Fifty Years On

Last weekend, I went to a lovely party celebrating the 50th anniversary of two of my friends from high school. This was an all-girls high school, so they weren’t celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary. Rather, they were marking fifty years on as a couple.

Friends in high school, they became a couple in college, when Kathleen transferred schools to be with Kim. They’ve been together since, and were married in June 2004, shortly after Massachusetts was the first state to legalize gay marriage. I was at that celebration, too. (In fact, I did a reading at it. (Sonnet 116: Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments...I free-lanced a bit at the end - I never writ, nor no man – or woman -  ever lov'd. I don’t think The Bard would have minded.)

And then there’s today, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the Stonewall Rebellion, when those brave gay, lesbian and trans folks decided they were mad as hell and weren’t going to take it anymore. So when the cops raided the Stonewall Inn – those raids and arrests were the norm back in the day – the patrons who were about to be rounded up fought back.

This pretty much kicked off the gay rights movement. Which meant that, 35 years later, in 2004, my friends Kathleen and Kim could get married. (Big anniversary week: Wednesday was the fourth anniversary of the SCOTUS Obergefell decision, legalizing gay marriage throughout the country.)

We have, indeed, come a long way…

I’m not quite sure when I became aware that there was such a thing as a homosexual.

I am sure that, by the time I was in high school, I knew there were men who were “different”: swishy, sissy, limp-wristed, lispy – all those gay male stereotypes. And I’d read some Oscar Wilde.

But I didn’t know that women could be gay until Sister Catherine Patrice talked to our homeroom about our class’s unexpected and “odd” SAT results.

Although the math instruction at my high school was generally abysmal – as opposed to English, which was generally excellent – most of the girls in my class scored higher on their math SAT’s than they did on verbal. (I was one of them.) Anyway, Sister Catherine Patrice confronted the issue head on:

“Girls, just because you did better on your math college boards, doesn’t mean you’re a homosexual.”

Huh? Who even knew that women could be such? Not me, anyway.

Then things started to fall in place: those tough women you’d see in downtown Worcester, the ones wearing dungarees and sporting slicked-back DA (duck’s ass) hairdos. Oh.

Sister Catherine went on:

“Girls, what can you do with them? You can’t put them in prison. They’ll be with their own kind!”

This was pretty much the extent of sex education in my high school, by the way.

The summer after high school, Kim and I worked in a shoe factory in Worcester. (This was way before there was such a thing as a fancy internship, and before our pre-Vietnam War consciousness was raised. We made combat boots, including jump boots for the South Vietnamese Air Force.) Kim was a heel podder and I was a trimmer, working at tables near each other. Kathleen joined us most days for lunch at McDonald’s. I didn’t think twice about it. We were all friends…

When I was in college, as far as I could tell, very few people were out. But I did know a couple of women who were lesbians.

I think the first gay man I ever met who I knew was gay was a Harvard student who worked as a busboy at the Union Oyster House the summer my roommate and I waitressed there. Joyce and I were pretty friendly with Dick, and at one point he asked us if we were members of the Daughters of Bilitis. We had no idea what he was talking about. There was no Google back in the day, so we must have asked Dick what the DoB was. Turns out it was a lesbian organization. Okay, but, no, we weren’t members.

But we were pretty sure one of the waitresses was “of that persuasion”: a no-nonsense woman who had been a WAC and who wore one of those downtown Worcester DA’s. (Jeanie was pretty much the nicest waitress of the lot.)

Anyway, it was a pretty big deal for people to “come out” back then.

Even in the early 1980’s, to come out at work was only for the brave. Someone you got friendly with would decide that you could be trusted, so they told you.

And then, all of a sudden, a lot of people were out. Pictures appeared in offices, boyfriends and girlfriends showed up at the company holiday party.

And all of a sudden, one of my best friends was gay. Peter and his long-time partner were also married in 2004. Peter and Tony haven’t been together quite as long as Kathleen and Kim, but I think they began dating in 1982. I remember when Tony showed up in the office for one of their early dates. Yowza. A gorgeous Greek god in a black turtleneck and jeans. (Funny story: one time Peter and I were talking about old TV shows and I mentioned that, in junior high, I’d had a crush on George Maharis, one of the stars of Route 66. Turns out, Peter had had a crush on him, too. Turns out, Peter was right.)

Being gay – at least a gay male – became a scary thing during the AIDS crisis. One of my work friends contracted AIDS, and I was part of the support group that helped Jose, his partner, and his family (when these incredibly sweet and loving people came to Boston from Puerto Rico during Jose’s final days). Jose and Larry’s commitment ceremony was the first gay wedding (or as close to a wedding as you could get, back then, if you were gay) I attended.

Fast forward: Larry – a Unitarian minister – helped me figure out my husband’s memorial service. And he and his husband came up from Philadelphia for it.

A few weeks ago, I ran into my friend Tim-from-the-Gym on Charles Street. It was the day of Boston’s Pride Parade, and I tagged along with Tim to watch it. (It runs quite near to my house, so I usually see part of it.)

Tim – who is a couple of years younger than I am, but of my generation – was lightly grousing about how corporate the event has become, and how much he missed the parades in the good old days, when Boston’s parade had quite a raunch element – plus a handful of PFLAG (Parents and Friends of Lesbians and Gays) members and a few Unitarian churches. Nary a corporate sponsor in sight.

Nah, I told Tim -  who, of course, has his own story of coming out as an Irish Catholic from Boston’s Dorchester section – all these corporate sponsors, the churches, the schools, the organizations that march in support are a good thing. Think of the young kids, grappling with their sexuality. How affirming it is to see employees from all these companies who are out. And all these other organizations. And all these folks celebrating their pride in who they are.

You know, a lot of people are down on the Baby Boomers, and it’s hard to blame them. But we did accomplish a few things, and one of them was helping make it a lot easier for gay folks to be accepted.

Anyway, fifty years on, congratulations to Kathleen and Kim. And thanks to those people at the Stonewall Inn who decided it was finally time to stand up and fight back.

----------------------------------------------------------

After I wrote this post, Kathleen sent me a link to a Boston Globe article on her and Kim. Here you go:  They Loved in Silence.