People who know me always make the comment that I’ve been “gay from the womb.” They’re right. I have been. I can’t ever remember a time when my sexual orientation was different than it is now. There’s been a lot of discussion about whether being gay is about sexual preference or sexual orientation. I’m a firm believer that it’s about orientation and just about everyone else is on board with that. In fact, in 1986, the American Psychiatric Association removed homosexuality from the DSM.

So, when a few people asked how I knew that early on, I decided to write this. The answer is that I didn’t know that I was gay from that early on. What I did know is that I was different, but I didn’t have a name for it. Let’s face it, we’re talking the very early sixties when I had my first experience. Nobody was really talking about it then and, if you were doing it, you were doing it in the closet. Contrary to popular belief, it was not a comfortable time to be gay. That was one of the things I find surprising about the sixties. In spite of the incredible openness of the time, being gay was risky. It was the decade of free love as long as it was heterosexual love. Finally, keep in mind that all of my experiences happened in the context of going to Catholic school. I did that right up through college.

My first experience was just like what other kids were doing: Playing “doctor.” Except my girlfriends were doing it with boys. Not me! Wasn’t the least bit interested in the male anatomy. Literally couldn’t be bothered. Boys were for playing hockey and baseball with. I’m still pretty much in that zone at the age of fifty-five. Nothing has changed. When it comes to men, my friends call me the “oldest living virgin.” Never the twain shall meet. I certainly don’t feel like I’ve missed anything.

Of course, there are plenty of people who just don’t “get it.” I’ve been asked countless times how I know I don’t like sex with men if I’ve never tried it. Listen, people, if it doesn’t interest you, there’s no point in trying it. That’s why I’m adamant about the fact that being gay is all about orientation, not try it and see.

Mmmmmm…something sure is different about me

The first time I had a feeling that I was different was as early as grammar school, and I’m thinking it had to be somewhere between the sixth and the eighth grades (or around the time we started going to dances). Most of my girlfriends were standing around looking at the boys. I, on the other hand, was standing around looking at the girls. However, it wasn’t that I didn’t hang out with boys. In fact, I had a blast with the boys…playing street hockey and baseball. My best friend was a boy. His name was Greg, and we had the best time together, but there was nada in the way of physical attraction. Of course, back then, what I didn’t realize was that we were both gay. As we got older, this turned into a great advantage because our families thought we were going out together. It certainly kept the heat off.

By high school, it was apparent that I was far from being like everyone else. The good thing was that I wasn’t alone anymore. There were five or six of us at Arlington Catholic who knew, by that time, that we were gay. That didn’t make it any easier to be gay, however. We were definitely singled out for ridicule by the other students. It was tough going initially. We eventually went from ridicule to novelty and life became easier. We all went to the prom together, with dates (albeit other gay people). The guy I went with was a riot. We had a blast at the prom, and the next day we all headed down to P-Town for the day, while the rest of our classmates went to Hyannis.

During my senior year, I also had my first fairly serious relationship. I’ve written about this already on this blog. It was with Linda, a girl who had been my constant companion since grammar school. I remember we started writing love letters to each other. For some reason my mother became suspicious of us, and began to go through my bureau drawers in search of evidence. She found it and proceeded to freak out. However, I had already learned that all you had to do was tell my mother what she wanted to hear and things would calm down. I did just that, and the freak out passed. The relationship lasted about a year (she was younger than me). By the time I moved on to Aquinas, it was over. She eventually married a guy named Mark and had five children.

That would not, however, be my fate.

The lesbian playground

I moved on to Aquinas Junior College in Newton. It may well have been a Catholic school, but it was a hotbed of lesbian relationships…my own included. I had a great group of friends and I would become involved intimately with two of them, one casual and one fairly serious. The casual relationship is indicative of the way some people thought back then. With Karen, you could kiss, but never go any further. It was almost as though that kept her from admitting she was a lesbian. There’s no question that it was tough coming out.

My relationship with Mary was much more serious. The reality was that I was also attracted to her younger sister, Barbara, but she turned out to be just a good friend. Mary and I moved in together after graduation, living in an apartment building owned by my brother-in-law and his family. She worked at Tufts Medical Center in Boston as a medical secretary and I worked at Millipore Corporation as a secretary to the promotion department.

