My first gay encounter: It’s a different world now than where we come from

NOTE:  I am an older man out of step with the times, so this may contain language or memories you find offensive!

Yesterday afternoon when I was outside in front of the Tiffany, two young men were headed my way from the opposite direction.

They looked around 16-17 years old, were both around 5’7”, slender, one had a goatee.  Both were wearing ski caps (in summer) on the back of their heads like Mike Nesmith from the Monkees.  And they were holding hands.

I tried not to do a double-take, but this isn’t something you see a lot in Pittsburgh.  Well, not in my neighborhood anyway.  I’m aware there’s a lot of gay people out there, I’ve been lucky to know a few and seen plenty at the Pittsburgh Pride parades every year when I worked downtown.

I’ve just never seen anyone this young and so casual about it.

I know gays have been pretty open for awhile.  Ten years ago, when my older niece Drew was going to her senior prom, I was curious about her date and looked him up on Facebook.  On his profile page he’d written he was afraid of ghosts, milk & frogs, “not necessarily in that order”.   When I contacted my sister Donda and said “Hey—about this young man…” she told me to relax, he was Drew’s best friend, gay & everyone knew it.  Wow, okay!   

This sure isn’t the world I grew up in.  When I was their age, being branded a “queer” or “faggot” was a death sentence.  I remember getting cornered at least a dozen times in the locker room before or after gym class, in 7th & 8th grades.  Always the same guys who looked like 13 year old versions of the hillbillies in the movie Deliverance, Vernon Smitley, Jerry Eaton & Alan Bradshaw.  Always demanding to know if I was queer-bait, while Donald Bates, a creepy possum-faced redneck stood behind them making kissy lips at me.  

Oh, and that’s their real names.  I’d love for them to see this and reach out to me.

Mom, the Beauty Parlor and my first Gay Man

When I was 11-12 years old, and Mom was still getting her hair done weekly at Mary Jane’s Beauty Salon, Dad would drop my sister Shawn & myself off in town on Saturday mornings and we’d ride home with Mom from her beauty appointment.  One Saturday in the spring of 1972, as we sat there in the shop eating our candy and reading comics and waiting for Mom to finish, a man walked in wearing a fur stole and sporting a platinum blonde beehive. 

He was short, pasty, on the chubby side.  His name was Conrad Perry.  (Conrad was NOT a transsexual, a straight man who dressed as a woman.  He was a gay man who liked wearing fur stoles and women’s hairdos.)  I’m pretty sure he was harmless.

He was clearly in a dither, gesturing at his head and saying something to the shop’s owner.  Mary Jane told him to come back in an hour and she’d try to fit him in.

When he left the salon, Shawn & I went back to Mom’s chair and asked “Was that a homosexual?” 

Mary Jane and a couple of the other ladies laughed, and poor Mom looked like a deer caught in someone’s headlights.  She said “Do you even know what one is?  Where did you hear that!”

I said “When we were at your mom’s house for Thanksgiving, she dropped a National Examiner in your lap and said ‘Here, I told you these two were married.’  It had Rock Hudson & Jim Nabors on the cover.  So is Conrad Perry one too?”

Mom said “How the hell do you kids even know him!”  My sister said “We see him on Main Street on his bike all the time” and I said “Yeah, and he always wears red satin hot-pants.”

Mom said “The next time you see him headed in your direction, I want you to cross the street.”  I said “But he zig-zags.  Won’t that look funny if we’re always zig-zagging when he is?” 

The ladies in the shop were now laughing it up pretty hard, while Mom shook her head and said “You damn kids, go sit down!”

I want to add that Mom did change with the times, and 10 years later she’d take up disco skating and become good friends with Ronnie A, an out-of-the-closet gay man and former classmate of mine who’s been with his partner 40+ years.

Here’s my funny, beautiful mom from the early 80s, wearing her gay pride rainbow top.  Sure do love & miss you, Mom—and I miss seeing you get riled up!