Revolution in America takes time...
The year was 1974, I was seventeen. Up until my senior year in highschool I was always in the college prep classes, Jacques Cousteau was my hero, and oceanography was where my heart lie. I was smart, curious, and full of passion. I had been junior class President in a school I had only attended since the beginning of my sophomore year. All the signs indicated that I was on the right path to a bright future.
Sometime around the middle of the eleventh grade, I asked a girl who lived across the street, and was a couple of years older, if she could get a bottle of wine for me if I gave her the money. I knew she was pretty savvy, and she was of the cool kids. True to form she had no problem securing the contraband in short order.
My best friend at the time, whose parents were really strict and religious, was as anxious as I was to drink some wine. Living in Maine meant that ten feet off a well worn path and you were deep in the woods, so we went out into the trails around our neighborhood and quickly found a safe, secluded spot.
The wine went down easily. Boones Farm Strawberry Hill sounded innocent enough, like kool aid in a wine bottle, and the warm glow I began feeling enveloped me like a soothing blanket. In no time we were sharing our deepest secrets. A realization that had been gnawing at me suddenly leapt into focus and I knew that my best friend meant more to me than I had imagined. I was in love, but I dare not say it.
For me, love was something that needed to be hidden, silently brushed aside and dealt with late at night while sobbing into my pillow. I knew even then, having never been exposed much to anything "gay," that what I felt was wrong. The intense desire to kiss him, to touch him, were feelings I knew I had to lock inside. Unrequited love soon became a theme I would learn to embrace. Alcohol, drugs, and cool kids became my new best friends.
I don't remember exactly when the notion of dropping out of school became a thing. I stood astride two separate worlds. The college prep classes I was enrolled in came easy to me so skipping a few days now and then didn't really affect my grades. But the parties, the pot, the alcohol and the pills - things I craved to help keep at bay that which could not be spoken - were the final straw. I simply stopped going. More important than school, more important than career, more important than anything was finding answers. Why did my love have to always be one way? How many more were there like me? Could I change?
One of my good friends, who was a year ahead of me and had also dropped out of school, invited me to tag along as he had an appointment with a Marine Corps recruiter in Lewiston. I said sure, as long as we were back before nightfall. You see, we didn't have Facebook in those days, so hanging out in front of the library in the little town I was from was like party central. It was how we connected, how we knew what was going on where.
That recruiter had me pegged the moment I walked through his door. He had no idea I was gay, but he knew that I was desperately searching for something, and within an hour I was signed up to go to Marine Corps boot camp at Paris Island, South Carolina.
Only two days into boot camp and myself and all the recruits in the platoon I was assigned to were ushered into a large community shower. The drill instructors forced us into a sort of rhumba line, only our hands were down at our sides. They kept screaming for us to tighten up the line, "Asshole to bellybutton!" We were soon squeezed together like sardines in a can, butt naked, and made to just stand there, for a very long time. The DI's kept up their incessant yelling and poking and taunting, but I knew what they were up to. They were trying to weed out any homosexual deviants, and what better way than to press us together like that until somebody popped a boner. I guess they forgot to account for the fear factor. No nasty fags were revealed.
After boot camp I was assigned to an A-4 attack aircraft squadron in Beaufort, South Carolina. My job as an ordinance technician would be loading bombs and maintaining weapons systems. The Vietnam war was winding down and my squadron was full of war hardened vets fresh from the jungles of 'Nam. It was immediately obvious that people like me would not be tolerated. Some of the stories I heard, horrific tales of bashing, drove that part of me deeper inside. On the one hand, I was encouraged, getting a sense that there were a lot more gay people out there. But on the other hand, I was realizing how dangerous it could be for anyone to find out who we were. I knew the trick would be to find one another without being found out.
Soon after my squadron got transferred to El Toro, California, just south of Los Angeles, I was awakened to a whole new world. This was a time before the advent of HIV/AIDS, there were bath houses everywhere, gay culture was coming into it's own, and I was in the thick of it. I was also a U.S. Marine. The two were not compatible, so I began living a double life. I would sneak off base after hours and hitchhike to my favorite haunts. I developed a cadre of good friends apart from my military friends. When someone from my unit would question where I had been all weekend I would tell them I was at my sister's place in Long Beach. I learned that having short hair, having that military look, in an era of long hair was a ticket to anywhere, and I went everywhere.
I had come so far in such a short time. From a small town in rural Maine to the heart of L.A., from knowing nothing of gay people or gay life to immersing myself right smack in the middle of gay central, from longing for another's touch to having my choice - when and where I wanted. My mind and my universe were expanding. And yet I still felt isolated, always different, never quite belonging. My friends on base would laugh and carry on about their exploits with women and I would pretend to go along. My friends off base would laugh and carry on about their latest conquest or fashion choice and I would pretend to go along. Alcohol and drugs were still my refuge, and unrequited love was still the demon I had to conquer. I knew what I had to do.
At the tender age of nineteen, during a time when being gay in the military could get you discharged at best and beaten or even killed at worst, I committed my first act of revolution. I came out. Not all at once, and not to everyone, but I began the process. My search for answers had led me to this moment. Having been exposed to wonderful gay people who had the courage and conviction to live their lives openly, I realized that the answers I sought were within me. There was never going to be some epiphany or magic moment on a mountain. There was only going to be me and a lifelong process that would begin with this simple act of revolution. During a camp out in the mountains of Santa Ana I told my sister I was gay. At a bar off base, during a deployment to Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada, I told a few of my closest friends in my squadron I was gay. I trusted my judgment and I trusted my friends. I refused to live my life as a lie.
Fast forward forty years and here I sit at my keyboard. What began as an act of revolution in 1976 culminated in another act of revolution three years ago when I married the man I love in a wonderful ceremony attended by a hundred close friends and family at our lakeside home in rural Maine. In between those two revolutionary acts there have been millions upon millions of acts of revolution as gay people all across this land have come out, marched in parades, staged die-ins, run for office, acted up, yelled, yelled louder, survived a holocaust, and never ever gave up. We have taken one step forward and been pushed two steps back. We have been hired and then fired and told our love is not human. We have been beaten, bashed, and thrashed. We have had our kids taken from us as our families sometimes turned their backs on us. We have buried our loved ones and crafted beautiful quilts out of grief. And through it all we have kept pushing forward. It has been a revolution that has spanned decades. If you would have told that young Marine back in 1974 if he worked really hard, believed in himself, and never gave up, that one day he could marry the man he loved he would have told you were crazy and that you ought to share some of whatever the hell you were smoking.
A million acts of revolution. This is why I support Hillary Clinton for President. She gets me. I have seen Bill Clinton pilloried as he became the first President to ever give me the feeling that I belonged. I have seen Hillary bashed verbally for decades. I get her. Change in America does not come quick and it does not come easy. I know this. Hillary knows this. When my friends who support Bernie ask me why I support Hillary I tell them it's because I feel a deep kinship with her. I feel like we have evolved together. I get her and she gets me and I trust her. Explicitly.
