I haven’t actually watched Stranger Things, only clips of it on Facebook or YouTube. So going into this I have a patchy and disjointed understanding of its characters, its plots, and themes. So corrections to anything that follows are welcome. 

That entire genre of horror and monsters is mostly a big turn off for me, having experienced my kidhood watching the old black & white monster and big bug movies of the 1950s on the TV after school. Now it’s all CGI and gore and I’m not into gore. Plus, the thinking seems to be now that scary movies have to make you feel powerless against evil or they’re just not scary enough. I seriously object to that.

So I saw the online talk about Stranger Things ever since the first episodes appeared when I began to see it as less a sort of Twilight Zone or Outer Limits kind of thing and more like an IT thing I just let it slide. But more recently I started seeing online talk about two of the characters, Mike Wheeler and Will Byers, possibly having a gay romance, and it began to get my attention.

The proponents of this theory had clips of the behavior of these two that were very convincing. But I just expect that anything coming out of Hollywood or big bucks entertainment won’t treat us or our relationships seriously, so I figured at some point someone would put the hammer down on any such speculation like they did for Luca. I was pretty sure it would come to nothing. 

I’ve posted this Vito Russo quote so often everyone reading me is probably very tired of it, but here it is again:

“It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance.”

So when the finale came and went and no same sex romance I wrote it off to the usual entertainment establishment homophobia. Oh sure, progress has been made. We’re not pathetic sissies or psycho murderers anymore. We can exist, just not have love lives like real people do.

We can even have coming out moments now on screen. I began seeing clips of Will’s big speech about how afraid he has always been to be out to anyone, and how after he made that speech everyone in the room said how much they still loved him, and a great big group hug ensued.

I was actually very happy to see that. But because of the nature of that short clip based view of the story, I missed its significance. And that significance was, I believe now, a major milestone in how audiences not only see us as people, but in the context of the overall series plot, it also spoke to the deeper meaning of our civil rights struggle.

This story takes place in the 1980s, which while it was better than previous decades, was still a very hostile time. That’s something younger audiences aren’t quite getting when they watch that scene, and start wondering online about why it was made such a big deal in the story. But that’s only part of it.

Not to go into any great detail about the complex plot of this series, but Will was being mind-manipulated by an evil entity (Vecna) that wanted to eradicate all life on Earth. As I understand it (remember I still haven’t watched the entire thing) at the heart of this story is a wormhole (they call it the Upside Down) linking our Earth with a dark desolate mirror Earth full of monsters, trying to get into our Earth. Vecna wants to use these monsters and the wormhole to eradicate all life on Earth (out of, I assume, just pure hate). It’s been using Will’s fear of how his family and friends will react to him if they find out he’s gay, to alienate Will from his friends, and his friends from each other. And especially from Mike. 

Will has a crush on Mike. Mike sees his relationship with Will as they are best friends. He loves Will, but its Philia, not Eros. Mike’s heart belongs to a girl, El. And seeing it is breaking Will’s heart, and causing stress in their friendship that Mike can’t figure out and Will can’t bring himself to be honest about. There’s a scene where Mike and Will are being driven to Nevada to find El, and Will is telling Mike that if El seemed like she was being mean or pushing him away it’s because she knows she’s different…

This is from a transcript of the scene I found online. Not sure if it’s from the script… [Update… It is from the script]

[Will] (haltingly) …and when you’re different, sometimes you feel like a mistake. 

The pain is real. His own words cut deeply to the core.

I hate who I am.

On the verge of tears, he turns back to Mike:

[Will] But you make her feel like she’s not a mistake at all.  Like she’s better for being different. And that gives her the courage to fight on. If she was mean to you, or she seemed like she was pushing you away, it’s because she’s scared of losing you, like you’re scared of losing her. And if she was going to lose you, I think she’d rather just get it over quick. Like ripping off a Band-Aid 

Now it’s Mike who doesn’t get it.

[Will] (CONT’D) (convincingly) So, yeah, El needs you Mike. And she always will.

Mike’s face brightens.

[Mike] Yeah?

[Will] (breathlessly) Yeah.

Will FORCES out a SMILE and Mike returns with a NOD. Thanks, I needed that.

Will turns to the window full of emptiness that goes on forever. HE STIFLES HIS SOBS, finally resigned to knowing that he just ripped off the Band-Aid.

Vecna has been using kids since the start of the series because, as it admits, kids are easier to manipulate. And it is using Will’s fear of being outed to mind-manipulate him into doing things, to cause strife among the friends, and their friends, and keep them all week and easy to manipulate.

The scene where Will comes out to everyone in the room, terrified, but determined to do it and take whatever comes of it, is pure gold on several levels. So I’m told shooting it took two twelve hour days to get it where it had to be emotionally for the actor playing Will Byers, Noah Schnapp, and also the others. I’m quoting the speech here in it’s entirety because it only works as a whole.  

I haven’t told any of you this because I don’t want you to see me differently. But the truth is… I am. I am different.

I just pretended like I wasn’t because I didn’t want to be. I wanted to be like everyone else. I wanted to be like my friends and, I am like you. I’m like you in, in almost every way. We like playing D&D late into the night and we like that old person smell in Mike’s basement, and we like biking to Melvald’s for malted milkshakes, and we like getting lost in the woods and getting lost in Family Video and arguing about what to rent and settling on ‘Holy Grail’ for the millionth time.

And we like Milk Duds in our popcorn with extra butter, and we like drinking Coke with Pop Rocks, and we like bike races and trading comics and NASA and Steve Martin and Lucky Charms and literally all the same things.

I just— I just— I— I don’t like girls. I mean, I do just— Just not like you guys do. And I had this crush on someone even though I know they’re not like me. But then I realised he’s just my Tammy, and by Tammy, I mean it was never about him. It was about me. And I thought I was finally OK with myself.

But then today Vecna showed me what would happen if I did this, if I told you guys the truth. He showed me a future and in this future, some of you are just worried for me, worried that that things will be harder for me, and it just makes me feel like something’s wrong with me.

So I push you away and for the rest of us, we just drift apart more and more and more and more and more until I’m alone and I know none of that has happened and Vecna can’t see into the future but he can see into our minds and he knows things and it just felt so real. It felt so real.

Vecna showed him what would happen if he came out. But it was a lie. Everything Vecna said would happen if he came out, is actually what would have happened if he’d stayed closeted. Will would always feel like something was wrong with him. He would eventually push all his friends away out of fear and they’d all drift away and he would end up alone. And Vecna creates the mutual distrust it needs, and that’s how it wins.

But Will comes out anyway, despite his fears. And when he does, and he is accepted, and loved, at that moment Vecna loses its control over him, and the power it had over all of them.

Do you see what the filmmakers have done here?

