My Gay Experience
A storm of vitriol may rain down, but I have to admit that neither side of the same-sex-marriage debate seems without merit to me. All people of good faith congregate, I think, around the conviction that love should be honored wherever it flowers.
When I was in my early twenties, struggling each month to make rent on a fifth-floor walk-up on the Upper East Side, I took a job as an usher at Carnegie Hall. What a great gig. Of course, I felt superior to the task of showing people to their seats. One night a blue-haired matron arrived late, looked at the sky-blue jacket emblazoned with CARNEGIE HALL, and asked if I was an usher. “Lady, I’m not trying on their fall line,” I said. Ouch. I remember thinking: I hope she doesn’t take that to management.
Back in the mid-1970s the pay was only ten dollars a show, but the benefits were amazing. Staff gave me all the plum assignments: page-turning for Maurice André’s organist; handling stage seating the night Montserrat Caballé drew an overflow audience; helping out during rehearsals when Benny Goodman celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of his debut; gazing directly into Helen O’Connell’s gorgeous green eyes as she ran through “Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree.” Those were great times.
The ushering crew was a mixed lot-young musicians and actors, older folks picking up a second job. The environment was socially liberal. Gay, straight; it didn’t matter at all. One of my fellow ushers, a nice-looking kid named Steven, asked me out repeatedly over several months. I took it as a compliment but always brushed him off. One night he invited me to dinner, and for some reason I said yes.
We had a perfectly pleasant evening. Afterward he told me two neighbors had asked us to stop by. Someone lit a joint, and the evening took on a hazy glow. Then it hit me.
Steven’s neighbors-a gay couple-assumed we were lovers. I was experiencing the gay lifestyle from the inside. And then another unbelievably profound insight leapt into my head (I was stoned, remember): gay people are just like straight people. Nothing sexual was happening; we were just four people sitting around talking. I know how naïve that sounds, but give me a break-I was a callow kid.
That moment has stayed with me, as have other times when I’ve felt how much we all have in common, how much labor is required to prop up the walls we build to keep each other out. Steven never hit on me again after that night, but we remained friendly until I left the job.
A firm proponent of equality for all, I’m ready to be persuaded that failing to grant gay couples the right to marry violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. I also sympathize with those who feel that a fundamental social construct is shifting beneath them. Maybe if we all got together for dinner one night…
4/3/2013
