CW: Sexual Assault
Bill 1
Scene I: Notes from the Basement
The basement of my family home is a terrifying place: many spiders, sharp green webs, the occasional snake slithering in from a hole in the foundation; the eternal dark fruit cellar (shelves lined with Campbell's soup and canned tomatoes), the dirt from the outside yard, and the layer of dust that accumulates weekly from the clothes dryer; my father's workbench, a pile of corrugated steel, and an oil furnace. This is my least favorite Saturday chore: cleaning up that mess, sweeping away the dust and my dad's long legs.
Though terrifying to me, here I hide in the recently abandoned men's underwear section of the Sears catalog. I flip through old comic books and am captivated by the ads for Charles Atlas's dynamic tension program. I think it’s more about Atlas's pictures than the promise that I wouldn’t get my face kicked in by bullies at the beach.
Actor's Note: Why did I know I had to hide in the basement to look at those things? Why had I already understood that looking at pictures of men was wrong and sinful, something to be ashamed of and guilty about? Mom and Dad, did you teach me that? Was it Father Aronofsky? Family, friends, and neighbors? Everyone? Did you know that over the years, my lifelong spiral began with shame, then anger and sadness? The shame began, its roots quick and deep.
Scene II: Oil City
I often accompanied my parents to Aunt Dolly and Uncle George's house in Oil City. The drive was a bit long, but I was always very excited: Aunt Dolly was the best cook. Dinner was always great, inevitably featuring homemade pie and ice cream. Afterwards, I usually walked with Uncle George to see his garden. He was a kind and gentle man.
This time I was glad because all seven of my siblings were absent. My uncle and aunt (and the apple pie) were mostly just for me. So exciting! While my aunt and parents were preparing the whole dinner in the kitchen, I was watching the TV news program with Uncle George - I think it was 60 Minutes. The announcer introduced the next segment titled "Homosexuals." I was completely captivated and terrified by the initial images I saw on the TV. Uncle George's head perked up. Did he notice my interest? He called out to my parents: Arnie and Anna Mae! There’s a program about homosexuals on TV. I don’t think you want young Arnie to see this, do you? Dad immediately called me over, and my face turned red.
Actor's Note: This was the first time I heard the name "homosexual," and it was the first time I realized how bad being gay was, to the point that my parents didn’t want me to discuss it at all. Uncle George, I know that wasn’t your intention, but your and my father’s reaction made me feel shame, embarrassment, and fear. Do you know how terrifying it was for me to realize who I was? Something I had to hide, never to discuss with family? It made me realize that if my family found out the truth about me, I would be shunned and unloved. Alone.
Scene III: The Yellow School Bus
I hated taking the bus to school. The bumps and jolts on the way to and from Baden-Pernodior Middle School seemed to make my pants ride up. I always had a backpack on my lap to hide it, even as my face turned beet red. The bus was also where I tried to avoid Chris and other potential bullies, keeping my eyes down and minding my own business. One day - the same day the metal shop teacher asked me in front of the whole class whether the kid sitting next to me was a boy or a girl? - I was getting off the bus from school, seeing that there were no bullies today. I found a seat in the back, where a pretty girl and a cool kid were sitting. The girls seemed to like me, and we were joking and laughing.
As the bus pulled away, it suddenly screeched to a stop, the doors opened, and Chris came striding in. Damn. Chris walked down the aisle; I looked up, terrified to see him staring at me. What’s the faggot in your seat doing? I stood up to move, and he shoved me back into my seat. You don’t sit here anymore, whether I’m on the bus or not, got it, faggot? The bus was deadly silent, except for the pounding in my ears, as loud as my humiliation and screams. I looked at the girls I had just been laughing with, pleading with my eyes for them to help, to do anything. Nothing. I stood up in silence and shuffled to the front of the bus. I knew some kids were staring at me, some were not. I sat down in an empty seat, even though I really wanted to open the bus door and jump onto the highway.
Actor's Note: Chris, why did you humiliate me in front of my peers? Did you do it to look tough in front of the girls? Do you know what it felt like to have a knife stuck in my gut, making me dread riding the bus every day for the rest of the school year? Do you know how much I hated you from that moment on? And you, my temporary girlfriend - how could you not speak up for me? You, bus driver, where the hell were you?
Scene IV: Movie Night
It was a muggy summer night, and I was hiding in the thicket between our house and my neighbor's house on the hillside. I could see the road from here; I was waiting for Bob to come home. Earlier that day, he had shown me some porn magazines in his garage, telling me to come back tonight when his dad would be drinking beer at the American Legion. As I saw his car coming down the road through the thicket, my stomach knotted up, and then he turned into his driveway, a few doors down. I stood up, brushed off my shorts, and walked over to his house. The lights were on in his garage, where he was doing some electrical work. I called his name, and he waved me in, closing the garage door.
