THE TENNIS CLOSET

Nothing against Joâo Lucas Reis da Silva but he’s not exactly a household name. As Wimbledon gets underway this week, he is the only active male tennis player to ever come out as gay. Six months ago, Reis da Silva made headlines, The New York Times asserting he was “the first out gay active professional male tennis player.” He’s not in the Wimbledon draw. He did not even compete in the qualification rounds. 

João Lucas Reis da Silva

Based on a quick Google, the twenty-five-year-old has never competed in a Grand Slam (Australian Open, French Open, Wimbledon, U.S. Open) beyond the level for juniors. This week he is tied with his highest ever ranking at Number 250 in the world. Not bad. He’s currently the sixth highest ranked Brazilian player in singles. Still, I wonder where all the professional gay players are in the upper echelon of tennis. Why are they closeted?

 

I don’t watch tennis the way I used to, now that I can quickly check scores on the internet and especially since I no longer own a TV after my flatscreen smashed three years ago. I still glance at scores on a daily basis and follow Canadian players in particular, many of whom are ranked lower than Reis da Silva. I haven’t played in five years after hitting the court with an ex and finding the strain too much on my back and entire lower body. (Very humbling.) Nonetheless, I am familiar enough with tennis to think it is not the sort of sport where a he-man, ultra-masculine straight image is required to withstand locker room harassment and taunts from numbskulls in the stands. I don’t even see coming out as hurting sponsorship deals. Can’t Nike or Wilson tolerate having a gay player wear their brand? I would posit to say there are plenty of gays who enjoy casual play on local tennis courts.

 

So where are all the gay professional tennis players?

 

Daria Kasatkina

Many women have come out as lesbian or bisexual, including Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Amelie Mauresmo and active player Daria Kasatkina (currently Number 18 and previously 8^th in the world). While it’s easier to be a queer woman in sports, I find it hard to believe the taboo is too great in men’s tennis in 2025. 

 

Rafael Nadal

When I was a more avid tennis fan in the 1980s, I often admired the legs of male players but the sport never struck me as requiring loads of muscle. Jimmy Connors and John McEnroe almost seemed scrawny and Petr Korda was wiry at best. Even Ivan Lendl, while fit, did not seem brawny. While Rafael Nadal more recently liked to show off his guns wearing sleeveless shirts, he is known for his biceps, in part, because his body seemed to be the exception. I say all this only to make the point that men’s professional tennis needn’t be caught up in some hetero conception of uber-masculinity. 

 

Bill Tilden

A century ago, Bill Tilden was the number one tennis player, winning three Wimbledon and seven U.S. Open titles. It wasn’t his reputed gayness that was problematic so much as his having sex with minors, for which he was twice arrested and incarcerated after his professional career was over. Despite off-the-court behavior, Tilden is regarded as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. And still, a hundred years after his heyday, Reis da Silva is the only out male player. 

 

I really don’t get it.

 

Stefan Edberg

To be sure, there have been many players I have crushed on but, alas, Stefan Edberg never registered on my gaydar. Same for his compatriot, Anders Järryd. (I’m partial to Swedes.) Fabio Fognini and Grigor Dimitrov are also easy on the eyes. Again, no gaydar signals. I no longer need a gay crush; It would just be nice to know that a few gay men are succeeding on the tennis court and don’t feel their gayness is cause for shunning or shushing. Let them have their boyfriend or husband cheer on-camera in the stands, not as a “hitting partner” or “trainer” but as their current significant other. Let single elite gay tennis pros be able to have a normal life in public. Let them, however quietly, serve as role models and/or at least tennis players who can be as open on social media and in life as their straight competitors.

 

Will somebody else open the closet (or locker) door?

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

CHECK THE LABEL

During my final years in Texas, I may have technically come out.  A conversation, a few gay friends (even though we never acknowledged anything gay), even an unsolicited male-on-male kiss that landed squarely on my nose.  I wasn’t really out of the closet, but the door was ajar.

After I moved to Malibu, it still took me two months to inquire where the boys are.  It wasn’t something you could Google back then and I had to resort to a gay helpline listed in the old L.A. phone book. Yes, I officially came out the same year Harry met Sally.

Early on a Saturday night after I was sure my roommates had left, I dialed the number and a friendly male voice answered. I got right to the point, worried that someone in a real crisis might be hearing a busy signal. “I’ve been here for two months and I haven’t met any gay people.”

Friendly Guy’s response: “How is that even possible?”

I mentioned I was attending law school in Malibu.

“Haven’t you gone to the beach?”

Many times. I told him about this stunning beach north of Malibu where nobody went. Even then, I made bad decisions, expecting to meet people where there were none.

“You need to go to a bar,” he explained. “What do you like?”

I was utterly naive. Texans did not talk about anything gay aside from news stories about AIDS deaths and a Texas Monthly article I’d read about vigilantes killing local faggots.  What did I like? There was only one clear answer. “I don’t know.”

He chuckled, not to be mean. I sensed my call amused him. “Do you like leather?” he continued.

“No,” I said. “I’m a vegetarian.”

