Coming Out, part 2

Image by Keith Haring (May 4, 1958 – February 16, 1990). Thank you for all you did.

I was back in Richmond, VA, in September of 1971, sleeping on my friend Wayne's living room couch. My first gay love affair had just ended badly but I was not yet out of the closet. During the four months I lived with Wayne I began to come out and eventually moved from his apartment to my own, partly to have a place to entertain guests (read: bring home men). Through all of this Wayne was totally cool and his reactions made it much easier for me to come out fully to other non-gay people.

It was at Richmond's far-from-glamorous Dial Tone, the only gay bar I knew, that I met Sandy, in January of 1972. I had been meeting men and occasionally sleeping with them but had had no ongoing relationship yet. Sandy was blonde, attractive and drinking coffee -- all three not so usual at the DT. We began a passionate relationship that night; I was 23; he was 19. That we lasted two years is, I think, quite an achievement at that age. He was my first serious male relationship; I was his second. When we threw in the towel in 1974 we told people that we loved each other too much to keep trying to make the marriage work. Sounds trite, but it was true, evidenced by the fact that we lived together for another 6 months or so as roommates.

By mid-1974 then I was out to a certain extent, but not as much as I might have pretended. In fact the VCU (Virginia Commonwealth University) Cobblestone had titled an article I had written about being gay at VCU "One foot in the closet, one foot out." I was pissed off, thinking I was totally out -- but that was not true. Sure, lots of gay friends knew, and a few close straight ones did too, but there were plenty of people in my life who thought I was straight: my family, my boss, most of my straight acquaintances. (As I reread that sentence prior to posting it occurs to me how absurd it is that most gay people had to hide such a basic part of themselves from the people who, supposedly, were closest to them.)

Coming out was a process and I wasn't done with it yet.

I took the final steps in 1975 when I joined the Gay Alliance of Students at VCU. The group was in its infancy and had just been denied official status as a student organization by VCU. There was talk of a law suit and when in fact one was launched I became a plaintiff. In short, we won part of the argument in the District Court, but the university won as well, most importantly winning the right to deny us recognition. We appealed and, in October of 1976, won in the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit. And I won my freedom as an out gay man.

My parents had been living in Florida when the first suit was filed. By the time we were waiting for the Circuit Court's decision they had moved back to Richmond. By then I had already been on the radio and TV and had been quoted in the papers. I knew that I needed to come out to my folks or there was a good chance they would learn about me by watching the evening news. So we had the talk in their apartment on the east side of Richmond; it went very well, though their full acceptance was a gradual thing -- just as mine was.


(Author's note: the above was posted from Ft Lauderdale where we are about to board the Celebrity Solstice for a week-long Caribbean cruise. My next writings will be about that trip but may not be posted til I return, depending on connectivity.)


(Author's note 2: scary night to be in New York City! [I was not]).