They Call It Puppy Love

         

“FAGGOT!”

“WHAT?”

“FAGGOT!” Bobby Barkley yelled, while sitting on the summer grass, legs spread wide with a young beagle licking his exposed pecker.  I was eleven.  “What?” I asked. As if I needed him to clarify his statement.

 “You’re a faggot ‘cause you like Dolly Parton,” he matter-of-factly replied. 

I paused and took stock of the situation.  A boy who I played “doctor” with on a regular basis and who was now seated before me with his little erect penis inserted in his pet’s mouth was calling me a faggot.  He was calling me a faggot because I listened to Dolly Parton.  I couldn’t help it if I identified with her music.  I had a coat of many colors.  And whenever my neighbor, Ann, and I would play “9 to 5”, I was always Doralee.  I didn’t even own a Barbra Streisand record, and I was being called a faggot because of Dolly Parton?  I was incensed.

            All I attempted to do was display the new cassette that my parents brought back to me from their trip to the Smoky Mountains.  My brother, Keith, and I were left in the care of my favorite people, the Glass family.  David was my age, had a hole in his eardrum, and always had to say “WHAT?”. Jimmy was my brother’s age and fearless to the point of disturbing.  And Jessie was five and meaner than all of us.  I never knew what was going to happen over there which was why I loved it.  Pitchfork fights, baseballs hurled at top speed in the hallway, anything was a weapon—even metal car tags.  On more than one occasion, Jessie found her plump self being hurled through the screen door onto the porch after her brothers had their fill of her.

            Their house was a wreck.  It was a small three-bedroom home with five people crammed inside.  The shag carpet looked as if it was never vacuumed.  Their dogs came in and out as they pleased.  So an innocent game of hide-and-seek usually meant that someone wound up running from their hiding spot after being covered with fleas.  When it came to housecleaning and chores, anarchy ruled.  Dishes were washed whenever someone felt like it, clothes were picked up off the floor whenever someone ran out of clean underwear, and dusting was a foreign concept.  I loved it.

Keith and I each got to pick one cassette that my parents would bring back for us from the mountains.  I loved cassettes because they fit easily into a purse.  My brother chose the Charlie Daniels Band.  He already had that cassette before, but Mrs. Glass caught us listening to, and, singing loudly along with, the song “Devil Went Down to Georgia.”  It would not have been so terrible, but we kept rewinding the part where he called the devil a son-of-a-bitch.  And we sang that lyric with gusto and screamed it at the top of our lungs.

Sitting around the porch on a swelteringly hot Alabama summer day, we taught five-year old Jessie to swear with conviction.  Mrs. Glass heard the commotion and came outside just as Jessie stood up, obviously inspired by the music, and led the rest of us with her rousing reading of the line, “I told you once, you son-of-a-bitch, I’m the best that’s ever been!”  Mrs. Glass took the cassette and cut it up with a butcher knife from the kitchen.  Talk about censorship.

            Bobby Barkley was the creep next door.  He went to my school, and I despised him.  Yet even at that young age, I found myself strangely attracted to him, hence our fondness for playing “doctor”.  My relationship with Bobby laid the groundwork for countless relationships with men in my adult life. Mutual disdain followed by some sort of sexual activity followed by intense mutual disdain—the cycle would go on.  Bobby’s home life was not great.  His dad was into coke, his mother into denial and both bought Bobby the world.  Of course, I knew nothing about his dad’s condition, so in my mind, Bobby was just a spoiled little shit who had an RV, a trampoline, and a swimming pool.

So, on that day in Linden, Alabama on some day in late July 1984, I discovered that I was a faggot.  I didn’t even know what the word meant. But I definitely knew it wasn’t a word I wanted to be associated with.  At the time, I didn’t react to his announcement except to defend my love for country music.  Later that evening, I went to my room—larger and lonelier than the night before—and cried.  I also formulated a plan.  I would do as much research as I could on this word called “faggot”, and I would simply rid myself of it.  Easy.  I would like girls, play baseball, and instead of being the “patient”, I would be the “doctor.”  Or maybe not.  I was so confused.

