Grief, in Two Acts
On being gay and outliving my trauma
CW: Sexual assault
Act 1
Scene I: Notes from the Basement
The basement of my family home is a frightening place: lots of spiders, stringy webs, the occasional garter snake that sneaks in through a hole in the foundation; the perpetually dark and moist fruit cellar (shelves lined with Campbell soups and canned tomatoes), the dirt tracked in from outside yard work, and the weekly coating of dust from the clothes dryer; my dad’s workbench, a stack of corrugated steel sheets, and the oil furnace. It’s my least favorite Saturday chore: cleaning up the messes down there and sweeping up the dust and the daddy-long-legs that come along for the ride.
As scary as it is to me, it’s where I hide to flip through the men’s underwear section of the recently discarded Sears Catalogue. Where I flip through old comic books and am mesmerized by ads for Charles Atlas’ Dynamic Tension program. I think it’s more about the pictures of Atlas versus the promise of me not getting sand kicked in my face by a bully at the beach.
Actor’s notes: Why did know I must hide in the basement to look at those things? Why did I already understand that feeling the tingles while looking at pictures of men was wrong and sinful, and worthy of feeling lots of shame and guilt? Mom and dad, did you teach me that? Was it Father Aronowski? Family, friends, and neighbors? Everyone? Did you know that these years started my lifelong spiral from shame into anger and grief? The shame starts early, and its roots grow fast and deep.
Scene II: Oil City
I often accompany my parents to Aunt Dolly and Uncle George’s house in Oil City. The drive is a bit long, but I’m always super excited: Aunt Dolly is THE best cook. Dinner is always fantastic, and inevitably followed by homemade pie and ice cream. Afterwards, I usually accompany my uncle on a walk to see his garden; he is a kind and gentle man.
This time I’m happy because none of my seven siblings are along on the trip. I have my uncle and aunt (and the apple pie) mostly to myself. So excited! While my aunt and parents are in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on dinner, my uncle and I are watching a TV news program — 60 Minutes, I think. The announcer introduces the next segment, titled “The Homosexuals.” I am totally drawn to and terrified by the initial images I see on the TV. My uncle’s head perks up; does he notice my interest? He raises his voice and calls out to my parents: Arnie and Anna Mae! There’s a program about homosexuals on TV. I don’t think you want young Arnie watching this, right? Dad immediately calls me and my reddened face into the kitchen.
Actor’s notes: This was the first time I put a name, “homosexual,” to the feeling of otherness I’d had as long I as I could remember. It was also the time I learned that homosexuality was so bad that my parents didn’t want me exposed to any discussion about it. Uncle George, I know it wasn’t your intent, but your and my dad’s reaction that day made me feel ashamed, embarrassed, and afraid. Do you know that it made me realize that who I am is something terrible; something that I must hide, to never speak about with family? It made me realize that if my family ever found out the truth about me, I’d be shunned and not loved. Alone.
Scene III: The Yellow School Bus
I hate riding the bus to school. All those bumps and jolts on the ride to and from Baden-Economy Junior High seem to cause a rise in my trousers; I always have a book bag on my lap to hide that, even though my face is beet red. The bus is also where I try to avoid Chris and other potential bullies, keeping my eyes down and minding my own business. One day — was it the same day the metal shop teacher, in front of the whole class, asks the kid sitting next to me if I am a boy or a girl? — I’m getting on the bus right before it pulls out from school and see there aren’t any bullies riding today. I find a seat in the very back, where the pretty girls and cool kids sit. The girls seem to like me, and we’re joking and laughing.
As the bus is pulling out, it suddenly screeches to a halt, the door opens, and Chris gets on. Shit. Chris saunters down the aisle to the back; I look up and am terrified to see he’s looking right at me. What are you doing in my seat, faggot? I get up to move and he shoves me back into the seat. You don’t sit here ever again, whether I’m on the bus or not, understand, faggot? The bus is deadly silent, except for the pounding in my ears, except for my humiliation that is as loud as a scream. I look at the girls I’ve just been laughing with, begging them with my eyes for help, for something, anything. Nothing. I get up in the silence and shuffle up towards the front of the bus. I know some kids are staring at me, some not. I take an empty seat, although I really want to push open the bus doors and jump out onto the highway.
Actor’s notes: Chris, why did you have to humiliate me in front of a busload of kids? Did you do it to look tough in front of the girls? Did you know it was like sticking a knife in my gut, how it made me terrified to ride the bus every single day for the rest of my school years? Do you know how much I hated you from then on? And you, my temporary girlfriends — how could you not speak up for me? And you, bus driver, where the fuck were you?
Scene IV: Movie Nights
It’s a muggy summer evening, and I’m hiding in the brambles on the hillside between our house and my next-door neighbor’s house. I can see down the road from here; I’m waiting for Bob to come home. He’d shown me a few porn magazines earlier today in his garage, and he told me to come back this evening when his father would be out drinking beers at the American Legion. My stomach is tied up in knots as I see his car pass me in the brambles and then turn into his driveway a couple of doors farther up the hill. I get up, brush the dirt off my shorts, and walk up to his house. The light is on in the garage where he does his electronics repair work. I call his name, and he waves me in and closes the garage door.
