I'm From Driftwood

by Michael Poole

I’ve always known that I was gay. Well before I had even heard the word, or knew its full implications. I never believed it to be wrong, how could love be so? But growing up in a small country town with a combination of conservative Catholic parents and religious schooling, I knew it was a difference I had to keep secret. Back then, there were no openly gay people or role models to be seen. I felt very alone. Sometimes I wanted to tell people close to me what was going on, but I remained absolutely terrified, fearful of being rejected and losing them. Worst of all, my greatest fear was in my parents finding out.

I was a shy kid, not naturally inclined or interested in sport. That was always going to be a problem at school. I was one of those kids who wanted to believe no one knew the truth, meanwhile I was pressed against the glass doors of my self-imposed closet like a big gay butterfly for all the world to see. Sensing that, they quickly closed in. Though I was generally a good student, my school years increasingly became something to be endured rather than enjoyed. Constant homophobic taunts rang in my ears. In the last few years of secondary school, the new AIDS epidemic hit the world. The initial highly homophobic public backlash that came with it only pushed me even further into that closet, and raised my fears. It was probably more a cry of help than any real serious attempt, but at twenty one I attempted suicide. An overdose of pills, washed down with scotch. I can remember being completely surprised at how many family and friends visited me in the hospital. I remember thinking they don’t understand me. I didn’t even feel that I understood myself. Unfortunately, it was beyond me at the time to give any real explanation for my actions, and so any chance to do so was lost.

Yet with alcohol, I was to discover that discomfort and dis-ease was seemingly dissolvable. The feelings of alienation and the pain of those old schoolyard taunts slipped away. I went from being a quiet and introverted kid to the raging life of the party. But that so called party was very short-lived. Within a few years I had gone from drinking to feel comfortable to drinking for oblivion. Drinking to socialize became drinking alone. Binge drinking became daily drinking. Initially a few close friends expressed their concerns, but in my arrogance and denial I would not listen. As far as I was concerned, booze was not the problem, it was the solution. And so I slipped into alcohol and later drug addiction. For a decade I was to gradually descend into Hell. A very black abyss.

I got my opportunity to move to Sydney when a friend of mine asked me to come down and stay with her. Towards the end of my addiction, she was a lone beacon of kindness at what was obviously a very painful time for me. I thought I was in love. I wanted to be in love. So what’s a closeted, gay, alcoholic madman to do? Marry her, of course. We married the following year. It seemed to an outsider looking in that I was getting my life back together. Could that be so wrong? A few years later our only child, a daughter, was born. She was then, and still is, the greatest joy in my life.

Eventually confronted with the truth, my marriage finally ended after twelve years. You would think the new-found freedom would be the perfect opportunity to come out, but it was not to be. For whilst I had personally come to terms with my sexuality over the years, that old fear of losing people through disclosure was still a big hurdle. Having found Buddhism a few years before, it was of all places at a two week Buddhist retreat that I finally decided to come out as gay. I was 37 years of age, and now over ten years clean and sober. In the weeks and months after leaving that retreat, I came out to various family, friends and colleagues. All those old fears proved unfounded, and people were overwhelmingly accepting and supportive. It felt like a huge weight was lifted off my shoulders, and the final piece of a very large puzzle clicked into place. I was joyous. For now.

My parents were to be the last people I came out to. Not because I was ashamed or afraid, but because I knew they would find it difficult. Though kind and loving, they were also extremely homophobic. For a time I simply wanted to spare them that pain. In the end, I decided that I had lived with the lie for long enough, and had to tell them. Any difficulty with that was ultimately their journey, not mine. And so a little over a year after first coming out, I wrote them a letter. I thought that best. I could say everything I wanted clearly thought out and articulated, without emotions on either side getting in the way. Their reaction more than lived up to my expectation. They disowned me, and wanted nothing to do with me any more. I gave them some space and time. Later, gently, I quietly tried to re-engage. Again and again, it was like hitting a brick wall. Eventually I gave up on them changing, the pain of which was overwhelming. It was like mourning their living death. A few years later, very bravely knowing exactly what would happen but acting anyway, my younger sister also decided to tell them she too was gay. More pain. Ignorance had now taken away both their children and grandchildren. My sister and I learned to move on. To this day my parents have not. It’s now been over 8 years.

It was the night of the gay and lesbian Mardi Gras in Sydney. Hundreds of thousands of people lined the streets. I was waiting to march in the parade for the first time. My excitement was building, the atmosphere electric. As I finally strode down Oxford Street I saw the countless smiling, cheering and all so accepting faces. The gay music anthems were pumping out loud from the float in front, and I was swept up in flamboyant joyfulness of it all. But that was not the best thing. Not by far. For my now teenage daughter was marching right by my side. Always accepting of her father, she wanted to share this moment with me as we marched with PFLAG. All the energy and emotion created by the crowd and parade could not match that simple act. Tears streamed down my face. Tears of joy.

