My Coming Out Movie

Rock Island, June 1978

I didn’t go to movies much when I was a kid. Our church forbade them, and besides, I didn’t get an allowance until junior high.  In 1968, I saw only 3 movies in a theater: Blackbeard’s Ghost, Yours, Mine, and Ours, and Oliver!

But during the summer of 1978, shortly after my senior prom, I was a high school graduate.  I had a job at the Carousel Snack Bar and my own car: money and freedom. And I went to all the movies I could.

During the 10 weeks of summer, from Memorial Day to Labor Day of 1978, I saw 21 movies, alone, with my brother, with Aaron and Darry and a boy I liked: Old Marx Brothers comedies at the Film Club, dollar movies at the Augustana Student Union, The Rocky Horror Picture Show at the Nuart, and lots of blockbusters at the Showcase Cinemas (Animal House, The Cheap Detective, The End, The Eyes of Laura Mars,  Grease, The Greek Tycoon, Seniors....). 

One of them was my coming out movie.  I never actually got to the end: I began to sob uncontrollably.  I ran from the theater and ran to my car and sat in the front seat, sobbing.  And when I stopped sobbing, I was able, finally, after 17 and a half years on the planet, to say the word.

Gay.

You probably think that Rocky Horror did it.  No, it was Grease.

It's a heterosexist boy-meets-girl fable, drawing on the 1950s craze, and therefore kin to Lords of Flatbush,  Happy Days and Laverne and Shirley): during their senior year at Rydell High in the 1950s (actually 1962), "nice girl" Sandy (Olivia Newton-John) falls for greaser Danny (John Travolta), but he is only interested in girls who "put out." So her friends, the Pink Ladies, give her a tramp-makeover, and Danny is lured in.


But more: it's about masks, surface conformity hiding our true selves. Danny is sweet, sensitive, and caring, but his culture requires a pretense of machismo. When he falls for Sandy, he is forbidden from acknowledging that he is in love; it's supposed to be all about sex.  Sandy, meanwhile, learns to hide her true self under a sleazy, leather-clad, cigarette-smoking facade.

At the time, both were heavily rumored to be gay.  Conforming, wearing a mask.

But girls can only lure, hint at sexual availability.  There are dire consequences for actually giving in, as Rizzo (Stockard Channing) learns.

What do the teenagers want, when they are their true selves?  Not sex.  Not romance. They want belonging, an emotional connection.

As the movie ends, the eight friends wonder what will become of them after graduation.  Will they go their separate ways?  "No," Danny exclaims.  "That'll never happen. We'll always be together."

"Grease," performed by Frankie Valli, was constantly on the radio that summer.

This is a world of illusion, out of control, makes us confused: nothing is real, you have to wear the mask, say things you don't mean, pretend things you don't feel.

 The adults are lying -- only real is real.  It's all one big lie.

Over and over, day after day, year after year, they try to make you believe that what you feel doesn't exist, what you want doesn't exist, that you cannot possibly be attracted to these men, that no same-sex love has ever happened in all the history of the world.

They are lying.  Only real is real.

We stop the fight right now, we got to be what we feel.

That did it.

I may be the only person in history to start sobbing uncontrollably during Grease.

See also: A Nude Party with the Golden Boy.; Grease Live.

Wilton's First Time was with Captain Kirk

Millions of Baby Boomer kids got their first glimpse of beefcake on Star Trek (1966-69) where, week after week, Captain Kirk  would take his shirt off to fight alien monsters or kiss alien babes. I didn't find him attractive -- he was too smug, too leery, and way too hetero.

Shatner continued to play Kirk in movies and parodies for 40 years, but he also appeared in a wide variety of movies and tv series, including starring roles in T. J. Hooker, Boston Legal, and Sh** My Dad Says.

Married four times, with a notorious eye for the ladies, Shatner has no gay rumors, that I know of.  George Takei, who played Sulu on Star Trek, reveals that the entire cast and crew knew that he was gay, except Shatner: "it went right over his head."  For him, gay people simply did not exist.



But in his early days, Shatner was quite different.

Montreal, September 1947

Wilton was 16 years old (model is over 18), a sophomore at West Hill High School in Montreal, and an aspiring journalist -- he had already published a poem about the War.

Physically, he was not so hot --  a tall stringbean, pushing through puberty with oversized hands and feet, oily skin, and constant horniness.

He didn't know that gay people were defined as "criminal psychopaths" in the Canadian penal code.  He didn't even know that gay people exist.

But he knew that Johnny Sheffield in a loincloth in Tarzan and the Huntress made him feel all hot and flushed.

And he had a picture of Alan Ladd with his shirt off hidden in a desk drawer in his room.

And he liked looking at the football players.  Some of them were nice, saying "hello" to him in the hallway and collaborating with him on class assignments,  but many of them were jerks.

Bill Shatner was a jerk.