While we were not closeted with our friends, we were definitely closeted with our families. She came from a strong Irish Catholic background and I came from an Italian Catholic background. There was no way we could comfortably come out of the closet at the age of twenty-one. The pressure to marry was incredible, but I had the courage of my convictions and my family eventually backed off. Not hers. Her uncle was a Catholic priest and really put the pressure on her. The relationship was doomed after that. As fate would have it, her uncle would turn out to be one of the most prolific pedophile priests ever seen in the Archdiocese of Boston. The Catholic church would eventually end up settling more than seventeen separate allegations. If that isn’t a case of the pot calling the kettle black, nothing is. I walked away from the Catholic church for good after that experience.

After my relationship with Mary ended, I moved back home for a while. However, the whole experience of having nearly been outed to my family by a pedophile priest only galvanized my desire to live my life the way I was meant to live it. I couldn’t do that while living at home. That’s when I moved to Melrose and my life as a lesbian really took off.

Comfortable with who I am

I think that I’ve been comfortable as a lesbian for many years, but it wasn’t always so. Anyone who tells you that they do not — at one time or another — long to be like everyone else is a liar. I went through that for a short period of time after my relationship with Mary. It just seemed too hard to be who I was. During my two years at Aquinas, I had lost contact with Greg. After graduation, we renewed our friendship. He was out of the closet. I was out of the closet. The party had begun.

Within a year of breaking up with Mary, a year in which I questioned who and what I was…and what I wanted to be, a great weight was finally lifted off my shoulders. It was Greg’s friendship that helped me get to that point in my life. I’ve been there ever since.

I came out because, once you do that, everything gets easier. That’s not to say you don’t lose some people along the way. I did. However, I determined that if my sexual orientation was the breaking point of a friendship, it wasn’t really a friendship to begin with. What it did for me was remove the unknown fears that had been preying on my emotions. It allowed me to face reality and assess where my life was. While it hurt that some people turned their backs on me, it also took a huge weight off my shoulders. The older I got, the harder it became to pretend to be what I wasn’t.

I came out at Millipore as well. I decided to do that because I spent a considerable part of every day there. While several people had advised against doing that, I found few repercussions. In fact, I discovered that Millipore was a pretty progressive company back in the mid-to-late seventies. Again, I lost a couple of friends, but that was just about all the trouble I would have.

Speaking personally, I carry the LGBT flag proudly. None of us has anything to be ashamed of. If we’re ashamed of ourselves, then it gives everyone else permission to be ashamed of us. If we stay hidden, then they can keep us hidden. All we can do is speak our truth regardless of the repercussions because, at the end of the day, all we have left is our integrity. I am out everywhere now, at work, at home, with all my friends and foes. Doesn’t matter. My attitude now is, if you’ve got a problem with who I am, it’s your problem.

Some people know they’re gay from the womb. That’s me. Now, that doesn’t mean that I acknowledged it from the get go. Knowing and accepting are two very different things. When I was really young, I didn’t necessarily have a word for what it was. A few things stood out, though. First, I played ‘doctor’ exclusively with girls. Never boys. Second, I never spent time looking at other girls’ boyfriends, but I spent a lot of time looking at a lot of guys’ girlfriends. Third (and this was as I grew older), I never thought about dating — or anything else for that matter– with the opposite sex. Never. I mean it. To this day, I’m the world’s oldest virgin in that respect. I’m not curious. I don’t feel as though I’m missing anything (as some of the more unwitting have asked). I’m not interested in going there.

Now, all of this being said, there’s nothing easy about being gay. I have this argument with conservatives every day: It’s isn’t sexual preference. It’s sexual orientation. People do not just wake up on a Thursday and decide to be gay. People may very well wake up one day and realize that they are gay, but I can assure you that they’ve been gay for a long time.  I also propose that nobody would choose this life. Why? Because they have to put up with the assholes who argue differently. Like they know better. In spite of the fact that coming out now is easier than it was when I came out, I feel like I came out at the greatest time. And I feel as though I came out at the greatest time because there was a social support system in place that has all but been replaced by the Internet. Only, the Internet isn’t a very good replacement because it takes away the human element. The gay bars are what I’m talking about here people.

The best of times

Like I said, coming out in Boston was a freakin’ blast. It had the best bars, and not one was the same as the other. We always used to tell each other, “You don’t want to get involved with anyone hanging out at a bar.” But that didn’t stop us from taking them home (or going home with them). We just knew they weren’t ‘relationship’ material. Frankly, we all went out in a bunch just to have a great time. If we met someone, so be it. However, that wasn’t the goal.

In fact, it is here that I will tell you about my friend Lida, as straight as an arrow, who loved the bars and came with us whenever she could (much to her husband’s chagrin, as I recall). I remember that I used to be her cover in case anyone tried to hit on her.  There were a couple of other straight women who used to come out with us as well, but I cannot remember their names — although I can see their faces.

