals. I know of at least one who did. However I can also say with certainty that the fact that I had some fun in a dress at the age of eight didn’t make me gay. I played dress-up a lot when I was a kid. In my closet there was a box of old clothes that was there for us to play with and we did. We put on old hats, shoes, ties and yes, dresses. We pretended to be people we were not. It’s what kids did and I presume still do when they play. Then you get older and you put little kid things aside to please your parents and fit in with your peers. Certainly back then any boy beyond a certain age who continued to choose girlie things to play with over boy things was going to have problems in most families. 

Certainly if I had continued putting on dresses and lipstick after the age of nine or ten there would have been concern from my parents, but by puberty I was “normal” enough to be embarrassed by reminders of my childish behavior as a little kid, especially the pictures of me dressed like a girl. However, in retrospect I think my parents didn’t pressure me too much to conform to hardline gender specific behaviors and interests. In my family, as the middle child who was considered the more “creative” of my siblings, I was allowed to stray a bit outside the boundaries of normal gender specific interests. I played with cars, trucks and toy guns but I also had a puppet theater. I liked music and performing and both my parents encouraged me. I learned how to use tools from my dad and my mom taught me how to use a sewing machine. Dad would take my brothers and me to the movies to see many of the action-adventure movies of the 50’s and 60’s like “Ben-Hur” and “The Buccaneer.” Very much “guy” movies, but he also bought sheet music of songs he liked for me to learn how to play on the piano. Mom took me to see shows and concerts. I learned many skills from both my parents that have served me well in life for which I will always be grateful..

My grandmother Edith as a young girl

I can only imagine what new challenges are brought to the parenting game today with all the gender and sexual identity issues being being more openly discussed and dealt with publicly by young people, adults and children. However while I look at all the old photos of me and my brothers and cousins as kids, I think that maybe back then in more innocent times, there were fewer things for parents to worry about. I wouldn’t suggest that things were better when I was growing up. However, I think one lesson that 21st century parents might take from their mid-20th century predecessors is to relax a bit and try not to obsess too much over the consequences on their kids for everything they do as parents. Parents today would probably cringe at much of what their grandparents did as parents, but a substantial number us survived without too much permanent damage. Children are pretty resilient and will probably deal with a whole bunch of really crazy stuff that we haven’t even thought off yet. So if your eight-year-old son wants to put on a dress and lip-synch to Lady Gaga don’t discourage him (unless of course he’s got no talent). He will move on to other things tomorrow or maybe he won’t, but either way, he’ll probably survive just as most of those little boys that the BSA encouraged to dress like girls in 1958 did. I’m pretty certain that most of them grew up to be respectable adults Sure one or two of them may have grown up to be drag queens, but so what? Today it’s a viable career choice.

About the ponytail I was wearing in the photo: It was a long lock of hair that my mother had saved from when her mother cut her hair. It was a long substantial amount of hair and I assume that my grandmother saved when she gave up the Gibson Girl look of her youth. It matched my hair color perfectly and I used again ten years later when I needed a ponytail for a period play I was in my senior year of high school.

A Conversation With My 18-year-old Self

I've been playing some Back to the Future games in my head lately that have been keeping me awake at night. So after a long absence from contributing to this blog I'm going to throw some more words into cyberspace in hopes of exorcising them from the front of my brain.
While sorting through things in my elderly mother's apartment to prepare for her to move to an assisted living facility I found several letters that I wrote to her and my dad over the years. One is dated 1968, my first year of college. It was quite a shock to meet my 18-year-old self in a letter from 47 years ago, especially since that 18-year-old was really pissed off (more about that later).
My mother was a reliable letter writer through all the years since I left home for college. It was our family's preferred form of communication in those primitive days before the internet. Long distance phone calls were for emergencies only. I would regularly receive envelopes from my mom that contained not just letters from her, but letters from other family members with all the family news from aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents. She would often ask me to contribute my own news and send it on to one of my brothers. She called it the Round Robin.
The letters my mom saved were not the ones filled with innocuous small talk that revealed only sparse and sanitized stuff about myself for family consumption, but ones where I had something of importance (or so seemed at the time) to say. Reading them again all these years later brought back a lot of personal history that I haven't thought of for years. They touch on a lot of life decisions I made as a young man that in retrospect must have been difficult for my parents to understand. They are also revealing in what they don't say to my parents. Between the lines of these letters are also memories, experiences and life decisions that I chose not to share with them – choices I made that set me on a path of emotional and physical distance from my family. I think my mother was able read between the lines as well and realize that there was a lot I wasn't telling her. These letters represent little islands of honesty and real emotion in a vast ocean of midwestern WASP stoicism. That she saved them tells me a lot about my mother that I'm just now beginning to understand. They also are markers along a path spanning 22 years starting 1968 taken by many gay men of my generation that put physical and emotional distance between us and our families because we had to protect them from having to really know who we were. It would take 22 years to get to point where I felt I could begin to feel confident enough to be totally myself around my family.
Ironically, the thing that my 18-year-old self was so pissed off about that he threatened to "make other plans for my life" was not about his budding sexual orientation, but a haircut. Would my 18-year-old self have made different decisions if I could go back in time and have a conversation about his future? Probably not.

Scene: Late night in a dorm room at Butler University, 1968. The lights flicker on dimly as the young man wakes up from a deep sleep startled by a strange sound.

66-Year-Old-Self: AHHOOOOOOUU!

18-Year-Old-Self: Who are you? How did you get into my dorm room?

