Being Gay In The 80S And 90S

[MrM]

Earlier Methodwriter posted a topic about 'old' Millennials. It got me browsing the Interwebz and I found this interesting article about why many of us who grew up in the 80s and 90s are so completely screwy. Those of us that came out early...were brave leaders. The rest of us...being in the closet was understandable. However...this time was better than being Gay in any time before 1979.

 

What are your experiences or impressions of growing up gay in these times or the times before?

http://www.geekscape.net/gayscape-10-growing-up-gay-in-the-80s-and-90s
 

[TetRefine]

Well I guess since I was born gay, I was "gay" in the 90s.

 

Lets see, my gay 90s life consisted of being potty trained, learning to ride a bike, graduating kindergarten, and playing with cars and GI Joes.  

 

Such an exciting and sexy gay life I had back then, haha. 

[Drew Espinosa]

Well I guess since I was born gay, I was "gay" in the 90s.

 

Lets see, my gay 90s life consisted of being potty trained, learning to ride a bike, graduating kindergarten, and playing with cars and GI Joes.

 

Such an exciting and sexy gay life I had back then, haha. 

Hey, that was also my gay 90s life! The only difference is that I started Kindergarten at the beginning of the new millennium, lol.

[JamesSavik]

You are missing the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room...

 

It wasn't music or fashion that defined this era for us.

 

 

 

 

 

1996

Edited February 9, 2016 by jamessavik

[Gene Splicer PHD]

Well, I don't want to be Danny Downer here but

 

In the late 70s and early 80s my role models were Jody from Soap (who, like all good mid 70s gays, either had tragic circumstances, a mental disorder, or went straight - Jody had all three) and all the rumors about Rod Stewart having so much oral sex backstage at his concerts that he had to have his stomach pumped (the same rumors went around about David Bowie and Elton John). I found the idea fascinating. Oh, and all the fags were apparently in San Francisco, and I was in Michigan. Bummer. I was in middle and high school through the late 70s, I graduated high school in 81, so my formative years were full of horrible middle school bullying in locker rooms and showers, a lot of drugs and staying stoned as much as possible, and a terrible grade point average. And a lot, lot lot of kids who just did not deal well with "gay". It was not discussed, unless you were calling someone else a fag. It was not done (except that it was, and later in life I learned just how many closet cases there were in that high school).

 

In 1982 or thereabouts somehow I got a copy of "The Boy Who Picked The Bullets Up" by Charles Nelson and read it over and over. It informed me (wrongly) about what "gay" was all about, my not having any other source at the time. It's about a gay Navy corpsman stationed in Vietnam who screws around with his squad mates and for its time was very graphic, both about sex and about his eventual downfall into heroin addiction and of course, all the death.

 

I vaguely came out to my stepmom (who didn't believe a word of it) and to my FWB - he didn't want to be friends anymore but it was fine with him if I wanted to come blow him a couple times a week and didn't hesitate to tell our friends what I'd said. I dove back into the closet so far I was behind the hangers for years.

 

His older brother was queer as a three dollar bill. He was very "obvious" and was brutally bullied for it through high school. I saw his example and for a time hid very deeply from being attracted to boys. He was a very cold, mean boy to me and the FWB, but had us figured out and used that to his advantage. I was so intimidated by him that I didn't talk to him until he moved out and into a house with his boyfriend, who worked on the line at GM. He became kinder (probably because the bullying stopped) after he moved out, so we'd go to his house and get high, then I'd blow my buddy and we'd go home, and FWB would disappear for days (until he needed a ride to his brothers house for more dope, when he'd call me, lather, rinse, repeat). Anytime we were over there the older brother would play Barbra Streisand and Bette Midler and Elton John (and Queen, of course) records constantly (when he wasn't being really dramatic at his piano).

 

In the early 80s AIDS got going and I went into the Navy (NOT as a corpsman), screwed around with my shipmates (very secretly!) and after my enlistment, came out like an entire drama school band camp. I hit the bars, screwed around some more, and ended up an alcoholic living above the older brother and his (now-suddenly-bisexual) boyfriend who worked on the line. They broke up when the BF decided he needed to be straight - he was getting a lot of guff at the local AA meetings about his "roommate" of ten years - and sold the house, so I went into rehab, found a great bunch of friends through a different set of AA meetings, and then watched most of them drop like flies as AIDS finally caught up with all the partiers from the 80s. Thankfully I was never infected, something that screwed with me for quite a while.

