As teens, we sometimes tire of hearing our parents talk of their teen years, or hearing our grandparents talking about “the good old days”, but we do benefit from their wisdom and experience, in ways that we sometimes don’t recognize. The following was sent to us by a nice gentleman from Texas, who is an older gay man who has remained in the closet all his life. This makes us feel fortunate to be members of Generation Y/Generation Why?.

Back Then

Some print magazines and television shows don’t understand their value as information sources for young people in the gay community. Internet authors may, and they provide greater value by being somehow “real” or personal, even intimate.

My coming-of-age world was very different on the Texas-Mexican border in the 50s. I never quite fit in, but I was smarter than many of my peers (I didn’t understand that then; I was only getting by.) so I survived. I wasn’t athletic, but I worked at fitting in.

In that world, there were only children and adults. Children became adults at whatever age they left home. There were no teenagers until James Dean in the film “Rebel without a Cause.” There was no Rock and Roll until Bill Haley and the Comets did “Rock Around the Clock” in 1955. Who gave us the phrase, “Rock and Roll?” Alan Freed (a DJ) took credit for it. More likely, it was Black musicians using the phrase both for music and as code for sex, as “jazz” was used in the 30s.

Getting rock and roll started was tough. In 1954, I know some 100+ boys only were doing the bop (bebop is a form of jazz, but bop was a dance) in the lobby of the Texas Hotel in Ft. Worth. Some were arrested because it was determined to be a dirty dance. Black musicians could not get played on radio. Teenagers got songs by word of mouth. Songs didn’t reach all of the country at once. So, you listened to the radio late at night to hear KTSA in San Antonio, KOMA in Oklahoma City, or WBBM in Chicago. What were other kids listening to? Little Richard, Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Laverne Baker, Ruth Brown, Ivory Joe Hunter and many others were whom we wanted to hear. They were nowhere, except on records, because they were black. You couldn’t hear “Ivory Tower” by Ivory Joe Hunter on radio; you could only hear it by Gale Storm (Who? And is that her real name? But, she was white.). Pat Boone covering Little Richard and Fats Domino made their music acceptable to parents, but not to us kids.

Then came Elvis Presley and clarity as to what rock ‘n’ roll meant to us. It was ours, not our parents’ music. A kind of identity for those who listened to and liked rock ‘n’ roll took hold. Teenage rebellion codified in music.

In 1954 I was twelve when my mother bought me a “book”, Understanding Sex. It was less than 20 pages of slick paper. There were line drawings. The explanation of masturbation was that “many” boys did it, but they usually outgrew it by their late teens. I remember it noted that lower class boys outgrew masturbation sooner and more often than other boys. There was no mention of homosexuality.

I literally grew up on the wrong side of the tracks. Later, as a graduate student, I had a student who kidded me about having grown up on the wrong side of the tracks (he certainly hadn’t). Only when he visited my hometown and pointed out that I really did live on the wrong side of the tracks did I understand this wasn’t metaphorical.

As a teenager, I read everything. Lots of John O’Hara: 10 North Frederick, Butterfield 8, From the Terrace, and so on. I read Patrick Dennis: Auntie Mame and some of his books with other pseudonyms. I read From Here to Eternity -- when the enlisted man ate his rifle, I was not sure why. Had something queer happened? His suicide was too ambiguous for this fifteen-year-old.

Starting in the seventh grade – at that time the start of junior high or middle school – I made very good grades and that continued throughout my overly long academic career. Yet, I always had feelings of being alone. I started driving and taking the car when I was 12. I had my license at 14. I would take the car and drive late into the night, with no destination. If I couldn’t get the car, I would walk. I saw lots of tarantulas in the spring, late at night. Mexico was not far away. I saw my first whorehouses at 13, in the eighth grade. This was so long ago; they had live bands, with lots of brass.

The sexual revolution that de-stigmatized sex didn’t happen until the 60s. There was a book then: Nice Girls Do It, Too. In the 50s, nice girls didn’t do it. Nice boys could do it, but they couldn’t do it with nice girls. Nice boys had to go to whorehouses. We were less than 30 miles from the Red Light Districts and Boys’ Towns, in Mexico. You haven’t lived until you’ve met the father of the girl you are dating walking down a sidewalk in Boys’ Town. Intercourse was about $5, oral sex $2, from a girl. 50 cents from a boy! The boy who received the oral sex was never called queer.

I ran with a rough crowd – all older – they were juniors and I was an eighth grader. That changed when I turned 14 and joined DeMolay. DeMolay did not help one fit in, because it was not associated with school. It was outside school. The boys in DeMolay were not very popular. It was a good place for me to learn leadership. At sixteen, I helped a 14- year-old get into DeMolay. He wasn’t anyone I knew. I had to interview him and his family as part of the petition (to get in) process. I was the junior; he was the eighth grader. However, he was eighth grade first-string football, and he was first-string throughout high school. He was popular then and in his high school years.

I fell for him. Turns out he was the aggressor, fortunately. I had about 18 months with him and it was truly spectacular. This is the only significant sexual relationship I ever had. He really liked sex. I introduced him to a girl that he dated and eventually had sex with. Often on the same nights he had sex with me later. Of course, he was fourteen… He did begin to “outgrow” our relationship.

Reading was my on-going effort to figure out who and what I was. My senior year in high school I visited the University in Austin. There I found a bookstore and a used text on abnormal psychology. It had a paragraph on homosexuality being the result of paranoia. It was the first authoritative read I found.

My freshman year in college I was scared and I met no one. My sophomore year, I did. I have never been as close to anyone as I was to him. Like me, he is an only child. At one point we were so close, we could carry on a conversations with sentences that had at least three levels of meanings. In fact, we sometimes had conversations that were meaningless on the surface and to anyone around us. I came out to him. He wasn’t gay. He didn’t really reject me, but the friendship was painful from then on. Still is.

I was a co-op engineering student with NASA. I had a secret clearance. I remember reading the questionnaire that had a box to check for “homosexual tendencies.” I stared at it for a long time before deciding that I’d not check it; but that I would never be blackmailed.

I suggested to my buddy that we couple our engineering degree with a law degree. He did it; but I found you had to be of “good moral character” to get into law school. It was clear that you couldn’t be of good moral character and gay. This was clearly stated in the instructions you were to give those who you asked to write your required litters of reference.

I fought my nature. I successfully suppressed it. If you didn’t, you could lose everything – friends, job, whatever was important to you. After all, it was not until the early seventies that the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses. I was living in northern California at the time. Our office manager went to dinner with the boss and his family, including a 19-year-old college student son. My boss asked the office manager if she thought I was gay. The son answered: No, he’s asexual. That hurt.

I am successful by some standards. I work in higher education and I make more money than most campus presidents and I am not one. Nor am I a coach.

What I really am is very, very disappointed with my life. I had no information growing up. So, I had to piece together a life that let me get by. It doesn’t fulfill and I am both alone and lonely. I try not to be bitter. I remind myself that I am responsible and that I made all the choices that brought me to this point.

However, I got here without having the information I needed when I was a teenager and even into my 30s. By then, it is very hard to change.

I believe that the value of your work is in providing information and a sense of worth. Please keep it up. You’re not likely to know the effects of your words, but I know that had I had access to such information, I would have been both a better person and a happier one.