Essays: May 2002 Archives

There is perhaps no harsher lesson of life that that of lost innocence. When I was a boy, I looked at everything with wonderment. All forms of life were beautiful for I had no preconceived notions of good or bad. Everything was a mere comparison to the only thing that I knew - myself. Even in that, I was in a world of discovery. How to crawl. How to walk. How to talk. How to run. How to climb. All were miraculous feats of accomplishment. All of life was wonderful. It was only the best of times and the world was as young and new as I was.

The world was different then. People were different. I would come and go with my parents and my grand parents. We were all so close. Love was everywhere. Was it even conceivable to me that there was an opposite side to the world that I knew? Everyone cared for each other. Our neighbors shared goods with each other and we had genuine fellowship and goodwill. Not the goodwill that you read about in books or fairy tales, but genuine goodwill from the heart. We were all the same and were all equal. We were all white. We were all pure. We were all Christians. There were no mean people. There was only occasional talk of how people far away from our utopia were "mean" to others. No one liked to talk about it so it was rarely talked about. Not talking about it meant that it wasn't there. Nothing like that could ever happen to us. It was so far away, and it all happened in ages long before my little life.

My loss of innocence didn't happen suddenly. It was a slow erosion of idealistic values. It was a long hot summer in 1961. My father went away then. I never really knew where he went. One day, I woke up with my teddy bear at my side. Everyone was gone except for my brother, sister, and my grandmother. My mother had to leave for a while but would be back. I played with my toys and watched my favorite cartoon on our first black and white television. When my mother returned, I could see something wasn't right and it made me feel uneasy for the first time in my life. What were these feelings and where did they come from? I didn't like them. I was told that my father had to go away for a very long time. That was the night that my father left our utopia and suddenly, the world was less than perfect. He died that night but as far as I was concerned, I was told that he "went away". His funeral came and went. I didn't go. I didn't know about it. I was spared of the heartbreak of it all. After two years of asking when my father would come back to us, I was told that sometimes people die and leave this world. "What is death?" I asked. They had to go somewhere. I was just told that it was a wonderful place and we would all go there someday if we were good. Was it possible to not be good? What would that be like?

In my second year of school, I developed a few friends. I was very shy and withdrawn. Perhaps I was afraid that if I liked someone too much, they too would go away. That was the year that a little more of my innocence was stripped away. I had developed a friendship with a boy. To me he was "Bobby". To my family, I wasn't to talk to him or have anything to do with him, because he wasn't like us. I didn't understand. He was my friend. How else could he be different? Someone told me, "He's black. Don't you see that?" I suppose I must have, but it never occurred to me that someone would be bad because they didn't look exactly like me. After all, weren't we all the same?

I came to realize that the world was far from perfect, but it was still good. I knew by now that while "honesty is the best policy", it's better to keep some things to yourself, and it's ok to lie if it is to cover up some awful secret that you hold inside for the preservation of the utopia that we still had. There were things in life that were sad and unpleasant, but as long as we all stood together with love and harmony, we would be ok. After all, weren't we all the same?

So, I lost my friend and was told that "those people" were causing riots and bringing disorder to our utopia. That was the first time that I heard of a man named Martin Luther King. I didn't know anything about him, but I knew that he was bad because he was causing trouble. Why couldn't he just be the same, like us? At least he didn't affect us. The trouble was far away from our little heaven on earth. Bobby and his family moved away that year very suddenly. I later learned that his home was burned down in the middle of the night and they were run out of our little utopia. I was told that it was for the good of our society. Now, things were back to normal again. After all, now we were all the same again.

In my senior year of high school, I knew inside that I was not the same as everyone else. Actually, I knew at a very early age that I was gay, or a "homosexual" as they called them then, but it was never that important. I was sure that my friends and family would understand and love me anyway. After all, weren't we all the same?

As time went on, I would hear my uncles and others commonly make jokes about people called "queers" and "faggots" and what they would do to them if they were in our midst. My brother went away to join the Navy. When he came home on leave, he told a story of two men sleeping together in the barracks. My stepfather had a great laugh out of it and told my brother what they were. My stepfather then told my brother that Liberace was also a "cock sucker". I heard the jokes and laughed at them as well. All the while, I was crying inside. There was no one to talk to. When you are gay, you keep it to yourself. The loneliness turned into a feeling of hopelessness. I prayed to God to change me and He did nothing. Rather than bring dishonor to my family and chaos to our utopia, I decided it would be best to remove myself from it. The utopia that I once knew had turned into my worst nightmare. I left for college and for a time, didn't have to face my reality. It was a time for learning. It was also the time that I discovered who I really was with more freedom. It was in college that I found a remarkable man with a keen mind. He became a source of strength for me. We are still together today.

After college we moved to San Francisco where I was able to study music with people of the San Francisco Symphony. I also joined a choir. It was a men's choir made up of all gay men. I became well known in The Castro neighborhood. It was a small area of the city that was mostly gay people. Walking down the street, it was not uncommon for 20 or more people to stop me to say hello. My utopia was back because once again, we were all the same! Little did I know, it wasn't to last.

I remember the tour buses would come to our neighborhood filled with curious tourists with hopes of getting a glimps and if lucky, a picture, of what "faggots" looked like. They would never leave the security of their bus. It would just park for a few minutes, the windows would come down, and the pictures would start. We didn't have to worry much about violence because our numbers were large and we generally tried to stay in our neighborhood, especially after dark. Leaving the neighborhood at that time would be dangerous. It was common practice for neighborhood kids to bash gay people. I never understood why they like that so much. Was it a sport to them to beat someone senseless and put them in the hospital for weeks?

A discovery was made that a new disease was causing the death of people, specifically, gay men. Everyone was reading about it. The death rate was one hundred percent at that time. To the medical and scientific community, it was a matter of scientific curiosity. To us, we were frightened and wondered if this was some ingenious way to rid us from the earth. Over two hundred of my friends died before my eyes. Many of them I held as they took their last breath while I told them how much I loved them. My sadness eventually turned to anger. There were marches and protests because of all the people dieing around me. No one outside of our community seemed to care. We were just "faggots" and vermin. We were worth nothing to society. For the first time, one reality hit me very hard. It was something I never wanted to admit, but it was starring me square in the face: We were not all the same. We never were. We are different, and our differences destroy us. That was the end of my innocence - it's death. It was the end of hope. Henry David Thoreau summed it up this way: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation. What is called resignation is confirmed desperation. From the desperate city you go into the desperate country, and have to console yourself with the bravery of minks and muskrats. A stereotyped but unconscious despair is concealed even under what are called the games and amusements of mankind."

It was a turning point of how I dealt with life. I realized for the first time that there really was no community and no utopia in the sense of how I defined it. There is really only me. All that I knew was a lie and a sterilization of what was real. If AIDS had killed all the "queers", would the world even care now? The innocent boy, or what was left of him said, "of course they would care because we are all the same". That was the last I ever heard from him. He was gone.

Today, I know that there is very little you can control in life. My family is a very small-handpicked group of loving and understanding people. I don't make friends easily and I don't let people into my life easily. I'm too smart for that. I'm cynical about the world in general and have doubts that we will be around much after my life has ended. Innocence is gone. We have met the enemy, and he is us.

Every once in awhile when I reflect on life, I remember the little boy that I once was, and how he looked at life. I miss him. I long to go back to those days of innocent youth. I want to be like that again. Sometimes I forget what it was like, only to see it on some child's face and I will say to myself "there you are!". Robert Frost once wrote of the longing for the return of innocence:

I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.