This subplot of Will struggling to deal with his sexual orientation in 1980s America is a metaphor of our civil rights struggle. It was never just about how liberating it is for us to be able to, finally, at long last, live honest decent whole lives, but also about liberating society at large, for all of us to be able to live in a world where the all too human monsters among us no longer have power over us. All of us.

These filmmakers/storytellers get it. That is so deeply gratifying.

Which brings me to the other thing I am very gratified to see in this story: How the filmmakers handled with genuine sympathy Will’s crush on Mike.

El is Mike’s true love. The advocates of a Mike and Will romance weren’t giving us the clips that clearly showed that. I don’t think it was meant to deceive, I think they just had a really bad case of confirmation bias. They were only seeing what they wanted to see in the scenes between Mike and Will and brushing off the scenes between Mike and El. If you didn’t see how Mike felt about El before the finale you had to have during it. Mike is best friends with Will, but El is his true love. A romantic relationship between him and Will would have been contrived and disrespectful of the characters.

Recall that scene where Will comes out took two twelve hour days to film. That was not just about getting Will’s emotional state right, but also the characters watching it. During Will’s coming out speech Mike, and this is something the filmmakers have confirmed, realizes for the first time that Will has a crush on him. The actors are good. During that scene you can see dawning awareness on Mike’s face (Mike is played by Finn Wolfhard).

In the next and final episode, as the team prepares for the final battle with Vecna, Mike has a talk with Will…

[Mike] Hey, um… What you said earlier at the Squawk… I’m sorry. I mean, not sorry about what you said. That came out wrong. Or not came out wrong. Jesus Christ.

[Will] [chuckles] It’s okay.

[Mike] No, it’s… it’s not. I should have been there for you, and I wasn’t. And I guess I was just so self-absorbed that I couldn’t see it. I just… I feel like an idiot, and I… [sighs] I’m sorry.

[Will] You don’t have to be sorry. And you are not an idiot. You’re not. It’s just… I didn’t even understand it myself for the longest time. I just… I think it needed to happen the way it happened. I needed to find my own way. But what matters is that you’re still here, and you still think we can be friends.

[Mike] Friends? No, thanks. Best friends. All right, come on. We’ve got a planet to catch. 

Which brings me to this: After the final battle, Mike is bereft over losing El. Sheriff Hopper has a talk with him. It’s worth embracing.

It’s not your fault. What happened is not your fault. El made her choice. Now it’s time for you to make yours. And the way I see it, you’ve got 2 roads ahead of you. You’ve got one road where you keep blaming yourself for what happened. You keep going over it in your head, what you could’ve done differently. You push people away, and you suffer, because that’s what you think you deserve. And then there’s another road, where you find a way to accept what happened. Find a way to accept her choice. Doesn’t mean you gotta like it, doesn’t mean you gotta understand it and never think about it. You just accept it. And you live the best goddamned life you can. I’ve been down that first road before, and I don’t recommend it.

There’s something there about acceptance for the characters, and also the audience. For Mike, for Will, for the viewers who so deeply wanted that Mike and Will romance to happen. For all the loves that were lost. For all the loves that might have been but weren’t. For everyone of us who were still in deeply love and the other just walked away. And maybe, especially, for all of us gay kids who had crushes that would never be on straight boys who just couldn’t go there: It’s not your fault. You can keep going over it in your head and wonder what you could have done differently. You can suffer alone because it’s all you think you deserve. Or you can find a way to accept what happened and have a life, even if it wasn’t the one you wished for. Doesn’t mean you can never think about it. Denial just makes a fixation worse. You just accept what happened and live the best goddamned life you can. 

Fifty-Four years ago…

December 15, 1971…sometime around twilight I took a walk from the apartment mom and I shared, up Parklawn Drive to Twinbrook Parkway, then across the railroad tracks and to Rockville Pike. I sat down on a curb near the Radio Shack and watched the twilight deepen over Congressional Plaza. A classmate I was madly crushing on, but could not admit to myself that I was crushing on, had put an arm across my shoulders as we walked together down a school hallway to a side exit where he always parked his little motorcycle, and given me a quick little squeeze, and my head went into the stratosphere and I’d been walking on air ever since. I was watching the colors in the sky deepen, but all I could see was his face, and all I could think about was how it felt to have his arm around me.

Eventually I could think it: I’m in love. And then I could think the rest of it and not be afraid or ashamed, because nothing had ever felt so wonderful. And from that moment on I was never afraid or ashamed. Life was better than I’d ever thought possible.

It didn’t last. He left the country the following summer for parts unknown. A classmate told me he probably went back to Germany which surprised me because he always led me to believe he was a Brazilian. It wasn’t until many years later I found him again and we reconnected briefly. I should tell the rest of this story at some point.

I need to make this point first: I had it good. I had it very good. Compared to other kids I had it golden. Mom loved me, I never doubted that. But there were others on her side of my family tree who would have been happy if I’d never been born. Not all of them…I need to emphasize that too…but enough of them that I felt the static over being my father’s son all the time I was growing up. Here’s the thing: you grow up in these situations others might consider strange and it doesn’t seem strange to you at all. It seems normal. Because for you it is normal. I didn’t get to meet my dad until I was 15 and that had to be on the down low because otherwise mom’s family would go nuclear. Which…they eventually did anyway. But that was normal for me. Your mileage may vary.

Part of the reason I was able to handle my emerging sexual orientation as well as I did was I’d already accepted by then that there would be people in my life who would hate my guts for something I couldn’t help being, and which all by itself wasn’t anything for me to be ashamed of. But it left its mark all the same, and at age 72 I’m still picking out pieces of the scabs.

So if it seems strange for a guy my age to be completely taken by a series of books aimed mostly at teenagers and young adults, it’s because that background premise in those books of “Forbidden Children” and “Children Who Should Not Have Been Born” and its main character telling the gods at the end of the first series to recognize all their children from now on so no one ever feels unwanted again, really hits me in a very deep place where I didn’t expect the books to take me.

I started reading the Percy Jackson books when I saw the cover art pop up in one of my feeds for The Sun And The Star and realized looking at it that it was a story about a young same sex couple in some sort of fantasy/adventure story.

I have been devouring those kinds of stories ever since Mercedes Lackey wrote her Last Herald Mage books, as a way of vicariously having/reliving an adolescence reading boy meets boy, have adventures, win their battles, defeat the bad guys and fall in love stories I never had a chance to have growing up in the late 60s/early 70s. So I bought a copy and started reading, and then fell into Rick Riordan’s universe of forbidden demigod children, unknowingly born into world where they are misunderstood weird kid outcasts at best, targets for monsters at worst, and half their family tree is dysfunctional, and they have to fight for acceptance and find and defend their chosen family.

