I’m still processing in my mind some of the stuff that turned up in the storage locker I closed a month or so ago. Something that I’ve shopped around to friends who might have a perspective on the matter has been too much in my mind, to a point where I had to mentally force it out. Might as well document it before I let it go entirely.
My father was gay. I never knew this until after he was gone. It was surprising as hell at first but after that wore off I just kind of shrugged it off. It’s not like I discovered he was a Nazi, after all. But it’s a little sad to think he went through life unable or unwilling to be who he was born to be. Whatever the case I, for whatever reason, assumed it was a late life discovery of his, and that like many people from his generation he just didn’t know until later.
That assumption was thrown into doubt when I noticed something that never registered with me until now. The letters that he wrote to me in the 1980s and 1990s had a custom made return address sticker. The sticker contained a rainbow illustration. It was the Gay Pride rainbow. It’s unmistakable, although it also contains an image of the sun which, as far as I can tell, was never part of the Gay Pride logo or designs.
Gay Pride Logo?
As tempting as it might be to imagine that dad was trying to send some kind of signal with this I just have to say no. It simply does not make any sense. I think that he, like I, did not recognize those colors for what they were. However universally recognized that color sequence might have been within the gay community I do not think it was as readily recognized outside that world. I mean I did not even recognize those colors in 1989 and I was a student at the gayest college in America. The only regard I remember ever giving that sticker was that it looked like a Florida sunshiney kind of thing, and I think that is probably what dad thought, too. It is kind of ironic that he was drawn to these colors but I cannot imagine it was a product of subconscious association with the Gay Pride movement. He lived in a town where being gay could get you killed, and not to exaggerate that point but even something as trifling as a return address sticker could provoke a true hater.
Still, it’s haunting to think that he always knew but never pursued a lover or any involvement with men. He patrolled his life from the black helicopters of his mind, allowing a deep but solitary knowledge about himself to never get in the way of being what his upbringing dictated a man was supposed to be. It echoes what the Jesuits taught about homosexuality when I was in high school in the 1980s: Being gay isn’t the sin, it’s engaging in homosexual acts that gets you in trouble with God. The unspoken and to me cruel implication of this was that gay men should become priests, or else choose paths that keep them away from sexual temptation or deviance. Innumerable priest sex scandals show what a great idea that was.
To give the church some slack this teaching does not come from a specifically anti-gay belief, at least I don’t think it does. It conforms to the broader Catholic teaching that engaging in sex for any purpose other than procreating is sinful and debasing. I guess that statement could be considered apologist or whitewashing. I’ll think about it.
My dad was not religious but I think similar attitudes about knowing you are gay but not acting on it might have informed how he managed his self-knowledge, causing him to repress what he knew about himself. My mother made comments in later years that he exhibited very effeminate characteristics, a comment I found impossible to dispute. She never outright suggested he was gay but I think she had an inkling, even if she might have repressed that line of thinking the same as he did. It is one of my regrets that I never told her what I knew, but by the time that could have happened I don’t think she would have cared.
It could have been something he took with him to the grave. Maybe he thought it was, or maybe he left those videos there for us to find. There were women’s panties, too. I think he either forgot they were there or he didn’t think anyone would actually put the VHS tapes in the VCR and see what was on them. Had I not found them I would never have known he was gay, nor would the possibility have ever entered my mind. But once I made the discovery and got past the surprise it made sense. He had such stilted flamboyances and make awkward sartorial choices.
As dad’s estate attorney grandiloquently said when I asked if he knew my father was gay: You never know what is happening in the minds of mortals, even those you thought you knew better than anybody. I thought of that when I had the first brain MRI some years ago. They took dozens and dozens of pictures, every slice and every blob of fluid. They could have taken millions of pictures but still no one would have been able to tell what was going on inside.
