I watched Handsome Harry the other night. It’s a 2009 drama about a 50-something coming to terms with his past. It’s seriously flawed, but is not the worst way to spend a couple hours -- and any movie with Aiden Quinn is one I want to see, though his part is a very small one.
Harry Sweeney is an ex-Navy man who visits the deathbed of a shipmate, a man convinced he’s going to hell for his part in a gay-bashing that left another mate, a promising concert pianist, with a crippled hand. The visit prompts Harry to look up the other bashers and to revisit this shameful episode in which he too was involved. By movie’s end we learn that Harry has buried his true nature for decades, unwilling for most of his life to publicly be the person he is.
Watching this film the New York Times called a "pungently didactic critique of the masculine mystique among American men" I was reminded of an experience in my own life. As a freshman at Notre Dame I knew a man I'll call Leif; he lived in the dorm room next to me and even my sexually-ignorant, repressed-Catholic brain assumed he was gay -- he was that obvious, or, more accurately, he fit that unfortunate stereotype that even I was aware of. He was likely the first person I ever labeled gay.
But he was "one of the guys" and whatever each of us might have thought individually, he was accepted as just another freshman.
During that summer (1966) I flew to Pennsylvania to pay Leif a visit. That night we shared a bed, a normal and innocent thing to do in those days. You already know what happened: in the middle of the night he made a move. I was both freaked out and intrigued, but too scared to respond, so I yawned theatrically, turned away from him and pretended to be asleep.
The next day, and for 45 years since, nothing was said. The situation never repeated and neither of us ever spoke of it.
Perhaps 22 years ago I was thinking of Leif, wondering what ever happened to him and, since I still had his parents' phone number, I called. I reached his Mom and we had a pleasant conversation, punctuated by her saying the most amazing thing: "you know, Walter, it's odd, but Leif never married." "Odd?" I thought, but did not say. "It's not odd at all; he's queer like me, you silly woman!" (I did not say that either).
She gave me his number and I reached him too, only to have an even more amazing conversation. I filled him in on my life, told him all about Ransom and then waited for him to respond in kind.
Nothing. No coming out story, no boyfriends, no lovers, nothing. No girlfriends or wives either. He seemed not at all happy to hear from me and downright uncomfortable. I hung up the phone, totally perplexed and unsatisfied.
There may be another explanation, but the only one that makes sense to me is that Leif is deeply, deeply in the closet and will likely remain there his entire life. Some men do, especially men my age and older. It's a testament to the power of homophobia and to the fear of coming out that homophobia instills in gay people.
Like handsome Harry, Leif has buried a part of himself way down deep. Perhaps someday something will prompt him to dig up that past -- maybe it has happened since our phone call. Perhaps it will never happen. It's a shame that our society has created a climate where people are afraid to be who they are. Homophobia’s victims are not always young teenagers struggling to accept themselves; sometimes that struggle never ends.
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