I was only able to get halfway through the first Harry Potter book before I got bored with it and put it down. It was at the quidditch match part and I put it down to my reliable allergy to watching sports, and bad memories of being forced into it in grade school. This was well before I saw her dark side online. At the time I thought I should at least try to finish it because it seemed like everyone was thoroughly enjoying the books and the story of an outsider kid growing up in a family that raised him in a little closet away from the world of his birthright should have appealed to me. But once I put it down I moved onto other things, and then later I saw her dark side. It was probably less traumatic for me than others since I’d already become bored with her world. In retrospect Rowling had all the tropes and the skill to use them better than most, but not enough to make them rise above themselves. It’s like the difference I found reading Zane Grey versus Louis L’Amour, or Tom Clancy versus Alistair MacLean.

Looking forward to watching the second season of Percy Jackson And The Olympians, and then season three where we finally get to meet a young Nico di Angelo. Alas at the rate they’re going it won’t be for another six years after than before we get to Nico’s fight with Cupid and it comes out he’s gay and he had a crush on Percy. Maybe in seven years Disney Corp will have enough backbone to actually tell its audience that no kid should ever feel unwanted again.

Even if they’re gay and their father is Hades.

[Edited a tad…]

Surprisingly enough since I was born in southern California, I’ve only been to the original Disneyland only twice now, and just in the last few years; the last time a little over a year ago. I’ve come to really like the new California Adventure park. It has elements of Hollywood Studios in Walt Disney World, plus some California specific stuff and it really appeals to me, more so than the original Disneyland, which I went to more as a pilgrimage. I’m going again for a few days this December and really looking forward to that, and a month with my brother in Oceano. At some point I should probably blog about getting my Disneyland annual pass, then losing it, then getting it again. 

You walk into the Disneyland parks on the west side entrance by way of its Downtown Disney zone, which is between the Disneyland Hotel and the two parks. This is different from Disney Springs in Walt Disney World, which is a completely separate from the parks area. Both are free to enter shopping and dining areas. Disney Springs is large enough (like everything else in Walt Disney World) that it also has dedicated entertainment venues like House of Blues and Cirque de Solari. Downtown Disney is crammed into a small space because that entire original Disney park is crammed into the only available space to it in Anaheim. Walt Disney was taking a big gamble when he built it in 1954-55 and he bought as much land for it as he could afford. Then it became a big hit and all sorts of other commerce began nuzzling up to it to get a piece of the action and he couldn’t expand. So he went to Florida. But over the decades they’ve been buying a piece here and a piece there in Anaheim and they’ve been able to add new things to it. California Adventure was made out of what was the original parking lot, after they got space enough to build a huge parking garage nearby.

So everything in Anaheim is on a much smaller scale to those of us who came to know Walt Disney World first. I suppose people who’ve only known Disneyland are awed by the scale of Walt Disney World.

And so…burying the lede…as I was saying, if you’re entering on the west side, you walk into the Disneyland parks by way of Downtown Disney. Walt Disney called it the Happiest Place On Earth, and the parks are definitely some of my happy places, along with Ocean City New Jersey, Oceano and Pismo Beach. And the open road. I am expecting, hoping, Needing in these stressful times to enter my happy space, at least for a little while, to remind myself from time to time why life is a great adventure, and worth the static it often throws in the faces of us gay folk.

I’m all smiles as I’m walking into Downtown Disney. Then I look to my left and see this…

There…in the upper left…two boys on a scooter…

Two boys who are trying hard to keep the townsfolk from knowing they’re really sea monsters…

Yeah…that movie.

I’ve said pretty much all I want to say about that movie in that blog post. But can you appreciate why it was the first thing my eyes locked on as I walked into that happy place. Oh well…it can’t be all pixie dust and magic.

I’m bringing this all up again because apparently that movie is being re-released, and we’re already beginning to see another round of run up to the (re)release publicity. This appeared in Epcot Italy…

It’s temporary chalk art that they put around Epcot for the Arts Festival. Which is good because it can be easily washed off before Ron DeSantis gets mad.

I can’t even look at these characters just…just being happy together…without knowing how that pure and wonderful first teenage crush (they’re 13 in the movie) has to be smothered and denied if it’s two boys, for the sake of not rousing the howling bigots. But then they’re not boys, they’re monsters, and monsters don’t have teenage crushes, let alone fall in love.

It gets better this time around…apparently. The run-up t the (re)release let’s get the gays interested and increase ticket sales publicity that is. This came across my Instagram photo stream the other day…

This makes my heart ache. I did a little digging and found another…

This is art from the story lead on the movie director Enrico Casarosa was pleased to assure everyone was not about a teenage crush, but rather the “pre-romance time in boy’s lives”. I’m guessing they didn’t get the memo.

And digging further, I found some fan art…

Is it too much to wish that maybe this time, just maybe, this time, there won’t be any more tut-tutting from the director Enrico Casarosa over the suggestion that these two are in love? Because the goddamned story lead sure thought so, and I’m pretty sure they weren’t the only one on the crew who thought so. Is it too much to wish upon a star that a budding romance between two teenage boys is treated honestly and everyone be happy for them?

Probably.

[Update…] I found this link to a story with the headline “Disney’s Luca declared ‘canonically gay’ after spin-off director shares ‘Luberto’ fan art”. There was a spin-off short I never knew because I’ve been avoiding anything to do with this movie: Ciao Alberto. The director of that short shared some of the artwork posted above and that’s given fans grounds to declare that Luberto is canon. For those unfamiliar, this is a fan thing now, where fictional couples have both their names joined together a’la Solangio (Nico di Angelo and Will Solace from the Percy Jackson novels) and Percabeth (Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase, also from the Percy Jackson novels).

On the one hand, this is very gratifying to see now in the younger generations. The heterosexuals among them get it, they see the love between same sex couples, and they recognise it as like their own. I am so glad I lived to see this.

But on the other hand…

In fact, Casarosa said that when they were making the movie they were thinking more about race than sexuality. “Because like, hey, how many different ways as kids we can feel like outsiders. It’s so various. And my version was certainly we were two geeks, losery, and so it’s not where I was coming from but it’s so wonderful and even more powerful for the LGBTQ+ community who has felt so much of as an outsider, right, where this is so real and stronger than my experience, I’m sure to have to grow up with that kind of a difference,” Casarosa said. “I felt really honored and I don’t like to say yes or no. I can say, well, that’s not how we wrote it. It wasn’t my experience, but I love that that metaphor is reading in all these different ways.”

Okay…I see where this is likely to go and it’s so tragically familiar territory. He is so honored. And gay kids are still so much on the outside looking in. And they are still throwing them into ex-gay camps in some parts of this country, and in some parts of the world they are killing them.

Is it too much to wish…too much…too much…

So goes the voice of The Moody Blues. John Lodge has passed from this life at age 82, suddenly and unexpectedly according to his family. Never assume you still have more time on this good earth, no matter what the doctors tell you.

I’ve no idea if The Moody Blues ever intended it or not but some of their songs really spoke to the gay youngling I once was, and to the love lost adult I became, and I still listen to them longingly.