It’s hot in the garage, and really stinks of ozone and oil. Bob pulls a few porn mags from his stash hidden in the drop ceiling. He shows me a couple with men and women, then a couple with only men. He tells me he wants to show me something in the house, and with nervous anticipation I follow him in. He grabs an 8mm film projector from his bedroom and sets it up on the kitchen table. Weird. He starts the movie — some kind of porn western — and I sit there watching, unable to move or speak. He reaches over from his chair and puts his hand on my crotch; he starts rubbing and squeezing. Still can’t (don’t want to?) move. He unzips my shorts and pulls my dick out, stokes it for a while, then gets down on his knees and puts it in his mouth. He asks me, Is this your first blowjob? Me, yes.
We end up in his unkempt bedroom; he takes off his pants and underwear and asks me to suck him. I do, reluctantly, revolted, wanting. I’m terrified his dad is going to walk in the house any second. We both cum. He hides the projector, and we walk back to the garage. He starts chatting about everyday things, like what just happened was the same as having breakfast, going out to play, or doing homework. I’m 13 and Bob’s thirtysomething. I walk home feeling guilty, ashamed, relieved, confused. Mostly feeling different.
I go back to his garage many times over the next several years. Sometimes there’s alcohol and porn magazines, sometimes there’s sex (with or without a movie). Sometimes there’s a mean older boy from down the street with us. It’s always the same confusing mix of feelings, wanting it and hating it at the same time. But it’s all I have.
Actor’s notes: Bob- you’ve been dead and gone for a long time, so I can’t tell you directly how you fucked up my life. But you did. I could have used a mentor and guide to help me understand my sexuality, but you weren’t interested in that. As kind and giving as you pretended to be, you were using me. You took my sexual awakening and turned it into something that was dirty and hidden. Sex and sexuality are forever tainted. I haven’t managed to be in an intimate relationship for most of my adult life. You gave me herpes — a scarlet pasted on my chest the rest of my life. I grieve every day for what you stole from me.
Scene V: On Retreat
The Jesuit retreat center, an imposing but beautiful brownstone building, is tucked away amid several acres of forested land and manicured gardens in rural central Pennsylvania. The hardwood floors with carpet runners, the soft, dim lighting in all the rooms, the abundance of candles in the chapel, the silence, the unctuous smell of Murphy’s Oil Soap — all this combines to create the perfect setting to pray and meditate.
That’s why I’m here: to pray on my decision to enter the priesthood and feel God’s welcoming embrace. Finally, I’ll be in a community where I’ll be accepted, protected, and unconditionally loved. My entire future life is in god’s loving hands.
It’s two days into the retreat, and I’m feeling an expanding ball of intense emotions in my gut. There’s profound sadness, anxiety bordering on panic, a sense of utter aloneness, an overwhelming sense of loss and grief. Finally, I tell the retreat leader — a kind, typically cerebral, Jesuit — how I’m feeling. Then the words “I think I’m a homosexual” spill out of my mouth of their own accord. The priest passes no negative judgement; rather, he encourages me to stay at the retreat and meditate on what I’m feeling. But the unabating assault of emotions is too much for me; on the third day, I leave the retreat — and my entire planned future — behind.
Actor’s notes: While I’m not sure God exists, I’m angry that he/she/it led me to the point where I was ready to turn over my whole future, my life, to its care. Then it pulled the rug out from under me. Losing my painstakingly curated and safe future grieves and angers me. After all, I worked hard, I prayed harder; I was a good Catholic boy. Maybe all this was a setup; gullible, hopeful me. Seems like all this praying and following the rules is bullshit. I’ve given up believing in anything; trusting anyone.
Scene VI: Family Secrets
It’s time, I decide. I tell a couple of my sisters that I’m gay; that of course starts the avalanche of phone calls among them, and soon all seven siblings know. As I have individual conversations with each of them via a phone call or letter, the reactions to my revelation are mixed. Two of my sisters reach out with understanding and support — they already have gay friends. One of them cries with shame, remembering how she taunted me with the word “sissy.” Some of them feel trapped between the acceptance I’m asking for and what their “faith” tells them about gay people. A few come around (at least a bit) over the years.
I reach out to my parents in a letter; there’s too much I want to say to them all at once. And I want to get it right. When my siblings hear the letter is enroute, a couple hatch a plot to have my oldest brother (he lives near my parents) check the mailbox every day and intercept the letter, so my parents never see it. He declines.
I get a call from my parents. My mom is crying. My dad sounds disappointed and sad. We talk briefly and agree to talk more later. My dad says he loves me but adds, I just think the gay lifestyle is a dead lifestyle. My mom cries. After dad passes away a few years later, I try to keep talking to my mom about it. It always devolves into her crying and saying she’s worried about me. And, she says she loves me. My sisters urge my mom to reach out to her sister or her best friend to talk through how she’s feeling. She never does. Too ashamed.
