I Love Rainbows
Always have. One of my favorite stuffed animals as a kid was Puppy Brite. It was a character from the children’s show, Rainbow Brite. This is what it looks like:
Look at that cute face, floppy ears, and beautiful colorings. I have zero memories of actually watching Rainbow Brite, but that doesn’t surprise me. I was probably more interested in the pretty colors than the show itself. What can I say? I love rainbows.
It wasn’t until high school, maybe junior high, that my love of rainbows started to become a problem. Not for me, mind you, but for society in general. Apparently, there was a group of people who had chosen the rainbow as their symbol, their flag, their way to identify each other. Rainbows were no longer something pretty. THEY WERE GAY.
It started in 1978 when Gilbert Baker designed the first one. It wasn’t random. Each color represented something, “hot pink for sex, red for life, orange for healing, yellow for sunlight, green for nature, turquoise for art, indigo for harmony, and violet for spirit”. The flag quickly spread throughout the gay community, being carried at marches, protests, and put in front of businesses as a way of letting the public know that business was gay-friendly.
Now, if you’re younger than me, the concept of a place secretly identifying as “gay-friendly” might seem crazy. In some very conservative (funny how we always say conservative when we really mean bigoted) areas, I’m sure gay people still need to know which place is OK to patronize. But back in the day, little rainbow stickers started popping up on storefront windows. This thrilled me because I loved rainbows. More rainbows! As a kid, I didn’t understand what it was all about and my parents, openminded as they are, probably couldn’t explain it 100%. Homosexuality wasn’t mainstream. It was still very much underground in and in closets. It was seen as a fringe thing, a weird thing, something not quite wrong but also not right. They didn’t call them “queers” because LGBT people perceived as “normal”.
At a young age, no matter how progressive your home life is or how much diversity there is in your family, American children are indoctrinated into believing that homosexuality is wrong. It’s better now. I didn’t see a gay person on TV until Ellen. And boy did that cause some controversy! I’m not a huge fan of Ellen now, she seems like another Hollywood nightmare. Which is kind of nice, in a way, that a gay person can now be as shitty as a straight person and their sexuality isn’t the reason for the hate they get. In any event, she was called all manner of stuff, like Ellen DeGenerate. HAHAHAHA get it? Because it sounds like her name and also demeans her humanity. High comedy. It was rough. And children everywhere were being taught how to react to gay people. The best-case was humor. The worst-case was bigotry.
Why on earth would anyone have a problem with this?
My first real experience with gay culture came in the form of the Boston AIDS March. And holy shit, guys, was that a GAY day. Pride was not something I had ever really been exposed to. I’m trying to think if my parents had any openly gay friends and I am struggling to come up with one. I don’t think it was because they were bigoted. I can say with certainty that my mother wasn’t. Our whole family participated in the AIDS walk for several years. I think the motivation behind it had to do with my parents’ friends, unnamed for privacy reasons. The husband in the couple was bisexual and HIV positive. He has since passed away and the world is, without a doubt, less bright.
Upon reflection, he was probably my first exposure what could be called “gay” culture. He was a fancy man, always well-groomed and in shape. His taste was impeccable and he definitely liked the finer things. If he could have lived anywhere, it would have been at Rosecliff, a beautiful mansion in Newport, RI.
He kept his home very clean and hated whenever I would get fingerprints on the walls, which, I’m not sure how it happened but it did. There were several rooms in the house that seemed to be out of another era. White marble statues adorned their dining room and the ceiling in the sitting room was painted in a Renaissance style. Like I said: fancy. But it wasn’t all flowers and fluff. He loved cars too and for most of my life was restoring a 70’s Plymouth Roadrunner. When it came time to go to prom, I borrowed his Mustang to roll up in style. He was a great man, a good father, and a wonderful friend to spend time with. My parents still mourn him. I think most people who knew him do. I do. I would love to talk to him about the state of things today.
The biggest lesson I learned from him was that a man could be anything they wanted. They could be fancy and neat but also love the roar of a muscle car’s engine. There was always something different about him, something I identified with. Looking back, I can see that was his unique blend of femininity and masculinity that made him stand out. Most of the other friends my folks had were typical. The men were men and the ladies were ladies. But this guy, he was a bit of both. I loved going to his house, mostly because he had Van Halen albums on CD (kind of a new thing at the time) but also because there was a comforting acceptance there. In a roundabout way, he inspired me to embrace all sides of my personality, even the ones that society told me to be ashamed of.
By the time I got to high school, homosexuality was at times a joke and other times a serious thing. As I’ve said before, it was not unusual for my friends and me to call each other “gay” or “fags”. But in my heart, I don’t really recall any animous for gay people. There were plenty of other people to do that. I remember a particularly violent episode were members of the hockey team beat up another student for wearing a pink dress to school. There was an afterschool GSA club but they were really powerless to do anything. The school’s attitude towards the beating was that it wasn’t good but the kid shouldn’t have worn a dress on an important day (hockey day or something) if he didn’t want to get his ass kicked. I mean, what were they supposed to do? Society was “fixing” this confused teen and hopefully, he learned his lesson. As I said, it was a different era. Bullies were not a bad thing. If anything, they were encouraged to be the protectors of the culture, to get the wayward sheep back in line.
