HAS THE LINE MOVED?

Never thought Kevin Spacey coming out would have people talking. But, from what I’m seeing online, there is some division on sideline sentencing and whether there is any guilt at all.

I don’t think anyone can convince me that he didn’t cross the line in making the moves on a fourteen-year-old actor. Some people offer the vague defense that many minors go to bars and lie about their age. Not the case here. Spacey knew Anthony Rapp and he knew the guy was a boy. It wasn’t at a bar; it was at Spacey’s space. Could alcohol have played a role? Sure. I just don’t know how drunk you have to be to think it’s okay to come on to someone who is fourteen.

The bigger debate centers around those gay bars between men, not minors. One man says he was groped by Spacey at a bar and suffered Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome as a result. That’s where many seem to side with #TeamSpacey. Some say the other guy must have been homophobic to have such a strong, lingering reaction. Others say groping is a normal act in gay bars. There is no history of gays asserting power over gays, like the advantage men have had over women. Men can be cavemen and, without a woman in the mix, one can expect caveman actions. There’s never been a social check to tell gay men that groping is not okay in a gay environment like gay bars.

I was offended the first times I was groped. What just happened?! Often, the contact came on a crowded dance floor or as a friend and I circulated through the swarms of men packed into a West Hollywood club at midnight on a Saturday night. It was like that grade school “prank” where someone taps you on the shoulder, you turn around and no one claims responsibility. It would happen over and over as classmates laughed. Annoying until you figured out who did it. Then you laughed along with the group, relieved to finally be in on the joke.

In the crowded gay bar, anonymous groping happened. One friend or another would say, “I just got my ass grabbed.” Depending on the groper and or the gropee, the reaction was “Ewwww” or “Congratulations!”

I was always incensed. To be sure, I wanted to be noticed. I wanted a boyfriend and, in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, the gay bar seemed like the best option. (Seems sad when I type that.) An ex of mine in L.A. said I had a perpetual deer-in-the-headlights look to everything. And he meant everything, gay or otherwise. Like I was some country bumpkin when I was actually a nice, naïve Canadian boy who happened upon Los Angeles by way of Texas. (It stunned me that everything about that self-description was considered a turnoff to most guys I met.)

For the record, I never took my shirt off in a gay bar either.

Part shyness, part body image issue, part common sense.

As long as I didn’t share anything about myself, I remained grope-worthy, at least to a few. Some weren’t even all that drunk. I never suffered PTSD. Groping was part of the gay bar ambience, along with all that smoke that seeped into my clothes, skin and lungs. The fact I found groping offensive made me feel like a bad gay. If it was someone I wasn’t into which was almost always the case—friends said I was too picky (Uh,…thanks?)—the grope was too forward, too creepy. On the rare occasion, I thought the guy was hot, the act left me confused. Is that like a bad pickup line? What am I supposed to do now? Grope back? Why couldn’t he have just said hi?

“You just need to get laid,” a peripheral friend would say. But then he’d disappear for the rest of the night to,…you know.

To be sure, I wanted to be noticed. I wanted a boyfriend and, in the late ‘80s/early ‘90s, the gay bar seemed like the best option. (Seems sad when I type it.)

“You can’t be so sensitive,” a closer friend said. “And don’t you think he’s kinda cute?”

Miss you, Mary.

The answer was usually “No” and occasionally “Not anymore.” And then ten or fifteen minutes later, I’d say goodbye to whoever was still present in my little group of barflies, walk back alone to my parking spot, closer to The Beverly Center than the bars, and drive home, wondering, What’s wrong with me? Is this what gay is all about? Wasn’t the theme from the “The Mary Tyler Moore Show” supposed to be my song? What if I don’t make it after all? (Maybe I should’ve been more literal with my inspiration and followed Mary Richards to Minneapolis.)

My indignation made me a fuddy-duddy. I was out but still an outsider. Frequently I’d ask, “Is this all there is?” although I learned to keep the question in my head after the fuddy-duddy label. (I gave it to myself. People would just hear me rant, put their drink down and say, “Yeah, I think I’m going to check out the scene at Micky’s.”)

Basically, the feedback I got—expressly or otherwise—was that groping was just part of the gay bar scene. It’s what gays do along with drinking too much, taking Ecstasy and staring at the crotches of go-go boys. Too much real conversation was overrated, a buzz killer.

I revisited L.A. a few months before I turned fifty (I’m still pretending that was just yesterday) and some of the same friends and I found ourselves back in the same West Hollywood Clubs. There was a déjà-vu as the peripheral friend dumped us within the first forty-five minutes, leaving with a muscled twenty-something as though nothing had changed. At Rage, we danced and I got groped by a sexy man two decades younger than me. Instead of outrage, I was flattered, a sad reaction to what I’d always shunned. I knew all too well that I’d reached pasture-grazing status in the gay world. I didn’t have a beach home in Huntington Beach or drive a Mercedes or have personal trainer sessions three times a week like my ageless, never-worked-a-day-in-his-life peripheral friend. This ass grab made me feel noticed and younger. The guy didn’t even flee the bar when I turned and he saw my face in the admittedly dim lighting. Later, my group drifted to Revolver and yet again I got groped by another attractive younger guy. Still no indignation. Still flattered. I was a hypocrite. I was that desperate to feel young again, to feel looked at—even with a leer—instead of being looked past.

Maybe it is time for a new etiquette in what few gay bars remain. Before my time, I’d heard about sex in dark corners and backrooms but, at least to my knowledge, those things were the lore of an earlier generation. And, thankfully, I never had to figure out the colored hanky codes. We’ve done away with smoking in clubs. Perhaps it’s time for kamikaze groping to be retired, too. Should be easy to do away with. Anyone who wants random contact can hookup online or at some outdoor site that’s widely talked about on other internet sites. Maybe the clubs can turn up the lights a notch and people can actually get to know one another through sustained conversation. If we go retro, let us “Vogue” without that extra hand movement. Can we stop the anonymous groping in bars or is this still the wishful thinking of a (hypocritical) old fogy?