66-Year-Old-Self: AHHOOOU! I'm your future self here to show you the consequences of all the decisions your making as a young man that will determine your future. AHHOOO!

18-Year-Old-Self: Is this some kind of a joke? Barry, is that you trying to scare me? I've got to get a new room mate. Please go away. Besides you couldn't possibly be future me. You're old and fat… and bald!

66-Year-Old-Self: AHHOOOU! But I am you. If I wasn't you how would I know you're thinking about ditching your family over a haircut? AHHOOOU!

18-Year-Old-Self: That's none of your business and stop making those stupid ghost noises. You're not scaring me.

 66-Year-Old-Self: OK. But do you really think you can leave school and go out on your own without your family's support?

18-Year-Old-Self: I'll get a job. I was on my own all last summer. I didn't need anything from my parents.

66-Year-Old-Self: You were getting a $6o a week apprentice stipend and living in a dorm room at that summer theater. A real job in the real world means you have to show up every day to do real work and earn enough to pay real rent. Besides you'll lose your student deferment and you'll be drafted into the army and sent to Vietnam.

18-Year-Old-Self: If I can't get a job I'll join the navy. At least then I won't be canon fodder in that stupid war… and they have cuter uniforms.

66-Year-Old-Self: You know if you join the navy, the first thing that they do is give you a haircut.

18-Year-Old-Self: Leave me alone! You're worse than my parents! WHO ARE YOU?!

66-Year-Old-Self: AHHOOOU! I'm your future self here to show you…

18-Year-Old-Self: Shut up! If you're future me, then tell me my future. Tell me how I get so old and fat and bald! Tell me what happens if I don't get a haircut that my narrow-minded parents deem suitable for my narrow-minded relatives. Are they really going refuse to take me for Christmas at my grandparents? Do they really think I'm not old enough to make decisions for myself yet?

66-Year-Old-Self: It sounds like this isn't really about a haircut, but about you making your own decisions and whether your parents can accept it. Whether they can can accept who you really are.

18-Year-Old-Self: What do mean by who I really am? What do you know about who I really am?

66-Year-Old-Self: I know what you did with that oboe player last week. I know what you wanted to do with the cute blonde bass player in the band you saw at the dance last month. I know about the guy who took you for ride in his corvette and…

18-Year-Old-Self: Shut up! Now you're really scaring me. This is a nightmare!

66-Year-Old-Self: Look, I know this is a confusing time for you. I realize how unfair it is for 18-year-olds to have to make all these important life decisions that affect their future. I know what's in that letter that you're going to mail to your parents tomorrow. I read it 47 years from now. It reminded me of how angry and frustrated I was. That's why I decided come back here and have a conversation with you. I thought maybe I could make things a little easier and reassure you that…

18-Year-Old-Self: This is crazy! Reassure me about what? If you're really what you say you are, just tell me what to do. I'm really scarred that I'm not going to make it on my own. I feel so different about stuff than most of the other guys here, but then there are some that seem to feel the same way and are OK with it. Sometimes I feel like there's just so much out there I don't understand, things I want to do and places I want to go, but I'll never get to because I'm stuck with a family that will never understand me and let me decide things for myself. They want me to be like them. I'm not like them. I don't want to be like them. Or maybe I do and I just can't. I just don't know. If they really knew how I felt about things, knew about some of the stuff I've done would they even like me anymore? (laying back in the bed he turns away and gently sobs)

66-Year-Old-Self: I'm sorry. Maybe it was a mistake for me to come here. It's just that when I read that letter 47 years from now all the confusion and emotions that I felt – that you felt – when you – I – wrote that letter came rushing back to me. I just thought that if I could come here and have a conversation with you I could make it a little easier for you. Let you know you things would turn out OK. I'm not sure if this is my dream 47 years from now or your dream 47 years ago, but now that I'm here/there I realize dream or not, there's nothing I can tell you that will change anything or make anything any easier for you. I'll just go.

18-Year-Old-Self: Wait! Don't go! I don't care if this is just a weird dream. I can't believe I'm talking to my old self, but now that I am you've gotta give me more than that. You can't just show up here and fuck with my head, tell me "things are going to be OK" then skulk away.

66-Year-Old-Self: Alright, here's what I can tell you. You will be OK. But it won't be easy. You're going to make lots of mistakes, fuck up a lot of things and generally make many bad decisions that will cause you immense pain, suffering and self-doubt just as you're feeling now.

18-Year-Old-Self: Great! Then why bother if everything is going to be so fucked up and hard?

66-Year-Old-Self: Because even though you're being an ungrateful little shit to your parents now, they will come around and support you through all those bad decisions. They won't understand you or even know much about your personal life and you will continue to be a major source of anxiety for them for many years, but they will always be there when you need them and eventually you will be there for them when they need you. They will come to know and appreciate you as a man with no secrets. It will take many years for it to happen, but it will.
Because even though your life is going to be rife with disappointment, lose and grief it will also be filled with great moments of joy and wonder. You will come to know many great people and find yourself in many places that will surprise and delight you. You will make lots of mistakes, but you will have fun, lots of fun. Your life will be very different from what your parents had, but you will eventually appreciate that the people who raised you will always be part of who you are no matter how different you turn out.

18-Year-Old-Self: OK, that all sounds great. I guess I can go back to sleep now or wake up or whatever I have to do to make you go away. I just have one more question for you. Am I really going to be so old, fat and bald?

66-Year-Old-Self: There are just some things 18-year-olds shouldn't be told. AHHOOOU!

BLACKOUT