My manifesto was the opposite of a suicide note. It was meant as a declaration of my intention to live, and to live openly. But recognizing the fear in Ryan’s eyes, I thought back to his high school friend and the path he’d chosen, perhaps the only path he could see, and I felt luckier than ever to have had Ryan in my life to light a different one.
“Happy birthday,” he said.
But it was only March 6. My birthday was months away.
He clarified: “Today is your new birthday. You get to start again.”
II
It was a warm Los Angeles night in April when I pulled my favorite T-shirt over my skinny frame, let my blond bangs hang low and seductive over my brow, and handed Ryan his car keys. My hands were trembling in my pockets as he drove east, up Santa Monica Boulevard and into Boystown.
At a stoplight, Ryan handed me a small clear plastic baggy filled with a couple of condoms.
“What the heck is this?” I asked.
“Must I explain everything, kitten?”
“I’m not a kitten! And I’m not going to need these.”
“Well, I didn’t think you would. But he might, whoever he ends up being.”
“Are you saying I’m a slut?”
“No. I’m calling you a catcher. A receiver. Likely passive. What I call a hungry little—”
I was not going to let him say “bottom,” so I protested: “You know, unlike you, I have actually—”
“Done it with a woman.”
“Yes!”
“That’s your fault. Don’t get pissy with me about it. But I can only guess that while you were ‘doing it,’ you were dreaming of the roles being reversed.”
“That’s a big assumption.”
“But an accurate one, am I right?” I silently protested by examining the condoms. I’d seen one unrolled on a cucumber from afar in a sex ed class in high school, but I’d never actually handled one. Ryan took a sincere turn. “Just…if you ever actually land the opportunity, use them. And don’t be too shy to insist.”
It had been a while since I’d felt Ryan’s protective embrace. Now I was one of the boys in his West Hollywood pack, and he’d be damned if I was going to get hurt out here. The truth was, sex at that time, particularly for gay men, was indeed deadly. The only treatments being prescribed for AIDS either killed you faster or disfigured you while you died slow and painfully.
Ryan parked his car, and I shoved the condoms in my pocket.
I might have been knocking at the door of my twenty-first birthday, but I looked far younger, so we were headed into Mickey’s nightclub, one of the few with an eighteen and over night. For weeks I’d waited for this outing. I suspected my life was about to be flipped on its head, but I had no idea how many times I was about to be smacked on the ass. This place was teeming with fit, mostly college-age men taking full advantage of the lax age limit, some boys standing in tight, nervous circles, others swirling about, looking for a place to land, or a pretty face (or whatnot) to call their own.
I’d never received a phone number from anyone in my life. Within an hour, more than a few swirling types had scribbled their numbers on matchbooks or mine onto napkins. Within a week, our answering machine, which for me had only ever been home to my mom’s voice, was filled to capacity with potential suitors. It turned out that the attributes that had made me too slight, young-looking, or hairless for women earned me the oft-valued Boystown label of “twink.”
I was too afraid to use most of the numbers I received that night. Maybe it was all the AIDS and condoms talk, maybe it was the fact that I was craving romance more than the sexed-up vibe I’d found in WeHo; most likely it was a bit of both. But I did say yes to one invite: a screening of Doctor Zhivago from a twenty-nine-year-old named Bryan Singer who was sporting a goatee and a red flannel shirt that should have died with grunge. He’d been quick to tell me that he’d just finished principal photography on a film called The Usual Suspects. I couldn’t have cared less. Doctor Zhivago was the draw. It was one of my and my mom’s favorite films. When I was a kid, I’d spent my last dime collected from delivering newspapers to buy her a music box that played the film’s memorable “Lara’s Theme.” I was thrilled to learn that the film was going to be projected in an actual theater. This was worth facing any social anxiety for.
The movie theater in Century City was mostly empty when I arrived, but a few of the center rows were filled with young men. Bryan saw me, waved me down, and proceeded to introduce me to all the young, gay film buffs around him. Suddenly, I dared to believe that I had found a tribe of my own. I began to imagine that these boys might become lifelong friends and collaborators, and twenty years later I can report that my optimism that night wasn’t misplaced. I still know, love, and work with more than a few of those once-rosy-cheeked young men.
Then I saw him. The very first real-life man to grace my Cutest I’ll Ever See in My Life list. He was polite. He stood up when it was his turn to be introduced. He was an inch shorter than me, a bit older, and I could tell he had to shave each morning and did so with precision. He had brown hair, a cute, self-conscious smile, and was wearing a conservative button-down. He didn’t fit the mold of most of the other gay men I’d met. He seemed more like every boy I’d ever had a crush on at church or in school in Texas.
“Hi. I’m Jason.”
Oh life, you funny devil, another Jason! I instantly fell for this brand-new Jason—I just prayed for a less bloody ending.
