Because this was the time of coming to see my place, both in our broader culture and within the consciousness-raising movement, I want to pause here briefly to sum up how momentous my discoveries felt throughout my teens.
On trips to the Main Library in my tween years, with heart aflutter I'd look for "homosexuality" in the card catalog. The tomes about this topic were almost entirely along the lines of pseudo-scientific pronouncements about homo's suffering from a terrible affliction. And even then, this was seen as the enlightened, educated way of regarding this presumed disorder. As I began to learn, long before there was homosexuality there were all kinds of sexual deeds and longings that were seen as wrong, or at least quite naughty. Basically, everything that wasn't husband-wife-missionary-baby-making was kinky. Such behavior --- men at war, men at sea, women without access to men, and all the I-was-so-plastered-what-in-hell-did-I-do? --- was, it seemed to me, for a long time through history, simply that: behavior.
We tumbled, groaning, from following urges to sinning to being sick, and none of this made any sense to me. None of my desires and encounters felt bad or sinful or in any way sick. Through the 60's I found sex and relationship with an ever-widening world of queer men of every stripe. Yes, I was naive. I never had to consider society's labels about my liasons with men when I was fourteen, fifteen, sixteen. If a guy felt dirty about what he wanted to do, he wasn't interesting to me. I was attracted to fellows whom I could respect and feel good with. My first real boyfriend was a willowy, 6'3" hairdresser named Jim. I was a 9th grade high school student. He told me that he was my "muther." With patience and kindness, Jim initiated me to all the wonderful things that a man can do to give and receive pleasure with another man.
My family culture had shown me my place in the fight for civil rights and equality for all. It wasn't much of a stretch for me, by the time we got to '68, to take on the role of teacher and leader for my family and friends. We Shall Overcome was clearly for all of us.
I recall vividly the bumps in my road to liberation. Have you ever heard of Walter Jenkins? My Dad was working with President Johnson as Asst. Director of the Bureau of the Budget. One day, when I was fourteen, my father came home from work (next door to the White House). My sensitized gay ears picked up snatches of his conversation with my Mom. Jenkins had been busted at a public Men's Room in D.C. My Dad knew him as a good guy. Now Jenkins' life was brought to ruin. My parents' helpless concern for a man who, it seems, had brought shame upon the White House by trying to find release with a stranger in the eroticized arena of a public men's room, was very sad and somewhat terrifying to me. I'm sure that this experience helped convince me to carry on for another four years in the dark confines of my testosteroney closet.
I spent my last two years in the States on the barricades -- for civil rights, against the Vietnam war, and out up front for Gay Liberation. I had the time of my life. But by the time I was almost twenty, I was weary of fighting and longed to return to a state of just being me, living my life.
Onward to The Seventies...