I've made passing reference to the fact that I've been working on a memoir.
I belong to a writers' group - a small group of fantastic people who have encouraged me and offered guidance, feedback and sane company. It has been a long project - I actually started thinking about it and did some writing back in 1987.
The manuscript is finally complete except for a final edit by "my publisher" who are actually members of the writers' group. So while the book is as yet unpublished and as I don't have a clue when it might be and as I don't have much else to say, I decided to post the Preface here.
Did You Ever See A Horse Go By?
A Coming Out Memoir
Copyright 2013 Frank DeFrancesco
PREFACE
Peter,
to whom the following letter is addressed, died, like too many others I’ve
known, of complications of AIDS. I had never finished composing the letter to
him in 1987 and so it was never sent. Here, many years later, I’ve added a few
thoughts by way of a preface.
1987: Dear
Peter,
We had talked about writing, about our need to
capture in words the experiences and feelings, the joys and foibles of that
mysterious process-event we call “coming out.” While I’m not sure the world
really needs another “coming out story”, I feel deeply the need to tell it.
I
write better knowing I am writing for an audience, so I hope you will be both
my audience and my critic, as you are close to the experience yourself and of
course you are intelligent, sophisticated and articulate. I will appreciate
your feedback.
We
are, both of us, owning our true selves as adults rather than as teens or young
men; it has brought us on a mid-life adventure to an exotic foreign land filled
with marvelous sights and people and things to do and learn and discover.
Learning to get around in this new country is at times exciting, joyful and
deeply satisfying and at times dangerous, painful, sobering and even sad. I’ve
shed more tears for love lost than I would have liked or even imagined.
What
we are experiencing is adolescence. It’s not particularly easy to be a
responsible grown up and to be going through adolescence at the same time. But
in some respect, I find that my grown-up life of work and service in the health
field is less charged with importance than is the challenge of my adolescent
life: experiencing reciprocal erotic love for the first time, along with the
drama and jealousies and heartbreaks, not to mention the insecurities around
being attractive or desirable. But being out is certainly better than the
alternatives – remaining terrified of the dark but too afraid to open the
closet door, or living a lonely desperate life or, godforbid, suicide.
Peter, It is now 2013. I am nobody. I am old – or nearly old as life journeys go. My
life, in the grand scheme of things, is irrelevant. So why should my story – my
experiences beginning more than half a century ago – matter to anyone? Why
should I bother to write down these snippets of my life?
The
answer to that last question is: I had to write this account, even if no one
ever reads it, because I am compelled to do so in the same way as I was
compelled to come out; it’s a matter of survival. Because, if am to live any
semblance of an authentic life I must come out unreservedly and often; because
coming out is never only an event – it is a continuous process and one that
challenges me daily.
The
woman who cuts my hair insists on making small talk and asks about my wife. How
do I respond?
At
the auto repair shop, I tell the service tech, “if there’s a problem, call Lee
(who is not yet my spouse), my, uh, friend? partner? significant other?”
Lee
and I are holding hands on a deserted beach at sunset as someone approaches in
the distance. Do I let go of his hand or not?
A
close relative introduces Lee as my “friend”; do I make some awkward correction
and call him my husband even though we are not yet married?
Am
I afraid to offend the likes of all the Ann Bancrofts in the world with
constant gay references, “You haven’t spoken one sentence since I got here,” Ma Beckoff indignantly scolded Harvey Fierstein’s Arnold
in Torch Song Trilogy, “without
the word gay in it.”
I
am challenged daily to come out, again and again and again, because there still
exist subtle and pervasive societal and cultural norms that are intended to
force us back into our closets; the veiled but insidious beliefs, behaviors,
words, and hatred still go largely unchallenged, even as things appear to be
changing.
I
am challenged to come out again and again and again, because of the hate and
vitriol and rage that seem to have escalated in direct proportion to the
numbers of courageous LGBT individuals who refuse to be silent and invisible
and in response to our coming ever closer to achieving equal rights.
