Out, Out, and Away: Part III

(Read Part I here)

(Read Part II here)

The story of my running away from home—twice, in fact—is one for another day. This story, after all, is about being a role model for gay teens, and running away from home doesn’t exactly qualify there. Suffice it to say, that my father and I ultimately negotiated a settlement, at his behest, because he didn’t want me to flunk out of high school and adversely impact the rest of my life. The terms, loosely, were: If I agreed to stay in school until graduation, he wouldn’t ask who I was seeing or what we were doing, as long as I didn’t bring any of “them” home. (Two weeks after graduation my father declared me an emancipated minor and I, at 16, was living in Europe. But that, too, is a story for another time.)

When the time came I made the presentation, laying out my journey thus far, and sharing what I had learned about the meaning of homosexuality. It was a pretty low-key affair, having been eclipsed by all that had gone into making it happen. Kids in the class asked questions and I answered. Nothing changed, really. At least not in that particular classroom. What I hadn’t anticipated, however, was that plenty was changing in the closeted hearts and minds of other gay students at Branham High School—students I’d never met, who’d only heard of my project through the grapevine.

One such student called me at home one evening, introducing himself as Rich, telling me he was doing a paper on the subject of homosexuality. He said he wanted to interview me. I agreed to meet him. Turned out we were both on the Cross-Country team, so we arranged to go running together. In the end, Rich and I dated briefly (after Joey moved on due to the fact a that his being 19 and my being 16 opened him up to charges of statutory rape), and Rich never did a paper on the subject (nor had he ever intended to). But we did talk. A lot. It was an incredible experience to be able to share our thoughts, hopes, and fears about being different.

Unfortunately, our kind of different was unpalatable to Rich’s fundamentalist parents who, upon learning of our relationship, promptly withdrew him from Branham and re-enrolled him at nearby Leigh High School. I believe they also put him into some kind of Christian reorientation therapy. I had only a few furtive moments to speak to him after that—once when I staked him out at Leigh—and he wouldn’t say much. It was clear that he was traumatized. I was worried that he would attempt suicide. (He didn’t. I ran into him 15 years later in San Francisco.)

Eventually, because of my widespread involvement in everything from Track, to the Chess Club, to student government and the school play, it’s safe to say that most of the school knew I was gay by the time I graduated in 1974. Surprisingly, during all that time, there were only three minor instances of antigay sentiment expressed openly toward me. Once my locker was tagged with “Beaugay,” a witty play on my surname. Then there was the time when yearbooks came out and I signed a freshman jock’s, telling him how cute he was; after his jock friends saw it they made catcalls at me once when I walked by their huddle in the hallway.

Marty & Karen, Branham High School Senior Ball 1974

The third time I was taunted, which probably would have occurred whether I’d come out or not, was when I was the only boy enrolled in a Modern Dance class with my friend Karen (who later asked me to the Senior Ball). We were practicing in the gym when the class ended. But because I was having a difficult time learning to “chassé,” the teacher kept me a few minutes longer to try to get my arms to alternate with my legs instead of swinging with them (imagine if you will, left arm paired with left leg, right with right; pretty awkward). Boys who were between classes began gathering at the gym door and making rude remarks. In all honesty, I deserved it. Not for being gay, but for being such a klutz.

There were plenty of other opportunities before I graduated for kids to be mean, rude, or violent, if they were inclined to. For instance, there was the time my friend David (Karen’s brother, as it turns out) went as my date to the homecoming dance. We were asked to leave after—during, actually—the first dance. Once again, however, it was the adults who had the problem; the other kids just found it amusing. I remember a lot of smiles that night. Of course, David was straight, so perhaps the onlookers who knew that just considered it a big joke.

I don’t know whether the positive response I got from my peers was due to anything I did, or if it was just a great bunch of kids I went to school with. Certainly there was not the toxic political environment in the 70s; this was before Republicans and religious zealots decided to make antigay rhetoric part of a perpetual right-wing agenda in the media. People didn’t talk much about gay issues, good or bad. So the reactions of the kids in school were their own, not something handed to them in church, at home, or on TV. That, it turns out, was a good thing. I doubt it could be replicated today, although we see that, for the most part, the younger generations who have been exposed to gay friends and celebrities are far less inclined than adults to have a problem with gay peers. The battle for understanding hasn’t been won yet, but the signs are positive.

It really does get better!

Out, Out and Away: Part II

(Read Part I here)

The first parent to get involved was the mother of my fellow L&S Seminar classmate Mike, who was also on the Track team with me. (It’s likely that the rest of the team also knew I was gay and, although we shared a locker-room, I never had any indication that any of them were suffering a “military-style” paranoia about showering with me present.) Mike was one of several guys in the class who, along with me, were Key Club members. Because of the overlap between the club and the class rosters, everyone in Key Club—including many seniors—also knew I was gay. They too, were supportive. Or if they weren’t, I never heard about it.

Emancipated minor: Marty at 16

When Mike’s Mom heard about my project—presumably from Mike himself—she was outraged. At least, that’s what Mr. Wagner, the principal, told me when he called me into his office for a chat. Wagner himself was also supportive of my quest, but he had been instructed by the district superintendent to see if something could be worked out to calm Mike’s mom and any other parents who might feel the way she did. After some round-robin negotiations involving me, Wagner, and the superintendent, I was allowed to proceed, as long as I dropped my plans to bring in a speaker from Stanford’s Gay Student Union.

During the time all this was going on, another parent got involved: my dad. Whether he became aware of what I was doing through the principal, the superintendent, or Mike’s mom; or whether it was purely accidental, I’ll never know. What he told me was that my stepmother had picked up one of my school folders and “some things fell out.” Those things, he said, were my notes on the presentation I was planning.