But of course, when I opened my mouth, something like this fell out: “Hi. Some people call me Dustin. That’s my first name. But my friends and family call me Lance. You can call me…whatever you want.”
I instantly resented my mom all over again for giving me such a mess of names, but I hated myself even more for how poorly I’d handled this explanation I’d had two decades to perfect. Why not just say my name was Lance? Why be such a moron? I’d lost my cool. I knew it, and Jason could see it.
He offered a curt “Nice to meet you” and sat back down. Bryan sat beside him.
Now I worried that they might be “together,” but that made little sense to my naïve Southern mind. Bryan had clearly hit on me when we first met. How could they be “together”?
The film soon lit up the screen, turning Jason’s neck into a long, lean, glowing curve. The lightly freckled skin of his cheek had clearly done its time in the sun. The few little hairs he’d missed when shaving sparkled in the film’s light. This time I wasn’t lost in Omar Sharif and Julie Christie’s undying love; this time I was falling into my own. Three hours and twenty minutes later, when there had been no hand-holding between Jason and Bryan, I considered this conservative young man fair game and started a campaign to make him mine, but it was a campaign waged with very little know-how.
Months later, I had managed to sweat through dozens of stilted messages left on Jason’s answering machine, and only succeeded in sharing one coffee with him, during a late-night “homework session” at the Abbey in West Hollywood. Jason had only agreed after making me repeat that we were only there to do homework across from each other. This wasn’t a date. And this wasn’t the bumping, sprawling Abbey bar and nightclub of today. In 1995, the Abbey was a coffee shop. A haven for the under-twenty-one crowd—at least those without fake IDs—with an espresso machine and a baked goods selection manned by a sweet Mexican American man who knew every one of his “children” by name.
At night, the Abbey was filled with students—some with books open and notepads out, others easing into a game of pool or dropping quarters into a brand-new machine in back that let you play chess with kids on similar machines in far-flung cities: the early days of the internet. Modeled after a Spanish church, the Abbey was our sanctuary, our new home away from our families’ homes—homes that had rejected so many of us—a place where we could finally feel relatively safe, free, and norma
l.
But Jason didn’t want to talk much during our coffee outing. Not with me at least. He was too busy talking to himself as he memorized script pages. He’d tried college for a time but left early to try his luck at becoming an actor. He’d already seen some success flinging a tortilla in a national Taco Bell commercial. I was so smitten that somehow this impressed me far more than Bryan’s directing The Usual Suspects. So I tried to make a connection between Jason’s Taco Bell work and my own, but he seemed less than impressed that I’d actually mixed beans for real customers back in Salinas. He was smart, confident but not cocky; his family was from Indiana, and he eventually came out to me about one other personal detail: he felt more Republican than Democrat. That last bit baffled most in West Hollywood, but it sounded like home to me. I wanted to kiss his Reagan-loving lips, but he only had interest in memorizing yet another page of lines for one of his many auditions the next day.
The reason for his lack of interest soon became clear: Jason’s head turned only when men who looked to have spent ample time in the gym passed our table, often men with salt and pepper in their hair. I wasn’t his type, and no amount of push-ups, sit-ups, or shaving my peach fuzz to encourage beard growth would prove helpful. I know because I tried all of those things, for months.
I lost sleep over my crush. My passions began to shift from work to romance, from a love of cinematic sentiment to a thirst for real love. I couldn’t focus in school. And just like my mom’s had during her heartbreak over Don, my grades suffered. I was lovesick for the very first time in my life, and eventually even Ryan got tired of my lamentations. He was now involved with a tattooed Greek man with muscular shoulders, and his new romance seemingly gave him the authority to tell me the truth about mine: “Girl, you’re in lust.”
“No!” I protested. “I’m not a ‘girl,’ and it goes far deeper than lust.”
“Oh, does it?” He was genuinely asking.
“Yes. He’s special.”
Ryan thought on that for a second. “If he started giving you the time of day, you’d lose interest in a week.”
“That’s not true,” I protested.
Ryan rolled his eyes. He’d been around the block a few times at this point. He’d seen many a newly out boy from his pack “fall in love” only to fall right back out of it after he’d gotten what he thought he wanted. “Just have sex with him; get it over with. And then maybe find someone who actually gives a damn about you.”
Sex?! Are you kidding me? He knew me better than that. “I’m not that kind of gay,” I said, and I honestly wasn’t. You can take the kid out of the South and out of the Mormon Church, but you can’t just rip those values out of the kid. Not that quickly, at least.
He let that stand for a moment; then, as he sat casually cleaning out his camera bag from what was becoming a second career taking actors’ headshots, he offered: “You’re so used to not being able to have the things you want, or love, that you’ve fallen for the one guy in all of West Hollywood who treats you how you think you deserve to be treated.”
“What do you mean? I want him to be my boyfriend.” The word “boyfriend” felt so strange on my lips. I’d thought the word a thousand times, but this was the first time I’d ever uttered it. Then I added: “I think I…I deserve love.”