 

I connected with a guy from AA in the mid-90s, we bought a house and put up a fence and got a dog, then a few years later he screwed his way through the AA meeting directory and I kicked him out. I sold the house, went back to drinking briefly, then got a job doing what I do now. I live alone, but see some of the old bar crowd from the 80s and 90s since I rent an apartment from one of them.

 

The old bar crowd is much diminished, there are only two left. They hang out in the (gay) bar my landlord owns. My ex-FWB from middle and high school cleans carpets for a living, lives alone, and has gained a couple of hundred pounds. He drinks vast quantities of beer if the number of empties I saw in his trailer are any indication. I visited him a couple of years ago, and yeah, he wanted to recapture the moments we shared (it was a short visit). The older brother lives in a mobile home just up the street from him, and works nights bagging springs and gaskets in a local factory. The bisexual-straight boyfriend moved with his wife back to Kentucky, she is now institutionalized and has been for several years, and he (apparently) hits the truck stops to try to meet men. There have been arrests.

 

My ex is slowly emigrating to Cuba or something, he had a breakdown and is on mental disability and doesn't work. He's been moving south from Michigan for a couple of years now. We are still friends. I've settled comfortably into living alone but with a few close friends and a low but tolerable wage slave life fixing computers.

 

So to sum it all up, here's the happy picture: being gay in the 80s and 90s was a mental mindf*ck for a lot of us. The screwed up nature of being closeted, then out and screwing like rabbits, and then living through the AIDS crisis screwed a lot of us up. My ex-FWB and I would have lived very different lives if he had come to terms with his homosexuality when we were "together". The bullying the older brother got in high school drove him into a semi controlling relationship with the GM guy, whose own bag of issues was pretty full to begin with. All the drinking and bar hopping we did certainly didn't help, and I've learned that a person in AA isn't "fixed", they're just soberly screwed up instead of being drunkenly screwed up (myself included). In terms of cultural references, well, all the gay people had bad shit happen to them, didn't they? Jody from Soap. Steven Carrington from Dynasty. Popular actors dying from "exhaustion". Musicians wasting away. Pedro from The Real World. Longtime Cmpanion and Philadelphia. The AIDS Quilt and the March on Washington in '93. Being gay wasn't a net positive, is what I'm saying. We were depicted as either crazy, or stereotypes, or dying tragically.

 

Having said all that, sure there were good times - the three years with my ex in our house were very happy years. My time in the Navy was very agreeable to me, in fact I regret not reenlisting and making it a career. It stil would have been a mindf*ck, but at least it had structure and was an ordered existence.

 

So wax nostalgic about those decades - I'm glad you can, because I can't. It was pretty tough.

 

But you don't have to go far to see what all this was like - it's right here on the site. Look at all the early stories on GA from older authors, and the terrible ordeals (and sometimes even worse tropes) they put their characters through - and WHY those characters always rise triumphant at the end of the stories. How much is drawn from real life, only with a better ending? Then look at the stories from newer, younger authors here - lots of trials and challenges but with supportive families and friends depicted, GSA organizations, dances, weddings, all that.

 

My point is that those years sucked, but it IS getting better now, and our young authors are telling us about it, and that's good news to old beat-downs like me.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Gene Splicer PHD

[W_L]

Let's see:

 

I'm probably the one of the few tween in the late 90's that jumped on the internet for things everyone else will do years later, I barely learned how to jack off, but learned how to delete my browsing history years before people became "privacy" conscious

 

In the 90's, the moment I knew I was part of something more than just me and a bunch fem acting guys or guys wearing leather; I was watching the news about Matthew Shepard's murder. For gay tweens and teens of the late 90's, that was a defining event. There were gay martyrs afterward and before, but it made a powerful impact.

Edited February 9, 2016 by W_L

[Graeme]

An episode in my life from 1981: To Open a Door

 

I may wonder what may have happened if I'd had the courage to come out in the 80s, but I don't regret my life as a closeted gay man.

 

And Gene...? Jody from Soap wasn't a role model for me, but he's the reason I watched the show

[Ashi]

Elementary school years (early 80's):

 

I am going to get straight A's, which is a given of course....  Anything less is just not right.  Oh my..., those delinquent boys were in the bomb shelter comparing sizes.  AGAIN!!!  WTF.  That's like so gay!  (*stares at them at a distance*)  I am going to tell the teachers if they don't stop (but didn't).  Oh, girls are playing jumping rope again... let's join them.  Why my parents don't want to buy me Barbie dolls?  Maybe it's better that I ask for He-Man.... 

