A fun thing about being a queer person is the question WHEN DID YOU KNOW. It happens to all of us at some point. One minute you’re talking about how you had three Egg McMuffins for lunch and then there it is.
BAM!
When did you know?
It always comes unattached, there’s no direct object because half way through the question the person you’re talking to gets nervous. Of course they do — it’s suddenly obvious that WHEN DID YOU KNOW is coming out of nowhere or is maybe a little invasive, so you’re left confused. Your face goes blank, sweat beads on your forehead, your heart quickens, and your mind races to find meaning. What are they talking about? That’s when the question comes again, this time with a lot of uncomfortable hand gestures and wild eyebrows.
When did you first know — you were — you know??
When this used to happen to me it always took a minute to understand I was being asked when I first knew I was gay and not about selecting chicken over fish or deciding to become a bath person. I never took issue with the question. It always warmed my heart that someone was interested, especially back in the 90s when we weren’t as free to talk about sexuality. I haven’t gotten a WHEN DID YOU KNOW in a long while. Maybe this is because queer visibility and our current sensitivity makes the question gauche. Most of us understand now how complicated the answer is, but this wasn’t always the case.
The WHEN DID YOU KNOW inquiry is fascinating to me, especially in our current world. Queer people are everywhere. We’re on cereal boxes, your TV, next door, and everywhere in between. I love this, obviously there could be more, and it could be better, but all this “being seen” reminds me to be grateful for the miracle of change.
I think I used to get asked this question more often because the only queer people anyone saw represented in the media were the butt of jokes, or gay men dying of AIDS. We weren’t necessarily seen as real people with varied, complex, and interesting lives.
When did you know really means tell me your story. When who you are isn’t readily available and expressed in pop culture, it means the world doesn’t know what to do about you, and makes finding your place a little more of a challenge. It means having to do a lot of detective work. It took me so long to figure out who I am. Everyone was shouting it at me all the time, but pejoratives aren’t all that helpful. Thank goodness for movies. That’s where I found the clues, they were like messages in a bottle, and eventually led me to understand that all this big gay magic is worthy of everything good and all the love.
The very first time I knew I might be different was while staying up late one night to watch The Blue Lagoon. I remember sitting inches away from the TV so I could hear it at a super low volume and not wake my parents. I was watching the movie because I was a Brooke Shields fan, but there was something about her costar. Christopher Atkins was blonde and tan and wore nothing but a loin cloth. The sight of him made me tingle from my head all the way down to my toes. Why did I feel like someone had placed hot coals in my chest? I was a baby of maybe five or six, and I definitely didn’t know exactly why it felt like electricity was running through my body, but I did know enough to understand that I should pack this away for when I was older.
This, let’s call it the “moment of recognition question” came up at at a recent party. A few of us were gathered around a dessert table talking about books. I was focused on trying to not eat an entire sleeve of Thin Mints when I heard a friend mention Legends of the Fall. Now, you should know I am one of those people who hasn’t left the house much beyond going to work and the grocery store during the pandemic. I was at this party because shouldn’t I leave the couch and force myself to practice being social? Wasn’t it time? I probably should have taken these facts into consideration and had my mouth on a tighter leash. I didn’t even know Legends of the Fall was a book (it’s apparently a novella), and I didn’t know if this was the same Legends of the Fall that the 1994 movie starring Brad Pitt was based on and I wasn’t even drinking but before I could stop myself I hollered out, “THAT IS THE MOMENT I KNEW I WAS DEFINITELY A HOMOSEXUAL.”
It’s sorta true. There is a scene in the movie where Brad Pitt flicks the brim of his cowboy hat to both remove rainwater and say hello to someone and it might be the single sexiest moment in the history of the cinema. The first time I saw the hat flick something shifted in me. It was like gasoline had been tossed onto my undercarriage. I had a girlfriend, so it was very confusing for me. Though, it was the first semester of my freshman year of college, so every single thing felt fresh and new and very confusing for me.