“Not yet you don’t.” He knew this feeling all too well. “You think you deserve rejection. That’s what you’re used to. So that’s what you’re looking for, honey.”
Of course he was right, but he was being too honest too soon. “Stop calling me ‘girl’ and ‘honey’!”
“Whatever you like…sweet pea.”
I fumed, and I convinced myself that he was either blind to the truth or simply jealous. I told myself I could no longer talk to my only confidant about matters of the heart, and because that’s all I wanted to talk about anymore, the all-night conversations we held so dear ceased.
I pursued Jason harder, turning him into the producer of my student films, writing dreadful scripts with him late into the night. So yes, I was soon consistently physically closer to my “dream guy”—close enough to watch him date other men, including Bryan Singer, with his terrible flannel shirts, his now Academy Award–nominated film, and his endless bragging about his massive paychecks. How the heck could I compete with that?
Before I knew it, December was upon us, and Ryan left for Salinas to be with his family for the holidays. I felt his absence deeply that year. So close to love but still unable to touch it, a new kind of loneliness descended: just me and the hum of late-night traffic on the 10 Freeway outside the window of our one real bedroom as I curled up in Ryan’s bed. I thought about what he’d said. He’d been right about my feelings for Jason. He’d been right so many times over the course of our friendship. In many ways, he’d taken on the role of father figure in my father’s absence, of big brother when Marcus stopped returning anyone’s calls, and I wondered then as I still do today what would have become of me if I’d never met him. I can tell you this for certain: I wouldn’t have stepped out of my closet as soon as I did without him stepping into that unknown ahead of me.
In my coming-out “manifesto,” I had asked and promised Ryan this: “Please don’t tell anyone of this, but keep it; it is ours, and when I wish it, it will be the world’s.” I likely only meant that I’d one day come out to the rest of my world, meaning my own family. What I didn’t and couldn’t know that lonely night was that thanks to the foundation of our unlikely friendship, I would one day prove strong enough to confront my epic stage fright, literally come out to the entire world, demand our full equality in front of millions, and face down many of my country’s most powerful forces of bigotry.
But if you’d told me that at the close of 1995, I would have called you a fool. My concern that night was that there was little chance I’d survive the Christmas ahead—a Christmas back in the South, where no one knew I’d begun to “start again,” particularly not my good, headstrong, Southern mom. Out west, I’d begun stepping out; at her home in Virginia, I knew I’d have to climb back into that cage called silence or risk a whole lot of losing.
CHAPTER 14
Queen of the Ma’ams
I
Walter Reed was nearly an hour’s commute from their home in rural Virginia, but the many hours on the road each week felt worthwhile—Jeff and Anne loved their new jobs. In her lab coat, her civil service military ID clipped to its top pocket, Anne would hold her chin a bit higher as they approached the hospital’s gate.
Back in Texas, Anne had started as a GS4—pretty much the lowest level for any government employee—and worked her way up to a GS7, only to have to take a sizeable demotion to move out to California to be with Jeff. But when she got a shot at working in microbiology there, she took it, and let her work ethic, skills, and attention to detail shine. She also wasn’t stingy with her charm around the doctors, and within a few short years, she had defied the conventional wisdom that a degree is necessary to run a laboratory, and she’d become the supervisor of the microbiology and serology sections at Fort Ord army base.
When Anne was hired at Walter Reed, it wasn’t to keep running her own lab, but to work as a lab tech in immunology, performing tests for rheumatology and other special diseases. She had hoped to stay in microbiology, but the lab at Walter Reed was packed full of people who’d been there for years and weren’t going anywhere. But again, Anne put her shoulder to the wheel and soon re-earned a reputation as the best and brightest. She got to know all the doctors, pathologists, and heads of sections personally; and slowly, she worked her way back up.
Anne’s section was inspected every other year by the official certifying organization for labs. When the inspectors would arrive, Anne would have everything ready and laid out. The inspectors would stay for a week at a time, eagerly looking for any little mistakes, but each time, Anne came through with “zero recommendations” a
nd “zero deficiencies,” meaning everything was absolutely perfect. It was rare to achieve that once in a career. Anne achieved it every single inspection.
Then one day, the head of her section sat down with her in the break room over a hot chocolate and a Snickers bar and asked if she might be interested in flow cytometry. Anne claimed she was—even though she didn’t yet know what it meant.
That night, she had Jeff take her to a bookstore. They bought manuals on the subject, and she studied and read them well into the night. It was a highly technical, cutting-edge field, different from anything she’d ever done, and she worried that she wasn’t up for it, maybe not even bright enough for it. As he always did, Jeff held her hand under the covers as they fell asleep together that night, but this time he whispered to her: “You’ve always been able to achieve whatever you set your mind to, so why not this?”
Mama's Boy Page 20
