Girls Who Like Boys Who Like Boys Read online

  Within five years after we graduated, everything was different. Our high school experience in many ways resembled our parents’ time more than it resembles today’s. We lived in a time when we had cords on our phones—if not the cord connecting the handset to the base, then definitely the cord connecting the base to the wall. We lived in a time when chatting was something that didn’t involve typing, and text and page were words that applied to books, not cell phones. If we wanted to see naked pictures, we had to sneak peeks in magazine stores, or rely upon drawings in The Joy of Sex, spreads in National Geographic, and carefully paused moments in R-rated videotapes. The only kids we knew in towns outside of our own were the ones we had gone to camp with. The only bands we knew were the ones that were played on the radio or on MTV. For me, it was a time before Ellen and a time before the kiss on Dawson’s Creek and Ricky on My So-Called Life, and a time before the Internet and all the other pop cultural things that might have tipped me off to my own identity before I hit college. Because I was happy, I didn’t really question who I was.

  I don’t know whether the good girls were as ignorant as I was to my gayness, or if they had figured it out before I did and were waiting for me to piece it together. One of them had definitely picked up on it—during my freshman year of college, my friend Rebecca sent me a letter saying basically that it was totally cool if I was gay, and that I didn’t have to hide it anymore. I was hurt—not that she thought I was gay, but that she thought I was hiding something so important from my friends. I assured her that I would tell people if I were gay—and as of that writing, I was correct. Later on, during college, I’d figure it out. And as soon as I did, I didn’t really hide it. It seemed as natural as anything else, and I didn’t go through any of the anxiety, fear, or denial that I would have no doubt experienced had I figured it out in high school. It was a gradual realization that I was completely okay with, and everyone else was completely okay with. The good girls would have been much more shocked if I’d told them I was going premed.

  Because I’ve grown up to have a writing life that brings me into contact with a lot of teens, I see all the possibilities that are open now that weren’t open to me then. I see all the fun trouble we could’ve gotten into. I see how late I bloomed into being gay. I see how being a good girl meant missing out on some things, closing myself off to certain experimentations and risks. It was a sheltered life, but I’m happy that I had the shelter. I needed the shelter. I bloomed late in some things, but I bloomed well in so many others. I know some good things that I missed, but I also know a lot of bad things I missed, too.

  Now, most of the good girls—from high school, from college, from after—have found good guys (or good girls) to be with. And I have found the other boys who were once surrounded by good girls. Together, we boys form our own good-girl circles, doing all the things we used to do exclusively with the good girls: confide, support, chatter, have fun. I don’t think many of us would have imagined in high school that we would one day have such circles, that we would one day find so many guys we liked, so many guys like us. We still consult with the genuine good-girl articles, but now we can also be our own good girls.

  After all, we were trained by the best.

  WELCOME TO MY DOLLHOUSE

  Michael Musto

  I’ve always liked playing with girls, if not quite in the way Dad was hoping. I feel safer with them, freed from the male constraints of bluster and machismo—especially in the gay world. I belong with the lipstick-for-lunch bunch, and miraculously, I’ve been able to stretch our platonic little gender-blending mix-’em-ups into a lifetime of nonthreatening fun and games.

  It’s always been as natural a fit as the gown I got to wear in elementary school for an exciting Greek line dance that bordered on a drag show. When I was a kid, men seemed too busy, too pressured, and too distant to deserve—or want—my company. The ladyfolk got not only to wear clothes with more zing and possibility (appliqués! shoulder pads!), they could have the real fun, like sitting around over Entenmann’s apple crumble cake and dishing everyone on the block and the TV set, in between bowing their heads and murmuring their rosaries. Thanks to forward women like my mother and my aunt who lived upstairs, I learned the cathartic virtues of down and dirty gossip, something I not only turned into a life-affirming pastime, I’ve made a living out of it, complete with free meals and health benefits!

