I have looked for heroes who reflected a person like myself since I first understood that I was tangibly different from my peers. I guess that was when I was four or five years old when I preferred dancing in front of the stereo to Sammy Davis Jr's "Candy Man" over being drug out to mercilessly be "taught" how to play baseball. Those lessons in America's pastime lead to my front teeth being crushed by a baseball thrown by my father. At the moment that it happened, and even to some degree today, I suspected my father did it on purpose because I found his baseball lessons tortuously boring.
Perhaps this is a lesson in a gay boy's life that is too cliche. I preferred the art of dance to the rugged sport of baseball. Gay. I was bad at sports. Couldn't catch the ball, and it wound up in my mouth having crushed my lips and my teeth. Gay. Worst yet, I had a deeply vain moment and a momma's boy moment rolled into one, I was concerned about having gone from "momma's beautiful boy" to an ugly boy with broken front teeth and a fat lip. That concern? Gay!
It wasn't until a few years later with my older brother Jay telling gay jokes that I even learned what gay was. I asked my brother what did he mean by "gay"? When he explained that a boy was gay when he fell in love with boys instead of girls, I came out of the closet at the age of eight by pure stupidity. How? By saying that I thought that that was cool, and by telling myself on the inside that my whole life until then suddenly made sense, and by recognizing myself as a gay person. I wasn't disturbed at all by this revelation, but I quickly found out that I was supposed to be very disturbed by this whole gay thing, and my brother Jay pretty much told me so. That's when I decided that, indeed, I was disturbed by this whole gay thing.
Now, let me digress from my story for a second and let you know that, today, my brother Jay wholeheartedly supports me, and isn't even slightly homophobic.
Well, back to the story. Despite my obliged scurrying into the closet, I still understood myself as a gay person from that moment on. But that identification did eventually become authentically disturbing for me. I never knew anyone who was gay. There's a loneliness to growing up gay. When you KNOW you are gay, and you don't know anyone else who is, you begin to feel alienated from your own family who are all heterosexual, from your peers in school who all seem to be heterosexual, from your community for the same reason, and really, from everyone else on the planet. When you are the only one of your kind that you know, you don't feel special and unique, you feel, instead, painfully alone.
It's that feeling as a child that made the absence of out gay people in the media, politics, show business, the arts, sports, or music -- that is, to never see yourself represented reaffirms your freakiness, that fact that you are odd, and different, and particularly unusual. It reinforces that sense of loneliness: who else out there could be like me?
Over my life various important people have come out. And each one of them gave me a thrill and a sense of pride. But in my adulthood, years after I found gay bars, and gayborhoods, and met other gay people, and realized that I was no longer alone, I still found myself yearning to find out LGBT people who were, for lack of a better word, important. Not only that, but I wanted to see gay people succeed on my watch. I wanted it to be true that whatever a heterosexual person could do, a gay person could do, and do it every bit as well.
It's something about our collective humanity here. If gay people are collectively fully and equally human they must run the gamut of human activity. That must mean that gay people, collectively, are all that heterosexual people are. On the human spectrum of behavior we must be among not only the very good and righteous of people, but also among the wicked, and selfish. We must not only be among the ordinary men and women, we must also be among the famous and the important humans, and we must be able to become famous in the same way as heterosexuals do. That must mean that we climb our ladders to fame and riches and success as out gay people.
What? Out gay people? How is being out the same thing as straight people who climb ladders to fame and riches and success? Straight people never come out!
I expect that some people will tell me that because I have heard, so often in my life, that complaint from the straight and narrow "why do gay people always feel the need to 'come out'? Straight people never come out!"
"I don't care if you are gay but why do you have to tell everybody, no one wants to know what you do in your bedroom? Keep your sexuality to yourself"
Those complaints about gay people coming out, I suspect are not without ulterior motive, after all, if gay people didn't come out because it so immodest to do so, then we could not simultaneously fight for equal rights. But even more than that, such complaints come either from a place of severe lack of self-awareness on the part of heterosexuals who say such things, or a place a rank hypocrisy.
There is a distinction between sexuality -- that thing we do in the privacy of our darkened bedrooms -- and sexual orientation, the very public, social and legal status that has driven a wedge of inequality between LGBT people and straight people. Sexual orientation is a PUBLIC matter, and is on display in public.
Dating, before, during, and after the date, is, for example, a very public and social thing, and it is function of sexual orientation. The same is true for rituals like the high school prom, and wedding engagements with the very public indicator of such engagement as an engagement ring, and the weddings themselves are also function and indicator of sexual orientation. And those marriages: yeh, they are legal matters and thus a public records. These are all functions and indicators of sexual orientation. Sexual orientation, thus, is NOT a private matter. It never has been.
So to the point: for gay people to fully take part in the whole range of human activity, we must be able to do so while out of the closet, and with no hindrance whatsoever because we are out. So, let me get back to the title of this diary.
Today, Billboard magazine will do what it does every Wednesday. It will publish its Billboard 200 album chart. And as often happens someone who has never topped its chart will be there. But there is something different this time. In the context of this post, in the context of expanding the range of human activity and achievement that out gay people can fully take part, there is history being made. Today for the first time in US music history, an out LGBT artist will top Billboard's album chart. That artist is Adam Lambert, the album is Trespassing, and, may I add, an outstanding pop album that may be one of the best pop albums in the last ten years or so.
While some may want to diminish this moment by noting that LGBT artist have most certainly topped the Billboard album chart before, it is also true that none have been publicly LGBT while sitting atop Billboard's perch. It was, until now, an unspoken rule that to occupy this spot, gay artists had to hide their sexual orientation, even outright deceive the public about it if necessary. This, therefore, is most definitely a unique moment in US music history. Others may want to diminish the moment by pointing out that this was a slow week in sales, but no out artist has ever topped the charts even on slow sales weeks.
This is a cultural milestone to be sure. Is it a big deal? To me, and the life I lived, and the life I know gay kids are living at this moment, to the dreams those gay kids have, to be able to see this moment in our cultural history, that they can exercise the full range of human activity while being just as public about their sexual orientation as straight people are, this milestone gives them hope.
Congratulations to Adam Lambert.
9:11 AM PT: Thanks to Community Spotlight for the re-publish.
3:28 PM PT: Thanks to LGBT Kos Community, and milkmen and Women for the re-publish.