The Great Repression, my closet years, lasted from 1951, the year I was cured of homosexual tendencies by a child psychologist to 1989, the year of my failed suicide attempts. This endless phase of my life had its roots in all the reasons you can imagine, but at it's core was a fervent belief that I could achieve heterosexual desire through behavior modification and perseverance. I sincerely believed that behaving as a heterosexual and rejecting--sometimes violently--homosexual behavior--would at some point lead to a transformation.
Of course, I had no idea how long it would take and always feared that it would never come, the desire for vagina. I knew I was sick but I was certainly not going to tell my parents or my pediatrician. The consequences of revealing my sickness were, according to everything I could find in the New York Public Library, electro-shock therapy, dangerous drugs and an ice pick stuck in my brain. I decided to hold my secret close and cure myself. Furthermore manifesting symptoms of this disease was, according to the law, a criminal act. I could see no good reason beyond the urgings of my penis to step into this hideous swamp. And my penis was easily controlled by a swift jerk of the hand.
When did the Great Repression actually begin? I suppose one could link it to my 11th year when my mother sent me for therapy. But my first conscious memory of a closet like thing was when Andre McMullen attempted to invade what had already become a solid framework.
Andre and I were thirteen, it was the summer of 1961 and we were in the men's changing room suiting up for the pool. Our families were already at the pool, as was everyone else, but we had lingered on the bench as Andre was telling me intense homoerotic hazing stories from his New England boarding school, Phillips Exeter Academy. As you can imagine, I was mesmerized but still youthfully naive enough to not recognize a seduction.
As Andre described a naked and pinned dorm mate having his scrotum involuntarily painted with black liquid shoe polish, he suddenly reached over and cupped my balls. Andre might have been my first boyfriend, but instead, Andre earned the dubious honor of playing the victim's role on the day I delivered the first of two bloody noses. The second time wouldn't occur for another three decades (another story for another time.)
As Andre sensually caressed my balls, I jolted back and away but not before smashing my fist into his face. I was both shocked and terrified by his action and it seemed the only remedy for my fear and exposed arousal was violence and rage..
Bloodied and in serious pain, Andre flew screaming and crying out of the changing room and to the protective embrace of his parents. I quickly followed, already settled on my defense. As my nerves settled, I almost instantly realized--you should pardon the expression, that I had Andre by the balls. What was he going to say to his parents? What indeed?
While he was wailing to his mother and father that I had punched him in the nose, I managed some authentic tears of my own and with my best faux tremble whispered to my parents that Andre had called me a "dirty Jew." Check mate.
The McMullen's struggled to get a reason out of Andre for my barbaric attack on their brilliant and beautiful blond son, but Andre, of course, could say nothing and lacking a the wit resorted to a flurry of suspicion generating "I don't knows".
On the other hand my parents rose beyond their natural height, driven by post-Holocaust indignation and "Never Again" outrage. I was a hero and the McMullens and the Rothsteins never spoke again. As often happened in those days, the McMullen's had been instantly Nuremberged; and the McMullens were now furious with their son for having the stupidity to call me a "dirty Jew" to my face when he'd been properly taught that such things were only discussed behind closed McMullen doors.
Andre was not the last boy to invade my imagination and libido during my teen years, but the next time I would find myself on the edge wouldn't come until 1966, my freshman year of college.
Guy Alan Vogt was the next boy to find himself unknowingly rummaging around in my closet. Guy had been my best friend since freshman orientation day. We were on the same tour of campus and had formed an almost instantaneous bond thanks to our shared disdain for the ridiculous gravitas of our tour guide who was mixing campus information with pro-war propaganda.
Guy had found a kindred spirit and I had fallen in love. From that day on we were inseparable. The bond deepened even further when we realized that we were both aspiring journalists. Together we joined the staff of the school newspaper and quickly staked our claim to school newspaper fame. I would write anti-war and pro-civil rights editorials and cover the anti-war and civil rights movement. Guy who was also a jock. would become a sports reporter and columnist.
We became the kind of best friends you read about in books. As far as I knew Guy did not suspect my hidden feelings and simply accepted the fact that I cared for him like a mother hen. I had money. He had none. He wanted for nothing--but in a subtle way. I never gave him presents, other than some cool new bong or water pipe found on MacDougal or Bleecker, but we ate well (both sharing an insatiable appetite for lobster and Porterhouse) and we never wanted for pot, Acid, mushrooms, THC, amphetamines, mescaline or the finest munchies money could buy along Madison Avenue. Guy was particularly crazy for the elaborate confections at Sant Ambroeus, a madly over-priced Milanese bakery and cafe on 77th Street.