I started with my parents’ new encyclopedia set.  I loved reading the encyclopedias especially the sections on John F. Kennedy and on New York City.  There was something about both that I was drawn to.  Kennedy’s hair, his eyes, his physique.  New York’s lights, the skyscrapers, the energy in the photographs.  I couldn’t have Kennedy, but I was determined to get New York.  I also loved the annual yearbooks that were sent to us by the encyclopedia company because they listed all the major award winners. Even as I was lying around my bedroom memorizing who won the 1984 Tony for Best Featured Actress in a Musical, I couldn’t imagine why anyone would think I was a faggot.

“Faggot” and “gay” were not listed, but I had heard of this word called “homosexual.”  Our pastor at the Linden Baptist Church preached about it all the time.  He yelled that homosexuals were evil people, of the devil, and they were on the pathway to hell, not to God.  He screamed that homosexuality was an abomination and a sick lifestyle and only when one is born again into the kingdom of God is he saved from this perverse choice of a life.  Our pastor also had his name printed on ink pens, so subtlety wasn’t his strong suit.

I decided if the only way to save my soul from the devil was to be born again, then that’s what I set about doing.  I became born again…and again…and again.  Over the years I have diagnosed myself as being borderline OCD, and for whatever reason, the words “born again” triggered something in my brain.  For the rest of my adolescence, I was constantly getting “born again” or “saved” or baptized.  I swam in the baptismal pool more than I did the Linden Country Club’s.

I spent the next few years of my life getting reborn.  Several months would pass, and I would begin to worry that the rebirth didn’t take—sort of like a failed perm.  I began to regularly visit one of our church’s deacons who lived up the street from us.  He was always very kind to me even when I would interrupt his sports program on television.  He would always take his Bible out and pray with me, saying the same things each time and having me repeat them.  “God, please allow me to make you the aster of my life.”  I never quite understood what an aster was, but I got the general idea.  I was accepting God into my heart and by doing so, my sins were washed away with the blood of the lamb.  Or some shit.

Every once in a while, I insisted on a baptism to ensure my path to Heaven.  I always loved being baptized.  The entire congregation would show up, and all eyes would be on me.  I was the center of attention, and our church had spotlights, for Christ’s sake!  The congregation was my adoring fans, and the baptismal pool my stage.  I got to wear a shiny white robe and walk quietly, delicately into the warm water where my pastor awaited me in his black rubber suit.  A man in black rubber.  Again, laying the groundwork.  He would say something about the ghost and the spirit and the holiness.  He would take my nose, and I would dramatically dip back into the pool and arise, cleansed of sin, doing my best Joan Collins impersonation.  My fans would applaud wildly and after the service cue up in a receiving line where they would each greet me, hug me, and congratulate me.  God, what an ego trip those baptisms were!  They loved me, for I was born again, not going to hell, and definitely not a faggot anymore.

Once, however, the baptism didn’t take immediate affect.  I went backstage after one of my performances in the pool and found myself changing clothes in front of an older football player from my school who had also just been baptized.  When I entered junior high school, my father saw the writing on the wall when it came to my athletic abilities, so he called in a favor to his good friend, our football coach.  Instead of trying out for the football team, I was forced to be the team manager.  A fancy term for “waterboy”.  So I was on the inside track with all the football players.  While all the other kids were getting shoved into lockers and thrown into urinals, I was considered exempt due in part because I had to pick up their dirty jockstraps after football practice.  I assume they figured that was torture enough.

This particular player standing before me naked was different from the others.  He always offered me a ride to practice and on occasion would give me a lift home.  He never talked down to me, never forced me to sneak water to him on the practice field, and never did he once tell me to pull his finger.  And now here he was in all his glory.  In full view.  Not through the peephole that I had fashioned in the equipment room so I could see in the shower.  A full-on frontal assault, and I didn’t want to like it.  But I did. 

I was mortified because there had not been significant growth as far as my thirteen-year old body was concerned.  I weighed 105 pounds, had virtually no body hair, and my dick had shrunk due to the cool water in my performance space.  He was about to be a senior in high school and had the most perfect body I had ever seen.  Muscles rippled everywhere they were supposed to ripple.  And his cock sprung from a thick patch of black fur and hung perfectly, just like the guys in the Playgirl magazine I had recently stolen from the Jr. Food Mart.  He had a head full of black hair and a blinding smile that always stopped me in my tracks.  He caught me staring, and I almost threw up. 