Wilton had to admit that he was cute, with that curly reddish-brown hair and that bright Pepsodent smile. But he was a money-hungry, mercenary, soulless cog in the Cold War machine.  He wasn't interested in acting then, although he had done some children's theater.  He was all about money and getting rich -- offensive to Wilt's artistic sensibility.  He planned to get a football scholarship to McGill, major in economics, then start his own business.

But it wasn't just a difference in temperament.  Bill strutted around like he owned the place.  He wasn't even a star...he played an offensive end -- that's a minor position, but it made him a regular Jim Thorpe, in his own mind anyway.

When he was in a good mood, he ignored Wilton, walked right past like he was a ghost.  And God forbid he was in a bad mood -- he'd make with the nonstop jokes about Wilton's height, his acne, calling him ugly and a fruit, asking if he had pubic hair yet.

Wilton was a reporter for the school paper, and one day the editor gave him an assignment of interviewing one of the football players other than the quarterback -- anyone else he wanted.

He went into the locker room one day after practice to ask for volunteers -- and to gawk at the naked jocks, of course.

"Hi, I'm doing an article on what it's like to be on our football team," he began.  "And I was wondering if any of you would...."

Bill Shatner was walking from the shower wearing a towel, his chest hard and gleamng.  Wilton lost his train of thought.

"Um...would....would mind being interviewed."

"Hot-cha, Jackson!" he exclaimed with a smile.  "I'll be there with all my ears on."

Not that drip!  Wilton thought.  Anybody but him!   But he said "Ok, fine.  How about tomorrow lunchtime in the library?"

"No -- that's not private enough.  I don't want the whole world to know my deep, dark secrets.  Come to my house tonight after dinner."

So around 8:00 pm, Wilton knocked on the door of small flat-roofed house on rue Marcel, near the Bois de Saraguay.  He was surprised to see a mezuzah on the door frame -- he hadn't realized that the Shatners were Jewish.

Bill's father answered, and drew him into the living room, where his mother, aunt, and sister were listening to Family Theater on the radio.


"You're not going out to a soda shop, are you?"  Dad asked.

Going out?   "No, sir."

 "Good. You may not know that this is Erev Yom Kippur: tomorrow is the Day of Atonement, when we pray and fast to atone for our sins of the last year.  Nothing to eat from sundown to sundown."

Then Bill came bounding down the stairs wearing just his pants.  Wilt stared at his bare chest.  Suddenly he was flushed with erotic energy.

"Is that anyway to dress when you are entertaining a young man?" Mom asked.

"Sorry -- I just got out of the shower. "  He clapped Wilton on the shoulder.  "Howsa, Jackson -- let me spare you this agony -- come up to my room while I finish getting dressed, and then we'll blow."

Wilton followed Bill up to his room -- single bed, desk, pennant from McGill, bookcase with a few books on sports.  He carefully closed the door behind them.

"Where are we going?"

"Oh, I thought we could get some moo goo and meet some sweet petites [get ice cream and look for girls]. Better than hanging around this morgue, right?"     Bill dropped his pants -- he was wearing no underwear.  His cock was long, thick, cut.  Wilt stared.

"I never saw one that was circumcized before...."  His face was burning.  "Can I...touch it?"

Bill grinned.  "Be my guest."

Wilt knelt to get a better look.  He gingerly ran his fingers over the shaft, lifted the head. It began to stiffen.

Bill was caressing his hair, holding his shoulders, thrusting his pelvis gently forward and backward as his cock grew longer.

Wilton had never heard of oral sex before, but instinctively he opened his mouth and let Bill's cock slide in.  He grabbed the base to control it better, and bobbed up and down, licking the shaft like it was a lollipop.

"Suck it," Bill suggested.  "Make like you're a hoover [vacuum cleaner]."

Wilton began sucking and licking the head while masturbating the shaft.  He grabbed Bill by the butt to steady himself.

"That's it.  Good job," Bill murmured. ' Good boy."  He thrust hard, shuddered, and suddenly spurted an enormous load into Wilton's mouth.  He didn't know what to do with it -- he looked around, saw a box of tissues by the bed, and jumped up to deposit the load into one.

"Thanks, buddy-boy."  Bill took the tissue from his hand and threw it into the waste basket.  "He shoots -- he scores!"  He began putting on his clothes.

"Got anything to get the taste out of my mouth?"

"A smooth and creamy at Dairyland should do the trick."

"But...Yom Kippur.  The Day of Atonement."

"I've already atoned, Jackson.  I wanted to make up for all the times I was mean to you in the last year.  I knew what you wanted -- it's what all fairies want -- so why not give it to you?  And the soda is part of the deal, too."

They didn't become lovers -- Wilton didn't go down on another guy until college.  They didn't even become friends.  But Bill Shaner was a lot nicer after that.  And whenever they passed each other in the hallway, they shared a secret smile.

