Walden wrote:Oh... that kind of straight men. I was thinking Bud Abbot, as opposed to Lou Costello, or Andy Griffith as opposed to Don Knotts.
That was my first thought, too.
Two out of three of my college roommates were gay. It didn't bother me. Of course, this was during a time (early '60s) when Texas was not a particularly good place to be openly gay, so I didn't find out about them right away.
However, the first of them, Charley, turned out to be a bit odd, and that's how I ended up rooming with the second one, Jimmy.
Jimmy and I were very close friends. I visited him in Dallas when he took a semester off to try SMU, he showed me around SMU, took me to see the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, and took me (and my girl friend) to my first (and last) gay bar.
Actually, now that I think about it, he's the one who taught me most of my music theory. He was a music major, so I used to force him to explain all the details of chord structure, scales, etc.
After I did my final exit from college, I eventually ended up in the Army. While I was stationed in Monterey, Jimmy contacted me and said that he had dropped out of school and was hiding out with our (female, single) English teacher, because he didn't want to go back home.
To make a long story short (so rare for me), he came out to Monterey and I helped him join the Army. He went through Basic Training at Ft. Ord, then clerk-typist school, and ended up there as the organist (his college major) at the Post chapel. It never even occurred to me that the Army had a policy against homosexuals. We got together several times in Monterey after that.
However, after I graduated from DLI, I was taking a Greyhound back to Houston for leave, and at the Salinas bus station, Jimmy climbed aboard. It turned out that he had gotten angry at the Post Chaplain (a Colonel, no less), and cussed him out in front of a chapel full of recruits. When he repeatedly refused to apologize (because he was, after all, in the right
), he was told that he was insane, and was discharged. So, he was on his way home. When we hit El Paso, he had to switch to another bus to go north to Dallas, while I continued on south to Houston.
I only ever saw him one more time. When I came back from Taiwan, he was living in Houston, and we got together for lunch one day when I came to visit my folks from Ft. Hood.
Jimmy definitely had a bit of an effeminate manner. I remember one evening when several of us were on our way to a movie in Austin. He was all bouyant for some reason, and went skipping off down the sidewalk ahead of us. He wasn't exactly tiny, having a good bit of "baby fat", so it looked a tad odd skipping along like that, with big hops.
After I retired, I tried to locate him, but didn't have any luck. When I moved back to Texas at the beginning of the year, I started looking for him again. I finally discovered that he had died in Dallas way back in 1990. He would have been about 48 or 49. That's pretty young, and I'm afraid that AIDS was the cause. He has a couple of brothers, one of whom seems to be in this area. Maybe I'll run him down one of these days and get the details.
By the way, I also served in the Army with an openly gay man, Perry Watkins. This was during my last two years (1980-82), in Ft. Lewis, WA. He was drafted in 1968, during the Vietnam war, and had tried to stay out of the Army by admitting that he was gay. I guess they figured he was lying, so they went ahead and drafted him. After a decade or so, they tried to throw him out. He figured he had too much time invested toward retirement, so he fought it. About three years after I retired, he received a dishonorable discharge. He took it to court, and won--though it took another five years. He retired as a Sergeant First Class, and got retroactive pay.
This was a Combat Aviation battalion, and he was our Personnel Sergeant. I never heard a single complaint about his being gay, but lots of folks complained about his vicious sarcasm. On the other hand, I heard lots of praise for his efficiency. Still, the Army wanted him out. I suspect that the impetus came from up above. I really never understood it. Note that while they were trying to throw him out, he was still getting promoted regularly. Very strange.
You can read about Perry Watkins at
http://www.lambda.net/~maximum/watkins.html It's a bit over-the-top (in tone) to me, but has some good factual info.