The garage was hot, smelling of ozone and oil. Bob pulled out some porn magazines from a hiding place in the sagging ceiling. He showed me a couple with men and women, then a couple with just men. He told me he wanted to show me something in the house, and I followed him with nervous anticipation. He grabbed an 8mm movie projector from his bedroom and set it up on the kitchen table. Strange. He started the movie - some kind of porn western - and I sat there watching, unable to move or speak. He reached over from his chair and put his hand on my crotch. He started rubbing and squeezing. Still unable (or unwilling?) to move. He unbuttoned my shorts, pulled out my dick, stroked it for a while, then knelt down and took it in his mouth. He asked me, Is this your first blowjob? I, Yes.
We eventually ended up in his messy bedroom. He took off his pants and underwear and asked me to suck him. I hesitated, resisted, wanting to. I was so afraid his dad would come home any second. We both did. He hid the projector, and we went back to the garage. He started talking about everyday things, like what had just happened, breakfast, going out to play, or doing homework. I was 13, and Bob was in his thirties. I went home feeling guilty, ashamed, relieved, and confused. Mostly different feelings.
Over the next few years, I returned to his garage many times. Sometimes it was alcohol and porn magazines, sometimes it was sex (with or without movies). Sometimes there was a sleazy boy from the street with us. It always felt the same confusing way, wanting it and hating it at the same time. But it was what I had.
Actor's Note: Bob - you’ve been dead a long time, so I can’t tell you directly how you messed up my life. But you did. I could have used a mentor and guide to help me understand my sexuality, but you weren’t interested in that. Like pretending to be kind and devoted, you were using me. You took my sexual awakening and turned it into something dirty and hidden. Sex and sexuality were forever tainted. For most of my adult life, I haven’t been able to form intimate relationships. You gave me herpes - a scarlet letter stuck to my chest for life. I grieve every day for what you stole from me.
Scene V: At the Retreat
The Jesuit retreat center is a grand but beautiful brownstone building hidden away in several acres of wooded land and manicured gardens in rural central Pennsylvania. There are carpet runners on the hardwood floors, soft, dim lighting in all the rooms, rich candles in the chapel, silence, and the dull scent of Murphy's oil soap - all of these combine to create the perfect environment for prayer and meditation.
This is why I am here: to pray that I decide to enter the priesthood and feel God's welcoming embrace. Finally, I will be in a community where I will be accepted, protected, and loved unconditionally. My entire future life is in the hands of God's mercy.
The retreat is two days in, and I feel a strong emotional ball in my gut. Incredible sadness, anxiety, panic, a complete sense of loneliness, an overwhelming sense of loss and grief. Finally, I tell the retreat leader - a kind of my feelings, usually cerebral, Jesuit. Then, the words “I think I’m gay” spill out of my own mouth. The priest does not respond with negative judgment. Instead, he encourages me to stay at the retreat and meditate on my feelings. However, the relentless assault of emotions is too much for me. On the third day, I left the retreat and the entire plan for my future.
Actor's Note: While I’m not sure God exists, I’m angry that he/she/it put me in a place where I was supposed to be ready for the rest of my life, to take care of it. Then it pulled the rug out from under me. Losing my carefully crafted and secure future was heartbreaking and infuriating. After all, I worked hard, prayed harder. I was a good Catholic boy. Maybe all of this was a setup; easily deceived, I hoped. It seemed all this praying and following the rules was nonsense. I gave up believing in anything; trusting anyone.
Scene VI: Family Secrets
It was time, I decided. I told a few of my sisters that I was gay. Of course, this started an avalanche among them, and soon all my siblings knew. Because I had individual conversations over the phone or by letter, the reactions to my revelation were mixed. Two of my sisters reached out with understanding and support - they already had gay friends. One of them cried shamefully, remembering how she had mocked me with the word “sissy.” Some of them felt caught between the acceptance I was seeking and what their “faith” told them about homosexuals. Over the years, some (at least a little) came around.
I reached out to my parents in a letter. I wanted to say too much to them at once. I wanted to get it right. When my siblings heard that the letter was coming, a couple of them checked my older brother (who lived near my parents) every day, checking the mailbox and intercepting the letter so my parents never saw it. He refused.
I got a call from my parents. My mom was crying. My dad sounded disappointed and sad. We talked briefly and agreed to talk later. My dad said he loved me but added, I just think the gay lifestyle is a dead-end life. My mom cried. Years later, after Dad passed away, I tried to continue discussing it with my mom. It always turned into her crying and saying she was worried about me. And she said she loved me. My sisters urged my mom to talk to her sister or best friend about her feelings. She never did. Too ashamed.
