by Lui Gervais
aka Source Aurora
Wandering into our classic 1970s family room, I notice the new edition of Time magazine sitting on top of our hunkering wooden TV console. On the cover is a soldier in uniform. The bold headline is four words. At eleven years old, the first three words are simple enough for me to read. I AM A. I am a smart, sensitive boy. I AM A boy eager to read. I AM A boy curious about the larger world outside my dark, paneled home. The fourth word in the magazine headline is new to me. It is longer and more complex. It has an X in it and that stops me. A word with an X is a challenge.
Sounding it out, one syllable at a time, I give the word my best effort. In a classic moment of Freudian truth, I put it altogether. I AM A HO MO SEX UAL I say aloud to the shag carpet and orange formica kitchen counter. It’s unusual. In a family of eight, the family from is mostly vacant. Only my overworked Catholic mother is there in adjoining kitchen. Upon hearing my words, she spins around from her pots at the stove and stares angrily at me. Looking at the magazine and then back at me, a slow understanding emerges. “Isn’t that disgusting” she replies distractedly. Turning back to her pot roast, her alarm and revulsion dissipating.
Looking at the magazine again and feeling into the disdain in my mother’s voice, a shadowy truth suddenly crystallizes within me. Somehow, I know that whatever this soldier is that I am as well. It is called A HO MO SEX UAL. I too am a homosexual. Although I don’t know exactly what that means yet about me as a person or for my life, I now know that my mother DEFINITELY doesn’t approve of homosexuals. Clearly doesn’t want a HO MO SEX UAL in her home eating her pot roast.
Looking back, I knew that I was also a HO MO SEX UAL years earlier. In kindergarten, I wanted to touch, to be close friends with and was somehow slightly afraid of Stevie Beaulieu. Stevie had shiny blond hair cut into a simple bowl and when he was near, it amplified a magical feeling in me. An excitement that I intuitively knew to keep to myself.
This ‘disgusting’ moment with my mother and the soldier brings that earlier feeling and confusion into rapid focus. In that instance, I realize that I can no longer hide behind my childish innocence. I now need to hide in earnest. It is a small moment of trauma but the effects are huge. The new found conscious awareness of my dangerous situation pivots my world.
In my alliance with the homosexual soldier, I become a homosexual warrior as well. Not because I want to make war, but because that’s when I begin to worry. I take the war zone of the closet consciously, deliberately into my small self. Assessing my situation, I know that I am too young, too weak to face adult challenges. Too vulnerable to survive the consequences of discovery. I immediately go undercover and like an assassin, I kill the truthful adult version of myself. Without a second thought, I destroy the personality I would never grow up to be. The unselfconsciously authentic version of myself.
I like to say that aside from growing up in the closet, my childhood was beautifully facilitated. With pot roast and clean beds, I had access to every kind of creativity my young mind wanted to explore. Art lessons, dance, singing and music. Looking back, I’m sure I was hiding in plain sight. Anyone with eyes could see my sweet, creative sensitivity. And holding my secret didn’t prevent me from performing in musicals. The fantasy land where many other closeted gay boys gravitated.
At Sunday dinners, I would regularly receive alerts from my family over the intercom in my closet. “Attention! Attention! Any and all closeted homosexuals within earshot! Please remain firmly in your closet! We, out here! The ones who pay the bills and remain in power are not prepared for or willing to adapt to the idea of your confusing and burdensome sexual truth. Please, remain in hiding until further notice! That is all.”
“Homosexuals should be lined up and shot,” says my brother. Shocked, I look to my mother. “Did you hear what he just said?” I ask her, to which she tacitly says nothing. “I would never pay for a gay kid of mine to go to college,” my father drops into the conversation out of the blue. Little did he know there are two of us college bound homos sitting right there in front of him, spooning mashed potatoes and gravy into our open mouths. Jaws dropped, eyes darting back and forth between us, my sister and me, clear messages received.
As a teenager, I know exactly who and what I am. After masturbating for the umpteenth time to images of Burt Reynolds, there is no denying the truth in my body. The way Burt’s thick, dark chest hair flows dangerously lower, disappearing into the hot, power center between his legs. The thought of putting my face in there makes my eyes go wide with heat and my adolescent cock jump and twitch.
Burt Reynolds is the first to turn me into a beast, setting me free from the textured formica walls of the tiny basement bathroom and the mildly oppressive regime I am living under. One afternoon, Burt roughly rubs his hairy chest all over me. I shoot a huge load in my mouth with my legs snaking up the wall. Buttoning his shirt, Burt winks knowingly at me before disappearing for a short break. I look in the vanity and my future self breaks in to speak to me over the intercom in my closet.
“Geez Lui, look at yourself. You’ve got cum all over your face. Let’s face facts here. You are (whispering) A HO MO SEX UAL! Unfortunately, the folks here are not on board with that, but I’m here to tell you, it’s all gonna be ok. In fact, it’s gonna be great! One day, when you leave this house for good, you’re gonna go out into the world and frolic in a field of hairy chests and suck miles of cock. Just take heart, sweet boy. Know that it’s coming. Just around the bend. But for now shhhhh…mums the word.”
I took heart in his/my words. And he was right. Like Dorothy landing in Oz, my depressed black and white world opened up in technicolor on my very first day of college. While unpacking my Flash Dance poster in my dorm room, my life-long best friend walked in the door. When I first heard the reedy lilt of a sweet gay boy and noticed his white Capezio dance shoes, I knew I was homo home free. I came out of that closet that fall and unfurled my iridescent wings into the joyful, erotic animal I knew myself to be all along.
Oftentimes, our wounds are what forges our gifts. The damage of the closet lives on in the worrier in me. Not warrior as in war. Warrior, as in worry. It’s there in the uncomfortable distances I still carry with my birth family. It’s there in the crankiness that arises when I don’t feel safe or seen. But I can see now that growing up in the closet was a cocoon for fashioning the tools I now hold most sacred.
Keeping my secret kept my heart closed to my family. It was not safe to be open and honest, making it impossible to be vulnerable. And now, my work in the world is all about opening hearts. Creating intimacy. Encouraging vulnerability.
Perhaps I didn’t kill the authentic version of myself after all. After all these years, he’s here. He’s not the unchallenged version I once mourned. He may have been a bit battered and bruised while bursting from the hard confines of the closet, but like a butterfly pushing its way out from a chrysalis, the struggle is an essential ingredient that makes its wings strong.
I never thought I would say this but the closet was a gift. It was for me an evolutionary bootcamp. I will know no other life without it and in part, it made me who I am. Now, kick rocks, closet! I AM A HOMOSEXUAL. And that’s not OK, that’s just great!
