"The Truth About Me..."

I was born and came of age before the arrival of the internet-era, it was a time when it was hard to gain any knowledge of a subject considered to be taboo, even if you thought it was about you. And so on my journey to understanding the truth of myself, there were only a very few occasions that I ran across anything that was affirming of the way I felt... 

1972 (when I was only 8 years old) brought a first to network television, a made-for-TV movie staring Martin Sheen and Hal Holbrook as a loving gay couple.  "That Certain Summer" is widely considered to be the first sympathetic depiction of gay people on American television. At the time of this film's arrival, I was keenly aware that I was different from most of the boys in school and from my brothers, and I knew that it was in that certain way. I remember that I loved to read the TV Guide and I also remember an article about this film and the uproar it was expected to generate.  I secretly wished to see it, but it aired well after my bedtime, and although my parents didn't often screen what we watched on television, I would've been terrified to be discovered watching this. And so, it would not be until 8 years later in 1980 when I was 16 that I would see this surprising and hopeful film thanks in part to our proximity to the border with Canada.

By that time in my life, I was a miserably introverted, lonely and unhappy teen who literally was in the closet most of the day, for I had made a private nook for myself in the closet under our basement steps where I would spend many hours alone with only the little B&W tv my father had bought me some years before. On it I'd watch endless hours of old films on the Windsor CBC station and this was one of them.  I remember feeling somewhat hopeful that somehow maybe I could be part of a happy couple someday, even if only in my dreams.  I went on to see a plethora of similar films from around the world in my closet hideaway that would never air on American television including the very bittersweet "Boys In The Band."

Surprisingly, I've never forgotten "That Certain Summer" and in its own small way, perhaps it helped shape my belief that someday, I'd be brave enough to come out of the closet literally and figuratively to live an authentic life of hoping for love and find my truth.

"Fear Eats the Soul"