He laughed harder. I didn’t realize I was being funny. And that’s when I also realized that coming out would only leave me more confused. I had thought the entire inner fight to accept my sexuality would be the final hurdle. Now I could celebrate my individuality. Yes, mom, I am special. Like you always said. (But probably not like you meant.)

That night I learned that just being gay is not clear enough. You have to find your niche. During my years in L.A. and Vancouver, I heard many labels such as leather guys, twinks, daddy chasers, bears, femmes, fatties, sex dwarves, circuit boys, gym rats, rice queens and drag queens. Vancouver further segregated itself based on gay sports leagues—the softball guys rarely mixed with the volleyball guys. I always seemed on the fringes. Not buff enough to be a gym rat, not quite swishy enough to be a femme, past my prime as a twink and too square for the circuit. While I played in a gay tennis league, my skills weren’t competitive enough to be welcomed into their social clique.

The labeling has always reminded me of high school, a time of conflict, angst and bullying for many a gay teen. Why did adult gays need to recreate this system of separation? It has never made sense.

That is why watching “Happy Endings” on ABC last night amused me. Max, one of the six central characters in this sitcom, is the gay one. But he is the antithesis of the gay TV character stereotype. No repressed/fastidious Will, no effeminate, shallow Jack, Max is a somewhat overweight lout, straighter than the two straight male characters on the show. Max’s problem of the night: he didn’t have a gay bar where his type could hang. So Jane and a Jack-type sidekick joined Max on a tour of Chicago’s gay club scene on a quest to find Max’s place. The gay categories came on screen in rapid succession, all spoofs of real categories. Ginger snaps, chameleons, Broadway queens. My favorite?  Sitcom gays.

In the end, Max created his own niche: optimistic red-velvet walruses. Inspired. If I decide to conform, here’s hoping the walruses will have me.

FREEBIE GAY NEWS: A ONCE-VITAL LINK

I’m sure some still exist in Vancouver, free little newspapers that offer news headlines with a paragraph or two of elaboration. Mostly, they’re a space for printing a slew of banking, real estate and car ads. I don’t notice them anymore. The freebies that mattered to me are long gone and I cheer myself up with the thought that less newsprint must mean we’ve saved a hypothetical tree, perhaps even a whole forest. Alas, at present, we lose them to out of control fires. That’s dark but it’s real. I almost understand why deniers double down. Maybe they just can’t cope.

 

There was a time when The Vancouver Courier got dropped off at my house or in my apartment building lobby twice a week. I’d skim through the grocery ads—Score! Häagen-Dazs on sale!—and read about a dog park on the rooftop of a downtown parking garage. A stop on my next bike ride, not because I had a dog anymore but, hey, it sounded quirky and perhaps I could snap a photo to post on Twitter. 

 

There was also a time when my eyes were trained to spot purple news boxes. That’s where I could grab a copy of Xtra West, the free gay paper that came out every two weeks. When my daily life was consumed with slogging through seventh graders’ stories and planning an archaeological unit to teach them about Ancient Egypt, Xtra West was often the link to all I was missing in terms of being a gay man. 

 

I first stumbled upon a free gay publication in the mid-’80s when I lived in Irving, Texas, a suburb of Dallas. I taught at a special ed school operated by the Catholic Diocese of Dallas. Many of my colleagues were nuns and, since the campus also included a convent, my social life involved people like Sister Herman Marie and Sister Joan of Arc and no one who identified as gay. I didn’t dare step out of the closet. The fear was too great, partly due to AIDS, mixed with worries about being gay-bashed and, more than anything, a concern that I’d be fired if someone outed me. (As a Canadian citizen, I wasn’t allowed to teach in public schools so it felt essential that I keep the private school gig.)  

 

During my second year of teaching, I got a roommate to help pay the rent. My salary had risen to a whopping $12,300—half what public schools offered—but I needed breathing room in my budget, a chance to splurge on a meal at Chili’s instead of another dinner of peanut butter sandwiches made with Wonder bread and no-name PB. My roommate was Carla, a teaching assistant from where I worked. The nuns thought we were living in sin and I was informed they were praying for us, but their sheltered world contributed to the fact they weren’t imaginative enough in considering us sinners. Neither was I.

 

Carla and I got along great, connecting through humor and a willingness to step on tennis courts to retrieve balls more often than actually hitting them. We burned plenty of calories, modifying any dreams of playing at Wimbledon to competing against black labs in some pick-up game of Fetch at a local park. We also lingered at Friday happy hours in Las Colinas, ordering extra rounds of frozen margaritas after the nuns had gotten tipsy, smoked a final cigarette and left. 

 

I didn’t see Carla much at home. She was often spending time with Nancy, a best bud. She often stayed over at Nancy’s for the entire weekend. She and Nancy had some sort of falling out, but then my roomie became best buds with Maureen. 

 

Anyone else would have known where this was going, but I was as clueless and as experienced in the real world as the nuns. 

 

I missed Nancy. I tried to give Mo a chance even if Mo seemed gruffer. Why was I comparing? It wasn’t like Mo was replacing Nancy, right?

