PLAYING BY THE RULES
by
Justin Elzie
SMASHWORDS EDITION
* * * * *
PUBLISHED BY:
QueerMojo (A Rebel Satori Imprint) on Smashwords
Copyright 2010 by Justin Elzie
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Foreword
For those working in the struggle for full equality, it is so easy to become captive to statistics, data and timelines to prove our worthiness to be first class American citizens. Activists follow phone trees, email campaigns and briefing papers to make us better prepared for the epic civil rights struggle we are fighting on a daily basis. We can easily recite that over 13,000 of our courageous lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender soldiers have been dismissed from the military since President Clinton handed us “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell.” The community has had to listen to countless politicians explain while now is not the time, and offer pitiful excuses, for their own lack of courage to repeal this draconian policy. Often, in our eagerness for acceptance, we have forgiven unforgivable political conduct.
What is missing from this equation is our own humanity. The powerful stories of fear and oppression that have emerged from this long journey to be free are missing in action. Some because many of our possible storytellers have died in the dark period of AIDS, and are no longer around to remind us of our remarkable history, and some because they couldn’t tell their stories. You are about to read of one Marine that wasn’t asked, but told.
Young people often are shocked that lobotomies were a common practice in the 1950’s. City police in every part of the country often raided political meetings of the gay and lesbian community in the 1960’s. In reading the history of the HIV/AIDS epidemic they are stunned to discover that our government not only failed to fight this epidemic, but let it spread because it started in the gay community.
In many tribes in Africa, the role of the ‘storyteller’ is one of the most honored. The Sage that passes down to future generations the tales of bravery, courage, and our own unique ”trail of tears,” holds an esteemed place within the community. So many of our most articulate storytellers that could inspire this generation of activists were taken from us by the plague of HIV/AIDS. Those who emerged from the 1980’s and 1990’s still alive, even have a greater responsibility to share their journey to inspire the next generation.
As I read Justin Crockett Elzie’s Playing by the Rules, I breathed a huge sigh of relief in knowing that one more powerful story has been effectively and creatively saved for our youth. The easy path for Justin would have been just to share his coming out process in the military. Many of us, abstractly, can recite the familiar tale of fear, decision making and the process of coming out. In the military, the feeling is even more intense with the inevitable hearings, shunning and discharge from your life’s calling. The sense of hope and pride of having found truth within one’s self is even a more difficult path.
However to start at that point is to leave so much out of our struggle for freedom. The struggle begins with our birth, that early awareness, those first man crushes (usually on television) and the erotic moments of our first exploration. Those are the stories that create the man who is able to reach deep inside himself, and insist on living as a free man with dignity and honor. The moments of fear in our childhood and the stark loneliness is engraved into so many of our stories. The horror of possible exposure and the deep intense desires that we feel in our loins.
Justin Crockett Elzie has written a remarkable book. His story should be read not only by our activists, but by every American. The beginning of his journey, on the plains of Wyoming, born to devoutly religious parents, to finding his identity in being a Marine is powerful. Every step of the way, Justin relives his pain with brutal honesty to ensure that we miss nothing of his struggle.
I am mesmerized by his childhood in the Wyoming prairies. The constant battle of being forced to stand up for himself against bullies and emotional terrorists is jolting. Justin had to be strong from Day One. In those windswept plains, it was just him attempting to come to terms with his homosexuality in the most hostile environment that you can imagine. Parents who were abusive to not only him but also his sister made difficult any search for truth. By the end of this book, each and every one reading it, their heart will ache with the pains of his journey. However, not one of you will view Justin as a victim. Because in the end, he is victorious and is living as a free man who has more honor and dignity than most other Marines.
This is a book for the ages, and I am in awe at Justin’s courage in writing it and sharing it with us. The best way we can honor his journey, and his courage, is by sharing his story far and wide.
David Mixner
Acknowledgements
This book is a piece of my life, something that I knew that I had to finish in order to make a difference, and there are a few people that I need to thank. Without their help and support I could not have finished this book. I first want to thank my two editors, David Badash, who is a writer and the man behind the gay rights website, The New Civil Rights Movement, and John Shields, who is an Air Force veteran and writer. These two men took time out of their busy lives to painstakingly go through the manuscript, edit it, and give me constructive feedback on its content, grammar and style. I owe them both an immense debt of gratitude.
I next want to thank my publisher, Sven Davisson, with Rebel Satori Press, who has given me this opportunity to tell my story, and who took a chance on this book. He has made this whole process of publishing smooth and effortless. He has been amazing to work with.
I would be remiss if I didn’t thank my heroes through this whole ordeal, my attorneys, Lanny Breuer, Christopher Sipes, Allan Moore, Lieutenant William Brown and the law firm of Covington & Burling. These men were there for me when nobody else was and they stuck by me. They were my counselors, my champions, who stood up to bigotry, and in the face of an enemy that was relentless, they were true warriors. I will forever be in their debt.