I
am challenged to come out again and again and again, because too many gay kids
still choose suicide as their only option to escape bullying and familial
rejection; because some lawmakers still introduce bills that would effectively
deny rights and liberty to LGBT folk; because some religions still wave signs
declaring that “God hates fags” while others, not so obvious, use more polite
and educated language to condemn and vilify us.
My
“coming out” was not only a matter of self-preservation, it was and continues
to be, a uniquely liberating, transformational, spiritual and healing life
experience. I do believe that “coming out” is the only antidote to the poison
of societal oppression that tries to deceive us into believing that the closet
is the safest place to be, that the closet will ultimately protect us from the
world, from ourselves and from eternal damnation.
The
closet’s false security is ultimately suffocating and fatal to one’s emotional
and psychological integrity, if not to one’s physical existence. The closet is
built on more or less equal parts fear, guilt and societal and ecclesial
condemnation – a formula for what is called internalized homophobia. The closet
derives power from that internalized homophobia, from our internal conflicts
and fears: the phony conflict between good and evil; the fears of rejection,
reprisals, and violence; a mythologized Last Judgment and ungodly wrath.
Yet
we persist in our coming out as if our lives depended on it. Because they do.
Coming out is so vital to our integrity that the impulse to acknowledge and be
true to ourselves is, in many respects, not unlike our innate survival
instinct.
The
fact that there is such an event that we call “coming out” which is virtually
universal to the contemporary homosexual experience suggests that this is not
an inconsequential phenomenon. Think about that. Coming out has a reality
beyond our individual experience. Our experience of “coming out” is both a
unique and a shared experience – one that unites us in some fundamental way.
Now,
although I am “out” I am still in the process of “coming out.” After all, our
gayness is mostly invisible to others. Coming out and being out involves being
visible – when we look in the mirror and when others see us. Sometimes, to be
visible, we have to be “in their face.” Sometimes we need to tell our stories,
each of us, story after story, after story, until they “get it.” Because “they”
are still trying to define “us”, tell us who they think we are, tell us that we
are “objectively disordered” or sinful, or worse.
Just
who are “they” and who do “they” think they are?
“They”
are not only the ignorant and bigoted, but are often otherwise intelligent and
sometimes even well meaning individuals. It amazes and frustrates me that our stories
– the actual lived experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender
individuals – are so summarily ignored, discounted and dismissed. It baffles me
that many vocal and influential individuals persist in holding to and
disseminating absurd, erroneous and irrelevant opinions about us. This is
unacceptable and should no longer be tolerated; “they” can only make their own
positions tenable by repeating questionable scriptures, fabricated “studies”,
pseudo-science and outright lies, over and over – and by wholly disregarding us
and our voices.
I
can only pose a few questions for others to try to answer: What is it about
homosexuality and sexual and gender non-conformity that makes it such a
lightening rod? What is it so unique about this issue that religious factions
condemn it, regressive governments ban it, entire cultures punish it and
ordinary people are moved to hatred and violence by it? Why are millions of
dollars spent to fight us and to deny us equal protections under the law? Why
do “they” think they know more about our sexuality, or us, than we do?
More
to the point, why do they care? Certainly “they” outnumber “us” and we’ve always been an easy
target. Does their inability to save our souls or change us, or to limit our
freedom somehow make them inadequate or fearful? What is in it for “them” that
they so persist?
I
can’t answer these questions. But they underlie my need to tell my story.
As
for the first question at the beginning of this preface – whether my story or
experiences matter to you, the reader, or not – is for you to decide. But I do
know that the lives and the lived experience of gay, lesbian, bisexual and
transgender individuals are testaments to their truth and perhaps, that is
Truth with a capital T; and that their truth will never be silenced. This is my
voice, my truth, for what it’s worth.
For
me, the value in telling my story here, beyond being therapeutic, is to
preserve a tiny slice of our collective history – to document what it was to be
gay in a particular time and place. I want to remember others who were there
along with me, creating our lives and defining our sexuality as we went along.
I
had thought of beginning my story like this:
Perhaps
the world does not need another coming out story. But, I suppose it can’t hurt. Coming out at
thirty-six has got to be immeasurably better than not coming out at all . . .
With fondness and
love,
Frank
