Some few of the blackmailers gave up, took the money, and ran with it -- or plowed the ill-gotten gains into their private plans. The rest kept tapping the victim until he or she had had enough and either snuffed the criminal or refused to pay. There are books and movies full of these homosexuals.
I would propose that those from Great Britain who had their own tussles with such scenes took the high road and came out with what the world already knew -- homosexuals exist and some of them pretend to be heterosexuals and had children. No doubt, there were those who could not come to grips with life in the straight world and would not give up their closeted lives. There are books full of them, but I am coming to realize that the UK has cornered the market on putting their soiled linen out for the world to see and let the devil take the hindmost.
I knew as a child that the flamboyant Liberace was forever his mother's golden-haired boy to his death. I did not need my mother to tell me that Liberace was simply a talented pianist. She may have secretly believed that Liberace was indeed a limp-wristed queer, though she would never say so out loud. I was surprised to find out that Robert Reed, Dick Sargent, and others were also homosexuals. Mom would never tolerate the term gay in reference to homosexuals and she called us out when we used the term gay.
Mom was adamant about using the correct terms when referring to deviants and so we called them homosexuals or whispered gay under our breath until she became comfortable with the term. I don't think she ever did. Mom never even allowed cursing and we never heard her or Dad curse in front of us. The only response was soap in the mouth (and we didn't get the Lifebuoy but liquid dish soap, which is much harder to get rid of once the soap is out of your mouth. I think that's why she used it, to make the nasty taste last much longer. I found out that brushing my teeth, tongue, and as much of the inside of my mouth as possible with toothpaste was the only way to clear out as much of the soapy taste as possible. It's no trip to the cabinet where sugary donuts or the strong bite of Coca Cola were kept. Either suffer or don't curse. That was the message she proposed to leave us with. I chose the toothpaste.
At any rate, in realizing that the closeted male actors were let out of the closet, I was reminded of my own father about whom foster children gossiped was not so far wrong. The Mushroom knew about Dad but kept his mouth shut and rounded on the favored foster child with whispers of "Shut up!" or "You were mistaken."
All my life I had heard and seen things about my Dad that would have made Mom blush -- or clock the jackass in the mouth with her fist. She was still enough of a tomboy to settle such things with a roundhouse to the jaw or some such retribution. She would brook no such talk. Dad was her husband and had fathered her children and that was it and all about it.
More talk like that surfaced when Dad was dying of prostate cancer that had settled in his bones and caused him prodigious pain and grief. Dad turned to the bottle, something he had given up when Mom and he were saved and went to church full time. Dad did not like to buck the system or upset Mom and so he went. He had sufficient humility and close enough ties to the Lord that he was not unsettled by closeting the truth, and he certainly did not mind Mom closeting or quashing talk of his indiscretions when he was under the influence of alcohol. He drank vodka to cover his fall off the wagon and into a vat of booze. It did not work, not at all. Mom had the keenest sense of smell in the world. She could even spot a vodka drinker, even Dad.
I think that's where cousin, Bobbi Jean, was teased about having to smell her food -- the unspoken part was like Virginia. Bobbi Jean did indeed smell her food before putting it in her mouth and was teased about it, but it was not a joke and it was not nice (according to those keeping track of what is and isn't nice). It was a form of shaming and bullying, neither of which would go down well if certain people heard it said that such things were said out loud. They would come back and tell me that they wanted to be seen as nice, to which I would reply, "Then BE NICE." I call things as I see them, which is why I have written about this subject on my personal journal but have not shared it -- until now. I am writing my autobiography and that includes what I know, have known, and have come to learn.
It came to me (and I have known about homosexuality in history and in reality) for most of my life. I am not a homosexual, as I have adequately revealed multiple times and in multiple places, but I am boy crazy as Mom called me. I really like boys (men). I have no qualms about the fact that I have always enjoyed the company and the friendship of the opposite sex. I became someone who is of a shy and retiring nature, mostly due to Mom's blaming and shaming, keeping my feelings about boys to myself. Mom had a habit of reading my letters from friends I left behind and had no boundaries where personal space (mostly mine) were concerned. She constantly looked for my diary (I call them journals now) and rooted it out wherever I had hidden it. I also hid my personal letters, but Mom was less doggedly determined to root out my correspondence (and there was a lot of it over the years), thus I kept most of my secrets safe and out of Mom's hands.
I was less scrupulous with one friend's letters when I was barely into puberty, which is how Mom caught wind of me knowing about French kissing and the ins and outs of dating, a fact that Mom must have thanked heaven for since we had moved from Hampton Roads, Virginia back to Ohio. I was saved from further contamination by this older and more experienced friend. Mom would have to keep me ignorant of that on her own, which she did by breaking up potentially dangerous situations by coming downstairs in her man's pajamas with her face scrubbed clean of all makeup wearing her dark hairnet over her neatly cut and styled hair with a big hole ripped in the seat of the her pajama bottoms with the intention of what the boy had in store for him if he kept up his fondling and caressing without being able to take me to the altar and make it legal.
I knew what she was doing, but I was evidently enough of a prize that the making out session lapses were of infrequent duration. No, I did not want to get pregnant nor go too far as Mom thought, but I did enjoy making out when the opportunity presented itself and my boyfriend sufficiently alluring. That is how I got caught when I dated Dave Woodard. Mom did not like him either, but at least he asked my Dad for my hand in marriage and proposed to me in front of my parents on bended knee on my birthday when I turned eighteen.
The rest of this story will have to proceed on another day at another time since I was talking about being closeted.
That is all. Disperse.
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