“Hey buddy.  How’s it going?”

I was mute.

“Uh, good I guess,” I finally managed.

He gave me a strange little smirk, zipped his pants, and walked out.  His name was Steve Avery.

After that fateful July day in 1984 when I saw bestiality up close and personal, Bobby and I never again played “doctor”.  Or anything else.  His proclamation of my gayness and the thought of a dog’s tongue actually licking his penis made me physically ill, and I was repulsed by him.  However, unbeknownst to us, my brother and little Jimmy Glass were watching from behind the shrubbery and witnessed the entire display of puppy love.  They told anyone who would listen. 

A few years later, in junior high school, our teacher tacked a newspaper clipping of the football team’s picture on her bulletin board.  The next day, someone had written a word under Bobby’s picture with a permanent black magic marker. 

The word?  “FAGGOT”

The Way I Am

      In the first thirty-eight years of my life, I’ve had Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, small pox, hepatitis, a brain tumor, gonorrhea, syphilis, and a recurring case of homosexuality.  None were diagnosed by a medical professional, yet more than once I asked my mother for a living will.  I brought this up to my shrink once, and she said, “Craig, I have to go to the bathroom.”  Upon her return, I completed a series of tests, and just like that, she wrapped up all of my previous diagnoses and even tied a pretty little bow on top.

            “Craig, I think you have OCD,” she explained.

            “Oh God.  Occasional Crabs and Dysentery?”

            “No.  OCD.  Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.” 

            She explained that OCD is an abnormal brain function where a person has intrusive and unwanted thoughts and feelings and/or engages in repetitive behavior in order to halt them.  She told me that medication is not necessary since mine is a mild case and assured me that my recurring case of homosexuality obviously decided to stay.  It seems that part of my OCD causes me to project symptoms of various illnesses on to myself, but unlike hypochondriacs, I keep these feelings trapped in my brain.

            “So, my worries are unfounded?”

            “In most instances, yes,” she assured me.

            What a relief!  Now I could have sex with men without the nagging worry of giving them the Clap.

            At the time of diagnosis, I was twenty-eight, living in 

Alabama

and tip-toeing out of the closet.  Now with this newfound knowledge, my life began to make sense.  The faux illnesses, the angst and sense of dread, the constant praying.  Not to mention the typing in air.  I always thought I was fucked up.  Come to find out I’m just screwed up.

            As a pre-teen, I had an abnormal fear of being kidnapped after I saw a special report by Barbara Walters.  I also have an abnormal fear of Barbara Walters, but some things even medication can’t help.  Her report unleashed unfounded fears in my brain that could be so gripping and immediate, they often paralyzed me.  I went through phases where I never played outside after dark, even though we lived in a tiny tranquil burg where the talk of the town for an entire summer was the bank secretary’s affair. My dad spent many a happy hour at our local country club, and I waited by the window every night for him to come home.  Without him at home, I was more susceptible to being kidnapped by some deranged fanatic in a windowless van.  Each night, like clockwork, I saw his truck lights coming down the street and was relieved whenever they turned into our driveway.  Dad would come inside, sometimes sober and other times blitzed.  Either way, his presence served a purpose:  my physical security.  With him at home, I felt safe and could adjourn to my bedroom for the evening to do homework and watch “Dynasty.”

Things really got odd once I hit puberty.  It was 1985, Rock Hudson had just died of AIDS, and an older football player at my school, Steve Avery, was giving me hand jobs on a regular basis.  I was skinny and unsure, an awkward kid who enjoyed attention from both girl and occasional boy.  I enjoyed a modicum of popularity but quickly learned my role was the class clown, the jester with the effeminate gait.  I also had braces which paved the way for all sorts of nicknames and catcalls and also irritated my gums.  So they bled easily.  Our biology teacher added a new unit to our curriculum that year about AIDS, which was quite revolutionary for a small Southern town in the mid-80’s.  I’m still not quite sure where she got her facts though.

            “One of the first symptoms of AIDS is bleeding of the gums,” she instructed.