Beauty I’d always missed
With these eyes before
Just what the truth is
I can’t say anymore
And I love you…

Knock on my door and even the score with your eyes…

I wonder if you care
I wonder if you still remember
Once upon a time
In your wildest dreams…

…and now that voice is gone. But no…it will always be there to sing those songs to us, and the one in my heart. Nobody spoke to it like they did…like he did.

This graphic came across my Facebook feed just this morning. It’s about the rerelease of Goldeneye…a James Bond movie starring Pierce Brosnan, who I always thought made an excellent Bond, though I didn’t watch the movie. I haven’t watched any James Bond movies after the series jumped the shark with the addition of the Sheriff Claude Pepper and Jaws characters. Roger Moore was another excellent Bond though. I’ve always thought his Bond movies could have done with a little (a Lot) less camp. Anyway…friends and readers of this life blog can probably see which part of it caught my attention right away.

No stream rises higher than its source…as Frank Lloyd Wright once said. If you’re wondering why Fleming just had to specify hetrosexuals in that passage, you have not taken a good look at the man or his most famous character.

“Fleming himself had a deeply unpleasant attitude to women,” writes David Sexton in this 2015 article in The Standard, titled It’s no surprise James Bond is a misogynist when you meet his creator. And as usual, scratch a misogynist, find a homophobe…

[Pussy] lay in the crook of Bond’s arm and looked up at him. She said, not in a gangster’s voice, or a lesbian’s, but in a girl’s voice, “Will you write to me in Sing Sing?” Bond looked down into her deep violet eyes that were no longer hard, imperious. He bent and kissed them lightly. He said, “They told me you only liked women.” She said, “I never met a man before.” His mouth came down ruthlessly on hers.

-Vito Russo, The Celluloid Closet.

This also works for gay men, as I discovered when some straight classmates dragged me to see The Opening Of Misty Beethoven, which claimed to be a porn/comedy. In it, a call girl is selected by a pornographer to become his magazine’s New Girl of The Season. But to cinch that title she has to go through a series of sexual challenges. And I’m sitting in this theater watching one sex scene after another after another after another, including the obligatory lesbian sex scene, and I’m trying to figure out if pornography really is that boring after all or was it just I’m a gay guy with zero interest in sex with women, when her final most challenging challenge is to cure a gay man of his homosexuality. Which of course she does because this is straight male fantasy and there is no such thing as bisexuality.

Back when Goldfinger came to the theaters I decided to pick up a copy of the paperback. The paperbacks of Fleming’s James Bond novels were everywhere then, even in the grocery store checkout lane racks along with the gossip magazines and tabloids. Back then the secret agent phase of kid culture was in full swing, and I had the James Bond Secret Agent Briefcase and a Man From U.N.C.L.E. pistol-rifle-combination-submachine-gun (it took your usual cap rolls) and several secret agent toys that would probably give adults kittens today if they were sold to kids, like the transistor radio that converted at the touch of a spring loaded button into a rifle, and a pocket knife that likewise became a pistol. By then I was already a voracious reader, escaping into the world of books whenever the world outside my bedroom became too much, and scanned the paperback bookshelves constantly for new material.  I read westerns by Louis L’amour, science-fiction by Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and Hal Clement, the Lensmen series by E.E. Smith. I read the Arthur Conan Doyle Sherlock Holmes stories, mysteries by Earl Derr Biggers and Robert L. Fish. I read the novels of Arthur Healy. But the only cold war secret agent stories I could get into were the ones by Alistair Maclean. His stories really drew you in and kept you hooked. I tried to read Goldfinger and could not get past the first few pages. I scanned a few more, gave up and put it back. It was probably just as well.

Some years later I picked up a Raymond Chandler book whilst browsing the racks at a small local bookstore/newsstand (are there still any of these left?), because I’d heard he was the gold standard in hard boiled detective novels. It was The Big Sleep. Randomly I opened it up and began reading…

“Don’t kid me, son. The fag gave you one. You’ve got a nice clean manly little room in there. He shooed you out and locked it up when he had lady visitors. He was like Caesar, a husband to women and a wife to men. Think I can’t figure people like him and you out?”

I still held his automatic more or less pointed at him, but he swung on me just the same. It caught me flush on the chin. I backstepped fast enough to keep from falling, but I took plenty of the punch. It was meant to be a hard one, but a pansy has no iron in his bones, whatever he looks like.

…and then I put it back.

Yes, that really happened. I just flipped open the book and the first thing I read is this crap. 

It’s a better world for the gay and lesbian readers now, though sometimes it makes me ache for the world I could have had growing up, instead of the one I got tossed into where a pansy has no iron in his bones. There is so much more for us to read now…adventures, mysteries, stories where we are real people in them and not cheapshit bar stool stereotypes.

Here are some young adult books on my To Be Read stack, for the young adult I was once, who had to grow up in a world where young hearts like mine had to build walls around around ourselves to survive. It did its job on me…I never found a boyfriend to have and hold…but I have seen it destroy so many others, so runts like Fleming and Chandler could feel good about themselves. 

I wasn’t wishing you dead. I was saying that I felt trapped. I was trying to say to you in my own awkward just letting a stream of consciousness unedited words tumble out of me way, what Jack said to Ennis in Brokeback Mountain. “I wish I knew how to quit you.” What you said to me that I won’t repeat here cut me deep, and I was hurting, and I lashed out. Because I knew what I was in for in the years to come.

Ever watch Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? I haven’t…I don’t think I could bear to watch a movie like that, any more than I could watch Brokeback Mountain. But I’ve read the various synopsis. The film, so I am told, follows two people who were in love, who undergo a procedure to erase their memories of each other after the angry end of their romance. There was a time I was desperately wishing it was a real thing. Until I read this part of the plot:

Joel re-experiences his memories of Clementine as they are erased, starting with their last fight. As he reaches earlier, happier memories, he realizes that he does not want to forget her.

No. I couldn’t put myself through that. 

Do you dream? I wonder sometimes if you do, and how vividly. So I’m told there are people who don’t. I feel sorry for them. I dream dreams I can remember almost every night. I have a notepad I keep next to my bed so I can jot some things down before I forget them, which I will if I don’t immediately do that. And I have a Google Docs folder where I write some of my dreams. Some of them are so vivid I can feel the texture of clothing and furniture, and the taste of kisses on my lips. 

The one I had last night was about you. I have those often, also about other friends who have remained close to me. But it’s the ones about you that linger more. Mostly they are very nice, a little strange sometimes, and so vivid I sometimes wonder if I am not seeing things that are happening in a different universe. But I suppose that’s just wish fulfilment. Last night’s dream really got to me because of one specific detail.