  At age ten, I spent a lot of time at that gossip table, the only man for miles, while seizing every other free moment to go to the neighbors’ backyard and play with two preteen sisters, Teresa and Dawn, who took me in like a stray dog. On balmy summer afternoons, we staged fake tea parties and pseudo-TV tapings, and after braiding our dolls’ hair and slathering their heads with glitter, we’d put on even more shows, making the dolls talk and gossip almost as intoxicatingly as we did. I had a feeling this wasn’t accepted behavior for a boy growing up in testosterone-laden Bensonhurst, Brooklyn—in fact, it was screaming out for an intervention-via-straitjacket—but I didn’t have a choice. I could pass for a guy, but not for a straight one, so I knew to avoid the schoolyard across the street, where wry humor got you nowhere unless you also had a mean right hook or a killer kick in the ass. Any extravagant use of my limbs was generally applied to impersonating Diana Ross, not to scoring hoops and tackling people, so I demurred and stayed in the dollhouse where I could get by without anyone looking in and making fun. The girls accepted me, no questions asked, and welcomed my friendly ear and stylish advice. I knew I’d found my place.

  Aiming for a little normalcy, I did eventually try to cultivate a straight male friend—Jimmie Boy, a pesky neighborhood squirt who seemed only occasionally scary. We’d lightly bonded a few times on my stoop, so I suggested we go see a movie together (that sounded better to me than stickball), but it turned out we had even less chemistry than my parents. Jimmie Boy was pushing to see the John Wayne Vietnam butchfest, The Green Berets, a bloated flag-waver you couldn’t have dragged me to with a rifle. Instead, I was begging for the foofy Julie Andrews toe tapper Thoroughly Modern Millie, knowing that would be just my cup of period froth—who doesn’t love Carol Channing and Beatrice Lillie? Jimmie Boy looked as horrified as if I’d asked him to dine in the back of a sanitation truck. When I offered to pay, he said fine. We sat there in tense silence as the movie unspooled with all of its spangly costumes and campy humor. Jimmie Boy bolted midway, practically vomiting. I stayed till the end, enthralled, then went right back to the girls.

  They might not have liked Millie either, but at least they would have been nice enough to stick it out. Females were my salvation—once my hormonal years hit, me and the ladies, any ladies, clung to one another with an even fiercer desperation. Without the hint of sex—which can make things so messy and complicated, after all—we were able to explore our friendships with a minimum of game playing and an absence of hidden motives. With another guy, the subtext would always be either, “Why doesn’t he want me?” or “I wish he didn’t want me,” but with the girl-gay combo, that’s out of the way and you can just sit down and compare your fingernails. There’s no threat of rejection—we simply don’t like each other that way—so we’re liberated to move on to a more healthy interpersonal ballet without strings attached. Of course, sometimes the girl will develop a friendship-paralyzing crush on the gay, but that’s when you simply move on to another, less complicated fag hag. There are plenty out there.

  In the 1970s, I went to the then all-male Columbia College, maybe to punish myself, though I did find ways to make the experience more than bearable. I majored in ultragirly English literature and lived in Plimpton Hall, the Barnard dorm filled primarily with girls, girls, girls. On paper, this was a straight guy’s dream, but in reality it was even more tailor-made for a gay because I was shacked up with my gal pals, my peers, my kindred playmates. I was back in my dollhouse, far from creatures that liked football and John Wayne (except maybe for a few lesbians). I even wrote for the Barnard Bulletin—and would have gladly go
ne all the way and enrolled in Barnard if the school authorities had allowed it. After all, I still had that lovely Greek gown.

  My Ivy League friendships were the archetypal straight woman–gay man ones that are now the stuff of popular culture. I listened, they talked. I lent support and accessories, they returned them. I lived vicariously through their dating stories, they told me to get some of my own. Most importantly, we’d both been hurt or let down by guys and needed one another to fix the damage.

  Flash forward to today, when I’m still reliving those same familiar patterns from my childhood. I can’t help it: I’ll always be quite the ladies’ man. Happy, Dad?