Boston had great bars, no question. For a general good time, there was Buddies. There were more men than women, but it certainly was a mixed bar. Great dancing. Loud. Wild. Crazy. I have this image of dancing to that frackin’ Patrick Hernandez song, “Born To Be Alive,” and the image is on the Buddies dance floor. I know I went off on this in a previous post about the tie between gays and disco. My guy friends used to love Sporter’s for a men’s bar. This was definitely a cruise bar; no question about it. I only went a couple of times. It was definitely not mixed.

For women, the best damned place in Boston was a bar called Somewhere, which was in the Financial District. This place was perfect. If you went upstairs, you could dance to the loud pulsing beat of the music. Downstairs, you could sit at the bar and stare at Jackie (the bartender that just about every woman that walked into that place was in love with), play pool or sit in the comfy area (complete with sofas, chairs and a coffee table) and just plain old shoot the shit. The music downstairs was provided by a juke box. Even the guys liked it here, although this bar was definitely for women and they got ADHD pretty quickly without the sight of men other than each other.

There was one other bar worth mentioning. It was a place in Allston, Massachusetts, called Our House. I have fleeting visions of this place, but they are always good visions. I remember it being a restaurant/bar set up — not like today’s Club Cafe in Boston. It was more a laid back environment. The place was really cool. If any of my friends are reading this post and remember Our House, I’d love you to comment and tell me what you remember about it!

My point is that we had a place to go. Now, places are gay on certain nights. The only problem is that we’re gay every night. Know what I mean? More than anything, the bars gave us numbers. They showed us we weren’t alone. We had our space where we felt absolutely safe being ourselves. I’m pretty open. I really don’t worry about what people think anymore. Times have changed in that regard. Gay people are now a part of the mainstream. But I still miss the bars. I miss the cameraderie. I miss having that space or zone. Back then –  during the 70s and 80s — the bars were critical to us and we spent plenty of time there.

Gay people have this affliction called Disco-itis. I know I’ve had it in the past myself, but I’ve been cured. This affliction is brought on by a combination of alcohol, banned substances and gay bars. The more you take part in those three things, the worse the Disco-itis becomes. I came out at the height of the disco scene. (I will confess to you that I think it’s barely a musical form, yet in a gay bar it was intoxicating — probably because I was intoxicated. I have absolutely no disco in my vast music collection to this day.)

Of all the ‘ladies’ on the disco scene those days, Donna Summer was by far the Queen when it came to music in the bars. Donna Summer. One of the biggest bitch homophobes on the planet. The woman who states to this day that AIDS is God’s punishment for being gay. And those aren’t her only homophobic words. I wonder who the fuck she thought was buying all her records? Did we collectively ignore that fact about Donna Bummer, or was that not the case back then? Either way, I don’t do Donna Summer. Anything that broad (and I mean this in the most derogatory way) has made doesn’t get through my front door, doesn’t play in my CD player and doesn’t grace my ITunes library. In fact, my being gay trumps any kind of music. No homophobes need apply…even those of the rock n’ roll variety (and we know they exist as well). Nobody I know would dare bring a Coors beer or Crackerbarrel cheese into my house either. And, by the way, don’t ever ask me to step inside a J.C. Penny. But that’s a post for another day. For this post, consider it a lesbian rant.

The thing about the gay bars and disco is that there are songs that become anthems and their makers become gay icons. Everybody has a different viewpoint — the songs that they see as anthems may be different than yours. One that stands out for me is Shame by Evelyn “Champagne” King. I don’t think that’s a universal song, though. I think most people will say something like, “Oh yeah, man, I remember her now!” But I do think that a song like I Will Survive by Gloria Gaynor is a universal anthem. Two others that fit here are We Are Family by Sister Sledge and Lady Marmalade by Labelle (yes, that would be Patti LaBelle; pictured here in this post btw).

Then, there are those songs that you wish you could eliminate from the replay loop in your brain. Every time I see National Lampoon’s Vegas Vacation, that little ditty called Born To Be Alive stays in my head for days and not in a pleasant way either. That’s the song that’s playing as they enter Vegas.  The artist was Patrick Hernandez. Patrick Hernandez? Who the fuck is Patrick Hernandez? Here’s another that fits here: Ring My Bell by Anita Ward. Anybody else remember these two songs and do you find them as annoying as I do?