And as for Pot, our fame spread far and wide for having the most lavish marijuana buffet on or near campus. We acquired a dozen vintage porcelain pharmacy jars and relabeled them (in almost professional quality calligraphy--I had many talents) to reflect the kind of pot contained therein. By the way, in those days we bought by the pound--ounces or less were for amateurs.
Through dedicated scientific research we evaluated and subsequently organized our marijuana like wine, some pot went with Judy Collins or Joan Baez, other pot went with Jefferson Airplane or Janis.
We had movie pot, pass out pot, dinner pot and laugh your ass off pot. We also had very serious "outrage over Vietnam" pot for important political discussions.
The Moody Blues, Procol Harum and, of course The Who's Tommy demanded Acid, eventually chased with revive-the-munchies pot.
(I suspect these revelations have completely queered my viability as a presidential candidate.)
But our platonic love affair was about to hit a major road block when, one day, we were forced to play the lottery. I won and Guy lost. I was allowed to finish college and Guy was drafted and sent to Vietnam.
The December 1, 1969 lottery drawing was held at Selective Service National Headquarters in Washington, D.C. This event determined the order of call for induction during calendar year 1970, that is, for registrants born between January 1, 1944, and December 31, 1950. The lottery was a change from the "draft the oldest man first" method, which had been the determining method for deciding order of call.
There were 366 blue plastic capsules containing birth dates placed in a large glass container and drawn by hand to assign order-of-call numbers to all men within the 18-26 age range specified in Selective Service law.
With radio, film and TV coverage, the capsules were drawn from the container, opened, and the dates inside posted in order. I suspect that more Americans watched this than watched the lunar landing.
The first capsule contained the date September 14, so all men born on September 14 in any year between 1944 and 1950 were assigned lottery number 1. The drawing continued until all days of the year had been paired with sequence numbers. That year they drafted everyone up to 116. I had drawn 117; Guy had drawn 29.
We cut classes and remained stoned out of our minds for a solid week and then I was alone.
However, by 1970, Vietnam was a carnival of corruption and theater of the absurd. Soldiers were shipping back crates of unquestioned content that were outside the watchful eye of customs, so although we were apart, we remained engaged thanks to the happy business of exporting the wonders of exotic Southeast Asia.
I sent Guy money and he sent me back the riches of Vietnam, Thailand and Japan. By the time Guy returned--almost 18 months later--I had rented us a garden apartment in an old Brownstone on West 83rd Street and it was stuffed with oriental art, furniture, carpets, huge teak humidors of Thai, Cambodian and Laos, and thousands of dollars of the best Japanese stereo equipment of the day. We had speakers that were taller than a man and I had transferred hours and hours of music from LPs to tape. We could spend an entire night on the floor without having to change a record--which was a good thing with Thai stick and opiated hash.
On another front, while Guy was defending our nation from Communism and killing gooks, I was getting engaged to Betty Kamenda. Now Betty was an interesting girl, a good Magyar gypsy and Catholic, Betty had fallen in love with a latent homosexual and a Jew. I was in love with Betty because as a Catholic girl she was waiting for marriage--or so I thought--which meant no pressure on me to go searching for her vagina; and this was in the years before GPS technology.
A week after Guy's return to New York, Betty organized a little dinner party for the three of us. Betty and Guy had met before he had gone to Nam and they had been friends, but with his return the dynamics of our trio changed quickly and not to Betty's liking. I now realize that Betty understood much more about me in those days than I could have admitted to myself.
Supper was a candlelit affair featuring pot Brownies, an endless reel of the entire oeuvre of the Moody Blues and The Who, including Tommy, a centerpiece of Thai Sticks and several hits of mescaline on a silver tray. Somewhere between See me and Hear me, the three of us found ourselves in our underwear, Betty in bra and panties and Guy and I in white briefs.
I did nothing; Betty reached for Guy. He looked at me and I nodded. He tossed his jockey shorts over the side of the couch, rolled over on Betty and entered her. I watched for as long as I dared; Betty reached out to me, her hand in mine, but my eyes were on Guys slowly thrusting buttocks. I slipped away, discreetly scooping up guys briefs as I headed for the bedroom. I locked the door, stripped naked, put Guys shorts over my head, the crotch in my mouth, reached between my legs and, as best as I can recall fell asleep watching my own semen drip from the ceiling above.