This wasn’t exactly my first inkling that I might not be the straightest person alive, but the movie was something a little extra and took me by surprise. There had been other signs and signals, the The Blue Lagoon for instance, but Brad’s little hat trick was blasted across a 50 foot screen and became an EF-5 tornado aimed directly at my sheltered little world. There in the UA Cinema 150 (RIP — IYKYK) in Little Rock, Arkansas I gripped the armrests and pushed by whole body back into my big plush theater seat to inch myself away from this awakening and waited for the rumbling to stop.
Friends. It did not stop.
I returned to this theater over and over, maybe seven or ten or twelve more times. I took friends, and other friends, and possibly even my girlfriend to see the movie. What was happening? I never asked anyone for help, looking back I was so wide-eyed I don’t think I would have been able to verbalize my feelings. Being gay was so far away, so removed from my understanding, I couldn’t recognize it in the world or even see it in myself. I was clueless, and just kept taking people with me to the movie thinking that maybe they could feel what I was feeling. Maybe they could explain to me why I was so moved. Each and every time it was that hat flick. There was something about Brad’s eyes or his smile or maybe his hands? Funny how I couldn’t see what was happening then, and how now it lives in my mind as such a moment of clarity. Legends of the Fall was sending me a message as subtle as lightening strike, but I just wasn’t ready to receive it.
There were other moments like this one, signs that something bigger was at play. Over the years there were friendships with men that were very close and tense with something left unanswered. Nothing overtly sexual ever happened there was just a deep connection that went beyond friendship. Maybe it was infatuation, maybe it was love, but each time without acknowledging it to myself or anyone else I course corrected with everything I had. You can do this a lot and over and over if you want, but the truth is messages won’t stop coming and they just get bigger and louder until you receive them.
I was reminded of this over the weekend when I finally took a break from trying to figure out Madonna’s face and went to see Titanic in the theater. I loved the movie way back in 1997 when it came out, and I haven’t seen it since. Who could ever bother with the two VHS tapes (OMG VHS TAPES) or set fire to three hours and sixteen minutes?? So — OF COURSE I wanted to see Titanic in the theater. It’s the 25th anniversary edition, so obviously I went all out. Why would I bother to board the ship of dreams without Dolby Surround Sound, remastered cornea cracking 3D, and a comfy recliner? My God I love the future, even if the ticket did cost me twenty one American dollars.
Like anyone who was coming of age in the late nineties Titanic was monumental for me. That sounds so dramatic and makes me laugh, but I went to see it every chance I got. I can’t even tell you the number of times I saw it back in the winter of 1997. I took everyone I knew who wanted to see it, and I would have gone with strangers. I went over and over again, sometimes even by myself, and every time I would sit there inconsolable in the darkened theater.
That winter was a wild time for me. My girlfriend and I had moved in together, and our house was the party house of the theatre department. On any given weekend you could roll up to our place and find people in costumes, running around in their underwear, and on a few occasions you might even find an actor or two completely naked on the front lawn. It was one of the most fun times of my life. I had never been so social or had so many friends. I was loving every minute of it, but at some point that fall my girlfriend took a job selling merchandise and other odd jobs with a touring production of A Chorus Line.
The touring job was going to be temporary, only a few weeks, so it wasn’t that big of a deal. We had been dating for a few months, and she was unhappy with where she was working, so we both agreed that she should go on tour. She was my best friend, and it was really difficult to just let her go, but this was her dream. Back at home I had the weekend parties to console me. It was fun at first. I had a big group of friends to protect me, but somewhere in there the parties got weird.
We played a lot of Truth or Dare. I hate Truth or Dare, but when you’re in a college theatre department Truth or Dare is the bread and butter. You have to choose dare every time because you are an actor and actors need to be open and free and able to do anything or be anyone at any given moment. For me this meant being dared to kiss basically every man within a mile radius. It was hilarious, right? I mean, I was maybe the slightest bit effeminate, and maybe most people automatically assumed I was gay and with a girlfriend out of town why not just have everyone take me for a test drive.