Outside I wouldn’t put this stuff on my radio, but once I was inside a gay bar and after a few drinks (and does anyone remember Poppers?) my eyes would glaze over and it’d be the best freakin’ music in the world. That lasted for about eight hours. When you woke up in the morning, you felt about as guilty for enjoying that music as you did waking up to the person next to you. (You wondered what you were thinking on both counts.) At the risk of sounding like the Republicans currently in office, I pose this question: What if disco music was a secret government program designed to keep the gays under control?

You know, most of my friends consider me “gay from the womb.” I’d have to agree with them. The old saying ‘women need men like fish need bicycles’ would be accurate for me. I’ve got to be the oldest person in America who has never been with a man in the biblical sense, and I like it that way. Thank you. And here’s the answer to the next obvious question: No. I do not need to have been with a man in the biblical sense first to find out if I’m gay.

I do not want to give the impression that I don’t like men, however. There’s more to men than sex. I’ve always had a lot of male friends — in fact, more male friends than women over the years.

However, there were many tell-tale signs that I was a lesbian from a very young age. Oh, yes, I believe that these things can be deduced if you look for the right signs. Here were some of mine:

- I cannot remember how old I was, but I know my dad was still alive so I had to be younger than nine. I got a lifelike doll for Christmas. It was like the giant Barbies that were flooding the stores when my daughter, Thalia, was about five or six. I was one of the first kids to have it in my neighborhood. However, by the end of the day, the damned thing was buck naked and being shot off my rocking horse with a dart gun. A sure sign.

- Playing “doctor” is a normal thing, but I was playing doctor with all the little girls in the neighborhood. Another sure sign.

- The only guy I ever ‘dated’ (it was a dance, by the way) while in grammar school was a big fag, and I was comfortable with the fact that this particular relationship was going nowhere. I suspect the same was true for him.

- I did go to the high school prom…with a gay guy. It was a blast. We made our little appearance at the prom, then headed for a gay bar. I’m not sure how we even got into a gay bar, but I do know that my escort was older than us (I was only seventeen). I suspect he got us in. Can’t argue with that tell-tale sign, can you?

Of course, when I was very young I really didn’t know what to call it. I did, however, know that something was different about me. Oh, like, instead of coveting other girls’ guys, I was coveting the guys’ girls. See how that works? That’s different. And I ‘m not going to say that I never ‘worried’ about it. I did. It’s tough to be different, a fact not lost on my own daughter even today. While she’s not a lesbian that I know of (she may be someday, who knows?), she is also not anything like the other girls her age.

However, by the time I was onto my next educational adventure (an all-girls school) I was over all that worry. There’s not much you can do but go with the flow. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: It isn’t a lifestyle, people. It’s what it is.

I had almost forgotten this. However, this morning I was tripping through my photo folders and I came upon this gem of a photo. It’s actually a photo of my roommate, Steve, in the Boston Globe holding a sign reading, “Anita Hitler preaches hate no matter if you’re gay or straight!” It was the day after the Gay Pride Parade in Boston. I’ll be honest with you, I can’t remember the year. However, I remember thinking that I hoped my mother didn’t choose that particular Sunday to read the paper.

To this day, I’m still not sure if she knew I was gay. I mean, she had to have known. By the time she died, the last date I had (as far as she knew) was my senior prom. (He was gay too. That’s another wild story for another day.) She used to refer to me as a “career girl,” who didn’t have time for marriage. Well, she was right about that part anyway.

Of course, years earlier she went snooping around my room, looking in my drawers, stuff like that. Well, you know, if you go looking for stuff to make your hair fall out, you’ll find it. And she did. She found a couple of letters my best friend had written me. We’ll call her Linda. We had quite the thing going on, and it went on for a while. We were just in high school, and I was a couple of years ahead of her. We lived on the same street, which made it easy. Anyway, finding those letters freaked my mother out. I mean, big time. She lost her mind. One thing about Italian mothers, they love the guilt thing. It was the hand-wringing “Oh, my God, where did I go wrong?” Oh, yeah.

Unfortunately, I don’t do guilt. Not good for you. All I had to remember was that after a day or so, all I had to do was treat this like it was some kind of opportunistic infection. It was a mistake that won’t be repeated. She liked that. It was exactly what she wanted to hear. I was 37 when she died, and we never talked about the ‘gay’ thing again, even though it wasn’t going away and I did it plenty more over the years!

Anyway, on that day, I believed we started out on Boston Common after the March and made our way to the bars that evening…all evening. Ah, yes, Boston’s gay bars. There was nothing like them in those days and there’s absolutely nothing like them around today. Plenty of those stories to come.