LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
Weekend Beach Bum |
by Eric Morrison |
In college, I was known as "Mr. Gay." Quite an interesting moniker, and quite a responsibility for someone who was just beginning to explore his own gay feelings. You see, I didn't tiptoe out of the closet gingerly. I didn't stick my head out to test the air first. I kicked down the door with both feetone in a black combat boot, the other in a silver stiletto. After 18 years of repressed homosexual hankerings, I wanted the world to hear every word I had to say. I also wanted the world to change for me.
After coming out, I joined the University of Delaware's Lesbian Gay Bisexual Student Union, and quickly moved up the ranks to become an officer. When I ran for president of the LGBSU and lost to my ex-boyfriend (whom I've since forgiven), I restarted the defunct Queer Campus. Dorm diversity programs, sidewalk chalk, queer cheers, and posters with such charming slogans as "Fags and Dykes Are Really GroovyTake One Home or to a Movie," became a part of my daily college life. Then I began writing an often-controversial weekly column for the university's award-winning newspaper, and that's when "Mr. Gay" really began to be called upon to save the queer world with his superpowers. If you were a resident assistant with a distraught closet case on your hands...call Mr. Gay! If you were a hall director with a diversity presentation on Thursday night and you needed a panel of live queers...call Mr. Gay! If you were thinking of coming out and you were too intimidated to talk to your friends, family, or the university health center...call Mr. Gay! Literally, several times per semester, people approached me via e-mail, the telephone, or in person, and asked me to help them come out. As my friend Mollie hysterically observed, the situation began to borderline on absurd. I considered erecting a huge pink triangle outside my dorm with a sign reading, "Over six billion served." But I thought that would give the Housing and Residence Office the wrong idea. I vacillated between majors, minors, and concentrations so much in college that, one freshman year weekend, my frustrated mother finally broke down and inquired, "Eric, what exactly do you want to do with your life?" She asked me while my mouth was full of toothpaste and toothbrush, so I actually had a moment to think. "I want," I responded with the utmost conviction, "to be the Evita Peron of the gay people." My bubble of conviction burst when my mother responded, quizzically, "Who in the world is Evita Peron?" Much to my chagrin, after four years prostrate to the higher mind, I entered the working world only to discover there was no box for "Evita Peron of the gay people" on job application checklists. Instead, I waited tables, wrote fiction, and eventually broke into the glamorous world of retail management. Today, I have a much more stable and satisfying job in education, and the Evita fires have begun to burn again. This time, though, I'm a little bit wiser in the ways of the world, and a lot more interested in doing what I can without running myself into the ground. Recently, for instance, I have been responding to a lot of anti-gay newspaper editorials. There has been no dearth of homophobic print on Delaware newspaper pages ever since the introduction of House Bill 99. Actually, I am grateful for all these fire-and-brimstone diatribes against gay people. I have learned some very interesting things about myself, which, without the aid of these homophobic do-gooders, I never would have realized. First, I have learned a great deal about my sexual proclivities. A Delaware newspaper editor was overjoyed to publish one of my responses. He was overwhelmed with columns opposing House Bill 99, but could not publish many of them because they equated homosexuality and bestiality. I never even knew that I enjoyed having sex with animals. Considering the fact that I cannot remember as much as flirting with a fox, making eyes at a monkey, or asking a donkey to dinner and a movie, perhaps I can add amnesia or severe sleepwalking to my growing list of gay disorders. (I have dated a couple of real jackasses but, for the record, I didn't find out they were jackasses until after at least the third date.) I have also learned that Jesus just doesn't approve of my lifestyle. The Bible doesn't tell us so, but I suppose one of the greatest perks of becoming holier-than-thou is a direct and very long distance phone line to Christ himself. Never mind that Jesus never once mentioned homosexuality and that the book of Leviticus ranks homosexuality right up there with wearing clothing composed of more than one type of fiber and handling pig skin. I hope the people who have written these anti-gay editorials are wearing cotton-polyester blends and playing football right up until the point when they, too, shake hands with Satan. Religious writers have also noted that I oppose family values. I'm still trying to figure this one out, considering I am close with my family and adore my two nieces. In fact, I respect the family unit one hell of a lot more than Jesus did. Christ encouraged his followers to leave their families behind to follow him, and admonished his own mother, "Woman, what have I to do with thee?" "Family values." Family consists of those people willing to love you the most when you deserve it the least, regardless of sexual orientation, and numerous studies prove that children raised by same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted as their "normal" counterparts. As for values, any sociologist worth his weight in hen feathers will tell you that a culture's values are based primarily upon the powerful majority's desire to keep themselves in power. Once again, for the record, I've never been aroused by a hen, either. Nor do I molest children, recruit young people for the homosexual camp, or wear women's clothing without good reason. I don't even understand the concept of opposing gay people. It's like opposing peas for being green or leaves for being leaf-shaped. What has amazed me most about the anti-gay columns to which I've responded is the authors' collective inability to prove, by science or logic, that gay people threaten American culture in any way. I have broached e-mail dialogues with several homophobic authors. Unfailingly, when confronted, they quickly shed their scientific skin and reveal the religious and hate-motivated beasts underneath. (And for goodness' sake, I've never sacked a snake, either.) I guess the gay Evita Peron is back. Eric lives in North Wilmington during the work week, and in Rehoboth on the weekends. He can be reached at StarchildB612@gateway.net. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 11, No. 8, June 29, 2001. |