Nothing super weird ever happened. This isn’t where I tell you about some scandalous affair I had. There was just an awful lot of kissing for that stupid game, and let me tell you it was not at all terrible. I liked it. I liked it a lot, but I gave so many Oscar worthy performances pretending that it did absolutely nothing for me.
And then there was Titanic.
Over and over again I watched it, and over and over again I would sit in the dark weeping. It wasn’t about how attractive Leonardo DiCaprio is. I honestly still do not get that one. He looks like a man child and that is not at all what I find attractive. He has nice hair, but I just don’t find him sexy.
No, I saw myself as Rose. It’s OK, you can laugh. It’s funny, because of course a gay man sees himself as the gorgeous woman who is held on the bow of a ship by a matinee idol with swoopy blonde hair and an inordinate amount of charm. Rose and I were the same. We were caught between the life we were supposed to live, and a life of freedom and love. That was me up there on screen. I knew where I fit and what I should be doing, but I wasn’t sure I was brave enough to make it happen. Rose had Jack to open her eyes and push her in the right direction. I didn’t have a Jack, and I didn’t know if I ever would.
Seeing this story, watching this big dramatic love broke my heart. I cried and cried because I knew I could stay right where I was. I knew I could agree to a relationship and life that wasn’t right for me, but Rose made me want to fight all of that inertia. She made me want to come out and live authentically. I knew I was gay, but did that mean I couldn’t be happy? Everything everywhere told me I couldn’t be both. The more I saw the movie the more I felt the urge to try. Shouldn’t I have a big and wild and amazing love story? Didn’t I deserve to be able to stand on the bow of a ship, throw my arms out and fly?
The weight of living a lie, of never giving myself the opportunity to be happy was too much, and so I came clean. At first, all I could say was, “I’m bisexual." I was devastated at the thought of living a lie, but hurting my girlfriend — my best friend — was a knife to the heart. Eventually, I couldn’t say I’m bisexual with a (lol) straight face anymore and I told the truth. It was rough. Awful. That breakup was one of the most difficult times of my life, but I couldn’t allow myself to stay safe anymore. So, I did it. I jumped.
Seeing the movie this weekend brought all of this back to me. I sat there in my ultra cushy recliner wearing my big dumb 3D glasses with my eyes brimming full of — not tears— but gratitude. What a miracle it is that I finally got the message. How brave it was back then, to not know what to expect, to not see a path drawn out for me in any direction and to step out on faith. What an extraordinary ride, and how lucky we all are that no one has to make that big scary journey alone anymore. Queer people are everywhere. Our stories are in movies and TV shows and the cover of magazines and Instagram and on the evening news. It could be better, but we are out here — visible enough that our lives can light the way.
What a blessing that is.
So, to answer a question you never really asked, it was The Blue Lagoon, and it was Legends of the Fall, but maybe most of all it was Titanic. You really do have to risk it all. Keep going, and never — never ever — let go.
PUT ME ON YOUR CALENDAR: I’ll be performing my solo show BIG GAY NIGHTMARE this summer on July 7, 8, & 9. Put those dates into your calendar and use your good ink pen, because you’re coming. More details and a ticket link coming soon.
reading: I just finished Left on 10th by Delia Ephron — you know I read love an Ephron sister. It was good, maybe a little sad and REAL for the winter, but I enjoyed it. Currently reading Lauren Graham’s first collection of essays called Talking As Fast As I Can.
watching: I watched the “gay episode” of The Last of Us? I might need to write about it very soon because what in the world.
listening: Well, I just saw Titanic, so you know I’m over here with My Heart Will Go On on repeat.
Humor and heart. I love this one!
This was a poignant read that brought me back to my own past as the "last girlfriend" of a couple of beloveds. Thank you for sharing the turmoil of your feelings at these times! I hurt for young Jeremy and any fear he had. (I miss playing bookstore pictionary with the Rose Jeremy and his husband!)