Jack Tripper, Charlie Brown, The Paper Rose and Me, pt. 2

by Eric Franklin Crow

Here's the next installment of my coming out exploration:

About a year and a half after we moved to California  my family was having serious troubles, all revolving around my father, his alcoholism and the behaviors that arose from it. As a result, during Spring 1983, I saw a family counselor, sometimes with my family, sometimes alone, per the counselor's orders. When I went alone, I kept the money Mom gave me for bus fare and spent it on video games, choosing to walk to my appointments. They were in Mission Hills, the neighborhood west of Hillcrest (San Diego's gayborhood), and you have to walk through Hillcrest to get there. I don't know what it was about me that drew the attention of some of the men there. I wouldn't know what  it was all about (Alfie) for a few more years, which meant I also didn't know why I caught their attention, at least not explicitly. Maybe I looked older for my age, who knows. What I know is that I liked the attention they were giving me, and it didn't feel wrong to have their eyes on me. 

My parents, however, knew exactly what Hillcrest was, and if we got off at 5th & University, I had to stick close by. I remember my father getting into a near physical altercation with another man getting off at the same stop. Mom had to go pull him away, but not before I heard Dad call this man a "faggot," hurling the insult at him like a lavender brick. In a way, I understand where my parents were coming from. I remember being in downtown San Diego with my parents, watching a sandcastle contest around 4th & Broadway (shortly before construction began on Horton Plaza), and having a man come up to me, who was at least three times my age, with the salacious question of, “How'd you like to come play in my romper room?” I'm sure this is what my (ignorant) paternal parental unit thought of when he thought of homosexuals. I'm not excusing his outbursts, but he was from a different time and things were different then.

My early teen years were the time when music became very important to me. New wave, soul, rap, rock, R&B, it was all on within a turn of the dial on my radio, and I wasn't anywhere by choice that didn't involve my newfound love. Androgynous/gender-bending artists like Annie Lennox, Boy George, Adam Ant, Joan Jett & the Black Hearts, Cyndi Lauper and Prince carried special weight with me, again more implicitly than anything. I knew they were cool and I wanted to be fans of their music, but I didn't think of them as anything other than what they presented on stage. 

It wasn't in my vocabulary or psyche to be able to say that they were gay (I didn't hear Boy George say "You sure know a good drag queen when you see one" until I was in my 30s.)

There were all these personae serving as role models for me, like stars you point at in the sky. Record companies saw these bands as a cash cow, which wasn't a bad thing, at least in those times (before we know about the exploitation they visited on their artists) I would later learn just how much of the music I liked was from artists that were “not straight," and in some cases, I would get to see them at San Diego Pride as headlining acts. Same thing with acts like Liberace, Elvira and Elton John. I honest-to-goodness had no concept of their camp value and obviousness. To me, what they presented, I took at face value. Years later, when I got to see these acts live, it was like a dream come true. I would think back to the "cool kids" who liked these groups and thought they were the only ones who could lay claim to popular music, and I thumbed my nose at them. These were my groups, too, and in fact more yours than mind.

Back to the what you don't talk about or do when you're in school. I was bullied from grade school to my sophomore year, by both boys and girls. Spotting a rainbow is a thing that brings most people joy, but when I did it in school, that immediately made me a target for the rest of 8th grade, and all for nothing more than expressing joy at seeing something special. In high school, I hung out with the “different” kids once in a while, and I would hear them talk in hushed, furtive tones about the resentment they felt at not being able to be left alone to be themselves, Me, my problem at school is best summarized by an incident in 8th grade PE; when picking teams for a volleyball game, I heard the team captain say, "Well, he's on our team, because technically he's a boy.” I was the same boy who caught a football heading towards me at high velocity by simply holding still and holding my arms out. But the only way they could tell I was a boy was because of what I had between my legs. 

I was also bullied by girls, but the bullying from the girls was different, because sexuality was involved, and these girls used it as a weapon (probably also as a means of protection against the same boys I had to fend off in high school). It was nothing physical, but rather a kind of interrogation that meant to embarrass me. They would make inappropriate inquiries into my dating/sex life, knowing I didn't have one (who really does at 13/14?) and it was clear their aim was to tease and intimidate me, or any other boy they saw as inferior or rife to be a target.

Tenth grade was a particularly rough year for me. In a couple classes, I had a group of boys that were assigned seats all around me. As the weeks and months passed, the bullying was more relentless, and they would interrogate me about my demeanor with questions like “Why are you such a nerd?” or “Why do you walk like a fag?” I'm sure “fag” meant more than (or something different than) homosexual in their minds. I tried to answer their questions, if only to appease them, but as my answers just gave them more fodder, more grist for their testosterone-laden heads, and they became even more aggressive with me.

Then the day came in the third quarter, where I just got tired of putting up with it, and I took on the biggest boy in that group (a quarterback) out in the open in the lunch quad. If it meant my ass, so be it, but I was done just taking it lying down. As soon as he started in, following behind me and pushing me hard, I took my binder and started hitting him in the shoulders and the back of his head. Just as he came close to punching me, a school monitor came by and yelled for us to knock it off. As I headed towards the library, I looked back and gave him a “what you wanna start something?” look. I would have fought him just like that boy in 7th grade, too, if given the chance. I think he got the message, as he looked at me knowingly, before shrugging his shoulders and walked the other way. 