Along the way, close friends have been strongly supportive of this project and have taken time out in their lives to be a part of this journey. Nikos Kontomaris, Lisa Budwig and Darry Johnson, all read through the manuscript and gave me detailed, useful feedback and advice. This book would not have been possible without their moral support and encouragement in this project.
In reading this book you will find out that my true twin in my life is my sister Becky. She has been a sounding board, a counselor, and guide in my life journey. She kept me honest and on the path in my journey writing this book. I would not be the man I am today without her.
Also along the way I have had friends in my life that have given me useful advice and have been incredibly supportive of me in this process. Patrick Wallen, Rich Merritt, Perry Dean Young, Tanya Domi, Gene Barfield, Piero Savio, Jo Ann Santangelo, Jon Winkleman, Vincent Cianni, Jim Palmer, Bill Brooks, Jim Vivyan, David John Fleck, Daniel Handal, and Mario Braga. I have to also thank Kathy and Tad Hendrickson for giving me a quiet space to write and get my thoughts in order. This was essential to this project. I need to thank my roommate Kyle for his help this year. I would not have been able to complete this project without it.
I would also like to thank Mike Nichols for reading the manuscript and giving me constructive feedback on it. Mike has been a great teacher and I really appreciated his words of wisdom.
I would be in trouble if I didn’t thank the Drag Queens of Friends Lounge that put up with so much living in a military town and supporting their Marines. Danny Leonard, aka “Brandy Alexander,” “Secret,” “Donna Saye,” and “Scarlett Dailey.” I found out that we all can learn something from a brave and ballsy Drag Queen.
I also need to thank those men who came into my life at crucial points and helped me become the man I am today: Jack Clayton, Kel Stiles, Len Regan, John Conte, Eduardo, Michael Degutis, Jim Heiser, Joe Granger, Glenn Hargett, Nikos Kontomaris, Steven Wainio, and John Logan.
And lastly I want to thank the other side. As we grow as spiritual beings we find out that those who have gone on before us are on the other side and are still in our lives daily, helping us and guiding us. So I above all need to thank my spirit guide and those on the other side. Without their encouragement and messages that I needed to finish this book to make a difference in people’s lives, it would not have been done. Thank you.
Chapter 1
Walking Across The Divide
0530 hours 29 January 1993 Camp Lejeune, North Carolina
As I lay in bed I thought of the day ahead of me. Turning over on my side I looked at John sleeping next to me. My heart ached because I loved him so much and he looked so vulnerable and yet extremely angry with what I was about ready to do. I had an apprehension that only a recruit on his first night at boot camp would appreciate. Since being presented a couple of days ago with the opportunity of coming out and making the decision on Thursday, I had an instinctive internal drive, almost animal like, to come out in a public way, and nothing was going to stop me. I felt like I was on a train to destiny that I couldn’t get off, even if I wanted to.
The thing is though, it was something that I felt I had to do no matter what the consequences. Some people may understand this, but the decision to come out was above all a deeply spiritual experience to the point I felt it was like a baptism in the making. I was finally going to stand up to the United States Marine Corps and let them know who the real Justin Elzie was and how screwed up the ban on gays in the military was. I wanted to make a positive difference and change the Marine Corps. But before that was to happen I had to get to work and make sure everything went as planned. I had a strategy and a plan and I had to make sure it went well.
I got out of bed, showered, put on my uniform and met John in the kitchen. He asked me if I was still going to come out today on national television, ABC World Evening News broadcast. When I said “yes,” he threw the coffee cup that he was holding into the sink, breaking it. He looked like he was about ready to breakdown as he walked back to the bedroom not saying a word to me. I stood there in the kitchen distressed as I knew there was nothing that I could say to get him to come to terms with my decision. Being my boyfriend he was the most important person in my life and yet I couldn’t get him to support me in this.
What I was going to do would affect him also. Being my roommate, people in the Marine Corps would suspect him as being gay. In the military there is this idea that if someone hangs around or lives with someone who is gay, then they are gay as well. “Guilt by association” is what it is called, and that was what was about ready to happen to John.
What made this situation even more stressful for both of us was that John was gay. Being a fellow Marine who was also my boyfriend, we couldn’t let anyone in the Marine Corps know, so that his life was not ruined. However, just by associating with me he would be affected and would be under suspicion. In effect I would be outing him as well, hence his distress over the situation, which was clearly warranted. Aside from John’s reaction, I was even more determined. I knew as soon as he walked back to the bedroom, at that point, today I was going to have to face this situation alone and it was just me against the world.