 

Middle school years (late 80's):

 

Why boys smell like... armpits?  Must be puberty.  I think my body is changing....  I hate my voice.  I can't sing anymore.    Body hair is like so yucky.  I don't get straight A's anymore....  What's wrong with me?  I want to go to pee, but those guys in the stalls smoking cigarettes are so scary.  I must go to pee together with my BFF.  My BFF shares the same concern like me.  So why do boys stink so much?

 

High school years (early to mid 90's):

 

People don't like me, but I don't know why.  Must be my skin or my accent.  I don't need friends anyways.  Why people stare at me?  Let's focus on the academics and less about popularity.  You don't make money because you're popular.  School sucks anyways.  Those Goths people are scary, because they yelled at me.  I am going to die if my teacher found out the reason I was late was because I was in bowling alley with a friend.  Shareware games like Doom is so violent!  I hate FPS.  Why can't everyone must be dumbed down to be popular.  Not like I want to be popular.  If people want to hate me for being a nerd, then so be it.  Why that guy called me Daisy?  I don't need a sophomore guy to defend me, but it's nice of him.  Yeah, bullies are so childish.  But why does that sophomore guy has to move away?  I had a strange dream about guys in swimming pool.  Must not tell anybody about it.  Masturbation is... bad, but I can't help it.  I think I don't want to select swimming for my PE elective.  Volleyball is more fun anyways.  That guy who dyed his hair pink, I think I like his guts, but why he never talks?    Oh, Internet....  Internet costs money, so let's go to BBS.  Free stuff on BBS!!!  Yay, let's download sharewares, but not FPS....  That guy sitting in front of me in literature, he is not gay, is he?  Maybe he is..., but why should I care?  Jerry Springer Show is so trashy.  I bet that guy is cheating on his wife with a guy again.

 

College years (mid 90's to early 2000's):

 

Life is... going to school and back home again.  Might as well starting a virtual life on the Internet.  People online are so much more accepting.  People are questioning my sexuality again.  You know what?  Don't ask, don't tell.  I don't hate gay but I am not going to be identify as one either.  Maybe that's the easiest way out. 

 

I can't help myself but feeling this guy is watching me.  I think he is very cute, but how do I talk to him?  Maybe I should just stand next to him in the hallway.  He looks so cute when he blush.  (*stares at the guy*)  Oh no....  I think he smiled.  Gosh, I love taking English class.  Why is he avoiding me and wants to talk to me at the same time?  He is so confusing!

 

The summer job is boring.  I don't think I would ever see him again.  I didn't go chase after him on the second-to-the-last-day of class, because I was afraid I would out myself in front of everyone in the class.  Now I think of it... stupid, stupid me.  Why care?

 

Why is my supervisor looking at me funny?  I bet it's him who put that stupid magazine on my cash register....  Such a thinly veiled gay-agenda article.  Why is he coming to my register?  Oh no....  I was just talking to this gay couple.  Is that so wrong?  Why is he grabbing my arm and smile like that?  He is not my type anyways....

 

Maybe I just don't know my type, because I skipped work with him today.  He wants me to watch him play hockey and I just can't resist him....  Why must he stripped down to just his jock strap.  I am not going to give him a BJ, you know.  I am not like that.  Maybe I do like him, but I can't just do him in locker room or in his car.  And he is a smoker!  I hate smokers, though he agreed to switch to light....

 

Oh no, that seemingly nice lady online is trying to out me!  What the f*ck she thinks she is!  You know what?  I am going to out myself before she tells everyone. 

 

Maybe I shouldn't out myself.  Cause my online BFF doesn't talk to me anymore....  Is it my fault I am gay?  Why everyone is so afraid of gay people?  My BFF and I had so much fun together, and why would my sexuality change that?  It's all that lady's fault.  Now I can't even have my friends anymore.  Why can't I even finish this stupid pop quiz without making the Scantron all wet with my tear?  You know what?  I quit! 

 

Maybe I shouldn't quit school.  Now everything is all piling up and I can't seem to be on track again with my school work.  I should never out myself in the first place, not even when the lady taunted me.  I should just be like everyone else, keep my sexuality to myself.

