After I’d shaved off all my hair, I kept it super-short. I wore my lesbian identity on my sleeve—literally. My backpacks were littered with buttons that screamed such slogans as “I’m here. I’m queer. Get used to it.”
By this time I had become well known on campus as what was jokingly referred to as the BLOC: the Big Lesbian On Campus. This was a title that went to one lesbian who really stood out on the campus and took charge of the community by getting involved in as many queer leadership positions as possible. When I first came to school, my sorority sister Ann, who was a senior, held the title. Since Ann had graduated, the title had been handed down to me. This I accepted with great pride. I found that I was a natural-born leader. I was planning events, organizing protests, writing letters to the editor, and appearing in the college newspaper almost weekly as the gay spokesperson for the student body. I was on speed-dial with the newspaper’s reporting staff. Anytime they had a question about anything gay, they called me. I cannot tell you how many times my picture was on the front of the newspaper holding a rainbow flag or protest sign, or speaking at a rally. From time to time I was on the local news when their reporters came on campus to cover our events. I was at home in this role and found myself totally engrossed in being gay.
As I was learning in my sociology and psychology classes, this was common in many cultures when a person begins to self-identify with their roots, whether that is their racial background, ethnicity, religious affiliation, or sexuality. I learned in college that when a person first identifies with these things deeply, they go through certain developmental phases, such as the identity or immersion phase. I was in what the gay community refers to as my “pride phase,” when one identifies solely with the group and then becomes totally immersed in that culture, making sure that everyone around them is aware of their affiliation. I wore my queerness like a badge of honor. I aligned it with how I immersed myself in the program of recovery when I first got clean and sober. My entire world revolved around recovery, and while it was still a very large part of my life on a daily basis, my recovery was enabling me to branch out in other ways. I was in my third year of recovery, and I carried my two-year medallion with me wherever I went, always serving as a reminder of where I came from and how far I had come.
I also noticed that while I received a great deal of admiration and acceptance from my peers, my reality in the world was different with my newfound identity. People looked at me oddly when I walked down the street. I was followed in stores by clerks who would have usually bent over backwards to help me. Now they eyed me suspiciously, like I was going to steal something. I began to fully understand what it meant to be a minority, to be looked upon as an outsider. It was easier being gay when I still looked “straight” with my makeup and long hair. I could still blend easily into both worlds without being detected. But now, with my new looks, it was abundantly clear what and who I was to the world. With my ultrashort haircut and outwardly gay appearance, it wasn’t out of place for me to be walking on campus and hear the word “dyke” muttered in disgust by another student walking by. Worse, in the evenings when students were a bit more emboldened by their extracurricular drinking activities, it wasn’t uncommon to have a group of guys scream “fucking queers” or “fucking dykes” at a group of us as we walked on campus. It made my blood boil and also made me very sad inside that people who didn’t even know me would have such hatred for me based solely on my appearance.
Even though I had a great deal of pride in who I was now and felt firmly positioned in my own life the way I knew I was supposed to be, it still hurt at times to feel the hate that sometimes surrounded me. I was in central Pennsylvania, and even though I was attending an institution of higher learning, I was living in what most Pennsylvanians would jokingly refer to as the “Alabama” part of the state. Pittsburgh is at one end and Philadelphia at the other—both major metropolitan areas with mostly Democratic views—and then you have “Alabama” running though the middle of the state. We are a swing state in most elections because of this eclectic makeup. Central Pennsylvania is mostly rural and vastly conservative, home to farmers, hunters, working-class folks who tend to the Republican side, and what I would soon find—hate groups. Pennsylvania was home to many nationally affiliated, organized hate groups. Little did I realize I would soon become acquainted with one in particular. It made me stronger in my resolve to change beliefs and behaviors of others. It just made me work harder at the events I was planning, as I had a strong purpose behind each and every action.
38
QUEER PROM
ONE EVENT IN WHICH I WAS HEAVILY ENGROSSED was the planning of the first-ever Penn State Queer Prom. It was to be our end-of-the-year main event for 2000. I wanted to provide an experience for the queer kids on campus that they were never able to have in high school. Most queer young people went to prom either with someone of the opposite gender or not at all. It is a rite of passage that is often taken away from queer people, or at the very least, is not experienced fully like it is for most students.
I had never had so many close friends in all of my life as I did during my time in State College, including three amazing gay guy friends who were helping me plan the prom. As we got ready for the first prom, I was giddy with excitement. I had spent countless hours examining every detail of this event so it would be fabulous. At the time, I was casually dating Ann, but everyone knew my heart still belonged to Raye, so my efforts with Ann were futile at best. I had a few hot encounters with other women, but none of them felt right. Since I was all about being true to myself, I didn’t last long in any dating or relationship scenarios. I had heard that Raye had broken up with her latest, and she and I were speaking every now and then. Our attraction had never gone away; even when she was dating other women, we would talk or see each other at a party and wind up making out all night in the corner or even, one particular night, in a kitchen sink. But she had still been involved with the other person, and I wasn’t going to push her until she was ready. I still thought deep down that we would wind up together; I felt it was our destiny.