The day started out like any other had over the past ten years, getting my uniform on and getting chow and going to work. Unbeknownst to me, this day would turn out to end like no other in my life before. As I drove onto base, John and I had a heated discussion in the car. He was upset with me and I at the same time felt powerless to try to get him to support me in this decision. After dropping him off at his unit on base, I headed over to the chow hall and I put our argument behind me as I started thinking of what I had to do today. I figured I would just have to deal later with the fallout of coming out and how it would affect our relationship. One thing I was thinking about was I needed to come up with an excuse to tell the Gunnery Sergeant about the extended lunch I would need to take that day. The reporter from ABC World Evening News would be expecting me, off base at lunchtime to do the interview.
I drove over to the Chow Hall that morning, got out and walked in. I wondered if I would be able to do this next week when everyone would know who I was. To avoid the hassle of dealing with the other Marines and their attitudes, I was already planning on never eating at the Chow Hall again.
After eating breakfast I headed to my unit, Marine Corps Base Food Service Office, where I worked in Supply. It was a long morning and going through my mind the whole time was that the Marines could not find out what I was about ready to do before I did it. My heart was racing as I was afraid that they would foil my plans and that would end my goal to make a lasting difference before getting out of the Corps. I worried that if they found out what I was about ready to do then someone high up in the Marine Corps would call ABC News and get the interview canceled.
I had seen examples of how the Marine Corps had gone to lengths in the past to protect its image and from my experiences with the Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) it made me a bit paranoid. The military and NCIS have a history of tracking gay servicemembers and ruining their lives. Because of the clandestine way the military seeks out gay servicemembers, one learns to not trust people in general, to lie, and to strategize to survive in a hostile environment. Over the years, I had learned how to ride that fine line and to be as out as I could without getting caught. I had come to loathe the hypocrisy and the witchhunts in the Marines and the Navy that destroyed so many of my friends’ lives. I wanted to throw it back in their faces and stand up and fight the injustice that I had seen throughout my ten years in the Corps.
The Marine Corps is a close fraternity and goes to lengths to protect its reputation and would not want one of their own, in their words, “embarrassing” the Corps. Up until now no Marine had come out publicly or nationally, like other service members had done from the Army, Navy, and Air Force. The Commandant of the Marine Corps, Carl Mundy, with swagger, even made a comment to the sort that gays in the military was not an issue for the Marines as there were no gays in the Marine Corps. Well, I was about ready to change all that.
Sitting at work that morning, I didn’t get anything accomplished. I was about to explode with adrenaline. I kept looking at my watch waiting for 1130 hours to roll around so that I could go meet the ABC News reporter. I had butterflies in my stomach and racing through my mind was the same thought over and over again, “please doesn’t let the Marines find out before I do this”. At this point in my mind and spirit I was determined to complete this mission and nothing was going to stop me; not John, friends, parents, or the Marine Corps.
At lunch I told the gunny that I would be back a bit late from lunch as I had some bills to take care of. My heart was pounding so hard I wondered if anybody noticed when I left. Would this be the last time I would have to lie to them to play within their rules? I was already in the uniform that I needed to wear, so I drove off base to the hotel on the edge of Jacksonville where I was to do the interview.
I still remember the day like it was yesterday. The wind was blowing and it was chilly outside. The sun was brightly shining, almost in a way laughing a me, like everything was okay. It seemed to be making a mockery of the seriousness and the stress of the moment. As I got out of my car and walked toward the entrance to the hotel, I could already feel my life changing. My stomach was in knots and I was on an adrenaline high. As I entered the hotel, one of my first thoughts was, I hope the hotel desk clerk doesn’t call the Marines and tell them that there is this Marine being interviewed in one of the hotel rooms and it looks suspicious.
I walked up to the counter and asked for the reporter and what room they were in. The reporter came downstairs and met me in the lobby. As we walked upstairs and into the hotel room, I suddenly had the feeling of being led to the gallows. Upon coming into the hotel room, there were black umbrellas, the kind that photographers use, placed all over the room. The TV was turned on and tuned to ABC and the coverage of the day’s events, which was President Clinton meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff and them wrangling over what the outcome on the ban on gays in the military should be. I was surprised by the TV being on, as I didn’t know how that was going to figure into the interview. As it turned out, the ABC news crew wanted to get some shots of me watching the coverage and then interviewing me on my reactions to the final decision and why was I coming out right now. The newsman started asking me some pre-interview questions and we talked about what he was going to ask me on air. I was sweating like a horse and was very anxious about Clinton announcing that they would get rid of the policy. I had written some notes on a 3 x 5 card as to what I would say. I knew by this time that the sound bite would be important and I wanted the right message to come across. As I sat there the decision I had made hit me hard and I started thinking of how I had gotten to this point, to put my career in jeopardy after so long in the Marines. It’s times like these, that you really sit back and reflect and you ask yourself, how did I end up here and where did it all start?
