Why Men Fear Assumed Gay/Why Did We Care Our Richard Was Gay?
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Poor Richard Wiest. Sheldon Vogel, Harry Kaschuk and I made every day he sat by us in a classroom miserable. We teased him endlessly about behavioral mannerisms he could do nothing about. We ridiculed him for what we were most afraid of being labeled ourselves.
We didn’t use the term gay in the Bronx in the 1950’s. We used crueler and cruder words to make fun of Richard. Here we were three 12-year-old Jewish bullies doing to a shy, sensitive, scared young boy what had been done throughout history to Jews like us by malicious antisemitic tormentors. They had made fun of Jews for being Jewish the way we were making fun of Richard for being gay.
Why did we feel that way?
Looking back on our unconscionable behavior from my perspective 67 years later as an old man, I’m struck by how homo-frightened we were. I refer to us as afraid and not phobic because the subject of homosexuality was such a hidden and forbidden topic then that we knew too little about it for it to qualify as a phobia.
I remember watching Liberace play his candelabra-decorated piano on the Ed Sullivan Show dressed as far removed from macho manhood as Elton John would decades later. None of us watching at home used the word gay to describe him or his attire.
What was it about being a gay boy that struck such a fearful chord in the hearts, minds, and souls of 12-year-old adolescents like us? Was the deviation from the strong, silent, emotionally unexpressive, male stereotypes portrayed by the movie stars of that era like Gary Cooper and John Wayne so enormous that to be gay was the sexual equivalent of leprosy? Were gay men in the 1950s viewed by society as so aberrant in their behavior that they had to remain in the closet the way lepers were confined to leper colonies?
Three decades later, in the 1982 movie, “An Officer and a Gentleman,” tough-talking staff sergeant Emil Foley belittles Navy pilot trainee Zach Mayo by shouting, “Only two things come outta Oklahoma, steers and queers. Which one are you, boy? I don’t see any horns! “
It wasn’t until 1973 that the American Psychiatric Association agreed to remove homosexuality from its list of mental illnesses and sicknesses. Religious fundamentalists today who believe in conversion therapy as a desirable treatment for gay teenagers view homosexuality as a curable spiritual disease.
Do they worry like we did?
I wonder if young straight men worry as much about being perceived by others as sufficiently masculine-looking and acting as we did back then? I hope they don’t. There seems to be greater latitude today for what constitutes male expression without labeling it as straight or gay.
I see so many young men wearing pink shirts, pants, jackets, sweaters, and shoes that I don’t associate the color with gay male fashion. On Mother’s Day, Major League Baseball players don pink uniforms and swing pink bats to honor the holiday. The metrosexual look popularized by hunky athletes like soccer superstar David Beckham plays havoc with the idea that “real” men have to live up to an excessively restrictive color code for what constitutes masculine dress.
I could care less now whether I’m perceived as straight or gay. Old men like myself worry more about looking elderly than we do about looking unmistakably straight. Not walking like Joe Biden does now due to a severe stiffening of his spine is of greater importance to me than what anyone might think about my sexual orientation.
I admire the way both gay and black men dress. They dress to suit their own tastes and to hell with what the straight and white world of men think of them and what they’re wearing. I think my being a Jew causes me to see myself as an outsider much like many gay and black men see themselves. Once you realize you’re never going to fit into a world you were never meant to fit into, you stop trying. I did a long time ago.
Too late wise
I’m already typecast by my Semitic facial characteristics, so why should I care if I’m seen as a straight or gay old Jewish man? I wish I felt that way when I was 12. I could’ve spared inflicting a lot of needless unnecessary pain on Richard Wiest. We grow old too soon and wise too late.
I’m profoundly sorry, Richard, that I didn’t grow wiser sooner for your sake.
Jay Wissot is a columnist for the Vail Daily in Vail, Colorado. His previous article was “An 80-year-old Reflects on Dying and on Not Feeling He Will.”
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