Black Dahlia
I walked in my
blue silk shirt
to let the wind do its job
sweep away the petals of this
inequity
odd and unsightly to all
except a chosen few
for whom it smells more significant
than does Life
as cultivated by me
as it is unknown
to him who planted it
in me
after time
it will be simply some meaningless
bagatelle
In many ways this poem encapsulates my multiple attractions and lovesicknesses throughout my years growing up. In part, it’s a product of growing up in Appalachia where it’s safer and easier to leave the black dahlias hidden in the most remote part of one’s psychic garden, tended lovingly and with real amazement: how could anything be so wonderful and beautiful and still be the object of everyone’s ire and hatred? That question, of course, goes unanswered for me still. And in part, the poem is a product of growing up in the 1950s when it wasn’t cool to reveal anything about aberrant sexualities. I was fairly sure of how almost everyone would react. So the lovely dahlia grew larger and more enticing every day because it was now a substantial part of me and because it was hidden, a delicious joy that I could not share.
I was born in April 1944, and so, for many readers, the story I tell will be ancient history. Yet our culture may not have changed significantly in this nation or in the area of Appalachia I claim as my own. Though I went away to graduate school, I came back to Huntington to work as a teacher and have served in that capacity for over thirty years.
My first realization that I was gay occurred when I was sixth or seventh grade. First I idolized my father's body. As a very athletic man and a man who worked with his hands, his body remained strong. I still remember how excited I got when I happened to see him without his clothes. I remember too looking through old National Geographic magazines where I often found naked men. In particular, I remember a feature on the ancient Greeks that contained a picture of a teenage boy working for a potter and walking nude. I made the mistake of talking about these pictures, and then one day, I couldn't find the magazines anymore.
Junior high school was a particularly difficult time. It was at this time that I discovered who I was sexually, and at the same time found out how extremely isolating being gay can be. This was the really formative time, a time when for everyone, I suppose, you begin to emerge as from a cocoon, but not necessarily as a beautiful butterfly. Gym class was the most exciting time of the day--a class that I hated but at the same time lived for, that class and shop class, both of which were populated with only boys. I can remember to this day what certain boys looked like naked and I can yet see them horsing around nude in the locker room. However exciting that could be, the other side of the coin was that I could do no sport whatsoever, except running, but there was no track team. And without the ability to do sports, I was classified as a freak. That was hard enough, but it seemed as if the rest of the boys knew something about me that even I wasn't sure of. So I can remember being called queer and fag, with heavy expletives tacked on for emphasis, sometimes by the most beautiful boys in the school.
I did date in the ninth grade and never ever thought that I wouldn't marry or wouldn't care for a woman. But at the same time, I obsessed about some of the boys in my class and older ones at my junior high school. In fact, now that I think about it, I even obsessed about some boys when I was in the sixth grade. I recall cutting the "C" off Clove chewing gum and giving "love" chewing gum to the most beautiful couple in the sixth grade when they walked by the corner where I was a crossing guard. And I imagined myself as the girl admiring the boy in the relationship. So from sixth grade through the rest of high school, I had crushes on guys in my classes. Sometimes, it would be boys I hardly ever saw, athletes not of my social group. Other times it would be a guy in a class whom I saw regularly. I remember one short boy in my Driver's Ed. class who sat behind me. He had dark hair, and I tried constantly to make him laugh, to make him like me. I grew used to the frustrations and learned how to write about them in order to turn them into some special thing that was mine entirely. I was often consumed.
But my isolation was complete. I couldn't talk to my parents--I couldn't even shape the words in my mouth to tell them anything. I had good friends, two male friends in particular: one a boy interested in books and learning and music like me, the other less so, a brutish and ultimately sort of cruel boy. Neither of them did I find really attractive physically, nor was I consumed by them. But it was very important to have them in my life. When I dated in high school the same girl for several years, I didn't tell her really, only hinted at my feelings. It wasn't until college that it no longer mattered that I did not fit into a certain model of what a male should be. I could be myself, but not truly the self I knew myself to be. I had a friend in an honors class who thought he would bring me out--though I'm convinced he was not gay. We tried to have sex, but I was not turned on by him. I did find solace in studying cultures where homosexuality was tolerated or exalted, like ancient Greek culture. It seemed such an amazing alternative world where the values were finally what they should be.
It wasn't until my first year in graduate school that I found a group of friends who were really gay. We spent a lot of time together. And that was a wonderful year of experimentation. I had many crushes, one over an undergraduate that nearly derailed his and my life. I learned about the secret subculture I could now join, how it worked, where I could meet men, the kind of parties people could have. I was no longer isolated or lonely. I was not really happy or fulfilled, but I knew for sure who I was and that who I was was all right to be. Though there were no gay bars or any public meeting places where gays could get together, there was still, especially among the various groups of graduate students, spaces where we as gays could be, just be, just be ourselves.
I didn't realize until a few years ago exactly how damaging the isolation during junior high and high school time was for me. The friend most like myself, interested in learning and music and writing and language as I was, had moved far away after graduate school and created for himself an exciting and profitable life using his extraordinary linguistic skills. He tried to get in touch with me, and I agreed to see him. It was a very strange and awkward meeting, and I never felt comfortable around him. That's because I had found out through a gay faculty member whom he knew he was gay throughout junior high and high school and had experimented sexually with friends we both had. Somehow I can't get over that kind of betrayal. When I asked him how it was he could never come out to me, he said it was because of my family's strong religious beliefs. It is true that my family was very church oriented. Yet I confessed to him in the ninth grade that I had a crush on another guy, even said that I would like to marry him. I remember that he was very interested in this confession and thought it was humorous and intriguing. So, when I remember the conversation about my crush, I cannot imagine how he could not tell me about himself. He didn't, though, and I find now that I have no desire to associate with him--not to punish him; it's just that I can't understand why I had to be so lonely. It still puzzles me and makes me vaguely angry.
I'm married and have been, happily, for almost thirty-five years. I fulfilled the expectations of a time and place when there were no choices except to be married. I've lived a life no doubt confusing to an outsider. But my relationship with my wife is real, and when we first fell in love it was the hottest love that I have ever felt, a sublimely and completely physical love that consumed both of us. But I have loved men in the same way and am capable still of loving a man completely and physically. I've accepted the fact that I'm a mystery--not really to myself, but certainly to others for whom their own sexuality is somewhat simpler and more predictable. So, I become an example of the enormous variety of shapes and forms human beings can inhabit, and I was molded by a time and a place indelibly and ineluctably, but the black dahlia has become a flower of infinite hues.