It was still dark when I awoke. Back in the living room, I found guy shirtless but in his jeans; Betty was gone. He was sitting on the floor with his earphones on. I put mine on as well and sat next to him. I could smell her, him and his heat washed over me as if I had opened an oven. I looked at him and placed my hand on his naked chest. He did nothing. I ran my hand slowly down stopping just at the beginning of his treasure trail. I waited. He did nothing. I ran my finger down the hair line until I reached the waist of his jeans. I waited. I watched. I wondered. Finally, he gently took my hand in his and moved it away; we both slouched against the couch and drifted away to the music. It was early Sunday morning, we both slept until Monday. I went to work and he moved out. Nothing was ever said and he never spoke to me again. I never saw him again. I called his mother and his brother and they politely took messages. I wrote letters to his mother's address since I had none for him, but they were never answered.
After several days, there was a knock at the door, it was Betty. She hugged me, handed me her engagement ring, kissed me and left. I never saw her again either. You could say that things weren't going well, but I wasn't that upset. Betty was gone and I was left with "dumped by my heartless cheating fiance who fucked my best friend" bragging rights--excellent closet material; and Guy's rejection had saved me from making a terrible mistake. If Guy had responded, I would have become a practicing homosexual, years of hard work destroyed, and doomed to a future of perversion and mental illness.
All in the all that dinner party had worked out well; and I had managed to keep Guy's briefs.
Two years later I would be married and would remain so for 18 years. During that time there were temptations, but none as powerful or as treacherous as Andre and Guy, lost opportunities, lost boys in my Never Never Land world of the closet.
And then, in 1986, along game Steve, a Chicago cop and the lost boy who would put me on the path out of Never Never Land.
In 1981, emerging stories about a "Gay Cancer" added yet another padlock to the door of my personal Closet. Gay Cancer soon to become Gay Related Immune Deficiency and then Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome served up the most compelling reason imaginable to remain closeted--not that I needed another reason. Ironically, it would be the lever that finally pried open my door.
The newspaper headlines were clear: Come out and die.
The looming specter of AIDS killed any remaining hope for a happy life and drove me to the utter despair that led me to finally choose suicide on the night of my 40th birthday, October 22, 1988. On that night, I considered that with my life half over, AIDS nipping at my heels like a rabid dog, there really was no reason to continue with this pounding misery.
My battle for survival depended on some degree of hope, hope that one day I would find the courage to come out and end this nightmare, the psychic and spiritual horrors of closet life. By the end of the 70s with gay liberation flourishing all around me, I had finally come out of the belief that homosexuality was an illness and somehow curable, but by then I had constructed an elaborate life based on the lie, a life I believed would collapse like the proverbial house of cards if I were to reveal my horrible secret.
I would lose my family, my career, my home, my friends and possibly my sanity. And on top of all that, I would get some horrible disease and die a miserable and lonely death.
But life actually is full of surprises and the human spirit is not so easily defeated. And my life-changing surprise would come from an unexpected and very unlikely source: A Chicago cop who gave me back my hope.
When Steve, the cop, entered my life, I did not and could not have anticipated what was to happen. But many years later I would realize that Steve was one of the most important people I would ever encounter. In fact, he now holds a sacred place in my own personal pantheon of heroes. Sadly, he doesn't know this and never will. He died before I could hug him.
The story of Steve begins in 1983. At that time I headed the world's largest medical public relations operation and we had just landed an extraordinary account: designing a global marketing communications plan for what was to be the first mainstream biotech drug and one of the first anti-virals from an international pharmaceutical company.
This was to be an exciting time:
- A scientific milestone in biotechnology and medical science,
- A major marketing, image and financial relations coup for the pharmaceutical company concerned,
- A major political moment for the Food and Drug Administration,
- A professional high point for me
- A desperately needed and intriguing breakthrough for several patient populations that had heretofore been helpless to the ravages of viral infections.
But the drug posed a huge challenge to its maker. Huge. The first FDA approved indication for this breakthrough compound would be for an obscure disease and a patient population that was almost entirely homosexual-- a word that could not even be politely used within the halls of the drug company. In meetings we would refer to them as fringe patients.
In certain homophobic quarters, the disease, Kaposi's Sarcoma was glibly called the Purple People Eater. Kaposi's Sarcoma was easily recognized by purple lesions that would appear randomly on the patient's skin, sometimes hidden by clothes, but often not. It was one of the first identified physical manifestations of AIDS. And one that was impossible to hide at a time when fear of AIDS was almost at an hysterical level. This was a time when mothers wouldn't allow healthy gay men in the same room with their children for fear of air-born infection.