 

Then one day I noticed a compact little guide on the kitchen counter, neatly tucked under the telephone. The cover was a photo of some guy in a baseball cap and a sleeveless t-shirt. Lots of pink, which was unconventional for menswear in the ’80s. It was enough to make me pick up the free magazine, the same width and length of a paperback novel, but probably only sixty-four pages. The title was This Week in Texas. I browsed while my roommate was apparently hanging out again at Mo’s.

 

The magazine was chock full of ads. Different ads. Nothing for Dr. Pepper or Jeep Cherokee or Skoal dipping tobacco, the standard Texan stuff. The full-page ones touted a military ball in Dallas and an Austin bar’s happy hour called “Muscles in Action.” Another ad was titled PLAY IT SAFE! and offered mail order delivery for Trojan condoms. I wasn’t one to ever jump to conclusions so I investigated further, flipping pages. 

 

A news blurb from Houston announced, “There’s a big…billboard—the first of its kind—over Tila’s Restaurant…which lists the local hotline phone number…to call for information about AIDS.” Other blurbs provided information about HIV testing programs in Houston and San Antonio. A headline stated, “FORT WORTH GAY PRIDE WEEK HAS BUDGET CONCERNS, ” the lead sentence explaining, “Our people are hurting, both from AIDS and from the poor economy.” Other headlines: “The Big Race to Find an AIDS Vaccine,” “CRAB LICE STUDY,” and “TOGA TEA” with “20% of proceeds going to AIDS Resource Center of the Dallas Gay Alliance.” 

 

Processing….processing…

 

Forget the drumroll. There is no suspense here. But the drama was huge in my mind. This Week in Texas was totally gay!

 

I’d never seen it in the magazine racks at a checkout aisle in Albertsons. Where did it come from? Since it only covered a week’s time, presumably there were more. One for the week before, for instance. And for the next week. While this seemed obvious, it baffled me. TWiT could be a link to all things gay in Texas which was wrapped up in all things AIDS, as my archival issue attests. It affirms the sense I’ve had that my coming out years weren’t a joyous time of gay bliss, but shrouded in AIDS awareness and, for me at least, a pervasive fear of death. 

 

Based on my browse of TWiT, being gay was also about being shirtless and going to bars. Really, there didn’t seem to be anything else. I was certain that shirtlessness would not be in my future. I was much keener about free refills of iced tea at Chili’s than sipping Bud Light and pretending I liked it. Why was everything bar-based? Why wasn’t gay Uno big? Or gay croquet? Maybe a gay vegetarian picnic with a mixtape soundtrack of Madonna, Miami Sound Machine and The Style Council? Maybe I wasn’t fit to be gay. Or maybe I was trying to justify a life in the closet.

 

Still, my roommate’s paper pickup provided my first link to any sense of a gay network during my years in Texas. It’s true that I had been to a gay club a few times already during my last year of college, but only as part of a group of waiters, hostesses and busboys from The Spaghetti Warehouse in Fort Worth’s Cowtown. We’d occasionally go after a Saturday night shift, one or two gay waiters chaperoning the straight contingent which I hoped everyone thought included me. I clung closely to the group. I wasn’t ready to be gay. If copies of TWiT had been at the entrance, I wouldn’t have noticed as I didn’t want anyone seeing my eyes divert up, down, left or right. Even if I’d spied a copy, I wouldn’t have picked it up. “What are you doing with that?” Miguel or Teena might have asked. My red cheeks, obvious even in the dimly lit dance club, would have outed me and then what? It seems inexplicable to have been so fearful even amongst a seemingly pro-gay group who had chosen to spend Saturday night in a gay realm, but fear often isn’t rational. If it had been, I might have talked myself through it…eventually.

 

That wouldn’t come until I flee Texas and moved to Malibu. 

 

Incidentally, Carla did come out as a lesbian during a heads-down conversation at a pizza joint we went to on Sunday evenings. She feared rejection; I offered solid support. It would have been the perfect time for me to say, “Me, too. Not lesbian but, you know, the other thing. For guys. Like, um, ho—…homo—…okay…gay.” I did have this painfully stilted conversation with her over pizza, but it was six months later. I think she smacked me in the shoulder. Perhaps that’s revisionist but I deserved it. As for that freebie gay publication, while the advertised events didn’t make me feel connected to the Texas gay scene, the magazine’s acronym—TWiT—should have made me feel like there would someday be a place for me.

THE SPORTS CLOSET

In my mind, I see a large closet—let’s make it a walk-in—filled with tennis rackets, footballs, basketballs, soccer balls and hockey sticks. It’s also crammed with male pro athletes who use this equipment. Where are all the gay role models in professional sports?

 

In the wake of the immensely popular Crave/HBO series Heated Rivalry in which actors played three hockey players dealing with gayness and/or bisexuality, no active pro athletes have stepped out of the closet. There is no evidence of gay tennis[1], football, basketball, soccer or hockey players. In the past, all we’ve had is NFL draftee Michael Sam, NFL player Carl Nassib and NBA player Jason Collins who were out. These players did not lead to the closet door becoming unhinged. The door remains firmly shut. 

 

Checking the forty-nine openly queer athletes at the 2026 Winter Olympics, only ten are male and the majority of them are figure skaters, a sport seemingly without a closet. (The other queer male Olympians are a curler, a speed skater and a couple of skiers.) 

