Another summer in Miami Beach involved Michael, a blonde, blue-eyed, surfer type from Ohio. A Jewish man, 20ish, son of the wealthy owner of a restaurant chain, Michael had his own Porsche. I became his big brother. We spent so much time together, with Bob. There was nothing sexual about our behavior. But, Michael and I would dance up a storm; the floor would clear, and others would watch us. He would joke, "Fred and Ginger can't match us!" Perhaps because I was older than he, it seemed that I led the dancing, close or rock. Not true. Michael always led, but we were so in tune with each other, intuitively our movements were as one. It was just super.

I relate this so that it doesn't come across that every relationship between or among gay men has a sexual component. Also, though committed to each other, Bob and I enjoy the company of other gay men in social and recreational settings. Actually we much prefer to share those relationships, as we did with Michael and many others.

Older straight people would occasionally land on the gay 21st Street Shore in Miami Beach by mistake. We used to watch for their reactions.

A straight family once arrived with their two pre-adolescent children. As they were spreading their towels, the father looked around. Suddenly, urgently, "we're leaving!" He had noticed that most of the sunbathers were men; the rest female couples. No one was behaving inappropriately, but he panicked. Too bad; among the gay men were many with strong paternal instincts who would have gladly baby-sat the kids on the beach, at the hot dog stand, and in the water. For the most part, gay men (far more so than most straight fellows) express easily the natural, nurturing and protective qualities inherent in most males.

It was always priceless to watch the facial expressions and movements of panic-stricken straight folks as they discovered they were on the gay beach. They would flee, often awkwardly, as if they were going to catch "it" ...... and AIDS hadn't been heard of in those days. All of us would chuckle.

At the same time, we were a little hurt. We didn't feel menacing, and we were reminded, again, of how ignorantly and bitterly we were perceived.

“Kill A Fag”

All this touring was going on in our late teens through early thirties while I was completing my formal education, teaching, and serving some churches part-time. Bob was teaching, too. We lived in different towns for many of those years, and for three years I lived in Manhattan. Bob would visit every other weekend, and we’d have lengthy summer vacations together. At times it was terribly lonely, but we were determined to do whatever we had to, in order to complete our respective educational paths. We were very circumspect and, for example, would not go to the movies together anywhere near Bob’s high school job. Many gay couples won’t make those compromises during their early years. Eventually, though, as we reached thirty (in 1967) we had a two-family house built, one that Bob designed, in Bristol, Connecticut. Ten rooms (plus a basement study for Rich) for two guys was no punishment as we masked our household with two addresses and two phone numbers for those 27 years.

My life was compartmentalized, not in the sense of denying or forgetting, not in any way experienced as fragmented. But, for example, after a weekend together in New York City, neither of us would go into work and answer colleagues’ question about what we had done on the weekend! “A gay dance bar” wouldn’t have gone over well! Just part of the strategy necessary for many professionals during those years.

Did anyone ever find out? Not that we know of. But once I had a real scare. During my first teaching job (early 60s) at the Watkinson School in West Hartford, while I was a student at Hartford Seminary, I had a yearning to connect with some other gay guys socially – but at a distance. I lived at the school, and part of my position involved supervision of the boarding students.

In a gay magazine that I had dared to buy one weekend in New York I found the name of a pen-pal club, which I signed up for. I received a nice chatty letter from a guy my age with his picture (clothed). I wrote back to him saying that “maybe someday we’d run into each other.” I had no idea whatsoever of actually meeting him.

One morning the headmaster called me into his office. Two Hartford postal authorities were there – big, heavy men in uniform – right out of the movies.

“You’ve broken the law …… obscene correspondence. Come with us for questioning.” This was right in front of the headmaster.

So into their car I went, down to the main Post Office – as if I were a dangerous criminal. Trying to cover all bases, I replied to their questions by denying anything obscene, which was true. I made it clear that it was a pen-pal organization, and I had no idea that they were on the post office’s list as a source of obscene materials. I can’t

remember whether they had picked up the name from a return address or what. Certainly they had not read that one letter I received. There was nothing obscene about it.

They drove me back to school and told the headmaster that I was naïve, but OK. So, I retained my job. But the headmaster (who was a pious jerk later fired from the job) said, “If you were homosexual, you’d be out of here in two hours, and I’d have notified Hartford Seminary, too.” My unspoken puzzlement clicked in as I wondered with a chuckle, why two hours!

That’s the way it was then. And there had been nothing lewd passing through my mail. I was relieved that the headmaster didn’t assume “where there’s smoke there’s fire.”

****

Bob and I know something about the pain and humiliation of being perceived as gay in those days. We were in a raid once in the Greater Miami region. The gay bar was very ordinary looking with stools, the bar, and mirrored walls. The guys there, several dozen, were having their drinks, talking, and kidding around. There was no touching or overt sexual behavior of any sort. It was about 9 P.M.

Suddenly motorcycle police stormed in the back and front doors. We were thrown against the wall with everyone else. “What’s your name, address, and place of employment? Show me your ID” was growled at one and all. Fortunately, it was summer, and we were “unemployed” during this vacation period.

The next day the major Miami newspaper listed the names of all the locals, where they worked, and stated that they were in a bar that catered to homosexual customers. Can you imagine what happened to those people? They probably lost their jobs, never mind the public disgrace.

We had our taste of Nazi tactics that bordered on disaster. And so, when young people today say today that there hasn’t been any progress ….. when was the last time a gay bar in a major city was raided for simply being gay? For the most part, police cannot go around yelling, “Faggot, go home.” The progress has been enormous, or at least, was until HIV/AIDS came along. Our hearts go out to the gay and bisexual men and women who are still trapped living in redneck America with all those insufferable “Christian” bigots.