We worked on this drug launch for a full five years before it actually received FDA marketing approval. While that was not an unusual length of time for the FDA to review the science for a new compound and develop appropriate product labeling, it was seen as extraordinarily cruel by a gay community that was measuring life in days, not years. But the pharmaceutical company welcomed the delay hoping to find other uses for the drug in other patient populations that would allow it to be marketed in a way that was not associated with homosexuals.
Most decent and sane Americans outside of the FDA and the White House understood the urgency to quickly bring AIDS drugs to market; the wait was agony for patients. The well-connected pulled strings and got themselves into pre-approval clinical trials. The unconnected suffered and died.
This was a time, thanks to the Reagan administration, when AIDS was ignored by the federal government. It simply did not exist for President Reagan. As a result, the FDA saw little urgency in "rushing" drugs to market for this fringe patient population.
While it's tempting to digress and rave and rant about our 40th president, I will stick to my story and just say that when I hear how Reagan is described as one of the greatest presidents in American history, I can't help but to remember that his blind indifference to the plight of thousands of HIV-stricken Americans is partly responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. This was the only time in American history--other than slavery--when the American government intentionally ignored a public health crisis. This near genocidal legacy of the Reagan years has been conveniently "forgotten."
But Reagan wasn't alone in his contempt and homophobia. AIDS had put KS on the map, so to speak. And of course, virtually every patient in the clinical trials and every patient with KS was homosexual. And this was of great concern to the drug company.
They did not want to go to their shareholders and to Wall Street with the news that the results of years of biotech research investment had produced a drug for homosexuals.
We had our orders: position the drug as a breakthrough cancer drug, a revolutionary anti-viral therapy and the first major practical application out of biotechnology. Under no circumstances should the drug be described or promoted as an AIDS medication. This was not to be an AIDS drug, it was not to be associated with the gay community. This was not to be a "gay" drug.
The Gay community has few enemies more dangerous or treacherous than a gay man in the closet so I of course worked diligently to deliver on my client's orders--knowing full well that it would cost lives and cause suffering. We would launch this drug, use KS as our vehicle to get it into medical practice, but then promote it for other cancers and viral infections. Once we had it on the market, approved for the KS indication, we would put the full force of the public relations and lobbying machine behind unapproved indications for "mainstream" conditions.
We would not support its use for AIDS patients, we would not provide necessary education and we would do all that we could to bury the story as it related to saving the lives of gay men.
But this is also a story of the best laid plans of mice and men...and boy oh boy, did they go astray.
Deeply in the closet when I first landed this assignment in 1982, I was as removed and as distant from "gay" as anyone could have possibly been. The human inside of me was a long-forgotten prisoner in an iron mask.
But by the time the drug was actually launched on November 21, 1988, it was also a month past the night that I had decided to commit suicide. By the evening of my 40th birthday, October 22, 1988, I had become a barely functioning human being. For all outward appearances, I was extraordinarily successful, wealthy, influential and one of the stars of my profession. But I was a golem, a creature of clay with no soul.
My then wife had surprised me with a birthday party and as I sat at the dinner table surrounded by my 25 closet relatives and friends, the sense of isolation and the complete lack of intimacy was more soul-crushing than it had ever been before. I even found myself wondering if I'd be able to stand. Of course, I did, barely.
It would not be until the following August and after two unsuccessful suicide attempts that I would first have sex with another man. But from that night in October of 1988 through the afternoon of August 5, 1989 my first gay sexual encounter, I lived through the most painful and emotionally dark period of my life.
In the middle of all this, I was still running the largest and most influential pharmaceutical and medical public relations operation in the world. Additionally, I was now Chief Operating Officer of the New York division of the parent company. I also sat on the company's board of directors. To the outside world, I was a powerful man; at home I was filling a shoebox with the pills I would use to end my life.
I walked through those days like a zombie, watching myself from a distance, operating my brain and body as if by remote control, professionally surviving thanks to professional momentum.
And now it was time for the launch of the KS drug, the first major big drug company breakthrough from the biotech industry, one of the most prestigious moments in the history of my public relations firm--and at the head of this monumental undertaking? A monster from the closet.
As I explained earlier, from the very beginning of this project we had worked hard to design and implement a strategy that was, we believed, going to successfully steer all discussion of the drug away from the gay cancer, away from AIDS and away from the word "gay".