 

When will it feel safe for pros currently playing in major sports to come out? It is true that gay progress has taken a hit under the current Trump administration. (See last week’s removal of Pride flags from the Stonewall Inn, declared a national monument during Obama’s presidency and state actions to remove rainbow crosswalks as well as seemingly everything regarding trans rights.) Still, marriage equality has been on the books for more than a decade. It’s unlikely there will be a perfect time in the foreseeable future for an active athlete to come out. If not now, when? I know the inner turmoil I felt while I remained a plain old, closeted college student and teacher. I can’t imagine staying in the closet throughout my twenties and beyond. 

 

Earlier this month, in the article, “What HBO’s Surprise Hit Gets Right About Men’s Locker Room Culture,” The New York Times cited a 2023 survey of 1,000 LGBTQ high school and college athletes in which 95% of the respondents described teammates’ reactions to their being out as ranging from “neutral” to “perfect.” This should be encouraging although I’d like to know the gender breakdown of respondents. Women are more inclined to be out. As that same article explained, sports are more aligned to a “masculine identity” and, therefore, “just by playing a sport…some women find it less risky to be more open because they are already going against stereotypical femininity.”  By contrast, the stereotype for male athletes is being “hypermasculine,” “dominant” and “emotionally controlled” while gayness still comes with a “more feminine” perception.

 

Unfortunately, neither Michael Sam nor Jason Collins nor Heated Rivalry has inspired and guided other male athletes in stepping out of the closet. The NYT article quotes Bill Kenney, an out NBA referee, saying, “[T]he needle hasn’t moved. The needle hasn’t moved because nobody else has done it” in terms of coming out. 

 

It’s possible some players have come out to their teammates without making an announcement to the wider public. I get that. Telling teammates has the potential for building camaraderie and being authentic to one’s day-to-day contacts. Perhaps their reaction is as much scrutiny as a player wants instead of waving the Pride flag at a press conference or making a statement on Instagram. If this is happening, it’s progress for the individual and his team. Not everyone wants to be a torchbearer. But with no one carrying the torch, other athletes, both professional and amateur, both younger and older, remain left without current role models. Fans too remain tied to the hypermasculine narrative for elite athletes.  

 

Will it take another generation or just a different administration before more professional athletes remove the closet door and step out? At this point, there are no balls or pucks in play. It’s all speculation.

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[1] Okay. There’s one gay tennis player, Joâo Lucas Reis de Silva, though he is hardly a household name. He is currently ranked 207 in the world. This means he cannot play the Grand Slams (the Australian Open, the French Open, Wimbledon or the U.S. Open) without successfully going through three rounds of qualification. He lost in the first round of qualification in January’s Australian Open qualification draw. To my knowledge, he has never played in the main draw of a Grand Slam.  

HELLO, NEIGHBOR

If you’ve checked out my blog on a semi-regular basis, you know that I’ve spent the last eight years in a gay black hole. I do hear about rare gay couple sightings along the sixty or so kilometers of coastline in my region, but maybe that’s just a rural legend. Cougar reports are more frequent. There are two gay couples I know exist in the closest town. They own competing coffee shops. (New dating plan: open my own café and hope it lures a future co-owner/husband. I do love a good latté.)

Single gay sightings do not occur. It seems I’m the one and only. The last dodo bird. A creature too thick in the head to know that there is no chance for survival in the current habitat.

Yes, I tried to relocate. Over the course of three years, the house would not sell. I put in on the market, took it off, put it on, took it off. In early June, I was about to re-list, when two homes on my street suddenly donned FOR SALE signs. Too much competition. I bowed out. Within a month, I accepted a new job only a two-minute drive from home. I was here to stay. Love it if you can’t leave it.

To my surprise, both houses on my street sold over the summer. It meant an end to the suspected drug activity across the street and goodbye to a family a few houses down. On October 1, moving vans zipped in and out of my cul-de-sac. However, I never glimpsed the new neighbors.

Two weeks ago, I was in the midst on my Sunday afternoon grocery shopping in town, strolling the Health Food/Toilet Paper aisle, lost in thought. (Are these products grouped together by coincidence? If I buy the Cashmere toilet paper while it’s on sale, can I make my own bargain sweater?)

And then someone yelled down the aisle. “Jim. Jim Gregory.”

Huh? Sure that’s me. But I’ve gone by James ever since I moved here. It’s the first place where people haven’t cut it to Jim or Jimmy as soon as we got on friendly terms. (Maybe it’s just a reminder that I’m not that friendly with anyone in my area.)

I turned and Anson Turnbull walked right up. Hadn’t seen him in ten years. Back when I lived in Vancouver, we played in a gay tennis league, often carpooling to the courts. Nice guy if you can get past his perpetual awkwardness. He works as a technical writer and speaks the same way. Everything is very precise, each comment screened and revised in the millisecond between thought and speech.

“Anson? What are you doing here?”

“I just moved here.”

“Where?”

“Cedar Creek.”

“I live in Cedar Creek! Where?”

“On Newton Road.”

“I live on Newton Road!”

Yep. Hello, neighbor. The single gay male contingent suddenly doubled.