            Pangs of horror shot through my gut.  Goddamn it!  I knew I shouldn’t have let Steve touch it!  I went home, locked myself in the bathroom, and looked in the mirror.  With all the melodrama and nuance of Susan Lucci, I wailed at my reflection.

            “Oh GOD!  I’ve got AIDS!”

            Steve couldn’t understand why I wouldn’t play around with him for six months.  I didn’t want to tell him that I possibly had AIDS and that I needed to wait six months for any other symptoms to appear.  Again, not sure where my revolutionary science teacher collected her data.  I waited and occasionally worried that each new zit was a lesion.  Each bleeding gum episode was further AIDS infection from Steve’s hand jobs.  Every cough was AIDS-related pneumonia.  However, six months passed, my gums healed, and I didn’t die.  All clear. Steve was thrilled.

            Throughout my teen years, I was getting reborn and baptized as a result of my pastor’s sermon on homosexuality.  The word ‘reborn” triggered something in my brain, and I had regular engagements at the baptismal pool.  I also prayed.  Constantly. At the time, I subscribed to the Southern Baptist Laws of Christianity and Tolerance.  “If you don’t believe in God, you go to Hell.”  Easy. So to avoid the down under, I prayed the same prayer every night of my life, verbatim.  My brain dictated that any deviation in the prayer would cause my world to fall apart, and I would keep the devil company for eternity.  But when my Sunday school teacher said that we must vary our prayers and not recite something that we don’t mean, I simply reversed the sentences and prayed with conviction!

            “Dear God. Please don’t ever let me or my family get kidnapped, killed, or robbed. Keep us safe from all sin and evil. Please forgive me for my sins. And please let me get a hard-on with my girlfriend without having to think about Steve.”

            Looking back, I’ve exhibited classic symptoms of OCD as well:  keeping everything in certain order, doing tasks a certain way, not readily accepting change.  I’ve always hated cleaning, but my bedroom has always been kept just so.  Everything has a place, albeit sometimes a strange place, but a place nonetheless.  Condoms always in the same drawer as the Bible.  I’m not sure why; it just seems like God intended.  But some things even perplexed my shrink.  After I learned to type in junior high, I began to simulate typing random words that I would hear in my head. The principal could be lecturing me in the hallway. Before I knew it, my arms would be at my side, and I’d be typing in the air with my fingers:   

W-H-A-T  A-N  A-S-S-H-O-L-E! 

            Balance has always been very important to me.  I’ve gone through phases where if I scratch one arm, the other deserves a scratch too.  Smooth the right eyebrow?  My brain would be in a state of fury until the left one was smoothed also.  In gay bars, I’ve gotten more than a few odd looks from men who would playfully pinch one of my nipples, and I would turn and say, “Wait, you have to do the other one too.”

            There are darker compulsions as well.  Since coming out ten years ago, I have discovered that all men, straight or gay, are horny pigs.  The only difference between the two is that straight men don’t have the luxury of sex in the gym.  And never has there been such easy access to compulsive sexual behavior than now in the age of the internet.  It’s easy to mask the fears and doubts of self-worth and the disappointment of rejection when you’re sexually compulsive. Instant validation with the aftershocks of regret and depression.  Sort of like snorting coke with the added benefit of orgasm. But with time and therapy, I found myself surfing the virtual sexual highway with irregularity and confronting the taunting thoughts and fears head-on.  Spontaneity may be gone, but so are the crabs.

            OCD, just like homosexuality, is my DNA. Both needed to be hidden for awhile. Both needed to be eventually accepted. And in the end, both were embraced. And every so often, I’ll meet a kindred spirit. A few years ago, I met a guy at New York’s gay pride parade. He was a tall blonde strapping fellow from Nebraska on his first trip to our fair city.  We talked all afternoon among the revelers and drag queens. We had dinner with my friends, and I walked him back to his hotel. Standing in front of the Gansevoort on a breezy June evening, I was feeling quite randy. Using my substantial sex appeal and with all the romantic intention I could muster, I slowly brushed one side of his blonde hair back behind his ear, a la Streisand and Redford in “The Way We Were.”  He looked at me rather sheepishly.

            “This sounds so weird.  But can you brush the other side back too?”

            I smiled.

            “Absolutely.”