Key to our strategy was to find a patient for media interviews, a patient who was heterosexual and as "ungay" as possible. After six months of interviews and research, we hit pay dirt. It was as if Saint Ronald of Hollywood had delivered unto us a marketing miracle.
We not only found our patient spokesperson, we found a John Wayne. This was a patient who could speak out for the miracle of this drug and a patient who would be everything that a gay patient was not: masculine, mainstream and heterosexual. And, not only did we succeed in finding the perfect "poster boy" for the new drug, he was a perfect poster boy for heterosexuality: an all-American boy next door, a handsome, strapping Chicago city police detective with blue collar and middle-American origins.
Our plans for Officer Ultimate Heterosexual were extensive: a regional talk and news show circuit tour, national television including the TODAY show, all three network news programs and speaking engagements for media, physicians and the financial community.
I had pulled off a miracle, a major marketing coup. I had delivered on the impossible. Our focus was clear, this good-looking cop had been stricken with a rare cancer during the prime of his life and we were giving him renewed hope. Our drug was an anti-cancer drug rushed from biotechnology to the desperate immune system of a Chicago cop. And the drug, now a proven anti-viral would ultimately be used for many other cancers and viral infections.
With approval only hours away, we flew to Chicago to prepare the cop for interviews and to produce a video news release. In a suite at the Ritz-Carlton hotel, several of us from the agency and the drug company were in the bedroom or press suite reviewing message points for our poster boy while the camera crews were assembling in the living room. ABC World News Tonight was the first to arrive and they asked for an on-camera pre-interview.
I approached our hero and asked him if he was ready. He looked at me with a dead man's stare and then, quite suddenly, without changing his expression, this man's man began to cry.
I put my hand on his shoulder. "Stage fright," I asked? Considering the importance of this event, I had personally media-trained the cop, and even provided tips for dealing with stage fright. I was good. People I trained did not cry. Steve was crying.
Confusion and anxiety spread across his face. He whispered, "I'm about to go on national television, aren't I?"
I was stunned and pissed. Duh, I thought, Dumb cop. What the fuck? "Uh, yes, of course, you know that. You know that. We media trained you. You have the schedule."
"No, no..I mean, yes, yes...I know that. Of course, I know that. I need to make a phone call before you let the cameras in."
"Of course." I handed him the phone. Did he need privacy? No. He looked around the room at the public relations people, the ABC producer, the drug company executives and laughed at the idea of privacy. "I'm about to out myself on national television. Talking in front of you guys is small potatoes."
Out himself?
In front of us he telephoned his father, explaining where he was and what he was about to do. He told his dad that he had AIDS and that, yes, he was gay. "I love you with all my heart and I hope you can forgive me." And then he put the phone back on the hook and motioned for the cameras to come in.
And that night on ABC World News Tonight, the very heterosexual Chicago Police Detective outed himself and put America's first major biotech drug on the AIDS map.
The drug company execs and their PR team met late into the night to resolve this "crisis" but I wasn't listening. I could barely hold back a relentless need to vomit.
I couldn't focus on this obscene little meeting. A constant undertow of emotions made it difficult to even stay in the room. Outwardly, I was seated at the head of the table, in my heart and mind I was fetal.
Every cell in my body burned with the need to take Steve in my arms and cling to him until the end of forever. I needed my cheek against his cheek, our tears mingling. I wanted to press my body as close to his body as possible so that his courage would warm me and make me alive.
But instead, like the other heterosexuals in the room, I ignored the human drama that had just played out before our eyes and focused on saving the public relations program, preparing a crisis strategy for handling investors and the financial community, resolving an urgent marketing crisis and considering the possibility that we had just unwillingly launched one of the first AIDS drugs.
Never before had I been so conscious of the huge rift between me and me.
This Chicago cop had ripped open my heart and unleashed a flood of emotions that I did not know existed within the emptiness that I called me.
At the time, the situation seemed to quicken my resolve to end life. But it actually had exactly the opposite effect. I just didn't and couldn't see it within the moment but I did remotely sense that everything had changed. With one phone call this cop has ruined five years of hard work--which should have been my focus. But with that same phone call, the cop had ignited my soul.
Steve, of course, died within the year, the drug, Intron-A contained his KS, but the KS was the least of his problems. Thanks to AIDS Steve never saw the 90s but partly thanks to Steve I did and with the courage to kick open the closet door and come out with all guns flaming.
And I'm still in love with Guy.
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