And before you get any ideas, dear reader, there will be no mating efforts between these two dodo birds. Still, it’s nice to have some company. We went for coffee—at one of the gay-owned coffeehouses, of course—and got caught up. Like all my former tennis friends, he’s been sidelined by physical limitations that pop up during middle age (Achilles tendon, in his case), but Anson is a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

Now I wonder who’s in the drug house...

OH, FARRELL (Part 1 - Two Gays in the Closet)

 

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. 

 

This one is worth so much more. I could say there are no words, which would also be true. I could quantify it higher—ten thousand words, one hundred thousand words. Whatever. That would make a point, but it would only assign value in a competitive sense. I’m not competing with anyone.

 

This is a photo of Farrell Cahn.

 

If I’m being honest, it’s a terrible shot. He’s bent over. It’s black and white. The hairline at the neck appears to blend with something in the background so it looks like he’s got a mullet. Farrell would never have a mullet.

 

This is the only photo I have of Farrell Cahn. I discovered it when I Google-searched his name. Easy, right?

 

No. Over the years, I’d Googled his name so many times. Nothing ever came up. Google was established as a search engine in 1998. Farrell Cahn died three years before that. 

 

I have no personal photos of Farrell. We didn’t snap pictures then the way we do now. The first cell phone with a camera came out in 2000. During the time I knew Farrell, most people who weren’t professional photographers didn’t carry cameras. Taking pictures required buying film. It also meant paying for the shots to be developed. Few of us would have thought of snapping a pic of the soft tacos at Chili’s or the person across the table from you at Chili’s or, god forbid, turning the lens on yourself at Chili’s. During the time I knew Farrell in Texas, Chili’s was a thing, at least for me and “selfie” wasn’t even a word. Sometimes the good old days were truly that. 

 

Back then, a camera came out for special occasions. It was for a trip to Puerto Vallarta though I have no pics from my one vacation there because I got so sick I only learned after the fact that a maid was giving me sponge baths in lieu of changing the sheets. No parasailing, no snorkeling, but I lost ten pounds in a week. A camera was for Halloween parties like the massive gay one I went to in 1995, my first in Vancouver when friends and I dressed as a pack of crayons because none of us could carry off the typical gay Halloween dress code as shirtless firemen, gold-painted Adonises or Greg Louganis’s body double. (No partygoer stated that divers don’t have body doubles; that was not the point.) A camera was for my grandfather’s last Christmas when he gamely participated in a photoshoot, posing in each baseball cap I bought for him to cover his familiar bald head, suddenly ravaged by melanoma.  

 

Farrell and I didn’t travel anywhere. We didn’t go to parties. We didn’t spend Christmas together. Ordinary events weren’t photo-worthy. And all my interactions with Farrell were ordinary. 

 

We met in the spring of 1987 as part of a group of strangers who’d signed up for an evening tennis class, a course listed in the continuing education catalog for a community college in Irving, Texas. I’ve always loved tennis, but I’ve never been very good at it. Eight consecutive Wednesday nights of “lite” instruction and tedious drills didn’t make me Stefan Edberg, but Farrell’s skill level seemed to suck on a par with mine so we’d stick around to hit a few balls after class. We agreed to meet outside of class to get more tennis time without those time-wasting drills. 

 

We managed to get the ball over the net enough times to get in a workout. Retrieving balls that soared over the fence helped, too. We found enough to talk about during the water breaks necessitated by the Texas heat. Soon we started lingering after play, chatting on a bench or while standing by our cars. 

 

Farrell was a quiet, contemplative soul, as was I, although he didn’t always see that side of me. Tennis made me hyper. Someone once described me as the Energizer bunny, racing to track down every ball, regardless of whether it was in or out. I’d found a handful of regulars to hit with and I could fit in five hours of tennis in a day, even on hundred-degree summer days in Dallas. I was never the one to say, “Let’s stop.” Even when my opponent was worn out or tired of my errant forehand, I struggled to wind down. During off-court conversations with Farrell, I was less guarded, openly self-deprecating and plain silly. This amused Farrell, snapping him out of the disappointment he often felt about his play. On court, he was always saying, “Oh, Farrell” after a volley into the net or a mistimed overhead. Not exactly a John McEnroe meltdown but no one would aspire to that anyway. 

 

One Friday evening, I showed up on court after going to happy hour with nuns. Friday happy hours were huge in the late ’80s in Texas or, at the very least, among my circle of nuns. I taught at a special education school operated by the Catholic Diocese of Dallas so half of my colleagues resided at the convent on campus. Those nuns longed for time away. Happy hour evolved into hours, not all of them “happy,” but it was a must-see reality before reality TV became a thing. They bitched about the other nuns whom they were with 24/7. Booze and cigarettes made the bitching escalate. 

 

On that particular Friday, I suppose I’d had a drink or two too many. Maybe I shouldn’t have driven to the tennis courts, but there I was, returning every ball Farrell didn’t hit into the net. (“Oh, Farrell.”) Spinach may have given Popeye extra strength but, for me, it seemed to come from frozen lime margaritas. I hit everything out, more balls than usual soaring over the fence, Babe Ruth-calibre home runs. As I raced off the court to do my springer spaniel impression, retrieving another handful of balls, Farrell met me at the gate and said, “How ’bout let’s stop?” Turns out you had to have been at happy hour for the happiness to linger. We sat on the grass and chatted, his annoyance quickly going away. Eventually we grabbed dinner. Chili’s, of course; iced tea to drink. 

