I Was a Teenaged Homophobe!
When I was six, I went with my parents to a nearby park in the San Fernando Valley to celebrate the 4th of July. There was something unpleasant in the air, a feeling of tension not like that which commonly prevailed in our little tract house on Keswick Avenue. (Papa was never more than a few minutes from getting a ferocious browbeating from Mama.) I somehow divined that a pair of perfectly ordinary-looking male grownups were the source of the tension. I heard someone say the word “queers”, and felt the tension rise geometrically in its wake. I had no idea what the word meant. It wasn’t dark yet, which meant that the fireworks wouldn’t start terrifying every dog in the vicinity for at least an hour, but the two men departed, and suddenly the atmosphere was free of menace.
I didn’t give “queers” much thought until seventh grade, when, as a member of Coach John Heydenreich’s physical education class at Orville Wright Junior High School, I learned that dying your hair blonde, as the school’s ultra-elite — the surfers — were doing was an unmistakable sign of sexual perversity. He also cautioned us against “spotting” each other at gymnasia. It all starts with helping your buddy do bench presses. Next thing you know…well, it was too awful to say aloud.
In high school, a male classmate advised me not to cross my legs when seated. Only females and…faggots crossed their legs. A bullet just barely dodged! (I blamed Ringo and John for leading me down the primrose path to…faggotry!)
In college, I was very iffy about LSD because the guy who managed the band I was in had realized he was himself in love with another member of the band under the drug’s influence. I saw The Boys in the Band, which made clear that to be homosexual was to condemn oneself to a life of loneliness and misery. My buddy Ward had two male roommates, one of whom had a boyfriend who called himself Fifi, dressed flamboyantly, loved to cook, and was given to bouts of loud sobbing. The sobbing seemed to confirm the movie’s message.
A few years earlier, a high school classmate had pointed out that the blue velour turtlenecks that were my band’s uniform made us look…queer. I advised him that we’d actually chosen them because we hoped they might attract girlies.
I’m a pretty good mimic, and worked up a very credible impression of Ward’s roommate’s boyfriend’s very sibilant speech, with which I amused my new girlfriend and new best friend when the three of us dined together.
I could hardly have felt more ashamed when I found out some months later that my new best friend was gay, and pretty much repudiated homophobia on the spot.
Throughout the ‘70s, not a single fellow male indicated any carnal interest in me. I was simultaneously relieved —I had enough to worry about with women I didn’t find attractive, but didn’t want to hurt, offering themselves — and a little fretful. Everyone wants to be found attractive.
I had a bit of a moment in a hotel bar one night in 1978, when I was in London with a bunch of Aussies shooting the pilot of a rock show that was never aired. I thought I might have fallen in love with one of the cameramen, as I’d earlier thought I might be in love with Pete Townshend and Ray Davies. In every case, the feeling was fleeting. Thank you, Jesus!
After my first marriage collapsed, the dear friend who’d invited me to stay with him and his wife while I found somewhere to move subtly but unmistakably suggested we take our friendship in a new direction. I gently declined. To not decline, I thought, might wreck our friendship. It didn’t survive for long anyway.
As a repudiator of homophobia, I do enjoy discomfiting the sort of guy who feels compelled to maintain that he would never, under any circumstances, whatever, consider interacting erotically with another man. I asked one of the early members of my first UK band, driving to rehearsal one morning, whom he would be more likely interact with carnally if he, Cliff Richard at the time of his breakthrough, and British politician Anne Widdecombe were shipwrecked together. The speed with which he blurted, “Ann Widdecombe!” made me laugh.
Ah, some of the nonsense we heard way back then! Of course, we hear even worse today. A friend told me that he had been admonished to avoid the Covid vaccine -- NOT because his skin would turn magnetic or because he'd hear a voice telling him Bill Gates was God, but because the "jab" would induce a predilection for pre-pubescent boys! Go figure...
I grew up in a project in NE Phillie, this was the 40's and 50's, we never heard about queers or gays. There was a good looking blond kid that live on the other side of the creek,in a wealthier neighborhood, he was queer, so it was said, but no body messed with him he was an expert in judo, that was the thing at the time, no one heard of karati or tae kwan do,,.