As I sat there watching the TV, my heart began to sink as it became clear that Clinton was not going to overturn the policy. I sat there in shock as I watched him announce the six-month interim policy. Holy Shit! What would happen to me now? I suddenly had a sinking and ominous feeling and was totally disgusted with how he had just thrown all of us gay and lesbian servicemembers under the bus. The reporter then asked me if I still wanted to go through with the decision to come out and I said “yes.” I had made the decision and had come this far and I wanted to make a difference, even if the President had blinked. I was going to stand up for what was morally and ethically right and try to change the Corps for the better. Now was my moment and when it came time I wanted to make sure I said the right thing. I was not going to back down now. I had a mission to accomplish and I was ready to walk over the divide.
As soon as the cameras started to roll they asked me some questions and I answered them. My palms were sweaty and I had this ball in my throat that kept creeping up, threatening to cut off my air supply. But I knew what I had to do and nothing was going to stop me. All of my life experiences had prepared me for this moment and I was calling on all of them at that moment to come out to the nation.
After the interview the enormity of what I had done hadn’t sunk in yet as I drove back on base. As soon as I walked into my unit my Gunnery Sergeant stopped me right in the middle of the office within earshot of everyone in the office and said “I just got a call from Cheryl with the Montel Williams show and she was looking for you.” My stomach dropped to my knees and my mind was racing to come up with a quick response as there was no way the Marines could find out before I appeared that evening on the news.
I immediately said that she was a friend of my sister and that I knew her. This was another lie on top of others that I had been putting out there for the past ten years. When would it stop? Thank goodness he bought the story hook, line and sinker, or at least I hoped he had. But I knew in the back of my mind that come tonight they all would know the whole truth and everyone that had known me for the past ten years in the Marine Corps would be going back and looking at their relationship with me to include the Marines I currently worked with. What would they think now? I couldn’t think about this, I had to stay strong and look forward and not look back or second guess what I was doing.
The end of the day couldn’t come quick enough and my adrenalin was going strong as I walked out of my unit and drove off base to the house to change and go to the gay bar, Friends Lounge, to watch the evening news. I didn’t have to pick up John as a mutual friend of ours, a Navy Corpsman, was going to take him home. On the way home I was on cloud nine as it hit me what I had just done. No matter what they did to me now or what happened I had a BIG weight off of my chest.
I turned the radio up on the way home and enjoyed the moment. I was finally free with no secrets. I knew what I had done was the right thing as I felt it in my spirit. John wasn’t at the house when I stopped to change clothes which I was happy about as I didn’t want to have to deal with any negativity at this point. I needed to look ahead and stay positive. I felt like I really needed to call a few of my military veteran friends for some advice on what to do next. So I called Alan Stephens, Joe Granger and Tanya Domi. Tanya was a former Army Captain, now with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, (NGLTF) and a close friend. When I talked to her, she recommended that I call my Warrant Officer as a courtesy and explain to him what I had done to give him a heads-up.
I did not want to do this, as I would have to face someone who I knew would be hostile to me and pissed off at what I had done. I would later find out that of all the people I dealt with in the following days my Warrant Officer would turn out to be the one to watch out for. I picked up the phone and dialed his phone number. He answered and I immediately told him that I had to tell him something. I started in and said that I did an interview today with ABC World Evening News telling them I was gay and that I wanted to give him a heads-up to the interview that would air nationally in about an hour on ABC. At this point I heard silence as I stood there imagining what the look on his face was. He then proceeded to thank me for letting him know and that he didn’t subscribe to some of the talk in the office recently, in which one of the Marines had said “all gays should be shot.”
After the phone call I sat down and made a couple more calls to friends. I then changed and left the house for the bar to watch the evening news with my other gay friends.
Once I got to Friends Lounge I was the only one there along with the bartender and a couple of other gay civilians. There was a couch set up in one corner of the bar with the TV on.
As it got closer to the time for the piece to show more people arrived and found out what I had done. Everyone was positive but I could see the concern on their faces. When the piece finally came on I watched as they played the decision of Clinton caving into the Joint Chiefs and setting out a six-month review under what would eventually be called “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” (DADT).
They then played my interview as a reaction to Clinton’s decision. They only played one sentence from the interview, which was, “I just couldn’t stand by and not say a thing, I mean we got to stand up and say hey there are thousands of us out there and you know, this discrimination is wrong.” I felt at that moment watching my coming out on national television, as if I was standing up for every Marine that had been discharged from the military for being gay or lesbian and I was calling the Marine Corps out on their discrimination. I felt vindication, empowerment and at the same time apprehension deep down that I had broken a big rule by coming out to the Marines. But I did it because I wanted to change the rules.
I left the bar afterwards and drove back to the house worried as I knew I would have to face John and his wrath. When I came in the door John was furious with me. He proceeded to tell me that there were two messages on the answering machine for me. One was from someone at the Pentagon but was cut off. The second message was one that was ominous and portrayed what was to come. Upon listening to the machine I heard a sizzling sound. Somewhere someone had held the phone receiver over a frying pan and you could hear the oil crackling obviously inferring that I would burn for what I had done. That was it. That evening I had to deal with the decision which I knew was right and at the same time try to explain to John why I did it. He went to bed and left me standing there alone. That feeling of being alone was rough. At that moment I felt it was just me against the world.