You and I were together in your house, except it wasn’t the one you have in the real world, but a different one, in a different place, something like another suburb but deep in a beautiful woodland zone. It was late in the evening, almost nightfall, and we were having a very deep heart to heart conversation, and it seemed perfectly normal, as if we’d been close all our lives. I won’t write here what we said to each other, only that it was heartfelt and affectionate, like the talk between old couples, only in this dream we were young men, twenty-somethings, and you were still wearing your hair long. Oh…and we were in the kitchen. 

Eventually we walked from the kitchen into a space that was both a dining room and a living room, separated by a sofa facing a TV that was tuned to a news broadcast that we were paying no attention to. We were finishing up building a large wooden dining room table. I had made a top piece for it out of several lovely oak boards I’d glued together, then sanded and stained a light brown. Together we put the top of it on and fixed it in place with some wood screws and glue. Then I puttied over the screw heads and stained those.

We moved the finished table against the back of the living room sofa. You got down on your knees between the table and the sofa and asked me for a quote to write on the side of the table hidden by the sofa. I asked you if you didn’t mind a Disney quote, and you rolled your eyes a little but said sure, let me have it.

And I said “Dreams can come true.” And you wrote it on that side of the table, but I couldn’t see the words from where I was standing. Then you went back into the kitchen, and out the door to go to the grocery store. While you were gone I moved the sofa a bit and took a look, and discovered you’d carved the quote I gave you right into the wood, not written them with a marker. In German.

Träume können wahr werden.

Eventually you came back home, and began unloading the groceries you bought in the kitchen and we talked some more, and I woke up.

The full quote is, All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them. But it takes more than courage to make your dreams come true, and I never thought I was particularly brave, just stubborn. Some dreams, if they are not shared between two people, will never live. And there is nothing you can do about that. 

So we had a fight. It was probably inevitable. It went nuclear, like it was always going to. I wish I didn’t have that last angry glare you gave me to remember. I’d never seen that side of you before.

It’s been almost a decade now, and never mind what you said and what I said, I still feel trapped, I know I always will, and all I can do now is toss out these little messages in a bottle like I was doing for decades after the last time we saw each other in school, before I found you again 35 years later. Here one from my blog… 

September 25, 2006

Yet Another Message In A Bottle…

It’s been decades now since I saw that “For Sale” sign on your house. I can measure the years that have passed in all the little messages I’ve stuck in this or that random bottle, and tossed out into this ocean of time ever since. Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?

If only I hadn’t been such a nerdy little geek. If only I’d had a little more courage to just be myself instead of hiding behind my cameras all the time. And my cartoons. There’s more I wanted to say. But mostly this: You opened up the world for me.

Hello? Hello? Are you still out there…somewhere…?

These little messages in a bottle are the only way I have of waving to you now. But I reckon I’ll keep tossing them in…because I can still hope one of them will find you one day. Because I just want to wave at you one more time. Because I just want to see one more smile. Because I have to know. I tossed another one in yesterday. If it finds you, please wave back. Please.

Even before I had my own website I was tossing these out into the digital ocean every now and then, hoping maybe you’d see one and respond. Looking back on it I can see it came so close. If only I’d joined GeoCities. If only I’d not been such an awkward little geek. If only it hadn’t been 1971. If only I had been more brave instead of stubborn. Before I found you again I was sure you would be the braver one. After so much time had passed I figured if I ever did find you again you’re be living somewhere in the country of your birth, settled down with a guy who was much better looking, more intelligent, and a better all around catch than I could ever be and I’d just have to accept that it would never be, because you’d found someone better.

Then I did find you. And for a brief moment in time I saw you smile at me again. And you put your arm around my shoulders again. And we talked, heart to heart like we weren’t able to in the early 1970s. And it went where it had to, where it was always going to, because for both of us it was still the early 1970s.

I remember that time we passed back and forth a ski lift ticket I’d found on the pavement, like it was a talking stick, because you needed to explain something to me and didn’t want any questions. I remember listening to the guy I thought hung the moon and the stars way back when, telling me to go look elsewhere because a life in the closet had damaged him so much some days he didn’t know who it was he was looking at in the mirror.

It broke my heart, and maybe it also radicalized me to gay activism in a deeper way. But I was determined to at least show you by example that there was nothing wrong with you, and you could live an authentic life for yourself, even now, even if not with me. Because by then I was doubting we were ever that compatible. I could have courage, but you had to have it too. The best I could do was set an example, and I was not so much brave as stubborn. But maybe that’s what you have to be sometimes. But it was still the early 1970s.

I don’t think anyone who didn’t live through those times can grasp the hostility, the outright hate that gay and lesbian Americans got from every direction. Today on this last day of Pride month, let me give you one little example of what that did to us.

It was March 8, 1970. A gay bar not far from the New York City 6th precinct was raided, by the same cop that had raided the Stonewall Inn just eight months earlier. Not wanting a repeat of the six-day riots at Stonewall, that cop, lieutenant Seymour Pine, had all 167 of the bar’s customers of the bar hauled off to the 6th precinct, which was just over a block away. One patron, justifiably terrified of what was about to happen to him, because back then the practice was to give the names of those arrested at a gay bar to the local newspapers, which would gleefully publish all their details for everyone, family, friends, neighbors, employers, landlords, to see, attempted to escape by jumping out of a window. 

This is what happened to him.

I don’t know how you can expect a gay teenager coming of age in those times, in that climate of loathing and hate, to be anything but terrified at what was going through them when they are having their first crush and it’s on another boy. That is more courage than a lot of adults could muster.

So you and I just circled around each other, flirted a bit, teased at each other a bit, and I took lots of photos of you because I always had my camera with me and I just could not look away. And then you disappeared.

I remember that last telephone conversation we had, after we made arrangements to take our cameras to Great Falls, but instead of getting you on the phone I got someone else and then I guess the jig was up and you got told.

And then decades later I reconnected with you, and for a while we were close again, and this time we didn’t have to hide anything from the world around us, and I suppose you got told again, and then you told me I’ve made my allegiances, I have to stay inside my comfort zone.

It’s not a comfort zone if you’re pushed into it. It’s a trap.

But…so it goes. I am so very grateful I never saw your name on a quilt. And that I saw you smile at me again after all those years. For that I can live with that last angry glare. I get it. For many of us in our generation, it will always be a time before Stonewall. Trapped.

Respect the ones who could escape. Cry for the ones that could not, if the tears will come. Do what you can to keep it from happening to the generations that follow.

And don’t be afraid to dream. For the things that could have been, and might still be, in some better world than the one we are in. Not all dreams come true. But they can still be dreamed. For the courage we need to do the work still left for us to do.

It really lifts my heart to see so many stories out there now about gay kids finding that first love and it’s not tragic and the central premise of them isn’t that they’re tragically damned but that love is magical and wonderful, and worth whatever hardships the characters in these stories face to have and to hold. Films like Young Hearts, animated stories like In A Heartbeat and the different webtoons I’ve read like Tripping Over You, and this new one I learned about on Instagram called 3rd Wheel.

