Pride and Panic

the combination that led me to Japan

A writer friend from Twitter, Zev Good, shared an excellent post this morning on Pride.

I don’t think I attended an official Pride event until late in my first decade of out-itude (I might have attended a very small—now very large—Tōkyō Pride event in the spring of 1993 but I also took Hiro to Pride in Manhattan in 1996 at which he gleefully bought his favorite t-shirt, proclaiming fuck you, I have enough friends).

But my decision to begin my coming out process in the late summer of 1987 (thirty-six years ago—yikes!) came with a timely benefit.

After heeding the advice from Carol Pepper, our college chaplain and one of my dearest friends, I came out to myself in July of 1987. I gave myself about two months to marinate in self-acceptance before coming out to a few school friends when senior year began in September.

The first few times were challenging. I stammered a lot, tripping over my words and thoughts, a condition my friends noted as rare for me, someone who could wax glib through practically every conversation.

Late in September, I drove home to come out to my mom. The following is from my memoir’s manuscript, describing that moment.

      When I arrived at home, I sat on the back porch with my parents and performed my script, slowly, to the letter.

      My mother looked away from me, weeping. John rested his hand on her shoulder. I lowered my eyes, waiting.

      Through the tears, she began. I thought it was just a phase.

      I smiled; my eyes still lowered. You found my magazines, Ma. More than once and several years apart. That was a really long phase.

      What about grandchildren?

      Kevin will probably have kids. I don’t think we’ll both be gay.

      She gasped; the weeping intensified. Until now, her questions had all been covered in The Joy of Gay Sex. I trod familiar ground.

      I just want you to be happy.

      A sigh escaped. Don’t you think it’s easier to be happy when you accept who you are? Unhappiness isn’t a given. Gay means happy, right? I hoped she might chuckle.

      I’m frightened for you. With AIDS and all. The weeping had quieted.

      I know. I lowered my voice. AIDS is frightening. But I know what I need to know.

I had been calm throughout but when I returned to Williams and to Carol, I gave in to a little emotion—I could only handle emotion in small segments back then. Carol offered a few reassurances but immediately had a plan. Come to the march in DC the weekend after next.

The march in question was the Second National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights—the first march occurred in 1979, eight years prior.

A contingent of more than thirty people from Williams bundled on to a charter bus in the pre-pre-pre-dawn hours of October 11, 1987. Cocooned in a college sweatshirt, I slept for most of the seven-hour drive, clambering stiff and clumsy to the street when we arrived in our nation’s capital.

I think it was Carol who snapped this photo as the contingent mustered. Standing in the back, my head barely visible between the Williams and Preppy Dykes and Faggots banners, is me.

At some point before the more than 300,000 marchers began, I ran into Peter, a classmate from Williams who had taken a semester off but nevertheless found his way to the march. Peter was that rare individual who had been brave enough to be out in his fabulous bisexual ways from freshman year. Since I had been in the closet for my freshman, sophomore, and junior years, and had been worried that any friendship with Peter would blow my cover, I had avoided him.

But there he was in front of me, and we simply embraced. As Peter whispered a welcome out in my ear, I began to cry. This, I suddenly realized, was pride. Not only had I finally found the courage that Peter embodied, someone else saw that change.

Coming out to my friends at Williams, the refrain had been we knew all along. The implication being: nothing has changed.

But that wasn’t exactly correct. Something had changed within me, and although Stephen Schwartz wouldn’t compose the song until 2001, I was defying gravity. Defying the inertia of the closet. Peter saw that. Peter knew that.

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After the march ended at the steps of the Capitol, Peter took me by the hand and led me to the quilt. He explained as we went: it had been Cleve Jones who had first conceived of quilts as a memorial for victims of HIV-AIDS during the 1985 remembrance of Harvey Milk’s (1979) assassination in San Francisco. Known as the NAMES Project, the memorial quilt was displayed for the first time at that October 11 march, unfolded amid muslin walkways on the National Mall, in the shade of the Washington Monument.

public domain photo

Each quilt was combined into a square of eight, and each square into a section of four. Peter’s explanation could not have prepared me for the scope and a panic took hold as I wandered amid so much death.

Most of the panic was connected to my fear of grief. Ever since my father had died in 1980, I was steadfast in avoiding any emotions—sorrow, grief, loneliness—that brought me back to the reality of loss.

But on the Mall, amid the thousands of quilts, grief surrounded me. Making matters worse, there were no treatments available for HIV-AIDS in 1987. A positive diagnosis meant death.

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At the end of July, 1988, I boarded a Northwest flight from New York to Tōkyō. The palpable panic that hovered in my mental periphery every day since October 11, 1987, eased as plane taxied and took off. My escape was cowardly, but pointless. Everything I was running from eventually caught up with me in Japan.

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Hiro captured my Eph Pride last summer.

I spent the weekend before last at my 35th Williams reunion. Peter was with me, ever my friend, and together with our mutual friend Martin, we spent a lot of time laughing. Pride in our friendships and pride in our overlapping journeys outward encouraged these memories onto the page, and as I mentally reconnoiter, I find no more panic.

One final note of irony. I had intended to share this over the weekend. My internet provider and power company had other ideas, however.

The next issue will delve back into Japan tourism for my paid subscriber, and until then I wish you pride.