I thought if I got this type of reaction from John who was close to me, what would be the reaction of everyone else? I had no idea of what was to come, but that day set in motion events that would change my life forever, challenge me beyond belief and push my limits to the brink before the next four years were over.
Chapter 2
Early Lessons
0310 hours 7 July 1962 Cheyenne, Wyoming
I was born in the early morning hours on July 7, 1962 at DePaul Catholic Hospital in Cheyenne, Wyoming. My father was in the Air Force stationed at F.E. Warren Air Force Base on the outskirts of Cheyenne. My mother was a housewife. A short time after I was born my parents decided to move to a farm thirty miles east of Cheyenne near the farming communities of Carpenter and Burns. On our farm we mainly raised horses and hogs. My father was an excellent horse trainer and the farm allowed him to have quite a few horses.
Some of my earliest memories growing up on the farm in those early years were of watching Captain Kangaroo, Lost in Space, and Star Trek on television, and playing out in the pastures of our farm. While growing up I loved my Lincoln Logs, planes and had a fascination for things that flew. One morning, during the summer of ’69, my mother called me into the living room while I was eating breakfast. This was the day where my interest in space and planes took off. As I sat there on the living room floor eating my corn flakes, I watched on our black and white television the fuzzy picture of Neil Armstrong walking down the ladder and stepping on the surface of the moon. Walter Cronkite was narrating what was going on. At that moment, I felt a hunger and fascination for learning more about space, and astronauts.
After this day I would tell those around me that I wanted to be an astronaut when I grew up. This spurred my interest in my favorite television programs Lost in Space and Star Trek and anything science fiction when I was young. My parents would later buy me a telescope and I spent nights out on the front sidewalk looking at the craters on the moon. Because there is no light pollution from cities out west on the prairie, you can look up at the sky at night and see thousands of stars in the Milky Way. This is one of the things that I miss most from living out on the farm as a boy.
In those early years my father and mother instilled in me a sense of responsibility and respect for life, and for rules. Sometimes that lesson came hard. Before I was even in kindergarten I would help my father on the farm taking care of the animals, building barns and corrals. One day when I was around five, I was with my father at a neighbor’s farm helping build a corral for their cattle. While playing in the corral, I came across a grey tabby kitten and I thought it would be cool to see him swim. I proceeded to put him in the stock tank where the cattle drank and took a stick and kept poking him under the water so that I could see him swim underwater. At some point to my disappointment he stopped moving and he drowned. That was the day I found out that barn animals don’t breathe underwater. As soon as my father found out about the kitten he left welts on my legs that day by way of his belt and lesson learned.
Besides playing on the farm and helping my father, I have very few memories of anything else before kindergarten. However, when I entered kindergarten I was suddenly thrust into the harsh environment of dealing with other kids. On my first day of school I was so short that I had to put my books on the first step of the bus and use both of my hands to pull myself up the three steps to get into the bus. For some reason the bus driver thought this was funny and made a few sarcastic remarks. He continued to tease me for various reasons throughout grade school. This of course just gave the other kids a reason to do the same. This was the beginning of my getting bullied by others in my youth.
My kindergarten memories are filled with colorful paints and the big paint brushes that we had, Play-Doh, learning how to write, my multicolored rug I slept on for our nap time, and of course getting in trouble for talking during our nap time. One day during our afternoon nap time when we were supposed to be sleeping on our rugs, I was caught talking to one of the other boys. I found out that besides sitting on a hot car seat in the summer that a ping pong paddle can also warm up your seat and sting. Lesson learned was that you shouldn’t talk during nap time! I obeyed the rules after that and never got paddled in kindergarten again.
Throughout grade school I really liked English, Music and Acting. When Christmas time came around I was an angel in the school play. I had a silver halo made with a coat hanger and tinsel wrapped around it from our Christmas tree. Christmas has always been my favorite holiday and my favorite Christmas story when I was a kid was Rudolph the Red-Nose Reindeer. Playing an angel in the Christmas play was certainly better than playing the turkey for the Thanksgiving play when I was in the cub scouts. I really hated getting picked to be the turkey. I had to wear long johns and I looked like a plucked turkey. Not soon after that I quit the cub scouts. I really didn’t fit in. Even then in those early years I knew I was different, if only because the other kids let me know it.
Recesses in grade school were difficult and the kids were mean. Many times I ended up making up my own games and stuck to myself. As a matter of fact, because we lived so far out in the country with no other kids around after school, I escaped into books as a boy until my little sister got bigger and I had someone to play with.
Reading was my way of escaping the trials and tribulations of growing up. One of my favorite books as a boy was Where The Red Fern Grows, which is about a boy and his dogs. It is also about overcoming adversity. I have always had a fascination for books or movies about people overcoming adversity.