SPACEY-ING OUT

Sometimes the indignation comes easily. Poor Kevin. And by that, I don’t mean to show empathy. Mr. Spacey has long had us wondering when. We’d all heard it. The man is gay. He’ll come out once he feels safe, once his career is solidly on the down slide or maybe once he’s madly in love and about to marry a scholarly British gentleman. Isn’t that why he dashed off to London?

A long time ago, in the ‘90s, many of us wanted him to come out. He could make a difference. As an articulate, Oscar-winning, A-list actor, Kevin Spacey could add an esteemed face to the LGBT movement (back then, mostly L and G). This was when we were dealing with AIDS and hate crimes and hoping people could serve in the military as long as they weren’t blabbermouths about their personal lives. Anti-discrimination and marriage seemed too lofty cherry pies in the sky.

Kevin kept quiet. I don’t recall him trying to pass as straight off-screen. His right. But he was on the wish list. One day, we thought, Spacey, Travolta and Cruise would be grand marshals in Pride parades and continue to receive GLAAD awards even if their big screen roles dried up. How much money did they really need?

We listened to Kevin’s acceptance speeches. Surely, he’d pull a Jodie one day and toss in a cryptic thank you to a lover/partner. Something beyond “good, good friend”, something clearly different than the Damon/Affleck bromance.

I thought the coming out would occur during press interviews for his gay role in 1997’s “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”. Why take the role and then continue to cling to the confines of the closet? Maybe the fact it flopped affirmed Spacey’s fears that being “too gay”—in other words, publicly gay—was career suicide.

So we all continued to wait. Spacey would dodge questions about his sexuality, at one point in a 2007 interview stating, “I’ve never believed in pimping my personal life out for publicity.” Too defensive. It’s not like he was staging a wedding to Nicole Kidman or Katie Holmes. We all trusted that Spacey would balk at any such suggestions from agents, studios and established religious cults. We felt that this many was of good character. That’s why we all wanted him to come out. But then, somewhere along the way, with the passage of time and the Supreme Court recognizing gay marriage, we stopped caring about Spacey’s private life. He and Travolta and Cruise could go on keeping their “secret”. We had Zachary Quinto, Matt Bomer and Sir Ian McKellen. And Ellen and Rosie, too. Good enough.

If you had told me that Kevin Spacey came out today, I’d have shrugged along with everyone else. Okay. Good for him. That’s a weight off, even if no one else viewed it as a weight anymore.

But that, of course, is not how it went down. He didn’t just casually address it—finally!—in an interview. He tweeted it and he did so, at best, as a distraction and, at worst, in self-defense. We’re still in the thick of the Hollywood cause of the moment, its uncovering decades of sexual harassment and assaults. And, as part of that tide, actor Anthony Rapp disclosed that it was a twenty-six-year-old Kevin Spacey who made unwanted sexual advances to fourteen-year-old Rapp. Spacey launched a multi-tiered response: (1) I don’t remember; (2) I must have been drunk; and (3) Hey, by the way, I’m gay. The implication intertwined with his coming out is that he was conflicted over his sexual orientation, driven to drink and did dastardly deeds such as trying to sexually assault a boy. It was the behavior of a self-hating, self-censoring, horribly confused man.

Distraction or excuse, it comes off as sad at the very least. Yes, I have friends who were so conflicted about being gay that they became addicted to drugs or alcohol. It wasn’t good to be gay in the ‘80s. The alleged incident occurred in 1986 when the AIDS crisis went unchecked and the Reagan administration continued to shirk any sense of leadership in speaking with compassion and conviction to address it. Anti-gay sentiment magnified due to falsehoods and fears about AIDS. It would be exceptional for any gay man in the ‘80s not to be plagued with fits of self-hate, an internalized manifestation of society’s widespread revulsion.

But we didn’t go having sex with minors. I was warily aware of a dubious organization called NAMBLA which generated headlines due to its outrageous agenda. This was the North American Man/Boy Love Association, presumably no larger than a society advocating sex with UFOs, but every time I saw any press about this organization, I felt it represented a major setback to gay tolerance and that ultimate of wishful thinking, acceptance.

There were still large segments of society that lumped homosexuality in with criminals, perverts, practitioners of bestiality and pedophiles. I grew up frequently hearing this. How could that not have had a negative impact into a gay person’s identity? Even today, some extreme conservatives raise fear amongst themselves by claiming an LGBT agenda seeks to “recruit” their children.

Perhaps it’s with all this historical background that I cringe even more at Mr. Spacey’s deflection of responsibility. There was a time when, due to his celebrity, he could have helped advance LGBT causes. He passed on that, which is his right. (I presume he offered support in less public ways.) On a day when he is accused of sexually pressuring a minor, I don’t want him trying to climb on the gay bandwagon. It has the danger of perpetuating an old misperception. It smacks of excuse-making for that which is inexcusable.

If anything good can come from this, it’s a reminder that celebrities—whether movie stars or athletes—are not heroes. Their voices are heard more than the rest of us, but they can be as misguided, perhaps more so because of their protectors, their “yes” men, their perceived power and their desperation to retain fame and fortune.

I respected Kevin Spacey. He is indeed a fine actor. I hope something good will come of all that has aired today. Perhaps Spacey can receive counseling. Perhaps there will be a time when Spacey can truly express full remorse toward Anthony Rapp. For now, it’s an egregious mess, a woeful attempt at saving face and a blatant misfire in terms of garnering sympathy.

I wish he’d never come out at all.