Living among openly-gay people in LA in the 1980s


It's June, which is Gay Pride month, and it's got me to thinking about what I've seen in my own life of their struggles. Let's go back to the 1980s in Los Angeles, when I was in my twenties.

Whether the people I worked with were gay, or not, really didn't matter to me. I was in the process of learning about the world, and about people, and the subject of who people are attracted to, and what it was all about, was just something that I needed to learn as a young man.

The first thing that I learned is that there is a difference between flamboyant behavior and orientation (sometimes called "preference"). Yes, of course there were people who looked and acted like Nathan Lane in "The Birdcage", but there were also people like Rock Hudson. If you're not old enough to remember Rock Hudson, who died from AIDS, go ahead and Google him, or better yet, watch one of his movies.

And really, unless someone told you, or they showed up at a party with their significant other who was of the same gender and introduced them that way, you really didn't know. Speaking for myself, I've always been a private man, and have considered it no one's darned business who I may be sleeping with. People who would ask me would get a line that I learned from Roger Moore: "It's not something that a gentleman talks about." And this was honor, and courtesy, not shame.

My girlfriends have all known that I dislike PDA (Public Displays of Affection). I don't stroll down the lane holding hands, nor do I make out on a park bench. And in a perfect world I would prefer that other people felt the same way. But I have a neck, and I can turn my head - not from disgust, but from propriety. Ain't I stuffy?

Attitudes about being openly gay were changing so quickly in the 1980s that by the '90s Jerry Seinfeld could poke fun at it, after seeing an article that cheerfully accepted him and his friend George (although it didn't come right now and say it) as gay. Not that there's anything wrong with that! (A line from the show that you may recall if you watched it).

When I moved back to Arizona in 1989 I experienced something like a time-warp. Attitudes towards gay people were often openly hostile. And so a game had to be played, which could be very confusing. It was called "being in the closet", which meant that someone was gay but hadn't come out of the closet yet. And as long as they were in the closet it was important to play along. Admitting to being gay was called "coming out", and sometimes people were "outed" against their will.

I would walk around, slender, well-dressed, and people would wonder about me. Some people's curiosity would get the better of them and they would come right out and ask me if I was gay. And I would answer them with something that I learned to say in Los Angeles in the 1980s, "I'm sorry, no, I'm not gay. But thank you for asking anyway!"
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