But there’s a downside to this for me. I “ended” A Coming Out Story abruptly because my heart issues made me wonder how much longer I had to work on it and I didn’t want to suddenly go belly up and leave the story in an uncompleted state. So I moved some episodes around so I could just tack one on at the end that I felt gave the story some degree of closure. But there was a lot more to that story and every time I go reading some new webtoon I see how incomplete my own story is and I want to fill out the rest of it.

And I have no energy for it. Along with having no energy for any of my creative arts.

There are short, one-off cartoons I’d like to do that I have all scripted out in my head but when I try to get them out of me it just…stops. Partly it’s my lack of confidence in my own abilities. And the longer I stay away from it, the rustier I get. Party it’s something like Approaching End Of Life Sadness and I never found that significant other and I’m just…alone. I sit down to work on A Coming Out Story especially, and it just drains all the interest out of me. But there was so much more to tell.

I posted the other day about how painful it is to try and revisit that past where AIDS was killing so many of us, and the hate was thrown at us from every direction. It’s hard to remember all those faces. It’s hard to remember all the static you had to live in the middle of every day. But for some of us every failure to connect romantically is another hard thing to look back on. Not even my own awkwardness about it all, but the fact of the times I was living in, and trying to connect while the world around me was making sure I could not because what I needed, what young gay guys like me needed, was a disgusting sin. So many close calls in my life that others had to put a stop to in the name of decency and morality. I blog about some of them every Valentine’s Day.

And so I sit down at the drafting table, or in my darkroom, and I just feel empty, and I can’t get it out. And I see all this wonderful storytelling out there and it lifts me up. But I’m still empty inside, and I am not a natural talent at the drafting table. The level of concentration I have to maintain when I draw or paint is even more than when I am coding. Lots Lots Lots more. I hardly touch my cameras anymore. I have undeveloped film piling up. I have a tank with rolls I ran through the Hasselblad I loaded up two weeks ago and still haven’t made some chemistry to develop so those rolls have just been sitting there in the tank. I don’t know when I’m going to be able to manage doing art again.

Cardiologist appointment tomorrow.

This AIDS survivor’s post came to me by way of a friend of my generation. We all lived through some pretty dark times…

Back in the day, gay men like me became masters of emotional origami. We folded grief into smaller and smaller shapes until it fit neatly behind a joke, a cocktail, or a color-coded pill organizer. It was survival, not strategy.

We lived through a pandemic that killed nearly everyone we loved, then got up the next morning and went to work, to brunch, to the gym—pretending we weren’t haunted. Pretending we weren’t furious. Pretending we were fine. (Spoiler: we were not fine.)

You see, repressing emotions isn’t free. It’s more like a buy-now-pay-later situation. The debt comes due eventually—usually at 3am, or during a perfectly innocent CVS run when they play that one Whitney Houston song.

So if you’re one of us—one of the walking wounded who made it out of the ‘80s and ‘90s alive but emotionally duct-taped together—this is your reminder: it’s okay to feel stuff. Cry. Scream. Hug someone. Say their names out loud.

And if you’ve never lived through something like that? Hug us harder. Ask us how we’re doing. Mean it.

-Scott Abel, 6-20-2025

The debt comes due eventually.

Just so. I have on my bookshelves, books I was bequeathed in a friend’s will after he had passed away due to complications from AIDS. I cannot look at those books, let alone pick one off its shelf, without thinking of him. And then I begin to remember that time. 

A friend writes about telling younger audiences (I reckon everyone is younger to our generation now) about his experiences during the AIDS crisis and hearing gasps from the audience. I know the feeling, and not only about telling about living through AIDS, but also those pre/post Stonewall times in general.

It’s hard for people nowadays to believe that at one point gay men were rounded up and placed for an indefinite period of time in a locked down mental ward simply for being homosexual and nothing more (see: “Sex Crime Panic” by Neil Miller). That there was an executive order signed by President Eisenhower (executive order 10450, April 27, 1953. I would be born just a few months later that year) that forbade homosexuals from serving in the government or its contractors in any capacity. That every state once had a sodomy law that defined our very existence as criminal, and made it possible to deny us jobs, places to live, and services. While I was growing up Virginia had a law on its books forbidding restaurants and bars from serving known homosexuals. I tell this to people nowadays and the jaws drop. Really?

You grew up back then knowing you were loathed and hated, or at best granted a sort of rancid pity. You saw it every time there was a fight over applying non-discrimination laws to us. But when we started dying in the early 1980s you really saw the depth of how much we were hated.

I volunteered for an HIV vaccine trial, because I am a man of science and I wanted to help stop the dying however I could. In my case it was offering up my scrawny little body to a vaccine toxicity test. After they determined I was in good health and a good fit for their test, I was sat down with several other volunteers and given a four hour lecture on the possible bad outcomes, so there would be no doubt we were giving informed consent. I kid you not, half of the bad outcomes we were warned about were not medical, but political.

You see, the only way of testing for the presence of the virus back then was to look for antibodies to it. There were two tests, ELISA and Western Blot. As I understood it, ELISA just reacts if the antibodies in the range its testing for reach a certain threshold. It needs to be followed up with a Western Blot which detects specific antibodies. It looks almost like a barcode with dark bands representing specific antibody proteins.

Well…what is a vaccine supposed to do to protect you from disease? It generates antibodies to be there in position in case of infection. An invader enters the body and the army is already there to fight it. So if the candidate vaccine works, you get antibodies to HIV. Which means you will look like you have it when anyone gives you the basic ELISA HIV test. Unless someone who knows what they’re doing follows up with a Western Blot which will show that, no, this is a vaccine response, you would get tagged as being infected with HIV. And there was precious little of the kind of interest back then to look deeper into it. Not to people stricken with HIV, and not to homosexuals HIV or not. I’m an out gay man, so of course I’m an AIDS spreader.

So in that room we were told we could lose our jobs, get thrown out of homes, apartments, get denied healthcare…all of it, everything that actual AIDS patients were suffering through back then on top of everything the virus itself was doing to them. I’m proud to say none of the half dozen of us in that room backed out.

But there it was. People were dying, horribly, and instead of sympathy people took it as an excuse to hate us even more.

There were heroic exceptions to that, and we can remember and honor them today. But those were very Very dark times, and you have to appreciate how difficult it is to talk about it because then we have to remember.

It’s been a while since I’ve had that dream about walking among the quilt panels on the Washington Mall that day. But I still have that one from time to time, walking among the panels, terrified of the name I might see.

While looking for stickers for one of my drink mugs I came across this Pride rainbow sticker purchase from many years ago. How many of my local friends who happen to read this remember Deacon Maccubbin’s Lambda Rising bookstore?