 

Tennis outings—never again following my rollicking times with nuns—became tennis and dinners. Sometimes it was just dinner. We grew from court mates to friends. 

 

Farrell was reserved about his past. He’d been the result of an unwanted pregnancy, a Black baby placed in an orphanage in Louisiana. He was adopted by a woman and raised with a sister. From what I recall, his adopted mother had died and his sister, well, Farrell would just shake his head. It wasn’t an active relationship. He had no other family. 

 

He worked as an accountant, spoke vaguely of a few friends and regularly attended the Dallas Symphony. The convent and school where I worked as a teacher were adjacent to the University of Dallas where he earned his degree. He happily talked about the present but often turned the conversation to me. I talked passionately about my job and self-deprecatingly about my daily bumblings. I was 21, he was 28. I was still too egocentric, everything about post-university life new and exciting, every experience told as if lived for the first time…by anyone. As insufferable as I must have been, Farrell always seemed amused. 

 

In August 1989, I left Texas to attend law school at Pepperdine in California. Malibu! We kept in touch in those old-fashioned ways that were the norm of the time: phone calls and letters. Too few of both, I suppose. There’s something about academic environments where students feed off one another in portraying classes, homework and papers as heavy burdens, teetering on impossible. Yes, law school was intense, but I found time for the beach, my casebooks usually in tow, grains of sand spilling from them on my desk when I’d reopen them in the lecture hall during Civil Procedure. On weekend evenings, I’d grab dinner with classmates before dashing off, secretly, to the gay bars in West Hollywood, dancing to “Vogue” and tracks by Bananarama, making friends with a struggling drag queen and desperately hoping some cute guy in the crowd might look my way. He rarely did and, if it happened, I took the moment to suddenly check my shoelaces, a highly ineffectual stab at flirting. All this is to say I was consumed by my new, if temporary, life in L.A. 

 

Farrell came to visit at some point while I was still in law school. In the letter he sent me to say he was coming, there’s a phrase that now seems so inapplicable to me. He’d sent me a Calvin & Hobbes book and said, “I hope it gets you through those long Sundays when the sun isn’t shining, your body isn’t tanning and the women are not pawing off your clothes.” 

 

Um…clearly this pasty dude doesn’t tan. 

 

He stayed with some other friends who lived somewhere in Greater Los Angeles and we spent an afternoon in Santa Monica. It was wonderful to see him and I felt honored he’d made time for me, but shortly after the visit, I received a card. His normally light, cheeky tone was absent. He’d sensed coldness from me during the visit and concluded I’d figured out he was gay and I was “repulsed.”

 

Thirty years ago, self-hate was well-fed by a pervasive homophobic environment in the Bible Belt of the southern United States, including both Louisiana where he’d been raised and Texas where he lived. Despite having known one another for four years and having formed a close friendship, neither of us had ever talked about our sexual orientation. Neither of us had ever mentioned dating. Neither of us had a military background but we ascribed to our own don’t ask, don’t tell policy. Had I been so convincing he could envision women pawing off my clothes? And what women, pray tell?  

 

I wrote back—STAT!—because I couldn’t let a perceived rejection fester. I didn’t phone because I still wasn’t used to talking about being gay, even to a friend who had outed himself. Internalized homophobia can be a savage, illogical beast.

 

I remember smiling as I wrote him, assuring him that, “There is no possible way I’m repulsed by you. I’m gay, too.” And yet, we still didn’t talk about being gay beyond that card exchange. I always assumed it would wait for our next in-person conversation, a cherished heart-to-heart. We’d do a lot of nodding, even more laughing, a bit of head shaking and wrap with a warm hug, maybe a new component of our friendship. 

 

Curses to lost time, gaydar malfunctions and stupid Texas. Yes, Farrell. That’s why I fled the state.

Click here to read Part 2.

Why the Blog?

I have lived in large urban areas all my life: Dallas, Los Angeles, Vancouver. That changed three years ago when I decided to buy a house and I couldn't afford anything in the Vancouver market where prices were skyrocketing. I held a professional position that paid well enough, but my only options were apartment rentals or buying a box (condo) in the burbs.

As stubborn as I am, I decided that I needed a place to garden and a yard for my dogs to roam. I needed space so my boys could bark without disturbing neighbors above, below or beside me. My dogs are small, but they have booming barks that no condo wall can contain.

With the Mary Tyler Moore theme playing in my head--"You're gonna make it after all"--I packed and said goodbye to city life. Ah, the peacefulness. And what a lovely view of the water and mountains! I only hear sirens a few times a year. I can walk my dogs through wooded trails just up the hill from my house and there's always a chance we'll spot a couple of deer during our early morning strolls.