It turns out I was right. She ended up showing up at the prom dateless and swept me off my feet as we danced all night. Ann and I were not on any official type of date that night, so Raye and I were free to spend the evening together. That night she came to my apartment as I slept and threw stones at my window until I woke to find her standing outside with a rose and a smile. I let her back into my apartment, my bedroom, and my heart that night, and she never left. We became an official couple, and this time it was for good.
So my life was perfect, as it seemed. I had a ton of wonderful friends, school was going well, I was totally in love with an amazing woman, and my parents seemed to be okay with everything. I began bringing Raye around, and even though they were timid, they were tolerant. My stepmother had a hard time at first. I truly think they both thought my venture into the gay world was a college phase, but once I brought Raye home and had an “official girlfriend,” it began to sink in to them that this was no phase. They began to fall in love with Raye as much as I did—it was pretty hard not to love her. Getting to know my family was eye-opening for her. She came from a religious family that really lived the American dream. There was no trauma in her history, and she struggled to understand the family I came from. She never judged us; she accepted my dysfunctional family unconditionally, and I think it was that unconditional spirit and love that ended up bonding her and my stepmother so well. They were both female outsiders brought into this insanity of a family by people they couldn’t help but love. Raye and my stepmother shared that commonality and it brought them together, and out of that, my stepmother’s acceptance of our love came freely.
Raye and I dated all through our junior year, and I stayed extremely active on campus. I was committed to the community and truly came into my own as an activist. I continued to be the “go-to” person for media and everyone else on campus when it came to gay issues, and I became the president of the sorority
.
This latest role didn’t go over as well as I would have hoped. I quickly learned that when you become a leader in a community, it can be a very lonely place to be. Once you are seen as a person of authority, people tend to resent you a bit. It was a lesson in leadership that was challenging for me, and Dr. Rankin really mentored me through that process. It was one she had come to know all too well, being a leader on campus herself.
My sorority sisters treated me differently as I tried to steer us away from the party scene and more into community service. I cannot blame them in hindsight; we clearly had different priorities. Even though I was okay around the party scene because they were respectful of my recovery, I took the sorority in a direction they weren’t all thrilled with.
I was so compelled and committed to trying to change beliefs and attitudes and make a difference on campus that sometimes I forgot that some people just wanted to have fun. That is where my difference in age and my recovery were glaringly clear. I saw these strong, beautiful, and intelligent women within the group as agents of change, just as I was, and in many ways they just weren’t there yet in their own lives. They were still into hooking up and hanging out, while I was on a mission to change the world.
I felt we were at a critical mass. Matthew Shepard, a gay student in Wyoming, had been murdered a few years earlier in 1998. As a result, outrage was being expressed across the nation about the way gay people were treated in society. For the first time nationally, people took notice of the hatred that was expressed against gay people. I think it was because Matthew was a white, male college student with an affluent family. His image hit home with many families in that “Oh my goodness, he could be anyone’s son” kind of way. I just wanted to capitalize on that, to try to educate people about who we were, to try to somehow infuse acceptance into an intolerant rural community. I felt such an internal compulsion to make a difference on campus, because for me and for so many of us, it was a life-or-death situation at times. I often found myself in Dr. Rankin’s office in tears of frustration and conflict. She guided me through it all and helped me realize that I was a little different from the average college student.
It was so hard for me to balance being a recovery person, with all my grown-up history and experience under my belt, with this new, young college student that I had become. Sometimes I felt like I totally fit in, and other times I felt like I was so alone that no one in the world understood my plight. People in the rooms understood, and I relied heavily upon their understanding and guidance, but once I would step out of a meeting and back onto campus—it was once again another world. While I was happy and felt blessed to have so many friends, there was still always the underlying knowledge that I was different. I couldn’t just tune out the world around me as others were able to do so freely. Recovery had awakened me, and now that I was aware of what was going on around me, I felt a strong sense of purpose. I was becoming an activist, and that isn’t always a popular role.
39
SOMETHING IN THE WATER
ONE NIGHT I GOT A CALL FROM MY PARENTS TELLING me that Brian had been arrested and was in jail. He and my brother Jimmy were still deeply struggling with addiction. Jimmy had tried rehab a couple of times and had lived in a halfway house for a time where he was doing very well, but then he would have a slip and it would be back to the usual.
