If someone asked me if I was queer, my answer would be
"yes." That is, assuming it wasn't Billy Bob Joe Ray Don and his kegger buddies
wearing their "Guns don't kill people, I do" T-shirts.
If someone asked me if I were proud to be queer, the answer would still be
"yes." But "proud to be queer," I believe, is an inaccurate way of
putting it.
I grew up knowing I was different, with no attraction to the girls in my classes. Somehow,
even at that young age, I knew I had to make sure no one ever found out. In junior high,
at the age of 13, I discovered a name for what I was. It was given to me from the kids at
my school. I was a "faggot." Without any provocation, without any outward signs
that I was different from any of them, they knew-and they never let me forget.
One afternoon, after the principal watched several of the boys shove me around, hearing
the names they called me, I was summoned to his office. He sat, perched on the corner of
the desk Ward Cleaver-like while dispensing his worldly wisdom upon his sons. His sharp
eyes glared down at me, and there was a suffocating pause before he began.
"You need to stop acting queer, Matthew. It would be in your best interest that if
you are that way, you make sure no one ever finds out. It's not a good thing to be."
Terror consumed me, my mind went numb, and I walked back to my class in a daze. As I
walked down the hall, I shook uncontrollably and wondered what was the quickest and most
painless way to die.
I lived the following years in constant fear. My grades plummeted, and I pulled back from
everyone and everything. God was exacting his revenge on faggots: AIDS. With lack of
proper public information, particularly to we "innocents," I could only decipher
that this "gay cancer" struck without rhyme or reason and it only affected
"those evil fags."
I was certain that any day I would start showing signs of AIDS and I went for weeks trying
to suppress any "queer thoughts," hoping I could escape the fate of the plague
victims the news showed every night in its "special reports."
When I turned 16, I snuck a copy of an adult gay magazine through a checkstand at Tower
Books and learned the mechanics of gay sex. Those abundant and descriptive details began
to weave themselves through my writing as I began to explore the parts of myself I had
been trying to block out for years.
My mother discovered my writing, and as I stood in our front yard she called me
"fag." It was a moment that left me on a suicidal brink. My grandmother
responded similarly, demanding that my mother order me to "stop being that way."
"It's not right," she said. "Do you want him to burn in hell because you
didn't put a stop to this now?"
In a moment of self-loathing, I grabbed the magazine I had kept well hidden and tore it
into countless shreds before burying it deep in the outside trash can. I was never going
to be a "faggot" again.
Almost a year after I had doubled my efforts to fit into the heterosexual world, I walked
into my bedroom to find a relative who had come to stay with us after years away sitting
on my bed. He held in his hand a letter I had been writing to a pen pal who had come out
to me several weeks before. In the letter, which I had written and rewritten, I had begun
to open up to my pen pal. Once again, my written words were betraying me.
He began to question me, his voice filled with contempt and disgust. I was in shock. I
felt as though I had walked into a dream. It took me a few moments to feel his weight on
top of me, and I gasped for the air knocked out of me as I hit the floor. The inquisition
ended as he raped me.
For many people, an experience like this would have driven them into a permanently locked
closet or a graveyard. For me, it was the beginning of my self-empowerment.
Over the next few weeks as I pondered the irony of being raped by a man who hated me
because I preferred to have sex with men, I came out to most of my friends. Two of them
came out to me. Many I never heard from again.
From there I took bolder and bolder steps to come out of the closet and hang a big rainbow
flag over its door. As I read true tales of other people's triumphs and tragedies and
began interacting with people in the queer community, I developed a deep connection with
these people-my people. I started to grow and to heal. From my despair came rage, from
rage came strength. And from strength I grew to lose the feeling of constant fear I had
always lived under and find what I believe most of us feel is a sense of pride.
But the question is, pride in what? Pride in being queer?
Am I proud that I have sex with men? If I were heterosexual, would I be proud of
preferring sex with women? Am I proud of my difference? Proud of being
"victimized" and stereotyped?
I think the answer to that question is that I am proud of overcoming the obstacles that
others have placed in my path. I'm proud to be part of a group of people who have fought
long and hard to say, "No, we're not different from you. We're just as good as
you."
Last year, at this time, I watched the Sacramento queer community pull together to mourn
the death of Matthew Shepard, a young college student in Wyoming that was tied to a fence,
beaten into a coma and left for dead. He hung there for several days before he was found
and on Oct. 12, never having regained consciousness he died.
He was targeted for being queer-the same as countless people before him.
It is important that those of us within the queer community who have opted not to be
silent and to be "community leaders" in whatever field we chose not be afraid to
say 'Yes, I am queer, and I am proud of who I am and the community I am a part of."
It's the only way the future Matthew Shepards will have a fighting chance of not being
singled out merely on the terms of sexual orientation and to grow up with their own sense
of "pride" and accomplishment-not terror.
NOTE: My mother has since become one of my biggest supporters and has been a strong
factor in developing my sense of pride and self esteem. |