So how did heaven become hell? It didn't actually. Except I fear I'm losing my gayness, references to Mary Tyler Moore notwithstanding. When I moved here at 40, I'd already removed myself from most of the Vancouver gay scene for many years. Waiting to hit a club at 11 p.m. was a distant memory. Sleep triumphed over sleaze. I'd tired of the gay sports clubs where I never seemed to dazzle anyone with my volleyball spikes or tennis drop shots. My status as fresh cookie, a new kid in town, had long faded. Just a stale, hardened, burnt discard.

Still, being in the city and near the West End's gay ghetto meant opportunity could always be there if I ever made the effort. I could remain gay by association. I could have coffee with friends who were still somewhat connected. I could spot an attractive gay couple in the grocery store and know that I was not alone in the larger gay community sense of things.

Now I live out of town. It's not the suburbs so much as it's the hicks. (I mean that in a descriptive, rather than derogatory way.) The town itself has a population of about 3,500 and even has a Starbucks. The people are friendly enough and I run into acquaintances every time I pop in for any reason. There was a gay couple who ran a hair salon in town, but they moved a year ago to the gay mecca of Regina, Saskatchewan. I don't know any gay male in the area.

So am I making a problem out of nothing? I do love my home and, most of the time, I enjoy the solitude. Still, there are times when being gay in a rural area leaves me struggling with part of my identity. Whereas I'd successfully gone through the whole coming out drama in my twenties, it seems I'm back in the closet and I can't find much of a reason for stepping out.

Is there anyone who can relate? How have you made the adjustment? Other perspectives are most welcome.

FEEL THE CONNECTION?

I am now connected. At least, that's the message I get when I go wireless at the local Starbucks. But how did being connected become such a distant feeling?

Am I the only one who, despite the marvel of reading a tweet from a heretofore unknown Australian writer mom about successfully putting her kids to bed, feels that online connections are shallow, mundane, even time sucking? (Hold on now, dear reader. I do appreciate the meaningful comments to my blog postings. Still, typical Internet contributions rarely go beyond American Idol rants and retweets of other people's material. The whole point of this blog has been to attempt to present an authentic perspective on what it feels like to be single, gay and, yes, unconnected.)

Yes, I try. I blog, I tweet, I surf. To be honest though, I don't feel the impact. I get emails informing me of new followers to my Rural Gay account on Twitter. Mostly, they are gay porn sites and scantily clad women. Seems "gay" is synonymous with "sex" to many who use the Internet as a marketing tool.

Time for me to state the obvious: I'm frustrated. It's not that I obsess over being single (or, at least, that's what I tell myself), but dating in my forties is an even greater struggle than it was when I was in my twenties and thirties. And, to be clear, I was significantly dating challenged back then.

Bars are no longer an option. Not that they were ever the fountain of long-term possibilities. (Still, my longest relationship lasted seven years after a mutual friend introduced us at Odyssey, a gay club now closed.)

I've been meaning to join a gay running group, but I can't seem to get home from work early enough for the 6:30 p.m. start time. I've signed up for a gay tennis league, but it stands to reason that, if I can't be somewhere by 6:30, a half hour earlier isn't going to work either. Let my membership fee be a donation to people who actually have a life (and a decent backhand).

Back in the last century, I tried personal ads. Remember them, snuggled in the classifieds after the used car ads? (Fitting, no?) There were some strange, even scary responses. (One I distinctly recall came with the message "The word of the day is passion" scrawled on the back of the envelope. I deleted the i, making the phrase of the day "pass on".) A relationship arose when I replied to a man who sought someone who nurtured the mind, body and soul. Took me eighteen months to realize he was all about the body. His body. I couldn't convert to hailing the gym as my shrine or to making tank tops my closet staple. (My biceps have always been overly modest.)

So now the personals are virtual. Bland profiles portray every single gay man as an outdoor beast who craves kayaking/mountain-climbing/rollerblading/ice-cave-camping. My, we are an active crowd. And we all value honesty/integrity/commitment/humor/intelligence in ourselves and in others. Cripes, how is it that we are all single? We are all so well-versed on Virtues 101. Original thoughts? Not so much. The personals ought to be renamed the impersonals. Am I the only one who mistakenly reads the URL for Plenty of Fish as "plenty offish"? Makes me chuckle every time I log in.

Jaded? Maybe. (Okay, sure. I do profess to valuing honesty/integrity.)

I am feeling defeated by the Sears catalogue approach to finding a companion. Where have all the articulate people gone? The most recent message I received went like this: "love ur piccs! love ur dogs too!" I must suppress the urge to take a red pen to the computer screen. Of course, that message was far deeper than the one last week which consisted of "Hello" in the header and a blank message. Is this the SPAM method of online dating?

When messages do go back and forth, it seems that many guys are content to leave it at that. Is there an ego boost to carrrying on trivial text exchanges? "How you doing? Good bunny day wkd?" This message came after six weeks of sporadic online conversation. Good bunny day wkd?! That's it?!

I try to gear things to a face-to-face meeting, but often the other person ceases all contact at the mere suggestion of coffee. E-z there, dude.

These people aren't otherwise attached, are they? (Surely their partner or a friend of their partner could/would discover the public profile online.) Are their profiles false? What?! You haven't climbed Mount Everest but you read about it on Wikipedia?!