I am writing this now sitting in my inner-city studio apartment. Forty-seven years young. I love my gay friendly neighbourhood, and I love this city – I’ve been here 25 years now. My 33-year-old Indonesian born boyfriend of five years and I live with a gay feline diva we call Oscar. My now 23-year-old daughter, now jokingly referred to as the fag hag, comes over every second weekend. Fourteen years of Buddhist practise has grounded me, over 20 years of being sober and clean has healed me of many demons.

The 17th January, 2013, will be the 10th anniversary of my coming out. I first wrote my story for I’m From Driftwood back in 2009, but as is often the case with life, much has happened since then. I therefore thought the opportunity of my anniversary was as good a reason as any to update it. I have lived a life of both great pain and great joy, and the simple act of coming out has not ultimately changed that. The fact is that since 2006, I have battled with major depression. It was as a result of effectively ‘losing’ both my parents, combined with a number of other major losses in my life. It got so bad that I self-admitted myself to a psychiatric hospital, twice. I never thought I could be back in such a bad state, but I was. But this time, unlike the first, I dealt with it much more head on. Aside from actively seeking medical help, I also engaged in ongoing therapy and have been put on anti-depressant medication.

Then, just as I was starting to get my life back on track, I first developed and then was finally diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2010. It’s left me with a multitude of ongoing health problems, often leaving me virtually housebound for sometimes weeks at a time. First the depression, and then CFS, have left me both unable to work and very socially isolated. I’ve come to appreciate the smallest of things and, much like my life in early recovery from addiction, I’m again finding myself simply taking things one day at a time. Life may again be a constant challenge, but I make of it as best I can.

It Gets Better promises Dan Savage in his well known GLBT project. Some might say that my life now has clearly taken a turn for the worse; but that’s not entirely true. Looking back I would still not change anything about my decision to come out, not even in the telling of my parents. I reflect on all those years living the lie, and trying to drown the truth away in a sea of booze and alcohol. Being gay is simply a part of me, as it has always been. But, despite other life challenges, I can now stand proud of that fact. That kid with feelings of difference and alienation is long gone. The truth has indeed set me free. You see, despite it all I am completely comfortable in my own skin. And really, that’s all I ever truly wanted. Life may have again gotten difficult, but inside, it is indeed better. Much better.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Rainbow Kansas

Bellaire is a township inside the city limits of Houston. It is white, middle class; approximately 25 miles from Montrose, the center of the Houston gay community. I know that my mother lived in Montrose when she first graduated college, before marrying my father and moving to Bellaire. In the late 1940’s Montrose was a working class neighborhood right next to wealthy River Oaks. My mother took me to St. Luke’s Methodist Church which she joined back then until she and my stepfather got married at Bellaire Methodist.

I’m pretty sure I fell in love with a girl the first time when I was 8 years old. I didn’t know it was same-sex attraction. I thought we were just friends. She was 13, an older girl in a different cabin. The other 13-year-olds called me “queer” but I didn’t know what that meant. The summer I was thirteen, everyone called me “Baby Butch” all summer. I didn’t know what that meant either; I did know that I got a lot of attention! It was funny, friendly attention and very different from the kind of attention at home. That summer I knew for sure I had a crush on a counselor, another older girl. She didn’t have a clue, but we wrote all during the school year. Long letters filled with nothing important. It was the contact, not the content, that mattered.

I met the older girl counselor many years later. She didn’t remember a thing. And she was still in the closet after all those years.

It becomes a habit, being in the closet. I learned to lie about everything; but most importantly I lied about the most intimate parts of myself, the deepest part of myself was hidden from view. Alcohol helped some; but not enough.

When I got sober in Austin, Texas, in 1985, I did so within a circle of al-anons, codependents, sexual abuse survivors, addicts, alcoholics and “children of” all of the above. Two meetings on Sunday, one on Saturday, and a scattering of straight meetings during the week were my sobriety for four years. In those days there were 250 meetings a week in Austin. It was a pretty amazing time for me and a lot of women finding ways to deal with their families of origin and their own addictions.

I met a lot more women like me in Austin and San Antonio than I’ve ever met since: dual addicted to alcohol & drama and serial monogamy. My best friend at the time called it cereal monogamy; the Kellogg’s sex-pack. She was very funny! It wasn’t funny, however, when ten years later she had a triple bypass. It also wasn’t funny when five years later she had started drinking and smoking again and passed away. I miss her every day.

After many years of celibacy I gave up. And just like “they” tell you, someone came along. However, she was a nightmare. Sorry. She lasted about six months and was gone. However, bless her heart, she came into my life so that I could have cataract surgery in both eyes. Now I have 20/20 far vision, and I can see at night again.

Now you’re starting to worry about me. Don’t. The next thing that happened is that I met my current partner. She was married of course. I didn’t know we would fall in love or that she would divorce her husband. I was in a pickle all right. Eventually it all worked itself out, and she moved in with me. We’ve been together 9 years.

Our Holy Union in 2003 was a spectacle. We choreographed a wedding procession that no one present that day will soon forget. Our pastor offered Holy Communion to all present. There was a healing blessing where everyone in the church stood and laid hands on us in a trail of people down the middle aisle. We sang “Amazing Grace” for our witnesses. My partner’s daughter and friends organized the reception. I had a favorite cousin and a lifelong friend stand up for me, although my mother declined to attend. It took about a year until my partner’s mother accepted our union. Now she is a wonderful ally for our sacred marriage.