In the coming out stories that gay folk mostly tell…those of my generation at least…you get to the part where they walk into a gay bar for the first time and it’s an epiphany. They realize they’re not alone after all, and there are so many of us of all different kinds in all walks of life. But for me that moment of epiphany was the first time I walked into Lambda Rising. All the books and magazines and newspapers I had no idea existed…it was like the world had opened its doors for me. It was on the shelves of Lambda Rising I discovered Howard Cruse’s Gay Comics, gay fiction and non-fiction I had no idea existed, and magazines and newspapers I didn’t know about, or could only get if I walked into a seedy “Adult” bookstand in Wheaton.

That bookstore made it plain what Vito Russo once said about how It is an old stereotype, that homosexuality has to do only with sex while heterosexuality is multifaceted and embraces love and romance. The comprehensive ocean of our lives was there on those shelves. Nobody could ever tell me again that we weren’t just as human as our heterosexual neighbors.

The difference back then was our books were kept off the shelves of the major booksellers. No I am not likely to find a copy of The Front Runner by Patricia Nell Warren, or Counter Play by Anne Snyder, Coyote by Peter Gadol, The Boys On The Rock by John Fox, The Celluloid Closet by Vito Russo, Love Alone by Paul Monette, Farm Boys by Will Fellows (director Ang Lee gave Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal copies of this book prior to filming Brokeback Mountain) or Coming Out Under Fire by Allan Berube in a Crown Books, let alone a copy of The Advocate or The Washington Blade. 

I was a regular visitor to the store near DuPont Circle when I could borrow mom’s car, and then later when the Metro reached Twinbrook, then when I moved to Baltimore to the one in the gayborhood here. But like a lot independent bookstores and big chains it eventually closed its doors, unable I suppose to compete with Amazon, and I was deeply sad to see it go.

The gay bars are closing too it seems, but that’s because we’re becoming more integrated into our communities. And you can find sexual and gender minority content in the few chain and independent bookstores left. The next book in the Percy Jackson series focusing on boyfriends Nico di Angelo and Will Solace is coming later this year and will probably be on the shelves everywhere because the Percy Jackson books have been huge sellers. Rick Riordan has done an amazing job of inclusivity in his stories and characters, and it’s all the more amazing that these books are published under a Disney imprint. But it’s easy for minority voices to get lost in the torrent of pop culture. There are other voices, other stories, that I still have to dig to find.

The closest thing I have now to Lambda Rising is my subscription to the Gay & Lesbian Review, which is a literary journal (It used to be called The Harvard Gay & Lesbian Review) that gives me pointers to new books. But I really miss being able to walk into Lambda Rising and just browse.

Yeah…or for that matter any good bookstore or newsstand. It’s a real shame.

I’ve been collecting TV shows I used to watch when I was a kid for my home video library. What I’ve had to discover is how incredibly sexist a lot of them are, especially regards the one off female supporting characters per episode. There is so much heterosexual male fantasy there that, when I was that age, went right over my head, that I can’t stop seeing now. Okay…it probably wasn’t just my age back then. Gay boys tend to know even then that there is something a bit different about them.

TV shows like Burke’s Law, which if you ignored the heavy handed female sexpot of the day thread in the plots, was actually a pretty good mystery story series that played fair with the audience. The clues were always there for you to see, but you almost never did until Amos Burke pulled it all together. I tended to zone out at the romance scenes…there were an obligatory two per episode, plus the one at the beginning when Burke gets the phone call about yet another murder somewhere among the rich and famous. I always mentally skipped over the romance scenes. It was that Rolls Royce Silver Cloud II that totally fascinated me.

I picked up a set of Man From U.N.C.L.E. dvds, because I remembered how much I liked watching all the cool spy gadgets in it, and truth be told had I been willing to admit it, like a lot of girls back then I thought David McCallum was very nice on the eyes. What I’d forgotten, probably because I always zoned out on those scenes, was how relentlessly horny Napoleon Solo always was. You just couldn’t leave him alone with any of the female U.N.C.L.E. agents, who were of course always sexy and willing. Problem was there were men back then who felt perfectly free to be like that to the women in their workplace. And now they resent being told not to.

Speaking of secret agent shows, at least Emma Peel was played as the equal to John Steed, who was always a gentleman, even if she was required to have at least one scene per episode in those tight leather suits. And you got none of that in Secret Agent (aka Danger Man in Britain where it originated). I think the reason I liked Secret Agent more than the others was Patrick McGoohan was a more convincing secret agent, and he seemed like a decent man doing a very dangerous job for his country. The others were pure fantasy. Heterosexual male fantasy.  

And that fantasy played big in Hollywood, among the high testosterone studio heads. But sometimes it was played for laughs. One that went completely over my head until recently was Petticoat Junction. Look it up in the urban dictionary (“lots of curves you bet”), and also take note of the town just down the tracks named Hooterville. How did I not notice this? Did Hooterville have a Hooters I wonder.

That was Hollywood back then, where the hero of the story had to have a new babe every week, and gay males had to endure being told from every direction that there was something mentally wrong with them for being so preoccupied with sex all the time.

I’ve been watching clips of both Close and Young Hearts on various video social media. It’s given me a disjointed picture of both of them, but the plot summaries I’ve seen have helped me stitch them together. Close is tragic. The homophobia the kids in it experience from their peers drives them apart and the end of it is heartbreaking. Close is basically, near as I can tell, a story about prejudice. Young Hearts is a love story.

I have a fragmented view of this film, from watching the clips of it people have been posting from overseas. So I have almost zero knowledge of the dialog in the clips because the language is Dutch and when there are subtitles those are either in German or French…maybe I’ve seen one or two in English. But I can make out a bit of what’s being said from context, and the fragmentary and miniscule German I know when there are subtitles. And by guessing at the Dutch.

The first part of it is Elias becoming very fond of his new neighbor Alexander, and then falling in love with him. When he’s alone with Alexander he’s happy to acknowledge his love, but when it’s among classmates and family it gets complicated. Especially as he has a girlfriend he gradually becomes more distant to.

There a scene with Elias in the car with mom and his older brother in the front seat, and dad next to him in the back seat, and he comes out to them and it’s a very emotional scene. The kid is crying and telling them he tried to change but he couldn’t, and his mom stopping the car, getting out and coming back to him to tell him he doesn’t have to change, he is loved.

But in the clips I see I don’t get the reactions of dad and the older brother.

I suspect there was some static there because there is another scene that takes place at a costume party, Elias is wearing the costume of a knight and Alexander is dressed as the Joker. Elias tearfully breaks up with Alexander, telling him he isn’t gay like him (Alexander is played as being completely comfortable with his orientation, and not taking any static from his classmates), and that none of this would have happened if he had just stayed in Belgium. They have a fight, and it seems to be over.

But the synopsis I have read say they reconcile as Elias learns to accept himself with the support of his family, and eventually his girlfriend. So I kept looking around for clips of that. There is one where Elias is tossing pebbles at Alexander’s window in the middle of the night and he comes and Elias tries to get back with him but Alexander isn’t having any of it and pushes him away. So that one wasn’t it.