My gut tells me that these dating sites aren't filled with unfaithful liars. In an age where people yank out their iPhones and iPads while meeting friends in public, in a time when free porn proliferates the Net and people poke as many people as possible on Facebook--seriously, who has 758 friends?--, has genuine person-to-person contact become unnecessary? And if I dare not think so, have I become, gasp, old-fashioned?

I always thought wisdom and perspective came as we matured. Why is it that I am more perplexed than ever?

In the Name of Pride

The second annual Pride Dance in my local community occurred last night. Last year I went alone and remained proud for twenty minutes before making a beeline to the car and heading home. This year I brought a friend from Vancouver and we stayed for an hour. I was the one insisting we leave. He found the event to be what he thought it would be and seemed positive. I, on the other hand, felt it was what I expected, yet felt disappointment.

When it is my own community and a rare opportunity to meet as a group of gays and lesbians, a sense of hope builds. Logically, I know that the gay people in my area are already coupled up. They smartly got there lives in order before moving to a quiet rural or small town setting. Romantically, however, I wonder if a handsome stud with whom I have perfect chemistry will appear and sweep me off the dance floor. I know it won’t happen, but I hope it will.

The dance is done. I am still single. When will the next opportunity arise? Do I need to move back to the city? Can I afford to move back? Can I afford not to?

I realize the dance was more than a chance to meet Mr. Right. It was also a time to chat with other gays and lesbians and build connections, possibly friendships. The venue with loud music—Did they really think Wake Up, Little Susie was a great song for a gay dance?—made conversations difficult to sustain. I felt I keep thrusting my left ear in people’s faces as I strained to make sense of why their lips were moving. I am not a natural when it comes to random chitchat so there were times I did not even bother to figure out what was being said. I could feel myself giving up.

Over dinner before the dance, I asked my city friend why so many gay social events are at bars or dances. Is that all we are—martini (and water bottle) loving club kids? In Vancouver, there are also many gay sports groups. In the past, I joined a gay volleyball night and a gay tennis league. Here, there aren’t the numbers for that kind of thing. What else is there? How can truer connections be established? I realize I am sounding passive in that I am not organizing anything. That is a valid criticism. I am painfully shy and self conscious until I get to know people. That’s a hard thing to shake.

Ideas? Am I whining too much? Do I need Cher to show up, slap my face and say, “Snap out of it!”

Oh, if only she would. And if only I could.

CATALOG SHOPPING

I remember being excited as a boy when the Sears catalog arrived. Sure, it had some cool toys to add to my birthday/Christmas wish list—ooh, Lite-Brite!—, but the main attraction was the pages of women in bras. The section didn’t arouse me as it might have for most boys, but it appealed to my sparkly mind. Who were these women, letting themselves be photographed before they put their blouses (or muumuus) on? Why were they all smiling? Where was the embarrassment? How did Sears get away with this year after year? Didn’t they know children would be taking peeks?

Yeah, it doesn’t seem like much now, but I was a young, sheltered kid and this was pre-Britney, pre-Madonna, even pre-Farrah poster. Once I got over the initial shock in seeing the lingerie spread, I’d look at the women and decide which was the prettiest.

In my teens, I subscribed to GQ. That was before they had movie star actors or naked Rihannas on the cover. (At the airport this week, I was too embarrassed to buy the Rihanna issue. Felt more like an issue of Maxim or Penthouse.) Back then, GQ was all about fashion, male models with incredibly chiseled faces mocking my pimply complexion and my desire to generate something more than a snicker when I ran out and bought an Izod or a pair of Jordache jeans. (Gosh, what's the male vocal equivalent to Janis Ian's "At Seventeen"?)

I think it was my GQ subscription that led to my receiving the International Male catalog in the mail on a regular basis. Goodbye, Sears! I had pages and pages of tanned, buff male models with no body hair sporting brightly colored underwear. If there were boxers, I don’t recall them. It was all about the briefs. Again, it led to same old routine, ogling the pictures and deciding who was the prettiest.

I was reminded of this catalog shopping ritual yesterday as I browsed portfolios of men seeking men on PlentyOfFish.com. I have tried a couple of other sites like Manhunt and Gay.com, but they seemed particularly sleazy, with so many guys choosing to post penis pics. When it comes down to just dating a penis, I think I’ll have hit rock bottom. Not there yet, thank goodness. PlentyOfFish, by contrast, has always seemed more reputable with most of the guys claiming to be looking for something more than a quickie. But things seem to be slowly evolving. More and more men are posting photos of themselves with their shirts off. It’s still tame compared to the other sites, even more modest than International Male, but it still feels wrong.

Shirtless or shirted, there are so many profiles to peruse. It’s a shallow way to look for a boyfriend, but I suppose it’s no worse than cruising in a gay bar. As I still live in a rural area, I don’t have a lot of choices. I can’t join a gay running group or a gay tennis league or even go see “A Single Man” in a theater (not when Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakquel is playing). Fishing is the only option. And I must confess that I get sucked in to gazing at the shirtless guys. Can I blame Sears for creating this shopping ritual? The whole thing does feel like catalog shopping.

Something tells me I need to update my photos.