Adulthood and hindsight have made me more sympathetic to my father’s situation in those days, but at the time my reaction was one of defiance. I was in the garage when he confronted me, already astride my motorcycle, on my way to spend the afternoon with my boyfriend at his cabin in the Santa Cruz Mountains, just twenty minutes away. My father told me that he would not allow me to give my presentation because it would embarrass my stepmother, who was president of the PTA. I don’t remember what I said in return, but inwardly I had no intention of canceling my plans.

After making his point about the presentation, my father asked where I was going. “Joey’s,” I said. He already knew this, as my “friendship” with Joey had never been a secret; only the nature of it was. But my father used my reply as an opportunity to tell me that it was no longer acceptable for “these people” to call or visit me, and that he would not permit me to go to Joey’s anymore either. I remember trembling with a combination of outrage and fear. The fear of what I was about to do, because at that moment I was as determined as Juliet that nothing was going to keep me from my Romeo. I had found someone, a connection, a soulmate, a boy (he was 3 years my senior) who loved me. I was prepared to defy my father for that.

I ignored my father’s prohibition, started the bike, and zoomed off into the mountains to be with Joey. I didn’t stop to consider what the repercussions might be, nor did I want to know. I was running on pure adrenalin on a course dictated solely by my heart, not my head. But after staying with Joey late into the night, I had more than enough time to consider the ramifications of my actions. My fear of my father’s wrath was sufficient to lead me to another decision—one that, at the time, I felt was inevitable. I slipped back into the house long after everyone was in bed, I gathered up a few things, climbed out of my second-story bedroom window, and ran away from home.

(Read Part III here)

Out, Out, and Away: Part I

Marty at 15

[This post is inspired by the lament of a friend that there were no "brave" role models in high school for "scared" gay teens.]

By  the time I was 15½, I’d been Freshman Class president, I’d lettered in Track,  and I had starred in the lead role (reprising Rock Hudson) in the school play. I was the school’s first Sophomore student body vice-president (a role I had created while a student council member), president of the Chess Club, and had just gotten my driver’s license, a motorcycle, and my first job—as a movie theater usher. What was left for me to do?

Why… Come out, of course! I had understood that I was gay—and what that meant—since the summer before Eighth Grade, just months before my 13th birthday. My understanding was greatly enhanced by the coincidence of my adolescence with the seminal moment now immortalized as the Stonewall Riots, having occurred just two weeks after I completed the Seventh Grade.

Much was being written about the meaning of homosexuality at the time. But what made this a magical—and life-altering—moment for me was that, for the first time, not all of the discussions of the subject put it in a negative light. I found one book in particular at the Santa Clara Public Library in which a “gay liberation activist” by the name of Konstantin Berlandt explained to me that I was not only not “evil,” but that I was one of thousands of others like myself. Thus began my quest to find them.

So it was that in the second semester of my Freshman year, having moved to a new part of town (San José, California) and started at a new school, I did two things: I got myself elected class president, and I came out to the first person. The latter was not a planned event, and it took an entire tearful night—until 6 a.m.—to spit it out, but it was the turning point. The girl in whom I confided (after she inquired as to why I had not returned her affections) was completely supportive. Soon she had introduced me to a college-aged gay friend of hers, who in turn introduced me to a “gay rap group” (hey, it was 1973!) in Palo Alto, made up mostly of newly liberated Stanford University students.

There, in addition to meeting my first boyfriend, I learned the science and the politics of the struggle for mainstream acceptance. It was a serendipitous confluence of adolescence with the birth of a global phenomenon, and it affected me deeply—and irrevocably. At 15 I became an activist. A gay activist. In 1973. This was not a natural condition for me—at least, not entirely. I had always been a loud-mouthed, “willful” child, but I had a healthy (or unhealthy, depending on your perspective) respect for authority. I was the epitome of “The Best Little Boy in the World.” [Note: I should point out to the uninitiated that this is not meant literally; it is a reference to the 1973 book of that title by John Reid.]

But my new-found knowledge changed me. For the first time in my life I was willing to stand up to authority, yea, challenge it even! And that included my father, whom I had never deliberately defied about anything (other than eating tomatoes, perhaps) up until that point in my life. I didn’t set out to challenge him, of course. My fear of the repercussions led me instead, naively, to try to take on the establishment without his finding out what I was up to.

In my second year of high school, at my counselor’s urging, I officially skipped a year, becoming a 15-year-old Junior instead of a Sophomore. I was also enrolled in an “advanced” course called Letters & Science Seminar. The format of the class required that I write a proposal for a project of my own creation—which would count for half my semester grade—and then execute the project, which accounted for the other half. Well, as I said earlier, I had done so much already, that I was emboldened to propose something really radical and daring: My project would be to document my coming out, complete with a final public presentation before the class at the end of the semester.

Up until that point, I had only come out to a handful of friends. But once my project proposal had been accepted, most of my classmates in the L&S Seminar also knew. To my surprise, there had not been one negative reaction, not one taunt or slur, none of the anger, disdain, or hatred that my “mentors” at the Stanford Gay Student Union had tried to prepare me for. I seemed to be a hero to some, a curiosity to others. But no one in that class treated me any different than they had before.

Emboldened by this response, I set about chronicling my own journey, and began attending regular meetings of the gay student group at nearby San José State College (now University) to learn about the science and politics of “gay liberation.” It wasn’t until parents got involved that my carefully constructed plan began to come crashing down around me.

Read Part II here