The Velvet Rage (8 page)

Compounded shame and the associated rage is a toxic quagmire that can keep a gay man stuck in this uncomfortable, out-of-touch emotional stage for most of his life, until he comes to understand how shame is operating on him, feeding on him, controlling him, and keeping him from a more authentic life. As his shame confounds his relationship, job, and friendships, his frantic attempts to avoid shame increase in intensity. The splitting, dishonesty, substance abuse, and anonymous sex most surely increase, all in an attempt to pull himself out of the jaws of the shame that is consuming him. Those behaviors, in turn, eventually make him feel even more shameful, and on the cycle goes. This stage of a gay man's life is a truly devastating time. Some gay men move through it quickly while others linger, and some even spend an entire lifetime suffering the torment of overwhelming shame. Regardless, this first stage often leaves us with several problematic coping behaviors, like splitting and shame avoidance. Romantic relationships created during this stage are almost always stormy and traumatic for both parties, and everyone is often deeply wounded by the experience.

T
he intimate relationships a gay man has while in stage one are often some of the most defining relationships of his life. It is a tumultuous time, filled with rage, fear, and shame. Confused about who he really is and what kind of life he might expect to have, he is often unpredictable, impulsive, and without clear direction. His relationships are often intense, explosive, and for so many gay men, deeply wounding.

Even as I write this chapter, my mind reels of my own lost relationships of those early years and the too-short relationships of my clients who often recount them through heavy tears of grief. In his 1995 autobiography
Palimpsest
, Gore Vidal—arguably the first openly gay male American novelist—tells of his tender, loving relationship with an astonishingly handsome man named Jimmie Trimble. Trimble's full-page picture in Vidal's book depicts an adolescent beauty; Vidal describes a lifelong infatuation with him.

Written by Vidal in his seventies,
Palimpsest
provides a sweeping and grand tour of his life. It's filled with references and bits of conversation with the rich, richer, and famous. He
tells of conversations with Jackie and Jack Kennedy, Charleton Heston, Tennessee Williams, Marlon Brando, and Paul Bowles, just to name a few of the luminaries with whom his life intertwined. And yet it is Jimmie Trimble who stands out from the grandeur, a young man whom Vidal loved during his high school years and who was killed in the World War II battle of Iwo Jima at the tender age of nineteen. As Vidal states simply, Trimble “was the unfinished business of my life.”
¹
In the last pages of his book, Vidal prints the last picture taken of Jimmie and in caption asks that he be buried near Jimmie's grave.

What is it about a relationship with this young boy that so imprinted itself upon Vidal's life, a life that was lived between Hollywood, Washington, and Europe among the most dashing and genteel of the times? Why are gay men so affected by these early infatuations and trysts? Why do so many of us go on to fill our lives with men we can manage to forget?

The relationships formed in stage one have enormous power over the gay man. That first experience of feeling romantic love blended with erotic surge burns itself into our brains. The joy of finally having touched the innermost secret and first feeling of completeness it brings is monumental in our lives.

The darker side of stage one relationships is the overwhelming shame that clouds and penetrates this first powerful relationship. We are not free—not yet—and we struggle internally between the two defining poles of our lives, shame and love. This emotional struggle manifests outwardly as intense relationships that
are often swiftly abandoned and subsequently denied, leaving one or both men stunned and heartbroken.

Michael told me the story of his first love, Phillip. He hadn't deliberately recalled the story for more than twenty years, and it was obvious as he told it that the memories and emotions were flooding back, at times reducing him to tears. Michael had met Phillip at the University of Texas during their sophomore year. At the time, they were dating two girls who were friends, and the foursome had quickly become an inseparable unit at football games and pizza parlors near the campus.

Michael remembered the first night that he began to feel something strangely attracting him to Phillip. The four of them returned to Phillip's apartment from a night out on the town. Behind the apartment was a pond, and Phillip suggested that they all go skinny-dipping. In a flash, they were all out on the lawn, stripping in the moonlight. Michael noticed the muscular curves of Phillip's body and the glistening of the small, blond hairs that covered most of his athletic torso. He also caught the sense that Phillip was noticing him, too. In the water they plunged, swimming, laughing, and playing. Michael remembers the feeling of arousal that haunted him that night, and the difficulty he had concealing his underwater erection.

As the months went by, Michael and Phillip began going out without their girlfriends in tow. What was once a delightfully unexpected encounter became a weekend ritual. The two would go out to a local bar and drink until they were both thoroughly drunk and then stumble back to Michael's place on the edge of campus. Drunk and pretending to not know what they were doing, the evening would culminate with the two men naked in bed making out. This ritual continued throughout their junior year. Michael recalls that year with great fondness and tells of
how completely devoted he became to Phillip. He didn't think of either one of them as being gay, and yet he knew that he was completely taken with Phillip.

One night late in August before their senior year, Michael got a call from an old friend from high school who was obviously drunk. He asked Michael flat out if he was a homosexual. Phillip had been telling everyone around town that Michael had tried to seduce him, but Phillip had pushed him away and told him to go screw himself.

Now a strapping man in his forties, Michael shifted in his chair across from me and wept for several minutes. “I didn't know what to do. I just hung up the phone and thought I would die. I never spoke to Phillip again.”

Michael told me of how he had replayed in his memory time and again how Phillip had caressed him, kissed him gently, and how the two of them often had half a dozen orgasms before dawn. Over and over again he scrutinized his memories, looking for any sign that Phillip had been an unwilling party to this or that his feelings for Phillip had been on false premises. There was nothing he could point to—he was sure that the feelings were mutual and that Phillip had been as much an initiator as he.