Actor’s notes: All my adult life I wait to hear my parents and siblings say: We love you, Arnie, our gay son/brother. I’m devastated that my parents could never say those very words — and never will, since they’re both dead and gone. I grieve the loss of the opportunity to push harder with them. Some of my siblings cannot reconcile having a gay brother with their “faith.” I’m tired of hearing their varying versions of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Tired of them embracing preachers, media hosts, and politicians who demonize LGBTQ people, and then not understanding why I find that maddening. I’m tired of fighting for their acceptance. Tired, and sad.
Scene VII: Death on the Side
After coming out, I move to Washington, DC — the big city, as it were. I find new friends, a community, a diversity of peoples, cultures, and ideas beyond my small-town imaginings. I find joy, freedom, wonder, acceptance; anxiety, fear, and shame come along for the ride. I also find death.
It is the bad early days of HIV/AIDS, and I’m working as an office assistant for an infectious diseases medical practice. Each weekday young men and, occasionally, women come into the office after a visit to the emergency room for pneumonia, or to the dermatologist for a strange red rash, or to their primary care doc for unexplainable fatigue and night sweats. They’ve been told they have AIDS. Sometimes it’s a gay couple; diagnosed at the same time, or one after the other. I don’t remember any coming in with members of their family of origin (but it probably happened a few times out of hundreds).
The waiting room is filled with both the newly diagnosed and those men covered with Kaposi’s sarcoma blotches; those with sunken, wasted faces. Treatment is multiple pills of the drug, AZT, multiple times a day. Some also try homeopathic treatments they’ve heard of, like sea kelp baths to suck out the relentless, uncaring virus that has turned their own immune systems into biological artillery factories. They come every two weeks for monitoring and bloodwork; I become friendly with most of them, friends with some. Most often, within a year or so, the young, hale men wither before my eyes and die. Some hang on for the years it takes until new treatments give them a fighting chance to live.
Several close friends are diagnosed — most, though not all, late enough in the epidemic to benefit from new treatments. I somehow escape infection despite not following all the safe sex rules. Luck. A roll of the dice.
I am not sure how many acquaintances and friends die in this period from the late eighties to the mid/late nineties. Too many to count; too many to mourn. I compartmentalize my life — try to stay emotionally aloof from the death and loss. But death and loss are always around the corner from the dance floor; always hidden away in a side room somewhere. I must ignore them to survive; I become a master at it.
Actor’s notes: What disinterested universal power gave life to this plague virus, and then stood by as it tortured and killed millions of women, children, and men? Some of the righteous and saved thought they knew: of course it was God, punishing and purging the unclean homosexuals from the ranks of his worthy children. The mothers and children were innocent victims — unfortunate casualties in a holy war. Each country and culture came up with its own irrational rationale to explain the insanity of AIDS. I came up with tricks to keep the anger and grief at bay — and have suffered the consequences.
Act II
Scene I: Soliloquy/Present & Future
Thirty years hence, life events — approaching age sixty, retirement, my mother’s death — trigger in me an impulse to dig into my past traumas and present grief. Despite being in (mostly) and out of therapy and taking antidepressants for many years, I am driven to process through the ocean of toxic gunk that has clogged my emotional engine and kept me from realizing my dreams: dreams of a happy, long-lived intimate relationship, of writing wise and wonderful stories to share with the world, of feeling safe and loved. Reacquainting myself with Trust and Belief.
I attend a month-long residential trauma recovery program. I continue to invest myself in psychotherapy and pharmaceutical treatment. I increase my exercise and weight loss regimens. I duck in and out of online Refuge Recovery and AA meetings and yoga classes. I reduce my drinking (a tad, anyway). I take a couple of writing and other creative classes. I share my experiences with close friends and family. I do all these things intentionally to help my heart, mind, and body process my anger-wrapped grief.
I’ve learned a few things along the way.
The experiences in my past that were/are traumatic and painful also shaped and honed many of my better qualities. I have a great empathy for others, and a strong antipathy towards disparaging other people based on first impressions. I don’t know what burdens others are carrying from their past or present; I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I try to be friendly and welcoming and am not eager to engage in conflict. I recognize the importance of community, whether the LGBTQ community, the recovery community, or the community of my chosen family. These are all character traits that I like in myself.
I’ve also discovered there is no real beginning or end point to working through the traumas of my past; the work will continue until I die. I will never completely expunge the grief from my soul; some past wounds will never fully heal. I will feel the loss and see the scars.
But, and this is a big BUT, I retain hope — sometimes dimmer, sometimes stronger — for a progressively better, fuller life. A life I hope to share with someone else. I’m not completely sure what sustains this hope. I think it’s due to people who’ve come in and of my life, whose belief in and love for me keeps me afloat in the dark times. Also, there are the shared stories of my fellow travelers on this journey, many of whom have survived and thrived despite traumas I feel I could never have endured. Finally, perhaps, at my core there is a reservoir of belief in and love for myself that I often can’t see clearly through the disparaging self-talk and emotional refuse of the past. Regardless of the reason, hope stubbornly remains, and I am grateful for that.