Around this same time I had a Basset Hound named Cloe. One night as my father was backing up the truck in the back yard, he by accident ran over Cloe. I was devastated, especially when he told me that she needed to be put down. That meant that my father was going to use the shotgun to put her out of her misery. The night that he shot her I cried myself to sleep and felt an emptiness not having my best friend around anymore. This was pretty traumatic for me as a boy, losing my best friend, at the same time learning a hard lesson about life and death.
Around third grade my parents moved me from Carpenter Elementary School to Hillsdale Elementary School, which was about fifteen miles away, because of the effect the bullying in school was having on me. I was unhappy and my grades were reflecting the stress of what I was going through. Fourth grade proved to be a pivotal time in my life. My teacher, Miss Wallace, was like a mother to me in a lot of ways. She was stern when she needed to be but was also very loving and accepting.
During fourth grade we also had another teacher working as an intern with Miss Wallace. His name was Mr. Smiley. It was during this time that I had my first real teacher’s crush and it was on Mr. Smiley. At the time nothing seemed unusual to me about it, however, looking back on it years later as I was coming out I realized it was one of those key markers in my life. I just liked spending time being around Mr. Smiley. However, it didn’t last forever as Mr. Smiley was scheduled to leave us around Christmas time. I was depressed about it when I found out and I didn’t get to say goodbye to him because when he was getting ready to leave I had the chicken pox. This was right around the Christmas pageant and so I missed the Christmas play and saying goodbye to Mr. Smiley. My sadness over Mr. Smiley leaving was something at the time I couldn’t express or understand. I cried when he left because I missed him.
I started learning about sex around the fourth grade. Throughout grade school I had fooled around with some of the boys in my classes. Fooling around with guys consisted of a bit more than show and tell. This continued until junior high, when I started fooling around with a couple of upperclassmen. It was fun and seemed very natural to me. I really don’t remember much of wanting to hang around the girls at the time.
When I was growing up I was attracted to the cute guys in grade school and high school and always tried to find a way to hang around them and make friends and then eventually fool around with them. When I did, it was always consensual.
My first time seeing an adult male naked was at the military base swimming pool when I was in grade school. Total fascination reigned as I stood there in the pool locker room and stared at the naked men and the large penises. There was a desire, which I couldn’t express or understand at the time. I had this fascination and yearning of wanting to watch and be around men. Years later when I was coming out I looked back on these things and it helped me to come to grips with accepting myself and realizing that I had been born this way.
Both fifth and sixth grades were a blur. However, I remember the transition from sixth grade to junior high being significant, as this was when I started having interactions with high school students and I went through puberty. Now I had to start dealing with older kids and deal with the pressures of being a teenager. From kindergarten to sixth grade I was generally a naïve kid who could never understand why I didn’t fit in.
It was around seventh grade when I realized in order to fit in I would need to have a girlfriend. It was a status thing and I realized to play by society’s rules that I had to find one. As I was going through this I was still fooling around with the boys at the same time, which didn’t seem odd to me. I only fooled around with one girl at the time and my father found out about it. I used to play spin the bottle in the back of the bus and behind the school house with this one particular girl, named Julie. It was always innocent show and tell, that was until a high school student named Chuck found out about it and decided it would be funny to tell my father. I was horrified because he told my father about it as I was standing there. My father and I were at a neighbor’s farm one afternoon. Just as we were getting ready to leave, Chuck, who had found out about me fooling around with Julie, told me that he was going to tell my father. As we were getting ready to leave and getting into the truck, Chuck ran up to the truck window and with glee announced what I had done to my father as I was standing there. I just wanted to die at that moment. As we drove out of the farm my father was silent in the truck until we got out on the highway. I thought my father was going to beat me. This was when my father was being really hard on my sister and I. When my father spoke he asked me what had happened and told me that he was not upset. He then proceeded to share his own experiences about fooling around with girls. I felt relieved but at the same time I found it somewhat perverse to be talking with my father about sex. I really couldn’t envision my father having sex with my mother or anyone else and because my feelings for guys was stronger by then, I still felt a divide between us.
At the time I felt my father was trying to relate to me. It was one of the first moments that I can remember in my life where my father tried to bond with me man-to-man. It was like there was an understanding between two men about the way life was. At that moment I really wish I could have told my father about my feelings for guys, but I knew that would be going too far. At some shallow level we bonded, but the secret of my true desires never came out. When we got home he gave me a book about the “birds and the bees” from a Christian viewpoint and that was it. It was never discussed again. I don’t think he ever told my mother because she never mentioned it. It was something only a father and son would share. Because I was fooling around with guys, my fellow classmates, I was worried that someone would find out and tell my parents about it. At the end of the day there wasn’t anything in that book about the “birds and the bees” that explained having sex with guys. Somehow that was left out, so I started on a quest to find books or anything that would give me a perspective on these feelings I had toward other guys.