  DONNY AND MARIE DON’T

  GET MARRIED

  Brian Sloan

  Whenever my family pretends they were surprised to discover I was gay, I like to remind them of my obsession with Donny and Marie. This ABC show from the mid-1970s was a televised wonder with its sparkling sets, ice dancers, and musical medleys. Marie was a glamorous fifteen-year-old who seemed impossibly adult with her hair blown out like Farrah Fawcett and her body draped in Bob Mackie gowns. The real kicker, though, was her charming, sexy brother. Sitting inches from the TV, watching Donny in those oh-so-tight polyester pants, sporting that shiny-perfect hair, and blasting America with his nuclear smile, I was a nine-year-old in love.

  Anita Bryant was wrong about the gays recruiting children. The real culprit corrupting America’s youth was Donny Osmond.

  Fortunately, there was another person in my neighborhood who shared my obsession with all things Osmond. Sarah Forman and I had been friends since her family moved to Rockland Hills, a suburb of Washington, D.C., when we were toddlers. On weekends, we’d stage our own elaborate version of Donny and Marie on the Formans’ slate terrace, pretending it was an ice stage. We would decorate our set with streamers, Christmas lights, and potted plants, moving the patio furniture out of the way so there was more room for fake skating.

  Once the stage was ready, Sarah would play Marie and I would play Donny. Sarah had a certain star quality, reminding me of Jodie Foster circa the Disney years, with her freckled face, tousled dirty-blonde hair, and tomboyish energy. I was an equally freckled kid and a perfect match for her Marie. We even had a supporting cast of some of the younger neighborhood kids as chorus girls and comic foils for our improvised skits. We’d go “on the air” with a studio audience of three: Mrs. Forman, smoking her Salems in a deck chair, and Coco and Kimball, her Dalmatian and hyperactive poodle.

  Sarah was the first person who shared my delusions of fabulosity. She understood that, unlike most boys, I preferred putting on shows rather than racing around in circles after a ball. She got how I was different, enjoyed it thoroughly and took it at face value, unlike my own family. When I got home, I would relate stories of our broadcasts, but these fey-boy fantasies never went over well and the topic would be quickly changed to the Redskins game that week. Given my interest in the Osmonds and a propensity for baking, the joke among my brothers was that I was the sister they never had.

  Actually I was the one with a sister. I had Sarah.

  In marked contrast to my home life, there was a sort of benign anarchy that reigned at the Formans’. At my house, with four boys and two strict Catholic parents, we had countless rules and regulations about what could and could not be watched on television, the volume of music on the stereo, and the proper way to be seated at the dinner table (that is, actually to be seated). Sarah had no siblings and two younger, hipper parents, so things were more relaxed in the Forman home. You could watch television while eating dinner (on TV trays even!), something my parents considered worse than missing church on Sunday.

  I remember noting with awe that the Formans subscribed to both The Washington Post and Playboy, reflecting a much looser set of social mores. The living room’s bookcases were filled with lots of seventies self-help books (I’m OK–You’re OK) and racy novels (Jacqueline Susann was well represented), as well as a fairly extensive LP collection, heavy on rock and pop. In contrast, my parents had an encyclopedia set and a bunch of 8-tracks by Henry Mancini. Sarah’s mom used to play “Mrs. Robinson,” that catchy tune about adultery that never quite cracked the top ten on my parents’ wood console stereo. Sarah and I loved that song, so Mrs. Forman would blast it endlessly as we danced around the living room. Back at my house, my parents were utterly horrified when I started singing the praises of Mrs. Robinson.

  If Sarah had been a boy, this incident alone would surely have been enough to ban me from the Forman household for a few weeks, if not longer. But Sarah was a girl, and I’m guessing my folks thought they’d better cultivate this relationship, as it might be the only way I might not turn out gay. My parents have since confessed to having conversations with Sarah’s parents in which they actually discussed the inevitability of our future wedding. Yes, around the tender age of eight, it was clear to everyone that Sarah and I were meant for marriage. Of course, this was not to be.

