Musings: Med School Boys’ Club
“I don’t care whose dick you suck — just come to work and do your job!” — Dr. Cunningham
I will never forget this line delivered by my boss at the time. He was 68 years old, six foot seven, 250 pounds, and from Alabama. And to paint the full picture, he wore cowboy boots with steel in their heels so everyone knew he was coming. Or more so to give everyone enough time to run away. Fear is a powerful thing. And surgical residency was tough enough being the typical boys club, where terms of “faggot” and “gay” and “suck my dick” were thrown out both in and out of the operating room. As you can imagine, this wasn’t the most encouraging place to explore my true identity. Nobody really gives a fuck about you — you are simply a cog in the system.
But my confusion was something going on within my own self. My skewed perception started growing up in a “bro” childhood in the suburbs of New Jersey and followed me through to medical residency with 120 hour work weeks in a hyper-masculine work environment. These were all formative years for me, so one can understand the impact it had on me. Being out and proud wasn’t really an option, let alone the practice of inclusivity. Without a true sense of self, I met a woman during residency who I fell in love with — or so I thought — and decided to marry her shortly thereafter. Wasn’t that the right path? Heart surgeon marrying the woman of his dreams, who was also a doctor?
As I look back at this, I see it as a valuable life lesson because it forced me to face my own demons. Of course there are easier ways to do this, but we all have our own journeys and I see mine as simply more complicated than someone else’s. I do believe I, as I am sure many others before and after me have felt as well, was dealing more with internalized homophobia and less the limited inclusivity within the hospital or my profession. In order to choose the path of being a surgeon, most do fall into the “type A” personality. Would an environment that was more understanding and supportive of the LGBTQ+ community have provided me the tools to come to this conclusion earlier, allowing me to fulfill a huge part of my life without ruining someone else’s (my ex-wife)? To be honest, I am not entirely sure.
Coming out is so multifactorial and such a personal and unique process. But in doing so, it altered my career path, allowing me to professionally start a company geared towards the gay community that provides the safe haven for non-judgmental and non-biased care as it relates to sexual wellness. My surgical specialty went from cardiology to proctology and, almost twelve years after founding Bespoke Surgical, I wouldn’t have had it any other way. The process was completely instrumental in understanding how inclusivity, both in and out of workplace, is paramount to its success — for me as the CEO, for my staff, and for everyone who comes into my office to receive the services we provide. My entire life focuses on homosexuality, because, goddammit, it is my life and now, thankfully, I have come full circle to have the wherewithal to know there is absolutely nothing wrong with it. I didn’t know it then, but knowing it now allows me the opportunity to create a completely new field of medicine and surgical techniques that embrace a larger community — one that is desperately in need of inclusive and specialized care. May he rest in peace, I do think Dr. Cunningham would be proud of all of these accomplishments.
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