Oysters or Fish?

I doubt that my siblings know that Dad was a closeted bisexual. They may suspect, and the Idiot knows, but that is as far as it goes.

It was following the social trends that made the HBO show turn his father into a closeted homosexual who came out publicly just for him. There are a lot of gay men who posed as straight men during the decades in the past. They needed to pass in order to stay in the closet and remain undiscovered.

I am reminded of "Virginia Hams" who had such a deep voice and trotted it out at gay clubs throughout the city. He was just one of many. His mother did not like that he was so out and proud about it. She told him she would have had a size four wedgie stuck in her head if she had disrespected her mother the way he had used her. I'm sure there would have been many grownup children with wedgies sticking out of their foreheads if all the gay children came out and made no bones about it.

My Dad's mother would not have thrown her wedgie at him since she died when he was ten and was not around when he went through puberty. Dad came from Cynthiana, Ohio, a very small town and I doubt that he would have come out in such a place without having been beaten to death for it. I have no doubt that he knew he was that way, but he stayed in the closet. Coming out was not an option, not for him anyway.

Besides, I doubt he was a committed homosexual, but rather a bisexual passing as straight, which is something he had always done. He kept himself to himself and did not parade around or flame like an out and proud queen. Dad had his mannerisms, but he was a man, a good man. There was no loose talk where he was concerned, not that his children or his family knew about. Mom chose him when she met him at age eleven and decided then and there that she would marry him -- and marry him she did when he came back from camp, asked her father for her hand, and married her in their living room. All signed, sealed, and delivered so to speak. 

Dad had already walked away from his Japanese lover, leaving his half breed daughter behind. We all knew about his daughter and that she was being raised by her grandparents in the family home. More than that, we do not know, although I am sure I could find out more and write about it. I choose not to.

I wrote to Dad over the years and asked him to record his story, but he refused and I didn't press too hard. I did get a bit of his story, about how he was so poor and backward he went barefoot to school. DAd also told me stories about going to the movies when he accompanied his older brother, Don, to his post near Chicago. Dad hitchhiked back home when he came back from Korea the first time, but that was Dad's way. He told funny stories, but not too much. Dad kept his life close to the vest and did not talk much about his personal life.

Dad had had an affair with a woman when he was married to Mom and she never let him forget it. She punished him for decades. That was her way. She was vindictive and venomous, not to mention full of ego. She was Mom and there was no doubt about it -- or her. Nobody could hold a grudge like Mom could. Dad could tell you about it. He knew first hand.

Mom could be generous, but she would never let you forget it. That was her way. She could be nice, but not without a price. I knew she had an evil side to her. I experienced it often enough. She would pat me on the back -- or the head -- and then slap me right in the face. I never got the compliment without the immediate slap.

Or maybe it was just me that she patted then slapped in the face. She was not a subtle woman. She was as uncompromising as her brother, my Uncle Bob, who did not trust her and complained about how she had forced him out of the family. Or maybe that is his version of it. Who knows? Mom is dead. Dad is dead. Uncle Bob died last year. That is that.

Mom would have wished to be liked, which is why she was so generous. She would keep the price for her generosity to herself, much as Bessie the Bullfrog does. Bessie prefers people to think of her as nice, but she threw my advice (then BE NICE) back in my face. C'est la vie.

Or la guerre come to that.

Whether or not Mom knew about Dad's proclivities, she did not spread them about. That is my job, except that it is not my job. I talk about my life from my perspective. Since I have no relationship with my siblings, it is not strange that my siblings do not know about Dad being closeted. It is something that they would keep quiet about if they did know.

I am not telling this to shock them or hurt them. I am only telling the truth because I am trying to come to terms with it. I have known about Dad's behavior for decades, but it was not up to me to shove him out of the closet. This is all part of my biography and so I talk about it. Dad is part of my life and I knew so in it goes.

The point is that I did not think much about this until I watched the BBC version of "Aristocrats" whether Julian Fellowes portrayed the Duke faithfully because Julian was a bit of a flamer (out and proud). As I said earlier, the UK is out and proud about their homosexuals. The USA is much less so. That was the first time I saw Julian when he was being himself and out of the closet, which made me wonder about the Duke of Richmond.

Homosexuals have been around forever and everyone knew about them. There is this scene in Spartacus where Laurence Olivier informs Tony Curtis of the realities of life. "...Some people like fish and some people prefer oysters. That is the difference.: Olivier was telling Curtis that he swung both ways and he was asking if Curtis was straight or gay. Olivier was deciding whether Curtis was going to be his slave or not. Curtis was not going to swing Olivier's way. His friendship with Spartacus was of the brotherly kind and not the swinging kind. Too bad, Olivier. 

I have always known that boys (men) could not grow up without at least one encounter. No doubt, it was the same for Dad and boys of his kind growing up. Or maybe it happened in the Army. Who knows? It happened.

Men have always been of easier virtue than women and took full advantage of that. Maybe that is why men can be so casual about sex in the first place. It all goes into what makes the man prefer oysters as Olivier put it. 

Whether Julian portrayed the Duke of Richmond correctly, I found it odd that Julian would take on the role. Julian is, after all, a thespian and was a thespian before he became a screenwriter -- or playwright. Julian as the Duke made me reassess what I thought I knew.

When it comes down to it, whether men are gay or straight, they think about sex all the time. that is a given. Even my brother must do so, whether or not he flies to England over the Christmas holidays. He knows, one way or the other, he will get his wick waxed, which is why he is going in the first place. No doubt, Dad also suffered the tortures of the testosterone, with or without Mom's consent, and so he turned to the closet and let his wrists go limp. Maybe that is why Mom was so adamant about Dad spending time with John in Colon.

John was an expatriate, paid to stay in Colon in Panama by his wealthy mother who worked in cosmetics. John was obviously a gay man and Dad spending time with John was tantamount to an admission of being homosexual himself.

Or not.

There it is -- Dad's extra-martial proclivities. I figured Dad was at best bisexual, but maybe he was just that casual about sex and sexual liaisons. When it comes down to it, it makes no difference to me. Though he was an inveterate gossip, he was still a good man, a very good man. I don't care whether or not he was bi-sexual or homosexual, he was the best man I knew and I love him without boundaries or shaming or anything demeaning. Dad is who he was and I accepted him unconditionally. He is and was my father. He was also my uncle and I loved him in spite of his faux pas. I did not judge him nor did I shame him or expect more of him that there was.

James Cary Cornwell was my father and I accepted him unconditionally. His private life was his own, though I will reserve the right to consider writing about him and John. That is my privilege.

That is all. Disperse.

Hiding in Plain Sight

By now, most of you know that there have been homosexuals in the movie industry who had to hide their proclivities from the world and had PR agents to cover up their perceived peccadillos. When unscrupulous people got hold of the truth, they approached the closeted actor or actress -- though it was less obvious with women and all too obvious when men were involved -- with a blackmail scheme, the victim either valued his or her anonymity so much they fell into the trap and thus the criminals got richer and got a hold on the victim for as long as blackmailing was lucrative.

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.