This time Brian had gotten into a fight with a police officer and wound up in jail. My parents told me they were not going to bail him out. I was so proud of them, because they had been such enablers to all of us as we each struggled with addiction. Like so many parents of addicts, they wanted nothing more than a good life for their children and they made countless sacrifices both financially and emotionally to ensure our safety. But unfortunately they never really could secure our recovery or safety—just as no parent can. It is a futile effort when dealing with an addicted child.
My father used duct tape in an attempt to fix me. When I used to drink and black out—which was more often than I care to recall—I wasn’t the best driver. I drank, and I drove, and I bounced off things all over town including utility poles, other vehicles, sidewalks, walls—you name it—if it happened to cross the path of my vehicle while I was intoxicated and driving, I hit it. I am not proud of this; it was simply the reality of my life and my addiction at the time. I would often awaken from a night of heavy drinking and have a fog of emptiness in my head where the memories of the last evening should have been. I would find my father fixing my car with, of course, duct tape. Whether it be a smashed light or my fender half hanging down from hitting a riser on the road, he would be there quietly, lovingly duct-taping the parts back together.
I would always act as if I had no idea what happened, which in essence was the truth; I rarely had any recollection of the prior evening’s events, and in the rare case when I did remember bouncing off something, I never admitted it to my father. I would just dismissively say, “Oh, someone must have hit me in the parking lot,” and thank him for fixing the damage for me while never making eye contact with him.
I know he knew that I was lying. I know he taped my vehicle because he loved me and wanted to protect me, and also because he felt unable to help me in any other way. My disease was full-blown and directly in his face, and there was nothing he could do to stop me from getting behind the wheel on any given night and drinking and driving. It was his way of trying to put me back together, part by part, piece of tape by piece of tape. He fixed my vehicle in the absence of his ability to fix me. It was the one thing he felt he had some type of control over.
My parents had gone to twelve-step meetings with me and really began to grasp the program of recovery and their role in it. They began to learn about their codependency and enabling behaviors. It was a large step for them to not bail Brian out of jail, and I knew it was one that kept them both up at night, riddled with guilt. But sometimes the healthy choices that we must make for those we love hurt us the most. Brian stayed in jail for a couple of weeks, and upon his release when he called my parents for a ride home, they didn’t answer the phone. Brian walked home that day. It was several miles to my parents’ home, and on that walk he had an awakening. He realized his life was completely unmanageable and he was sick and tired of being sick and tired. By the time he reached my parents’ house, his feet were killing him but his heart was a bit lighter. He decided to take everyone’s advice and go to rehab. He went to the same rehab I had gone to three years earlier. He did well there, as he admitted freely that he was in fact an addict, and he began rigorously working a program of recovery. After thirty days, he went on to live in a sober living home right outside State College, which thrilled me. He and his other housemates would drive into State College every Saturday morning and attend our meetings. It was amazing to have my brother in the rooms with me, talking about recovery and looking better and healthier each time I saw him. I felt like my prayers had been answered. I was so proud of him that I would beam when he came into a meeting, and I made sure everyone within earshot knew he was my brother—not like you couldn’t tell just by looking at us, since we resembled each other so much. It was so nice to have someone from my family in State College.
After the sober living house, Brian moved to State College with another male friend. He attended meetings with me, and we began to build our bond back in a new and exciting way. I had my brother back, and it felt amazing. We began to get to know one another again as people in recovery, and I loved spending time with him and sharing funny stories of our childhood. I had such a tainted view of my childhood as a result of all the trauma and damage that had been done that it was nice to recall the good times with him and know they were real. My parents couldn’t have been happier, and even though Jimmy still struggled, they now had two children who they knew were safe and in recovery. They were beginning to think that there was something in the water in State College!
40
DEATH AND PROTEST
I WAS ONLY ONE YEAR AWAY FROM GRADUATION, which was sca
ry since Raye and I weren’t sure what we wanted to do after college, and I had everything I had ever wanted: a wonderful love, a great community, a new education, self-awareness that made me glow, my brother in recovery and living near me, and a future that seemed limitless.
Raye had been active in the Special Olympics and got me involved as well. I began coaching volleyball and softball—two sports I had no business coaching, really. However, it wasn’t about skill with the Special Olympics, it was about having fun, and I sure had a whole lot to offer in that area—which was good because most of the young athletes kicked my butt in both sports. It was about motivating them and helping them reach a new goal. In many ways I related so much to the athletes, because I knew what it was like to have to overcome something and the glory you felt once you reached a goal, no matter how small. I found myself very emotional at times when working with them because I felt so blessed to have the opportunity to do it. It made me feel even more in awe of recovery and its gifts. The best part of it all was what I got from the athletes: they made me see myself in a whole new way. They helped me slow down, set aside my ego, and appreciate the simple joys of life on an even deeper level. It was a humbling experience. Working a program of recovery in my life meant getting out of myself as often as I could and being of service to others.
Leave the Light On Page 18