Voenix Rising

Okay…remembering and writing about all this is fun!

Previously on Battlestar Galactica… (In case you’re wondering, I’m calling it this as a throwback to my original posting of these stories on the old blog, written at peak Battlestar Galactica popularity.)

While I suppose I could have come out publicly in High School, for a variety of mid-70s reasons I chose not to. I had consciously decided that I would announce to the world once I’d moved away from home and started college. Based on my mother’s earlier reactions to gay men—which was surprising considering she was an interior designer and had worked around them her entire career—I wasn’t entirely convinced it would be warmly received by the family and wanted to be as far away as possible when I dropped the proverbial bomb.

My first semester at the University of Arizona was—not surprisingly—a difficult one, if only for the usual problems of any first year college student. I had never lived away from home, and while I made friends easily, in the beginning I knew no one in Tucson.

My first dormitory roommate was a Japanese-American gymnast. I don’t remember his name or even what he looked like at this point other than he had a body that wouldn’t quit. He was a gymnast, after all. Might’ve been a fantasy come true if not for the fact he was virulently homophobic and made it known almost immediately. While I was still firmly in the closet, I knew this was not going to work as my plans for coming out slowly began to coalesce in my head. After a week or so I swapped rooms with a guy down the hall I’d gotten friendly with.

My new roommate was Karl Kilgore, a tall, blond, good-looking civil engineering (?) student from southern California.

Karl and I got along famously. We shared the same world view, liked the same music, and enjoyed each other’s company.

I still hadn’t come out yet, but the guy in the room adjacent to ours read me from the moment I arrived on the floor. Andy was…flamboyant…out and proud. He was one of the first gay men I met who was not. taking. shit. from. anyone.

In many ways he took me under his wing for those first couple months at the university, keeping my secret to himself. I remember one day toward the holidays we were chatting and he flat out asked, “When are you going to end this charade and just come out?”

I was quite taken aback, and at the same time relieved that he knew it was time as much as I did.

Along the same time this happened, I was over at the campus planetarium one night, when a series of events were set in motion that led to my tearing the door off that closet and bursting forth into the light. I was touring the exhibits when another boy caught my eye, one David Miller.

Another freshman, David was from the hills of West Virginia and frankly, turned out to be sweet as fuck. We struck up a conversation and a friendship soon formed. Was David gay? I didn’t get that sense about him at all, but I didn’t get “wholly straight” either. I remember that when I told Andy I’d made a friend outside the dorm he quipped, “So…Mark’s got a boyfriend.”

No, that wasn’t it at all, but when the opportunity presented itself for me to switch dorms and share a room with David, I jumped at it.

David accompanied me back to Phoenix for Thanksgiving that year and my family loved him.

The Christmas and New Year’s holidays came and went, and upon returning to campus for the spring semester I’d resolved that this was now the time to come out.

One evening in late January, after we’d gone to bed, I said to David, “I have something to tell you.”

“What is it?”

“You know that guy Adam I told you about? The one I met up with again at the library?”

(Adam was a guy from Phoenix whom I’d met and buddied up with during the Freshman Orientation weekend on campus the past August.)

“Yeah.”

“I like him.”

“Great! You made another friend. What’s he like?”

“No, I like him, David. I really like him.”

(It should be noted that nothing had ever actually happened between Adam and I at the library or anywhere else for that matter—but I was mightily infatuated with this now newly-minted frat boy I’d reconnected with.)

“What are you saying?”

“I’m gay, David.”

There was an extended silence. After several minutes he said, “I have a confession too.”

Was David about to tell me he was gay? I mean, that would be awesome.

“My uncle is Christine Jorgensen.”

Now while I hadn’t been officially out, I had done my gay history. I knew who Christine was.

“We don’t talk about uncle George much anymore,” he added.

Of course, this opened the conversational floodgates and for several days thereafter it seemed all was well in the world. David showed no signs of being freaked out, nor had his attitude toward me changed in any way.

HOWEVER, a little over a week later, David announced he was moving out of the room and in with—in his words several months later—”an Iranian who never bathed.”

I soon learned that shortly after my coming out to him, David—who never had a drink in his life—had gone out one night and had gotten absolutely shit-faced. He returned to the dorm at 2 am and basically went door to door telling everyone on the floor, “Mark is a fag!”