Last night someone posted the reconciliation scene to three Facebook reels. I’m doom scrolling (I guess it’s called now) and I hit this one I hadn’t seen before and it’s the moment the two kids put it behind them and get back together and no kidding it brought me to tears.

Elias is at some big outdoor party with lights and music…his dad is singing on stage…and he’s apparently looking around for Alexander and doesn’t find him and sits down on the grass distraught. Alexander was supposed to be there. Maybe he left because he didn’t want to run into Elias. But then Elias’ older brother comes over and tells him (I think), that Alexander is inside the main tent and he should go find him. Elias gives his older brother a joyful hug…I’m assuming it’s because now he knows his brother is good with it and still loves him. His brother pushes him off with a smile, telling him to go now and find Alexander.

So he goes through this crowd in the main tent looking for Alexander. And here the filmmakers pull out all the stops.

The scene goes into slightly slow motion, a beautiful evocative music soundtrack music comes in (it reminds me very much of passages in the music to In A Heartbeat, but the composers are different), and we see Elias stop suddenly and by the look on his face you know he’s spotted Alexander. I knew Exactly how that felt once upon a time, and that young actor made me relive it all over again. Butterflies like I haven’t had in decades. Then we see from his point of view Alexander, in the crowd, turn slightly, and see Elias. More butterflies.

Where do they get these young actors who are that damn good?? That one scene, just a minute or two maybe, is pure cinematic gold. I hope they and the filmmakers win every award they enter the film in. Not that I would expect the Motion Picture Academy to do anything for this film.

So the two of them reconcile, and then dad stops singing, steps off the stage and comes over to Elias and embraces him. And all the other grown up couples smile, and so does Elias’ girlfriend who accepts him now too. And the two of them, Elias and Alexander stand side by side, happy together again, and Elias puts his head on Alexander’s shoulder…and fade to black.

Supposedly it will be released for US audiences on March 15. Heh…the day after Valentine’s Day. But this is exactly the sort of thing the New American Order doesn’t want anyone to see, so I’m not sure it’ll actually get a USA release.

I’ve been watching clips of this movie on various websites. It’s a stunning exploration of how deep friendship can be between boys, and the ways homophobic social pressure shatters lives. Leo and Remi are in love. It’s never made clear if either of them are actually gay, although I’m told it’s strongly suggested that Remi is and was to a degree self aware. But straight guys fall in love with other guys too in a deeply felt soul brother kind of way, and these two are very young. For a time they grow up in a place where closeness between boys was simply accepted as a part of growing up. That changes when the two move into a new school year.

Their closeness attracts the attention, and static, of classmates, which Leo cannot handle. He withdraws from Remi and it tears them both up with tragic consequences. I’ve seen it said on some forums that Leo capitulated to the homophobia of his classmates, and I think that’s completely unfair. These are kids. If you’ve never felt that pressure…and it comes at you from all directions, that contempt and loathing…consider yourself lucky. It’s too much for a lot of grown adults. It’s way too much for someone that age.

I’m not sure I’m going to watch this when it becomes available because it might be too much for me, even at my ancient age, or especially given what happened to me throughout my own life. I grew up in a period of time and a part of American culture when boys were expected to form close bonds and have a best friend. I had my best friends. We had sleepovers. We were close. What happened in my case was mom had to move several times so she could be close to the bus lines that got her to work. The separations tore me apart. It wasn’t until later in my teenage years that I began to realize it might have been different for me than it was with my friends. Maybe. I’ll never know for sure.

But back then the homophobic static wasn’t there nearly to the degree it is now, because nobody talked about That in front of kids. I didn’t start feeling it until middle school and by then I was keeping an emotional distance from the world around me. I had the additional burden/advantage of growing up around family that absolutely despised my dad and his side of the family, and would take it out on me because I was his son. So I grew up knowing that there would be people in my life who would hate me for something I couldn’t help being. I got use to it, which helped when my sexual orientation became undeniable.

The point is I know how all this feels and how it would have felt to the characters in this movie and I’m not sure I want to relive it again, especially given what happens.

That said, I’m glad that stories like this are finally being told. They need to be told. It’s a crime against humanity to attack closeness between friends, treat it with contempt, gay or straight. This movie is amazing, the young actors in it are pitch perfect in their roles. There is another one along the same themes, but which deals more specifically about gay love and romance, called “Young Hearts” that I’ll probably watch because so I’m told it has a more uplifting ending.

Both of these were made overseas. Close (2022) is a co-production between Belgium, France and the Netherlands. Young Hearts (2024) is a Belgian-Dutch co-production. Of course you knew neither one of these could have been made here in the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Facebook Memories shows me this one from the end of 2015…

Why do I stay on Facebook anymore? I left Twitter after Musk turned it into a fascist playpen and went to Bluesky (@brucegarrett.bsky.social). But most of my friends and classmates are still there and that Memories feature is a nice way of looking back. But not always.

So this was when I realized the Christmas card wasn’t just late…it wasn’t coming at all. They say hindsight is 20-20, but I knew something was up then. I knew it years before when we sat at that table where he worked and passed a ski ticket I found back and forth like a talking stick, and he tried to explain to me how living in the closet fucked him up so badly he didn’t know some days who it was he was looking at in the bathroom mirror, and I needed to look elsewhere. But whenever I came into his presence I fell back to being that awkward clueless teenage geek I was in 1971-72 and I kept coming back anyway. And some visits he seemed grateful for my company, and others he was icy cold. By then our conversations were not private and I realized that it was when I told him I was coming down that Icy Guy appeared, and when I just showed up unannounced it was all smiles and conversation like it used to be. But that was not sustainable. 

So anyway that was the year I sent a card and he didn’t. He was being told, just like when we were schoolboys and the family learned somehow that he was talking to that faggy kid at the school… We agreed to go to Great Falls with our cameras. I never said that. Yes you did. I just don’t know why you’re calling me. You gave me your phone number. Well I didn’t think you’d use it. Two and a half months after this Facebook memory he told me never to contact him in any way, shape, or form, and I felt betrayed and angry and I lashed out, and said things maybe I shouldn’t have, but he said things to me that cut deeply and after everything we had said to each other it was completely unfair. 

So it goes. Maybe I should have paid closer attention to when he said life in the closet had fucked him over. I’d seen how it did that to other gay guys of our generation, I just didn’t want to see it in him.

I was sitting down to a lovely Kobe beef steak when I got his angrygram. What I should have done then and there was send him a shape.

Regards your angrygram of March 6, please accept this truncated dodecahedron by way of reply…

Then I should have drawn up an Affinity Return/Exchange form for him to fill out. Please include original receipt…

…which gives me an idea.

Well that was a short stint at being alcohol and tobacco free…