My first personal experience with homosexuality began as it does for most kids: experimentation. After we began the throws of puberty, my friends and I were all suddenly curious about sex. OK, mostly it was our dicks. These formerly utilitarian pieces of flesh now had a personality of their own. They would grow and shrink depending on the situation. They grew in a little hair. And with the slightest touch, they would rush with blood, causing a temporary blackout in the more evolved parts of our brains. We wanted to see what they could do.
I won’t get into too much detail but I’ll say this much. The “experimentation” happened many times, over the course of a long period. I wouldn’t say any of it was “romantic” as we both considered ourselves straight. It was more… you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. It always happened at sleepovers and wasn’t something we really broadcasted to our friends. I think we thought of it as practice of sorts. I’m not sure exactly when it stopped but I’m thinking it was around the time we got girlfriends and didn’t need to “help” each other out anymore.
In high school, in spite of having a girlfriend the entire time, I did have a few crushes on my male classmates. There was one guy, BH we’ll call him, who I crushed hard on. He wasn’t that attractive but he was such a nice and gentle man. To be clear, he was not gay and did not know how I felt. He was older than me by a few years and acted as a mentor of sorts for me when I joined the high school chorus. I don’t know if I had sexual feelings for him, per se, but there was an attraction for sure.
Another guy in the chorus caught my eye later on. His name was JWW and he was flamboyantly sexual. He loved to play with social norms. There were always rumors that he was gay but he got quite a bit of pussy for a gay dude. Another lesson learned: women tend to like men who aren’t uptight bigots. When our chorus sang at Disney World, JWW spent the day wandering the parks in a dress he borrowed from a friend. He aggressively defended himself against people who mocked him. He was so brave. We smoked cigarettes together in an alley in MGM Studios. He was like nothing I had ever seen before. His confidence and comfort in his sexuality were inspiring. I’d been taught that men were one thing and here was this beautiful weirdo breaking all the rules. It appealed to the rebel in me.
At our final music department banquet together, the end of year celebration that all the kids and parents attended to get awards and stuff, we caused quite a stir. It was a tradition that all the kids would form a circle during a slow song and the “class couples” would slow dance one at a time in the center. It was our way of sending the graduating couples off. JWW wasn’t dating anyone but he wanted to dance in the circle. We grabbed hands and walked onto the dance floor. With his hands wrapped around my waist and mine over his shoulders, we rocked back and forth, much to the delight of our classmates. I remember looking into his eyes and seeing his big smile. At the end of our time in the circle, I think we kissed. Some of the attendees saw it for what it was, two close friends having a bit of fun while riling up the squares. It was fun and romantic and we both felt great about it. That is until the parents had their say.
Mine were not happy. I remember them questioning me directly on the ride home if I were gay. Otherwise, what was that? Didn’t I have a girlfriend? Why am I doing this? There was confusion, embarrassment, and anger. My girlfriend’s parents were similarly upset, wondering just what the hell I was doing out there with a boy during this special tradition. Technically, I couldn’t have danced with her in the circle since we were both underclassmen. What I thought had been a fun, nice gesture of support became something ugly. Bigotry takes many forms.
In the context of today, our dance might be seen as mocking or demeaning. After all, we weren’t gay men, we weren’t a couple, we didn’t identify as anything other than straight. I’m sure there may have been some actual gay men and women there who didn’t find it amusing, or even raged with jealousy that they couldn’t be open. It was our perceived straightness that allowed us to be gay.
I was raised thinking that there were only two options: gay or straight. Bisexuality was a thing, but I think most people thought of them as super horny people who just wanted to bang everything. Sexuality is a complex spectrum that is influenced and informed by a number of different variables. I don’t know where, exactly, I fall on the spectrum. My instincts are generally straight. I’m in a heterosexual relationship and have been for a long time. But I can also appreciate the beauty of a man.
So where does this leave me with my love of rainbows? I generally try to avoid them these days but not because I’m worried about people thinking I’m gay and judging me. Hell no. I am frequently confused for a gay man and I always take it as a compliment. No, I avoid rainbows for kind of the opposite reason. I respect and appreciate the value that the rainbow flag has for the LGBT community. I would never want people to think I am stealing their symbol or misusing it. Is it OK for straight people to fly the flag? To wear rainbow clothing? To have shirts with rainbows on them to support the movement? I don’t know how it would be interpreted and to ensure that I don’t offend anyone, I keep my rainbow stuff to a minimum. But really, I would dress up like a rainbow every day if I could. It’s beautiful.
Love is love is love is love. Open your hearts and your minds will follow.