Well, I was now officially out. It also explains why there was no hurry to backfill that empty bed and how I ended up with a single room for the remainder of the semester without having to pay for it. Membership has its privileges.

The question remained, “What now?”

Andy suggested going to one of the GSA (Gay Student Organization) meetings on campus. After ignoring his suggestions and the adverts in the student paper for weeks, one chilly February night I decided to head over to the student union and check out this GSA.

Nervous doesn’t even begin to describe what I was feeling. Would I be accepted? Would they like me? Would I get raped by a group of sex-crazed homosexuals?

It turned out two of of three were correct and I left the meeting with my virginity intact.

When I first entered I was greeted by a guy named Phil Oliver. His first question—something no one had ever outright asked before—was “Are you gay?”

I answered in the affirmative.

The meeting was actually a bit of a bore, but I met a group of people who almost immediately became my tribe and ultimately confirmed two famous quotes from Richard Bach’s book Illusions:

All the people, all the events in your life are there because you have drawn them there. What you choose to do with them is up to you.

and

The bond that links your true family is not one of blood, but of respect and joy in each other’s life. Rarely do members of one family grow up under the same roof.

Next time on Battlestar Galactica…

In the original incarnation of Voenix Rising—that I stupidly deleted in 2011 after realizing a link to it had been sent out in the signature line of emails I’d sent to recruiters—I’d written multiple posts documenting my coming out and first tentative steps into gay life. It was one of the few things I truly regret not having backed up.

More recently, I’ve been following Mike Balaban, a gay historian on Instagram who is doing much the same thing, this time with pictures.  From what I’ve seen we’re about the same age, and considering how everything else in the world is fucking awful right now, it’s inspired me to relate my stories again, to do something positive.

Grade School

Like a lot of gay men, I’d known I liked boys instead of girls from an early age. When I first discovered masturbation in fourth grade, it was sex between men and women that captured my imagination. But then my focus turned more and more to the imaginary men in these imaginary encounters, and finally coalesced with my Phys Ed coaches and the men—not the women—in the Sears catalogs exclusively fueling my fantasies. Oh, how I eagerly anticipated the arrival of the Summer Catalogs because it meant shirtless guys in swim trunks!

Growing up, my exposure to men-who-love-men had been less-than-ideal. I don’t know if my mom already sensed my budding gayness or if she was just trying to—warn?—me, but I remember her coming into my room one evening in advance of a visit by my dad’s brother. She turned on the television (or changed the channel) to show me an interview happening with Truman Capote. “That is a homosexual,” she said, “And so is your Uncle Eddie. I don’t want you to be alone with him.” The old child molester trope…

My uncle was nothing like Truman Capote. He wasn’t a butch queen, but neither was he anything like the mincing, lisping example my mom was so keen to show me. Anyhow, I took some solace in knowing I wasn’t the only one in the world like that, and not the only one in the family. [Spoilers: If I only known the full extent!]

I remember my uncle (especially after I became an adult) as loving, generous, and very, very funny. As a child I always thought him so cosmopolitan for living in New York City. I mailed him my coming out letter in the late 1980s (because somehow he hadn’t gotten the news), telling him I was “living the life” in San Francisco and hoping we could connect over drinks sometime to share stories. After not hearing from him a couple years thereafter, one Christmas in the 90s a card arrived from him with a five hundred dollar check enclosed and a note that read, “I’m sure you’ll be able to put this to good use in ‘frisco.”

High School

My freshman year in high school was the first time I fell in love with another boy. His name was Tom Pleger.

It was odd how we initially met. I was crushing hard on his best friend, a guy named Jim Hurst, with whom we all shared a Freshman Communications class. Jim wouldn’t give me the time of day, but Tom and I soon discovered shared interests and we started hanging out together.

Tom’s family belonged to a neighborhood Lutheran church. I’d been raised Lutheran but my family was one of those Christmas and Easter churchgoing broods. That was, until I met Tom and convinced my mom that we needed to start attending—and more regularly than just twice a year. (Ulterior motives, of course.) She was initially reluctant since this church was Missouri synod and we were Wisconsin. (How that makes any difference is just one more reason when I came out I gave up on organized religion altogether. It’s all bullshit.)