We travel and walk our dogs, swim and read, dream and envision a life for many years together. We like our life.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Roberta Zenker

On Saturday I was read yet again, this time by a car load of teenagers who hooted and jeered at me as they drove past. I began to think that if I could not make it in the world as a woman that I could not make it all, for I knew that my life as a man was over. As I obsessed over that thought it became dark indeed inside my head. I began to feel the insanity that drives us to drink, or worse. As another friend would say, “in the soundtrack of my life,” Emmy Lou Harris would be singing in the background: Oh the dragons are ‘gonna fly tonight, circling low and in sight tonight, another round in a losing fight all along the Great Divide tonight.  When we are like this, and until we accept that drinking and dying are not options, it would be better for us to drink. I white knuckled it as I began to contemplate the “worse” option with all the attendant hopelessness and desperation of a year earlier, in the box, dispirited and demoralized.

I put myself in a dangerous position, an exemplary manifestation of all the reasons they tell us not to make life changes in our first year of sobriety. As my friend from law school told me when I came out to him: “You are fucking nuts right now.” I was very much, as they say, “bat shit crazy.” I was not drinking, but I had none of the tools of sobriety to help me cope with all the loss and changes in my life. I was desperate and devastated with almost nowhere to turn, at least that I was willing to risk. I bitterly sobbed with the submarine hatches wide open as I sank in an ocean of emotion. It did not occur to me to pick up the phone and call another alcoholic as they suggested. It amazes me that I might have taken my own life rather than risk revealing myself to another person. It defies belief that a person would forfeit life for pride. I turned to Mother Mary, clinging to my grandfather’s rosary beads.

Grandpa had lived through much of the advance and technological boom of the twentieth century. He watched the automobile become a household necessity, watched the world light up with electricity, and saw radio and television as they first broadcast to the world. He saw it all come into being, including the “giant step for mankind.” His life encompassed world wars and military engagements around the globe, not to mention the rapid acceleration of social experimentation and change, including the first successful sex reassignment surgery patient, Christine Jorgenson in 1956, the year before I was born.

After his passing my mother sent a few of his things including a monogrammed key chain with the letter “R” for Ralph, his first name and my middle name, and a decade of the Rosary on a key chain. The “Rosary” is a type of prayer and meditation that Catholics of a bygone era fervently prayed. It involved devotion to the Triune God and Mary. To keep their place in a string of Our Fathers, Hail Mary’s and Glory Bes, Catholics would count each prayer in turn on a string of beads with a crucifix that went by the same nomenclature, the Rosary. A great many Catholics would be surprised to learn that one of their most venerated traditions was borrowed from the Hindu and Buddhists tradition of japa malas beads brought back to Europe during the Crusades.  A decade was an abbreviated version that involved only ten beads for Catholics on the go.

After those two incidents of getting read and laughed at, in my despair I grabbed Pappy’s beads. I prayed Hail Mary’s as I sobbed holding the ring of the Rosary around my index finger in a clenched fist. I was afraid that I might take my own life, and asked God to save me from myself. When I awoke the next morning I did not hear music, but I was still clutching the Rosary. I had found my porch to safely whether the storm of self pity, doubt and fear. I had made it through the night, and I was not drunk or dead. The rest is gratis. As I ventured out that morning after a long bath and prayer to the Mother of All Children, it was with a certain lightness and gratitude. I went to Starbucks. I deserved it.

I took my latte to a nearby park, known as the Woman’s Park. I did not know its history, but it seemed like the place for me to be. It was Sunday morning. I wore a skirt, heels, nylons, and a dress blouse. I needed to feel pretty and feminine. As I sat at a cement picnic table I watched a woman walking down the sidewalk toward me. She was a local street character whom I had seen before. Her hair was graying, short with no particular style. Her teeth were crooked, and her face blemished and red. She had white whiskers, wore no makeup, and one eye drooped. She was slightly overweight which surprised me inasmuch as I always saw her walking. She did not appear developmentally disabled as from birth, and I wondered what calamity left her in such a state.

To my surprise she walked right up to my table and in a voice as soft as angel feathers asked if she could talk with me. I told her yes and she sat down across from me. She told me that I was beautiful and looked like a model. I could have kissed her and almost started crying all over again. It was a good thing that I did not kiss her, though, as people might have mistaken her joking remarks about street corner work as something other than humor. As she told me of the accident and resulting brain injury that stole her youthful beauty and promise, I knew that I would make it in the world as a woman, and that real beauty lies within. She told me that life is beautiful and short. She made me realize that this was my second chance and that I must get up and grab it every day. It reminds me now of an Afghanistan war veteran I heard on the radio a few years after her legs were blown off as she piloted a helicopter.  She wants to be worthy of the second chance at life given to her. God always answers prayer. Sometimes the answer is yes, or, “you’ll be okay. Just trust me.”