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
