Coming Out or Going In?
Struggling to Relate to Gay Chicago
When I lived in Chicago, not only was I friends with a bunch of gay people, but I lived with them. In fact, I’m pretty sure that I was the only straight guy living in this one place I rented for a summer. An old mansion in Wrigleyville called the Wilton Manor, it was owned and leased out by a pair of identical twin brothers, who were also, allegedly, lovers. This I’d heard from the building’s custodian, also a homosexual. For whatever reason, he had decided that I was a trustworthy confidant, and thus let loose with all sorts of gossip about the place. He also shared quite a bit about himself, including how he was in love with some teenage male prostitute, who may or may not have had AIDS. The kid was a runaway, apparently, and this pervert was doing all he could to prevent him from heading back home, including making promises that he had no intention of keeping.
Prior to my stay at the Manor, I worked as a shipping clerk for a Chicago-based greeting card company that was owned and managed by a deaf middle-aged gay man, who later confided to me that I was only hired because he and his assistant, also gay, thought I was queer as well. Thom, the assistant, and I got to be friendly, and I probably learned more about growing up gay from him than anyone else. He “blamed” his overbearing mother for his sexual deviance, not genetics.
Aside from the occasional in-house photo shoot, which featured the use of gorgeous models, there was little to recommend about the job. It was even degrading at times: One of my tasks was to glue fake boogers onto the inside of cards; condoms, too. Oh, I did get a kick out of Thom not answering business calls because he was “too busy,” and the owner not realizing the phone was even ringing because he was deaf. Eventually that was addressed by the installation of a light that flashed every time the phone rang. Who knows how much business was lost prior because Thom couldn’t be bothered!
I also knew a “revolutionary” gay socialist through my employment as the manager of a radical bookstore in Chicago. Jeff was a bona fide wacko. He volunteered to work shifts at the store, which all members of the collective were required to do; but, after being given the heave-ho by his wealthy “bourgeois” parents, he also ended up surreptitiously squatting in the back storage room for weeks, something I had only discovered by pure happenstance. One Sunday morning I found him sleeping on the couch, along with some letters he’d left laying around that were addressed to his parents. Instead of words of contrition, I only read the hyperbole of denunciation, calling them out for being “petty bourgeois” agents of capitalism and so on. Just totally out of left field stuff. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
The “weird” thing about all of these gay guys, though: Not one of them would have ever supported gay marriage. Not one. Because for them, even the business owner, there was something counter-cultural in their lifestyle that they valued. They had no time for the “inanities” of what Jeff would have referred to as “bourgeois” family life; in fact, not one of them ever mentioned wanting kids. There were too many “breeders” already doing the world harm via overpopulation — they wanted nothing to do with them. Plus, children were an unnecessary burden on the “exciting” and “interesting” lives they were already living.
I’ll bet, too, that many of them would have despised the “mainstreaming” narrative at work in popular culture, where television and movies attempt to “normalize” their way of life. It was the edginess of the lifestyle that sustained their interest — beyond the taboo of same-sex sexual attraction. They desired the gay ghettos of big cities. The gay-only bars. The bath houses. And of course, shops and stores that catered to their particular interests.
“Coming out” was never meant as an invitation for straights, male or female, to come in.
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