After this traumatic college experience, Michael had never been able to trust a lover again. He had great friends that he trusted completely, he said, but the minute he slept with a man, the suspicions raged. Michael desperately wanted a loving, long-term relationship but had come to believe that he was incapable of sustaining one. It was clear that his experience with Phillip, a man who so devilishly betrayed him some two decades earlier, stood in his way.

Like it was for both Gore Vidal and Michael, those early relationships created unprecedented emotional trauma that they
subsequently carried into every succeeding relationship. For Vidal it was the young beauty who abandoned him through death, and for Michael it was the strong, athletic man who betrayed and publicly belittled him. Very different experiences, yet both affected these men for many years afterwards.

In this first stage of being a gay man, we are not equipped to have a healthy intimate relationship. Our own internal conflicts prevent us from gaining the emotional clarity needed to maintain a safe and satisfying bond. The situation compounds when two men, both overwhelmed with shame, come together in an intense and explosive expression of passion. What produces arguably the most erotic experiences of a gay man's life also takes him to the lowest place he is likely to know.

Many years ago in California, I treated Sean, a bright, very handsome young man who was in a residential treatment facility for adolescents. Sean had been placed into the facility for repeatedly running away from home and for frequent bouts of depression. When I met him, it became clear to both of us that Sean was gay. Although he described himself as bisexual, it was evident that his only real romantic feelings had been for other boys.

Sean told me that his maternal grandfather had been the only person who seemed to understand him. He was a wise old man who spent a great deal of time with Sean, taking him fishing and camping in the nearby mountains. These trips away from home were greatly welcomed respites from the frequent beatings he was subjected to by his stepfather. His mother had remarried when Sean was seven years old, and the stepfather had been determined to “whip him into shape.”

I hadn't been treating Sean for very long when I learned that he had recently had a sexual affair with another male resident. Of course, sexual relations among any of the residents were strictly
forbidden in treatment—the subsequent persecution brought from the other male residents was just one of the many good reasons why. The other boys whispered loud enough for Sean to hear “queer” and “homo” when he walked by. The taunting and embarrassment had become unbearable for Sean. The other resident with whom he had the affair denied having participated in anything and completely ignored Sean when the affair became public knowledge.

One Friday in July, I met with Sean just before he was to have a two-hour visit with his mother. He was so excited to see her and told me that he had convinced her that he was ready to return home now. As he told it, they were going to make plans for his discharge in the next week.

That Sunday, sitting out on the patio of my favorite coffee shop, my cell phone rang. The voice on the other end was frantic. “Dr. Downs, you've got to come to the office quickly.” Concerned, I questioned the caller, a junior staff member at the facility, carefully. As he choked out the details, I started running to the car. One of the male residents had hanged himself.

On the drive to the treatment facility, I somehow knew that Sean was the person in question, but the staffer who had called me said that he wasn't sure. As I walked onto the grounds, I'll never forget what I saw. There, swinging from a rope tied to a tree not more than a hundred yards from my office, was Sean.

Nothing shakes you like having a client commit suicide. No amount of preparation or warnings from wise, experienced professors can prepare you for it. It makes you question everything about your profession, your skills, and the meaning of life.

What I took from this young man's suicide was a reverent awareness of the dire trauma that stage one relationships create.
I know that I will always be reminded of the significant and overwhelming consequences from these relationships. What casual observers might dismiss as young infatuations, I would always be careful to understand as powerful experiences that can become the template upon which many future relationships are built.

After his death, I learned that the visit with Sean's mother had gone poorly and that she had told him that he could not return because his stepfather wouldn't allow a homosexual in the house. She told him he was to spend the next six months in treatment and hopefully “get over” his sexual problems. Undoubtedly, Sean had been drowned in overwhelming shame, not only from his parents but by a treatment center that had failed to keep him safe from the cruel tauntings of the other young men. It had been unbearable, and he chose the only escape he could think of.

Sean left behind two notes. One was to his mother telling her not to worry because he had gone to heaven to be with his beloved grandfather. And the other was addressed to me, apologizing for having killed himself. He closed the note with these brief words scrawled in distressed handwriting: “You were the only one who understood.”

My heart broke for Sean, and even now as I write these words I feel a bitter sorrow over a life needlessly wasted. My grief goes far beyond that brilliant boy who was so quickly snuffed out, to a world of gay men who have lived this trauma, too. To be gay in an uncompromisingly straight world is to struggle to find love and,
once found, to hold on to it. We are men in a world where men are emotionally disabled by our masculine cultural ideals. And we are men who threaten those ideals by loving another man at a time in life when we are neither equipped for the ravishes of love or the torment of shame.

This early emotional stage is a traumatic and difficult time for all gay men. Those who grow up and live in a homophobic, invalidating environment usually suffer all the more. The memory of the struggle and the scars of the trauma are something we carry with us, long after we've moved on in life.

T
he first stage of a gay man's development always culminates in a crisis of identity. Who am I? What direction will my life take? With whom will I identify myself? Who will I love? Eventually, no matter how hard we try to avoid it, the question, “Am I really gay?” demands an answer.

There are basically two ways in which we may resolve this crisis. One is to retreat into a permanent denial of our sexual preference, often referred to as “foreclosure.” When a man forecloses on admitting he's gay, he gives up striving for authenticity. Of course, the other way to resolve this crisis of identity is to admit to our being gay and to make the choice to be openly gay. As perhaps you know, neither choice is completely easy. But peace of mind and being at peace with oneself doesn't come from foreclosure. No matter how hard it might be to be openly gay, it is the path toward being authentic.