Anyhow, we started attending on a regular basis and I found Jesus and developed a typical teenage religious streak that no doubt absolutely drove my dad (who was very non-religious) to absolute distraction.

Sadly, my romantic overtures to Tom were not reciprocated, and my confession of true love ended our budding friendship about a year after we met. Nothing more was said of it, and surprisingly, when we crossed paths at church he and his family were still cordial.

It was during my sophomore year that—perhaps because of my newfound churchgoing habits—my mom decided that I was well overdue for my Confirmation; a right-of-passage that would allow me to start taking communion. This led to classes led by the new, young, cute, and very liberal pastor who had just come on board. I remember the subject of homosexuality coming up during one of our question and answer sessions and he pointed out that Jesus never said anything about the subject…

Anyhow, these classes threw yet another boy into my life, Mike Knigge.

Mike was a year younger than me and a few inches taller. His family had recently moved to Phoenix from Lake Zurich, Illinois, a small suburb north of Chicago. From his description (he was terribly homesick) it sounded like a wonderful little hamlet, and I often fantasized moving there with him after we finished college and building a beautiful English Tudor home (my preferred architectural style at the time) with a huge swimming pool and cabana out back. I don’t remember much of our year or so together, but it must’ve been something special because I grew to love him as well.

Like Tom, it all fell apart after I confessed my feelings to him.

My junior year, after Mike, I took a break from romantic entanglements with boys, no doubt because no one had entered my life to pique such interest. I spent the year concentrating on existing friendships, including the one I shared with Jean Davis.

Jean and I were inseparable; partners-in-crime. People thought we were dating, and even though she was the first—and only—girl I’ve kissed and made out with (there was never any sex)—I only ever thought of her as my best bud. I think she viewed me as something more however, and when I ended up leaving Phoenix to go to the University of Arizona in Tucson, we both breathed a sigh of relief when she decided to stay behind. It was a breakup without any of the associated drama.

My senior year brought my unrequited love life new trouble in the form of Daniel Baxa.

Tom and Mike were just warm-up acts. I fell hard for Daniel. But sadly, like Tom and Mike, it was ultimately not meant to be.

His family had just moved to Phoenix from somewhere and I have no memory of how or where we met or why we even started hanging together. Why do teenage boys do anything?

Why did I keep falling in love with straight boys? Because at the time I knew of no other gay boys in high school—or at least none I was even remotely attracted to. The ones who were gay were so obviously gay that they were the subject or scorn and ridicule wherever they went. It was the mid 70s, after all. Despite Stonewall years earlier, was no gay marriage, no Love, Simon positivity swirling around gay relationships.

Daniel was a bad boy. He smoked. He drank. And yet he drove a pink 1968 Mustang and loved ABBA. He was…confusing. As our friendship grew, he wasn’t above physical contact, and many evenings while laying on my bed watching television, a spontaneous wrestling match would erupt, with one or the other of us getting pinned with obvious erections involved. But that was as far as it ever went, much to my disappointment. I often fantasized about just kissing him while pinned, yet never garnered enough courage to actually do it.

I was obsessed with Daniel, going so far as to climb up on the roof of our house to watch him arrive home at night from his job at Sirloin Stockade, telling my parents I was up there to “look at the stars.” I even got a job at the same Sirloin Stockade the final summer before I headed to college—ostensibly to earn money for college—and it showed me what an absolute jerk he could be when it wasn’t just the two of us together. It didn’t sour me to him, but I learned that great life lesson of people weren’t always what they seemed 100% of the time.

When I finally confessed my love, there was no big scene. I told him I loved him and he responded, “Oh, you mean like a friend?” “No,” I replied. The color kind of drained from his face as I recall and he said something to the effect, “Look Mark, I like you, but I’m not…”

Holding back tears, I left his house and went home. That fall I moved to Tucson.

I heard from a mutual friend sometime later (who, by that time, also knew I was gay) that our parting left Daniel hurt and confused. He hadn’t been ending our friendship; he was simply straight and didn’t want anything more.

After getting his address from the same mutual friend many years later, I wrote him a letter, apologizing for the misunderstanding and asking if he’d like to talk. I never heard back.

Next time on Battlestar Galactica…