FAG

Someone thought so...

I attended Del Oro High School from 1976-80 in Loomis, California, in the Sierra Foothills, that’s blood-red Placer County, about 45 minutes northeast of Sacramento.

High school was difficult for me. Everyday. It wasn’t about learning, it was about survival.

I was a swimmer. I didn’t participate in team sports. I couldn’t run, catch, throw and was not competitive. I stayed away from team sports since I had been embarrassed on the 6th grade flag football field for missing a pass and being teased by the self-proclaimed “king of the playground,” Scott Flanagan. (Why do we remember these names?) I was only 10, but it was one of the first but many memories that changed who I was, altering my life forever.

I was into music. Karen Carpenter was the first vocalist whose voice I heard and she soothed my young ears.

It was 1968, I was 6. I was taken by her angelic voice. From that point, I was interested in vocalists, melodies and lyrics. Not heavy metal or acid rock. Ever. My musical tastes eventually put me at odds with my siblings, who relentlessly teased me about my music choices. I had to resort to listening in private, alone, hiding my truth, my joy, my love for music.

I became a vocalist; a member of the school choirs. I loved music, I loved to sing. It was my escape from my life as an insecure, frightened and lonely kid. It probably was why I was so alone. I was told by my music teacher, Anne Day, a lifelong mentor and ally, that I was very good. I convinced my parents to let me take private voice lessons. I practiced a lot, and performed in school concerts. I even auditioned to be cast member of “Marriott’s Great America,” our regional theme park and with the well known “Up with People!” Neither happened. I guess I wasn’t THAT good.

But in my junior year of high school, in 1978, I got the courage to take part in our school’s talent show. Singing. In front of the entire student body and visitors.

My neighbor, Katie, agreed to be my accompanist on the piano. I chose to perform Barbra Streisand’s, “Songbird.” I remember practicing for hours at Katie’s upright piano across the street.

And, I did it. I performed. It was OK, I guess. I don’t really remember.

Fast forward, this past March 1… My brother was hosting a memorial for my dad would had recently passed, and my older sister, who had died about a year before.

I wasn’t in attendance, but one of my Texas first-cousins (who also happens to be gay, and also lives in Mexico), was there. [More on the revelations of his visit later]. But in keeping with the music theme: during a conversation about my “gayness,” my brother acknowledged my early creative side, and that same talent show in high school. I guess he was there. I don’t remember.

According to our cousin, my brother told him that at that show, after the last note was played; after I finished singing that last note, and before anyone clapped (you know you have to do that at talent shows regardless of the talent of the performers), someone in the audience yelled out:

“FAG!”

You know, I didn’t hear the slur. But apparently my brother did. He never said a word about it to me. I was probably dazed and in shock that I had actually finished my song without screwing up, and didn’t hear the applause either, if there was any.

Today, 48 years later, I am reminded why I didn’t come out in high school, or college, or before I got married, or before I became a father. It was that word, “fag,” and potentially worse, that kept me quiet for over 60 years.

And, you know, even at this moment, as I type these words, on a bus in Mexico, from Léon to San Miguel de Allende, I am transported back to that multipurpose room, that makeshift theater where that word was shouted at me, and I’m still shaken, still wondering what all those people (most of whom are probably dead), thought of me. No one defended me. No one comforted me. If I had heard it, there was no one to turn to.

It’s probably best that I didn’t hear it, but maybe if I had, I would have said “yes, yes I am.” And my life would have been a whole lot different. Not better. Different.

And today, I can admit that, yes, I am a fag.