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HIGH GEAR

JULY 1976

SIXTEEN

AND GAY

By Michael Madigan

The young man with whom this interview was held requested that his name not be published. We'll call him Jim. He is a healthy, active sixteen-yearold who lives and attends school in Bay Village. This summer, he is spending his vacation working for the Bay Village Parks and Recreation Department, as a children's activities leader.

We spoke with him for about two hours in the living room of his home. No other members of the family were present.

HG: Let's begin with basics. You live here with your family. J: My mother and my sister. My parents are divorced. They were separated when I was eleven. My mother found herself with responsibility for the children and my father found himself a small apartment. He's now remarried, he lives quite happily with his new wife and my stepsister, in a suburb.

Relationships. My father. He's a man of about forty, forty-one. He's constantly trying to keep up with me, smokes pot, tries to be the utmost in being a father.

I wish you could call us close, at times. But at times we're very, very distant. We're close when we want to be situations between the two of us. But he's constantly shoving them down my throat, saying, "Take the second teaspoonful," tightening my belt, telling me what to do. I figure he's just exercising his right to be a father. He'll play at being real easy, the whole bit. Then, when something comes down on top of my head, he'll try to come in and play the father image which I can see coming before it happens. I feel for him. I understand his position, but I don't like his position.

HG: You have a fairly mature attitude. I hope it's not a sad attitude.

J: It's not sad. The thing that's always destroyed me is when my gay friends say, "Well, Jim, I just don't understand why you want it today. You know, you say you want to settle down and have a home. But you're young and

you're gay, and that means everything in the world!" And then I say that when my youth goes, and my smile goes, and my hair goes, will I turn around and find somebody there? Who's going to be there? It's a vicious circle, very frustrating.

The people that I do meet, they mean something. I want everyone to mean something. Maybe it's just very youthful. But for being sixteen years old, I've been around.

HG: What do you mean by that?

J: I've probably been in as many bars, as many bath houses, as many gay movie theaters as many parties as anyone else has. I started going to the bars when I was about thirteen years old.

HG: Where do you go? J: I started going to a downtown disco, popular with the younger crowd. I love to dance. I really love to dance and I really just needed someplace to let loose a lot of energy, a lot of steam. I love going out with friends, screaming and yelling and carrying on.

Sometimes you don't feel very comfortable doing that in a bar, though. I've noticed the air of seriousness. Nobody was there to enjoy themselves, to drink, to relax. I've never seen so many uptight people at one time. It bothered me. Everybody parades around, looking for that Prince Charming who's going to ride by on that white horse.

HG: How do you deal with that set of impressions you've gotten from the bar atmosphere?

J: I separate my ideals, my ideas about going to a bar. I go for a lot of reasonseither to dance, or to enjoy myself, or hang loose I guess you'd put it. Or to get fucked.....

But that's usually the last attitude to go there with. I don't waste my time. It's a constant disappointment. I mean, after you've picked out your clothes, and washed your hair, and driven all the way downtown, you find nothing. And every week you go back for more. It's

cruel. It's so grating. I don't like feeling like a piece of meat. HG: Why do you subject yourself to this?

J: I don't. At least as best I can. Unless if I'm looking for meat. Then I know I'd better realize that I'm going to have to be treated like meat. But it's very

rare.

HG: Are you saying that, outside of that, there is far too limited an opportunity to find those things?

J: You just can't walk out on the street and stand there and hope that somebody will pick you up. In any case, it's more important for me to put things in priority, to enjoy myself even if it means saying, "Fuck", to the world or the bar scene or whatever so that I can do what I want to do. The thing is that there are too many other things to do, to waste your time in a bar, at the tubs just too many other things to do.

HG: Than to waste your time looking for sex.

J: Looking for sex, being looked at for sex.

HG: How would you rank sex in this priority?

J: I respect sex in the sense of it's happening between two human beings who care for one another or have an interest in one another other than just physical. I don't respect it if it's just hard core. I believe it can be a very beautiful, wonderful thing, but I believe it can also be very crude and perverted. Not in the sense of sexual perversion, but it can be exploited before my eyes.

HG: I think you'll find those feelings true of just about everyone.

J: I respect the fact that sex is part of the world, that, like everyone else, I have to function. Sex, to me is a fulfillment that each human being has to deal with. Some can suppress it and others can't. Most people can't. It's necessary. If I were to rank it, put it in priority in a relationship, I would put it number twoor possibly number three. After a feeling, a care, an

Michael Madigan

intellectual stimulation, something of interest between two people. And then I would put sex. It's physical. There's nothing like it and everything else is unlike it. And that's the place it should always be put in.

I also believe sex is a marvelous way for two people to get to know each other. Especially between friends. I don't think I've ever experienced something as nice as saying to my best and closest friend, I'd like you to share me. I'd like to share you. I. think that's very important. It means a lot. I feel sorry for people who can't be free with sex when they like each other. Sexual freedom is a marvelous thing.

HG: Was your first sexual encounter with a friend?

J: Yes, a fairly good friend. We talked and learned a lot about each other beforehand.

HG: You'd say that this was the first sexual encounter that you engaged in because you decided to do so, you knew exactly what you were doing, and because you were satisfied with what you expected to happen? Would you describe it?

J: Yes. This first time was when I was appearing in a play, and I met a very attractive guy, another member of the cast. One night at a cast party he became very drunk and began to talk a lot about himself, to make a lot of confessions. I was interested, and I could feel everyone's eyes on me. Later we took a long walk and I talked about myself, my feelings, my sexuality. He responded favorably and we had sex.

It was enjoyable. I felt a strange array of excitement, feelings, emotions that I'd never felt before. He was nineteen or twenty. I was eleven. I was sexually mature enough to get the whole impact of it.

HG: When did you first deal with your mother on the subject of your being gay?

J: When I was fifteen I broke up with my one true lover -Benjamin. She always knew, always had a suspicion that I was up to

something. She knew. When I broke up with him, she was there. I came running, crying and she told me everything would be all right, that there would be someone else. She treated it as though it were a normal situation.

She doesn't kid me about it. She doesn't get upset about it. She just doesn't want me to get hurt again which frightens me

in a sense. She's seen the bad side, and what somebody can do to her boy, and she's prepared to react if it ever happens again.

HG: You've indicated that sex is the second or third priority in the kind of relationship you'd like to have. Does the special nature of your sexuality make you want to raise that priority, or to accept a number of sexual alternatives because it is less important than, say, respect or friendship?

J: I can think of no other way that I would rather live my life -as sad, as upsetting, as disappointing, as happy, as angry, as murderous and bloody and cruel as it can be -than being gay. I could never consider myself living any other way. I'm proud of it. I'm not embarassed about it. I don't feel I'd like to go out on the street and say, hey, look buddy, I'm gay. If they asked me, I'd say yeah, sure. But I don't want to exploit other people's feelings.

sex

HG: Have you come up with any reasons for why you feel that way about being gay? J:1 believe in it. I believe that, as a human being, I should have the right to have with anyone or anything I want, whether it be my doorknob or the kid next door. I think I should have the right to LOVE anybody I want. I believe that if I love a woman, I might not be sexually stimulated, but I think I could still have sex with her -if I loved her. If I loved my DOG so much, if I cared so much on a purely emotional basis -I could. have sex with my dog. I don't feel inhibited about it. I'm really here to love anyone, physically, mentally.