  At the beginning of my junior year, I had a falling out with my best male friend for what, in retrospect, was the gayest reason ever: He had a new friend of whom I was terribly jealous. Charlie, who was a man of all sports, had met this other superjock during football camp and they’d become “tight,” as he liked to put it. So for the first time since the start of high school, I was on my own to secure a date for my school’s equivalent of the traditional homecoming dance, known as the Regimental Ball. For the first time, I couldn’t just take some random girl that Charlie had set up for me. Liberated from that pool of second-hand dates, the field was wide open. In my case, that also meant the field was absolutely empty. I didn’t know any girls other than my best friend’s girlfriends. I only knew guys.

  Except, that is, for Sarah.

  By high school, we were no longer the inseparable best friends of the Donny and Marie years. We’d see each other around the neighborhood and at the occasional holiday event, but never as often as we had during childhood. Part of this was due to Sarah’s switch to public school and our increased academic workloads. But a larger reason, I think, was my increasing discomfort with myself and my budding sexuality. Other boys didn’t seem to notice this, whereas girls, generally equipped with a keener emotional radar, tended to pick up on this sort of thing. I was not as eager to hang out with Sarah and be subject to a much higher level of scrutiny than I would at, say, a postfootball kegger with the boys.

  A couple of weeks before the dance, I was sitting at the breakfast table when my mom asked me for the one hundredth time who I was taking to “the Reg.” For the one hundredth time I mumbled, “I dunno.” She suggested that I take Sarah. I looked up from my bowl of cereal and gave her my trademark that-is-the-worst-idea-I’ve-ever-heard look. She said that I knew Sarah well and that we would probably have “a very nice time.” The way she phrased it actually made the idea sound appealing. I had never had “a very nice time” at any high school dance, ever.

  Maybe, I thought, my mother actually had a point.

  So I dialed Sarah’s oh-so-familiar number and popped the question: “Do you wanna go to the Reg?” She had no idea what “the Reg” was until I explained that it was like homecoming but a little fancier. Once it hit her that I was asking her on a date to a formal dance, she was thrilled.

  I, however, was scared stiff.

  After years of family and neighborly gossip about Sarah and me as childhood sweethearts, the day of reckoning had arrived. Though I’d been to countless dances, balls, and cotillions before this one, I had never experienced such anxiety. Those other dance dates were with relatively average girls, most of them now a dim memory. This was Sarah, the once and future love of my life, at least according to Rockland Hills lore. There was a lot of anticipation in our tight-knit neighborhood over the whole affair. We were like a localized version of Charles and Diana, the storybook romance of the era; suddenly the kingdom was filled with excitement over the Big Event.

  As the buzz over our imminent romantic coronation grew, I tried to
keep the volume at school on low. Unfortunately there was a meeting of moms, mine and Charlie’s, at the local Safeway, where the news of the impending royal date was spilled. After that, the word spread quickly around school. I knew that taking someone to the Reg who didn’t go to one of the five all-girl private schools in the area would be noticed. But my classmates were abuzz in a way I’d neglected to calculate. Sarah, being a public school girl, was a mystery to them.

  I was in the cafeteria when Charlie stopped by our table to drop a gossip bomb: He’d heard from a guy on the public school’s football team that Sarah was “a serious nymphomaniac.” I found this news particularly shocking, mainly because I didn’t even know what that word nymphomaniac meant. I was taking biology class at the time and knew that nympho had something to do with the neck. Was Sarah into severe necking?

  When I got back to my locker to look up nymphomaniac in my Webster’s, I thought I might faint: “a woman with a compulsive desire to have sex with many different men (often considered offensive).” My neighborhood sweetheart and future bride-to-be was an offensively insatiable slut? This didn’t sound exactly like the Marie that I knew. But then again, what did I know about Sarah’s sexuality? It’s not like we had talked about either of our sexual or even romantic adolescent adventures—or, on my end, the lack thereof. Suddenly, with this brazen rumor, things were getting complicated: Not only did I have to take her to the dance but apparently I had to perform as well! This was going to be a problem because, at that point in my sexual career, I was only a solo artist. Suddenly I was being called on to duet with the alleged Madonna of the high school set.