 

Maybe I should just chase after that guy in my English....  Maybe I should just give my supervisor a BJ....  Maybe... so many maybes....   Maybe I am not meant to be happy.

 

(ten years later)

 

I enjoy looking at Costco Boy....  I don't care what you think....  I am not going to screw up again.  He is better than many maybes, and opportunities lost, because he will always be there.  My life is not going well so far, but at least I have a sweet memory.  I voted no to Prop 8, I am glad gay people can marry now though it was not an easy fight, I walked AIDS Walks twice, and spectated Pride Parade once.  I think I am okay.  The future belongs to you youngsters.  Just be who you are.

Edited February 9, 2016 by Ashi

[MrM]

    

 

The responses by my contemporaries in age are exactly what I was looking for.

 

One of the things that brought me here to GA was to learn if my own particular experience growing up had been unusual or not. For many reasons both social and religious I spent most of my life in the closet. Half of that time I lived in a state of complete numb denial. I went to live in fantasy worlds and avoided contact with most everybody except a very select few. I never had a relationship with anyone. I closed off. I became frozen. Like the cartoon. Finally, last year I thawed out but, alas, I feel like my winter ended too late. But hearing other people's experiences, I see that we are all like wounded warriors from a long battle. We fought the oppression in our own ways and came away with our scars, but survived.

Its sometimes good to sit down and compare notes with our 'children'. I know, here in Hillcrest, a lot of the young ones come to me and want to talk about the old days. I have not much to tell them because to survive those times I had to live an unreal existence. I love a song by 'Radiohead' from 2000 called 'How to Diasappear Completely'. It's refrain is 'I'm not here. This isn't really happening'. That was my life. What the young ones have is far more genuine and oddly they have more experience about being gay than I do. 

 

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. More are welcome. I hope some of the younger guys can weigh in here and let me know how they feel about what they have read here. Compare notes. See what's changed.

[JamesSavik]

 I love a song by 'Radiohead' from 2000 called 'How to Disappear Completely'. It's refrain is 'I'm not here. This isn't really happening'. That was my life. What the young ones have is far more genuine and oddly they have more experience about being gay than I do. 

 

 

 

 

For me, it's this one...

 

[MrM]

For me, it's this one...

 

 

Ah yes. I love that song. I'm terribly sorry you have had to experience that level of pain in your life James. I hope someone has come or will come to 'Fix You' too.

 

Edited February 9, 2016 by MrM

[Ashi]

James and MrM.  Love both songs.    And I like both artists.

[JamesSavik]

What was it like?

 

 

 

Story from Arkansas Times

 

Story from PRM

 

___________________________________________________

Edited February 9, 2016 by jamessavik

[methodwriter85]

Let's see:

 

I'm probably the one of the few tween in the late 90's that jumped on the internet for things everyone else will do years later, I barely learned how to jack off, but learned how to delete my browsing history years before people became "privacy" conscious

 

In the 90's, the moment I knew I was part of something more than just me and a bunch fem acting guys or guys wearing leather; I was watching the news about Matthew Shepard's murder. For gay tweens and teens of the late 90's, that was a defining event. There were gay martyrs afterward and before, but it made a powerful impact.

 

When I was 11 years old, in 1997, I discovered a stash of my father's gay porn mags. You see, he apparently had some weird side business of selling photo copies of porn, and he put some magazines in a briefcase, which my mom took from him when he moved out in 1995. (Yeah, imagine the surprise when the locksmith opened it up!) I started sneaking them when I was 11 and I realized that I liked boys...a realization that was made Crystal-clear when I saw the Backstreet Boys gyrating shirtless in the rain:

 

 

My "gay life" in the 90's was essentially just that last year of the 90's in 1999, when I started going on the internet. I discovered Nifty Archive at 13 years old...which I honestly think gave me what I call the "Gay Man's Cinderella Complex". I grew up basically thinking that at some point that I'd bump into the love of my life on the campus squad. He'd be a hawt previously str8 jock stud; there'd be drama and a possible gay-bashing, but everything would work out in the end.

 

None of that happened, but I did really enjoy reading slash fiction. Nifty Archive had a whole boyband section going on- remember reading a lot of BSB, N'Sync, and 98 Degrees fanfictions as we headed into the Y2K era. I also really liked reading X-Files (Mulder and Krycek) and Buffy (Xander and Angel) slashfic.

