Recently, when responding to a comment by Why You Dirty Old Queer (hereafter referred to as “WYDOQ”), I came out as not being a homo. It wasn’t the first time I have said, “I’m not a homo!” There are at least four others:

• When my father caught me masturbating to gay porn
• When I had the lead role in a middle school production of “Tea & Sympathy”
• When I cried inconsolably after watching The Falsettos on Broadway
• When Edward Albee put his hand down my pants (this only happened in my imagination)

Now, notice I’m saying “homo” not “gay”, and that’s for a reason. I don’t want you to confuse what I am talking about with all of the other people, besides homos, that now sit comfortably under the big gay umbrella. I’m not talking about lesbians, et. al. I know next to nothing about lesbians, and what little I do know is wrong. This is what I know about lesbians:

• They like to play softball
• They wear expensive sunglasses
• If they have a blond ponytail, they put it through the little hole in the back of their baseball cap
• They live in large apartments and drink a lot of tea. (I got this from watching the movie Go Fish)

Please don’t bother to tell me I’m wrong about lesbians. I know I’m wrong, but I’m not talking about lesbians. I’m talking about homos. Old school homos. Now, for you youngsters who don’t know the mores of yesteryear, what made you a homo, in the old days, was not having sex with other men, though that was certainly part of it, but voluntarily adopting the folkways of the homo culture. Back then, having sex with men under certain circumstances didn’t make you a homo at all. For example, you could have sex with other men under the following conditions and not be a homo:

• You were both in boarding school
• You both had gone to boarding school
• You were both altar boys, novices, or priests
• You were at sea
• You were driving through the Lincoln Tunnel
• You were in prison
• You were living in a lumberjack camp

To be a homo took much more. I’m sure someone with more authority will correct me, but I think in the old days you had to be able to do at least one of the following in order to be considered a proper homo:

• Quote Walt Whitman or Verlaine
• Demonstrate an incredibly quick wit
• Act campy
• Be able to make furniture

So, as you can see, I clearly don’t make the grade, and it’s important that I say so.

Why It Matters That I’m Not a Homo

I have to make sure you know, because, as I said to WYDOQ, I’m cultured enough to pass for a homo, and some of you dumb millennials may mistake me for one. I don’t want to end up as the Rachel Dolezal of gay people. I’m very sensitive to the charge that I am appropriating homo culture, like some Internet Madonna. I try to give credit where credit is due. It’s not like my people came up with the idea of a shoal collar on a tuxedo, or symposia, or Western Art, or the use of the word ‘Troll’, or… good food. I admit it, a world without homos isn’t a world I would be interested in living in, and if I haven’t said that before, I’m sorry. So, I want to make sure that it is clear: If you catch me saying homo things, or hissing, or sucking my teeth, I mean to do it with respect and as an homage to the people for whom those words and actions are sacred. I mean no disrespect, but there is also another, more important, reason that I come clean.

The Real Reason That You Shouldn’t Count Me With Them

When I was in college, I had a friend named Mark Hinkley. I don’t mind using his real name because, unfortunately, he died of cancer a few years back. We were in school together at a small, conservative, all-male college in southside Virginia in the early 80s.

Mark was a talented intellectual. He was funny, and he was kind. In our Junior year he wrote an editorial saying that our college needed a gay student union. In the course of his argument he came out as gay. The response was immediate and fierce. I know that he was thrown out of fraternity parties, heckled, and shunned after he came out. What other indignities he suffered I can only guess. I have to guess because I didn’t stand with him.

I didn’t disavow Mark, I just didn’t help him in any meaningful way. I was on the newspaper staff. I could have easily written an editorial in support, but I did not. Our editor, Hawes Spencer, was more supportive and encouraging than I was. He too took some shit. When people asked me about it, I said simply that it was Mark’s thing. I wasn’t gay, you see.

In the intervening years, my life has been fine. I’ve been married for a long time. I never had anyone question my parenting, lifestyle, or choices. When Mark died his partner, Ed, sent me the news. You know what Ed wasn’t? He wasn’t Mark’s husband, though they were as nice a couple as any of my other friends.

Luckily, before Mark died I was able to tell him that his coming out was one of the most courageous things I have witnessed in my life, and I was sorry that I wasn’t more supportive. He, ever a gentleman, was gracious in response, but couldn’t absolve me of the truth. Sometimes you pick the fight, and sometimes the fight picks you. Long before big gay party marches and multi-color flags that flap in the breeze, when the idea of a rainbow facebook picture was as distant as one of Pluto, I could have really stood up for homos. I did not. I am ashamed of it to this day. That’s why it’s important you know: many of those old homos are heroes. I am not one of them.