Slow Dancing with Boys at Washington Junior High

Rock Island, September 1972

When I was in 6th and 7th grades (models are ovr 18), I was told incessantly about my upcoming "discovery of girls."  No matter that I thought "girls are yucky!" now.  One day soon, very soon, I would awaken changed, my body and my mind aching to kiss, hold, hug, and have sex with girls.

My parents, my teachers, Brother Reno, Grandma Davis, my cousin Joe -- they all insisted that it would happen, it was a fact of life, universal human experience, as inevitable as sunrise. As the days and months of 6th and 7th grade passed, they became more insistent, constantly interrogating me: "Do you like girls yet?  What about now?  Now?  Now?"

Meanwhile, the school kept trying to jump-start my "discovery."

One Friday afternoon shortly the beginning of 7th grade at Washington Junior High, we were all herded into a gymnasium decorated with red and gold streamers, the boys and girls on separate sides. A table on the north side had rows of paper cups full of beet-red punch and piles of sugar cookies that looked like they had been sitting around since Christmas.

“What’s going on?” I asked my friends (my boyfriend Bill wasn't there; he had football practice). They didn’t know, so I approached a hulking Ninth Grader.

"It’s the canteen,” he grunted.  "It's to teach all you Spazzes how to dance with girls."
"I'm not dancing with any girls!"

He laughed, a short derisive laugh.  “That’s what you think, Gomer! Nobody gets out of here alive unless you ask a little cutie pie if you can drag her, and she says ‘Oh, yes, please do!’”  The last came in a squealing falsetto.

"My church doesn't allow dancing.  It's a sin in the eyes of God.  I can get an excuse from the Preacher."

Soon a teacher walked onto the stage and announced that it was “time to dance.” He put a single on the record player: "Song Sung Blue," by Neil Diamond.  A few boys crossed the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards and dragged girls onto the dance floor. Others followed, until eventually most Ninth Graders and quite a few younger boys made the trek.

My friends and I stood our ground.  No one tried to force us, though once a teacher clomped over and announced with a grin that we couldn't hold out forever – in a matter of days or weeks, or months at the most, our ache of desire would overpower our shyness, and we would cross the wilderness of tan, gleaming boards, and approach the Girl of our Dreams, and become men.

That's never going to happen!  I thought savagely.

I noticed a few boys, maybe a dozen, on the east side of the gym, mixed in with the girls, chatting casually.

“Why don’t they have to drag girls?” I wondered aloud. “Are they already men?”

“Man, you got fruit-loops for brains?” my Ninth Grade informant exclaimed. “They’re the exact diametric opposite of men. They’re Fairies!”

“Like. . .um. . .in Mother Goose?” I asked, perplexed.

“Naw, Gomer...remember Acting like a Girl, the stuff that got Mean Boys on your case in diaper school?  Fairies are like that, but tons worse – they pretend they really are girls! So they hang out with girls instead of hugging and kissing them!  But they can't hold out forever!  Watch this!"

He suddenly vaulted across the gym to the girls' side, grabbed a seventh-grade Fairy, and dragged him out onto the dance floor.  They slow danced until two teachers rushed in and pulled them apart.  Everyone laughed.

"He was too obvious," I thought, not realizing that he intended to humiliate the younger boy.  "I can hide it, I bet."

I scanned the girls' side of the room.  I saw Dan, who would become my second boyfriend, but for some reason I decided on a cute dark-haired 7th grader named Brett, who was engrossed in a conversation with a girl.  I tromped over and asked "Wanna dance?" with a friendly, non-threatening smile.

Brett stepped aside, thinking I meant his friend.

"No...you."

He stared, his eyes wide with suspicion.

"Not a slow dance, a regular modern dance," I explained, "Where you don't touch each other."

"I...um...."

"It's crowded...who will know?"

He looked to his friend for advice.  "Oh, go on," she said, pushing him toward me.

I took Brett's hand -- warm, damp with embarrassment -- and led him onto the dance floor.  We danced to "Knock Three Times" and "I Feel the Earth Move," careful to always have a girl nearby and constantly move across the dance floor to avoid discovery.

It worked wonderfully!  I was dancing, laughing and joyous, with a boy.

I kept it up for several weeks, dancing with Brett or other from the girls' side of the gym.

Then, like Icarus, I flew too close to the sun.  One afternoon Roberta Flack's "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" came on, a slow dance. Most of the kids on the dance floor fled to their respective sides of the gym.

Brett looked at me quizzically.  "It's ok," I said.  We began to dance, slowly, not touching, but close, gazing into each other's eyes.  I wanted to hold him in my arms, I wanted to kiss him.  So I reached out and took both of his hands.

Then someone grabbed me and jerked me roughly backwards.  It was a teacher.  "Picking on a kid, just because he's smaller than you!" he snarled.  "A week's detention!  Brett, you can go home."

After that, I got an excuse from my Preacher to sit out the canteens.

Brett and I stayed friends, but we never danced again.

See also: Why Corpses are Called Stiffs