 

On T.V., we had Will and Grace- although sadly Will didn't do much. We also had Jack McPhee on Dawson's Creek, who would finally kiss a guy on-screen in 2000 after coming out as gay in 1999. There was also Queer as Folk circa 2000-2001, which pretty much was my impression of gay life- you'd have to live in a city, be a hot twink, and live for raves and drugs and hook-ups.

 

During the early 2000's tail-end of the 90's, AOL chatrooms were a big thing for me. Meeting and chatting with other people that were gay was a pretty big deal, and engaging in phone sex or cyber with people that I talked to online as a teenaged guy was a good outlet for my feelings. (Interestingly, I WOULD go on to cruising in the mid-00's, even though that had fallen out of favor because of the internet.) I remember the AOL profiles, and how they basically looked like precursors to the Myspace pages, and how exciting it was if you thought someone wanted to hook up with you.

 

I did wind up having one very weird and awkward hook-up with a man I met online in 2001..after that, I backed away from trying to hook up with guys I met online and just stuck to chatting.

 

Luckily, I wound up going to a school that was very gay-friendly and it basically normalized being gay for me.

[TetRefine]

This thread the responses are fascinating to me in so many ways.

 

To an extent, I understand the hatred and having to be closeted or not entirely out from the era. Unfortunately where I grew up the circumstances were pretty much unchanged from back then even through my high school years which ended in 2010! 

 

I'll never forget one of my high school football teammates saying at practice once, "If it were up to me I'd shotgun every one of them fags". A lot of guys laughed, including several of the coaches. In the years since, a lot of those guys have turned out to be gay. 

[MrM]

This thread the responses are fascinating to me in so many ways.

 

To an extent, I understand the hatred and having to be closeted or not entirely out from the era. Unfortunately where I grew up the circumstances were pretty much unchanged from back then even through my high school years which ended in 2010! 

 

I'll never forget one of my high school football teammates saying at practice once, "If it were up to me I'd shotgun every one of them fags". A lot of guys laughed, including several of the coaches. In the years since, a lot of those guys have turned out to be gay. 

 

Oh, that doesn't surprise me in the least. The most vocal gay-bathers are often gay guys in the closet being desperately afraid of being found out. They attack who they are attracted to because they are actually trying to destroy that part of themselves that they can't accept.

 

I found this out when I discovered my secret weapon against bullies. When they came at me like that I'd simply ask them why they wanted me to be gay? It's strange but it stopped them in their tracks and they usually didn't mess with me again. I don't suggest doing that though if you know this person is dangerous. It is very inflammatory because it's a mirror to the truth.

 

[W_L]

Oh, that doesn't surprise me in the least. The most vocal gay-bathers are often gay guys in the closet being desperately afraid of being found out. They attack who they are attracted to because they are actually trying to destroy that part of themselves that they can't accept.

 

I found this out when I discovered my secret weapon against bullies. When they came at me like that I'd simply ask them why they wanted me to be gay? It's strange but it stopped them in their tracks and they usually didn't mess with me again. I don't suggest doing that though if you know this person is dangerous. It is very inflammatory because it's a mirror to the truth.

 

 

The flip side is, if you confront the bully and he comes out to you, don't think it's going to end up like a gay romance, where you guys live happily ever after and settle down after a few plot twists from this evil writer .

 

Human beings are complicated, gay bashers are even more complicated. Fear of being gay isn't always based on attraction, it's sometimes based on secrets and experience. Sexual abuse is one of those things that can lead to this type of fear and self hatred. They may still be straight, but there's a lot of psychological crap behind them, including that fear that they will be harmed again by their abuser or to the point where they become their abuser.

 

Being gay is more than just sex, it is a state of who you are based on your attractions and your life experiences. Sex is just an action; even straight men can ask their girlfriends to put on certain equipment

[Northern Dutch Guy]

Well I guess since I was born gay, I was "gay" in the 90s.

 

Lets see, my gay 90s life consisted of being potty trained, learning to ride a bike, graduating kindergarten, and playing with cars and GI Joes.

 

Such an exciting and sexy gay life I had back then, haha. 

 

I'm sure those days for me were over during the 80'ies and 90'ies.

 

I think I need an anonymous profile here to tell things from the 80'ies and 90'ies 

Edited February 11, 2016 by Northern Dutch Guy