My parents were pretty strict while we were growing up. They fought sometimes like couples do and those were the times when we hid. It bothered me and I didn’t want to be around my father when he got mad. When they did fight my mother usually won. The way I saw it as I was growing up was that my mother was manipulative and always got her way. The earliest memories of my father are of an authoritarian. I was scared of my father growing up and I also eventually came to avoid any close relationship with my mother. As I got older I continued to grow further apart from them. My parents became more religious as they got older; at the same time I was discovering that I was attracted to guys. I found out these two things were in conflict according to my parents and the fundamentalist church we went to.
When I was young we went to a Methodist Church but as I got into junior and senior high we started attending an Assemblies of God Pentecostal church in Pines Bluff, Wyoming, which was a neighboring farming community about twenty miles away. Most Sunday mornings started out with us watching Jimmy Swaggart or the PTL Club with Jim and Tammy Faye Baker on television during breakfast and then going to Sunday school and church.
Sunday evenings were spent going to a Revival Pentecostal church service. During these Sunday evening church services there was “speaking in tongues” and listening to sermons about “hell fire” and “brimstone.” It was during this time that my internal clock was in total disarray as I heard one thing from the church and my parents, but deep down inside of me I felt something totally different. I hid this from everyone. I had kids at school calling me a “fag,” which I hid from my parents for good reason. Adding insult to injury, I would then come home to my parents and to our Church, both of whom vilified gays and lesbians. Throughout High School, at every one of these church services, I used to pray to Jesus to take away this desire for guys away from me, but that never happened no matter how hard I prayed.
My father went through a period where he was really abusive to us kids, and my sister in particular got the worst of the treatment. My sister hated the taste of milk. One day when my sister was gagging on her milk at the dinner table my father grabbed her by her hair and yanked her away from the table and then proceeded to beat her. He went on to punish her with his belt so badly that the next day at school her gym teacher saw the bleeding welts on her back and reported my parents. Nothing happened to them and they felt they were the victims throughout the whole situation.
My mother got mad at my sister and blamed her because of this. Even though my father chilled out as we got older, I was never able to develop a trusting relationship with my parents so that I could tell them how I felt or what was really going on in my life. That’s not to say we didn’t do things together as a family when we were growing up, like going camping and going to the drive-in theater, but it was always overshadowed by my father’s and mother’s authoritarian ways. As my parents became more religious, we stopped doing things as a family that my parents saw as evil or against Christianity, like going to see movies or any event where alcohol was present.
My sister was a year and a half younger than me, and my brother six years younger. Because my sister was so close to me in age we were almost like twins. We lived so far out in the country with no other farms close to us so I played with my sister at home. We played Cowboys and Indians a lot and acted out TV shows that we saw. I used to wear a sheet and pretend it was a cape and jump off the huge haystacks on the farm like I was Batman.
We used to play long into the afternoons, and then, when it started getting dark, mother would call us in for dinner to wash up, eat, watch a little bit of TV and then go to bed and hopefully fall asleep before our father got home. Those nights coming in from playing and getting to watch movies like Ben Hur or The Wizard of Oz were some of my favorite memories during those summers. One day during the summer when I was eleven years old, my sister and I were playing out in the pasture. Mother called for us to come in. When we came in my mother accused us of fooling around, playing doctor and doing show and tell. Nothing of which could have been further from the truth. We tried to explain to our mother that we had done nothing of the sort but she didn’t believe my sister or I. There was nothing that should have caused my mother not to believe us as we were not habitual liars as kids.
For punishment, she had us take off all of our clothes and had us stand across from one another for about a half an hour, naked. This was a traumatic experience for me at the time since I was standing naked across from my sister and she the same across from me. I still to this day have never forgiven my mother for this incident because she never believed us when we were telling the truth. I am embarrassed even writing about this, but think it is important that parents treat their children right. It was one of the situations growing up that pushed me further away from my mother. When I got into junior high, my mother got even stranger. One day I went to hug her and she said it wasn’t natural anymore since I was getting older. I was taken aback from the experience and rarely hugged my mother after that.
Chapter 3
Discovery
0800 hours 16 September 1976 Burns, Wyoming
I started junior high on September, 16 1976. I began to realize during seventh and eighth grade that life and societal rules were changing. Fooling around with girls and having a girlfriend was the rule of thumb, but fooling around with the guys was not part of the rules and I needed to keep it to myself. Up until now I had fooled around with a few of my classmates and one of my cousins and I enjoyed it.
In junior high something changed though, because the boys didn’t want to fool around anymore and wanted to hang around the girls instead. I wanted to continue to hang out with the boys and I didn’t care for the girls at all. I couldn’t figure it out. I still liked the boys but they now liked the girls. I found out that the difference was connected to the words “gay” or “fag,” which was what the older high school students were calling me. This was when I really noticed that I was different. It was like a fork in the road and I was taking one path and the other boys were taking a different one.