But the damage was done, and I continued seeking refuge from those boys, so I started ditching class in the spring semester of my sophomore year; of all places to go, I had to choose the library. I would go to the City Heights or Kensington Branches and camp out there for hours, reading books or listening to tapes. I knew from going to public libraries that 612.6 in the Dewey Decimal system had to do with the reproductive system, and in particular sex and sexuality. One day, I picked out the book “Everything You Always Wanted To Know About Sex (But Were Afraid To Ask)” and read the whole book, hiding it in the pages of a bigger book so passers by couldn't see what I was reading. The book opened my eyes to a whole world out there that I knew about but no one in my family would speak about, t least not to a 13-year-old kid. The chapters that stuck out most with me were the chapters about sexual dysfunction, prostitution and homosexuality. In particular, homosexuality was painted in a negative light in the book, with the author saying that homosexuals led lonely, unfulfilled lives, only able to have clandestine affairs, and all that 50's high school film projector realness.

In my junior year, things turned around, largely in part because I joined my class in decorating a float for Homecoming. The meetings were Friday nights at Stevie Ruocco's house in Kensington (one of my favorite neighborhoods to walk through). I had a huge crush on him, again another stocky, sandy-blonde haired boy with green eyes, and I would make it a point of always trying to be around him at the meetings. We would be done decorating for the night, and we would stay after for an hour or two, talking about common interests (imagine finding out I had things in common with kids at my school.) Being up late, having my own money from a paper route and having all these new people around was exhilarating, and it made it easy for me to let down my guard and my inhibitions of being around students, on and off campus. Bullying and incidents still happened, but but much less frequency. Either I grew up or they got tired of bullying me, or maybe it was a little of both. 

I had choir class in the second half of 11th grade, and the music room was open to any student that had a class in the room, to come in and play instruments or listen to music. I'd just decided I was a Prince fan, and had the "Parade" album with me every day. I would go almost every day after class, go in the AV room, play the cassette and rock out, especially to "Life Can Be So Nice." Music albums were new worlds I could escape to any time I wanted, and not worry about the outside world. I sat at the piano and wrote my first song, playing around with the "purple keys" (the black keys, actually, but these were the same keys found in Prince songs.)

It was a friendly, welcoming environment, and none of the boys in class were like the bullies, so I looked forward to class each day. For my final exam, I sang the last song on the album, “Sometimes It Snows In April,” note for note (Prince's music was very digestible during his glory days. This was the first song that ever made me cry from sadness and not fear. This got a near standing ovation from this class, who had never really heard me use my voice. It was here that I was finally able to move on and finally start being my own person. It was the only year I got 2 A's on a report card—Music and Elementary Algebra.

In Senior year, there were a couple other students who were also super into Prince, one who even dressed like Prince, pumps and trench coat and all. I didn't really think of it as androgynous, I just thought of it as cool; my 12th grade science teacher, not so much. She walked by my desk one day and picked up a notebook I was writing in, where I had detailed what my version of a Prince outfit would look like. She took the notebook to her desk and proceded to read the notes out loud. When she finished, she look at me and said, “If you were my son and dressed like this, I'd throw you out of the house. I think you've got some serious problems and your parents might need to be told about this.” Nothing ever came of it, because I think she was more interested in intimidating me, and her decision to humiliate me clearly backfired, only fueling the fire for my exploration of my own sexuality through Prince's music. He was my idol, and I loved the music, but almost more than that, I loved his aesthetic. Whether in the way he dressed or the way he designed his music products. I used to spend long hours in record stores looking at Prince albums. Being a Prince fan gave me the chance to dream and have fantasies about what I would do if I was given the chance.

It was the spring of 1986, just after I turned 17, when it finally happened. While headed to the office to get a paycheck—I lied about my age so I could circulate petitions and voter registration—for the Republican party (I'm sorry)–I ran across the street in a rush to get there and almost got sandwiched between a car and a van. The driver of the van pulled over to the side of the road, rolled down the window and asked if I was alright. He was what I would later call a Daddy Bear—grey bearded, hairy man in his 50s—, and he asked me if I wanted a ride somewhere. I accepted his offer and gave him the address. 

When we got to the building, he pulled over to the curb and he struck up a conversation with me; I found myself very comfortable with him. Our conversation took a hard left turn when he made a remark about liking my maroon slacks, and then he asked me, “Would you go to the back of my van and take these off so I could measure them?” “Measure them? What do you mean?” I replied. He put his hand on my leg and said, “yes, measure them.” In that precise moment, I knew exactly what he wanted. I felt this fear wash over my face and I had two choices—get in the back of the van with him or get out. But then the feat turned into excitement. He asked me, “Are you 18?” I lied, because by now I wanted to go in the back of his van, and just like that, I was right in the middle of my first time. Right there in a van in North Park. He took off my pants and asked me to lay back and spread my legs so he could get a good “measurement.” The "measurement" took about 10 minutes, and just like that, my virginity left the building.

I remember walking through the North Park library in bliss over what just happened.

Side-bar: In the fall of my senior year, we all got pulled in to an assembly for the one and only sex education talk I ever got in all of high school. This was just before the height of the panic years of AIDS, and the test for HIV had only been created the year before. The assembly lasted about 20 minutes and covered just the very basic facts of how and who. I had a full-fledged sex education class after high school in my health ed class at Job Corps, which also showed us “Scared Straight” and “Future Shock.” The point of these classes was to educate us through fear, and very sex-negative. 

Pt. 3 is coming Saturday