Actor's Note: My entire adult life, I waited to hear my parents and siblings say: We love you, Arnie, our gay son/brother. My parents could never say those words, and I feel so frustrated that they never will, because they are both gone. I grieve the loss of the chance to work harder for a relationship with them. Some of my siblings couldn’t reconcile with their “faith.” I’m tired of hearing their different versions of “love the sinner, hate the sin.” Tired of their embrace of preachers, media hosts, and politicians who demonize LGBTQ people and then not understanding why I feel this madness. I’m tired of fighting for their acceptance. Tired, sad.
Scene VII: Side Death
After coming out, I moved to Washington, D.C. - the big city. I discovered new friends, community, all kinds of people, cultures, and ideas beyond what my small town could imagine. I found happiness, freedom, wonder, acceptance; anxiety, fear, and shame came riding along. I also discovered death.
It was the early days of HIV/AIDS, and I was working as an office assistant in an infectious disease medical practice. Young men coming in every workday, occasionally women, after going to the ER for pneumonia, dermatology for strange red rashes, or their primary care doctor for unexplained fatigue and night sweats. They were told they had AIDS. Sometimes it was gay couples. Diagnosed at the same time, or one after the other. I don’t remember family members coming in with them (but it probably happened hundreds of times).
The waiting room was filled with men just diagnosed and men with Kaposi's sarcoma spots. Those sunken, wasted faces. Treatment was a regimen of multiple pills of the drug, taken several times a day. Some even tried homeopathic remedies they heard about, like seaweed baths, to absorb the relentless, merciless virus that had turned their immune systems into biological artillery factories. They came in every two weeks for monitoring and blood tests; I became friendly with most of them, friends. Most commonly, within about a year, young men withered away and died before my eyes. Some held on until new treatments gave them a fighting chance.
Several close friends were diagnosed - most (though not all) late enough in the epidemic to benefit from the new treatments. Despite not following all the safe sex rules, I somehow escaped infection. Luck. A roll of the dice.
I’m not sure how many acquaintances and friends died during this period, from the late eighties to the mid-nineties. Too many; too much mourning. I compartmentalized my life - trying to stay emotionally detached from death and loss. But death and loss were always lurking around the corner of the dance floor. Always hiding somewhere in the wings. I had to ignore them to survive; I became a master.
Actor's Note: What universal power allowed this plague virus to live, then stood by while it tortured and killed millions of women, children, and men? Some notion of justice and salvation they knew: surely God, punishing and purging the unclean homosexuals from his precious children’s ranks. Mothers and children were innocent victims - unfortunate casualties in a holy war. Every nation and culture offered its own irrational rationale to explain the spiritual madness of AIDS. I developed techniques to avoid the anger and grief - and suffered the consequences.
Act Two
Scene I: Island/Now and Future
Thus, thirty years of life events - approaching sixty, retirement, the death of my mother - triggered my impulse to dig into my past traumas and express my grief. Despite (mostly) years of therapy and taking antidepressants, I was still forced to wade through the toxic, awkward sea that clogged my emotional engine, preventing me from realizing my dreams: dreams of happiness, longevity, intimate relationships, writing wise and wonderful stories to share with the world, feeling safe and loved. To regain myself with trust and faith.
I attended a month-long residential trauma recovery program. I continued to invest in psychotherapy and medication. I increased exercise and weight loss regimens. I sought refuge from online shelters, AA meetings, and yoga classes. I reduced my drinking (a little anyway). I took several writing and other creative courses. I shared my experiences with close friends and family. I did all these things intentionally to help my heart, mind, and body process my anger-wrapped grief.
Along the way, I learned some things.
My past experiences are/painful and painful, but they also shaped many of my better qualities. I have great compassion for others and a strong aversion to others belittling others based on first impressions. I don’t know what burdens others carry from the past or present; I try to give people the benefit of the doubt. I try to be friendly and welcoming, not eager for conflict. I recognize the importance of community, whether it’s the LGBTQ community, recovery community, or the community of my chosen family. These are characteristics I like about myself.
I also discovered that there is no real beginning or end to processing past trauma. This work will continue until I die. I will never completely eliminate the grief of my soul. Some past wounds will never fully heal. I will feel loss and see scars.
However, this is a big but, I hold onto hope, sometimes dim, sometimes stronger - gradually becoming fuller lives. Lives I want to share with others. I’m not sure what sustains this hope. I think it’s the people who come in and out of my life, their faith and love for me keeping me afloat during dark times. Also, on this journey, my fellow travelers have shared common stories, many of whom I felt I could never endure, survived and thrived. Ultimately, perhaps at my core, my belief and love for myself, which I often see clearly through the self-deprecating self-talk and emotional rejection I often don’t see. Whatever the reason, hope stubbornly remains, and I am grateful for that.