I felt this loneliness that I was different, and realization set in that this was something that I should not tell anyone, especially my parents. I had enough self-esteem to stick up for myself, but I didn’t have enough at the time to be able to intimidate the other guys because of this secret. Sometimes it seemed like the older high school students could look at me, read right through me and see that I was gay. I knew down deep inside that they were right.
I tried as hard as I could to mask myself and play by their rules. At that age I was trying to explore and discover what “gay” was, and at the same time trying to pray it away. One night around this time, ABC television was doing a special on the music group, the Village People. The announcer was talking about the controversy surrounding the group, and about them being gay. I was sitting in the living room at the time with my mother. As I sat there watching the television I was immediately engaged in wondering what this group was all about. I had to be careful though because I couldn’t let on to my mother that I was interested. I was sitting there trying not to act to interested in front of her, but at the same time listening intently.
My mother started to disparage the performers on television and said that what they were was an abomination of God and that these guys were going to go to hell. As I listened to my mother say this I was self identifying with these guys and I felt a kinship with them. I wanted to know more and I knew I was just like them. This just re-enforced my belief that I couldn’t tell my parents about what was being said about me at school or how I really felt down deep inside.
It was around this same time that I started noticing that I was attracted to certain actors on television as well. I thought that Robert Conrad from the Wild Wild West show was hot and loved it every time he took off his shirt. The same goes for the show Trapper John, M.D. Every time Gregory Harrison took off his shirt and showed his hairy chest in the beginning credits of the show something always twitched inside of me and I knew that I was really attracted to that. I felt an attraction that I couldn’t put into words.
In junior and senior high school my school days started out by eating scrambled eggs, running down the driveway to the bus, a thirty-minute ride to school, and getting to my locker and my classes on time. After school I usually stayed for band practice or wrestling practice.
I hated the bus and the hallways at school because these were the places that I tried to avoid the bullies, the upperclassmen. When I was in junior high there was one bully who always screwed with me on the bus. One day I was fed up. He got on the bus and smacked me on his way to the back of the bus. I got up, set my books down, yelled at him and as he turned around I threw a punch and hit him square in the face giving him a black eye. He never touched me again.
The bullies at school were untouchable because they had free reign and could do whatever they wanted to others and not get in trouble with the staff at school. The teachers and the staff just turned a blind eye to what certain bullies did. What they did was accepted as an initiation. One time when I was in the hallway at school I started defending myself against this upperclassman named Larry. The coach at the time saw the whole incident and then proceeded to tell me that I couldn’t defend myself and that I needed to shut up. He was an enabler for the bullies in the school. He was a young insecure coach who tried to be just one of the guys. He laughed and joked when the seniors beat up and hazed the other students. This moment with the coach and the bully was an epiphany for me. Here I was following what my father said to do, which was fight back, and here I had a teacher telling me I shouldn’t fight back and to shut up and take it. This didn’t sit well with me and just made me that much more determined to stand up to the anti-gay bullying.
Telling the world that I got picked on as a kid and teen is hard for me to do, as I am really not proud of this and am quite embarrassed. I wasn’t weak, just sensitive, nice and naïve. This bullying throughout grade school, junior and senior high, shaped my view of life and how to handle relationships and it really affected me once I realized I was not like everyone else and that I was gay. As I look back on it now, going through this adversity in my youth helped me later on deal with what I would have to face in the Marine Corps.
As I tried to fit in, I tried to get involved with the extracurricular activities that I liked, one of which was music. In grade school I had started playing a woodwind instrument that would lead me to playing the clarinet in the school orchestra and marching band.
I did well in Band, and began to expand my skills and started playing the bass clarinet, tenor and baritone saxophones. I also decided to try out for the school choir, and to my teachers’ amazement I did really well. So much so that one day while I was still in junior high, the choir teacher called me into the high school students choir practice and had me sing for them. I went onto audition for the Wyoming All State Choir. I made it, and got to make the trip to Rawlins, Wyoming for All State.
I used to watch entertainment shows on television where there were singers and dancers and I wished my high school would have had dance because I know I would have done well. A couple of years after graduating high school I saw the television show “Fame,” a musical drama series about a New York City High School for the performing arts. I really wished my life would have been different and I could have gone to a school like that.
Instead, Burns High School, which I was attending, only had band and choir. It was a small country school. There were only 30 people in my graduating class. I had never heard of Broadway or show tunes when I was in high school but if I had I am sure I would have liked them. I lived a sheltered life growing up in a small farming community.
I also got involved in sports in high school. I had participated in little league as a kid and loved baseball and softball. I still cherish those early memories of my father playing catch with me helping me with my throwing and catching. My father really wanted me to excel at it. My mother and father encouraged me to get involved in sports early on. My mother in particular was not the type to be worried about a sport being too dangerous. My mother used to tell me that I was too sensitive. I did not have the stereotypically coddling mother. I think it was because she suspected I was gay.