****

I’m so glad that Bob and I found each other as teenagers. I’m also thankful that we were naïve and did not plunge into any gay subcultures. Touring is one thing, taking up residence is another! For example, cruising for sexual encounters (whether one is gay or straight) can become addictive. It can become a compulsive activity with no commitments. Unsafe, multiple sexual activities can cost you your life!

When you’re young, the hormones are raging, and males are often afflicted with what can be lightheartedly

called “testosterone poisoning.” Further, if you’re a youthful, attractive guy, there’ll usually be a good-looking sexual partner available for 15 minutes or a night or a week, or whatever. The whole process of cruising for sex can be an incredible high – the eye contact, the return looks, the signals, “your place or mine” – or the car. Nobody wants to be turned down, so the strategies of assessing another’s responses before there’s any conversation involves an appealing tension. Finding no one appealing or being rejected can be depressing and can intensify loneliness. Of course, all of this is equally true in a straight bar.

****

When we were in our thirties and enjoyed dance bars, we asked an older friend if he’d like to go out with us.

“Oh, I don’t to the bars anymore,” he said in a sad way.

Now we understand. We go to bed about 10. What a contrast to those earlier years when we’d leave the house at 9 P.M. to go to a bar that really didn’t get going until 10! In some places, like Provincetown and Miami Beach, partying didn’t begin until midnight!

In the 1980s, when Bob was away at a family event, I was talking to a young, gay friend on the phone.

“If you’re going out later, maybe I’ll join you,” I told him.

“Dick, don’t,” he said. The Hartford Puerto Ricans have been bashing people left and right. We’re

regulars and are left alone.” Also, he’s a big, powerful guy.

In the 80s straight kids were into gay bashing again. It had gotten worse while we’d been talking together for this book. The police were doing nothing …. they come an hour after they’re called. The bumper stickers say it all: “Eliminate AIDS. Kill a fag.” Even “Kill a fag for Jesus” and “God hates fags.”

MIMI

It’s a privilege to be let into someone else’s life, as Dick (and Bob) is letting me into his. For me this is an adventure – a queasy one as I rocket to a strange planet. But the shocking glimpses of an alien life-style doesn’t make me as uncomfortable as they might, because of Dick’s use of language. His forthright, sometimes clinical words minimize the embarrassment.

The appeal of intimate encounters in “sub-cultural gay life” still baffles me, however. I’ve seen straight “swingers” in their late thirties and early forties still unable to make a an emotional commitment to another person, and they’re missing out. Dick and Bob have indeed made a deep commitment to each other, but I’m amazed that it’s survived the “touring.”

It’s astonishing to see them now – Dick preaching and celebrating Communion, Bob discussing a lecture – and picture them as young men in dance bars late at night and exploring gay life in Manhattan, Boston, Provincetown, Springfield (Mass.) and even Hartford! There’s an appealing innocence about what I’ve glimpsed of them in the past that doesn’t jibe with some of the experiences I’ve deliberately asked to be told about.

In their scrapbooks, Bob is pictured during an adolescent Elvis phase – cold stare and slouch, droopy cigarette. In photos with family, a warm smile gives him away. Both boys grew into handsome young men – filled out, well-groomed “hunks” in their summer tans, tank tops, shorts, and loafers. Dick, the new priest, is competent and confident appearing in his vestments. Sideburns gave him a somewhat dashing air, but he still seems terribly young.

The police raid that Dick told about and the invasion of privacy by the postal inspectors are appalling. But what about the headmaster? His Board would probably have fired him if he knowingly employed homosexual men in those days, and perhaps now. Is that fair? Do homosexual, male teachers try to seduce adolescent boys? The question can be answered with another. Do heterosexual, male teachers try to seduce adolescent girls? Sometimes. But, it’s not usually a problem, as far as I know. Might a gay teacher proselytize – try to convince a young person who was confused about his sexual orientation that he was homosexual? I still want to ask Dick about that.

The deception Dick had to practice while at seminary and the schools where he taught bothers me. We Christians expect our clergy to be squeaky clean. But what else could he do? For him, homosexuality was natural, even though society called it sick (in those days). The Roman Catholic Church stubbornly disagrees and clings to uninformed, jaded assumptions about human nature.

“I personally feel,” wrote Paul Moore, the progressive once Episcopal Bishop of New York, in his 1979 Take A Bishop Like Me “that the day will come when a responsible homosexual relationship will be seen as not contrary to God’s will.” The Episcopal Church continues to be embroiled in gay related issues to this day and

probably will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

In March of 1987 James Fenhagen, Dean of New York’s General Theological Seminary, shared with me a piercing observation about the cruising which is associated with promiscuity.

“Every culture has its own norm, its own rituals for claiming identity. For a gay man, going to gay bars and baths may be a way of discovering who he is. For the first time he feels free; there’s no place else where he can go to affirm his identity.”

Sensitivity to the gay sub-culture’s norm is not the same as accepting it, however. Dick’s Church may in time officially accept his homosexuality and applaud his “faithful and responsible” relationship with Bob. But rightly or wrongly, it will be a cold day in hell before it condones recreational sex, whether heterosexual or homosexual.

Furthermore, in his sermons Dick frequently affirms Baptism as a unique child of God as the Christian identity. It seems to me that for him and Bob, this is the case. Their sexual orientation is subordinate and within the context of their baptismal identity. Perhaps this is why they aren’t dependent on the gay subculture for a sense of who they are.