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Published 9/4/03 in The Post-Star newspaper Forced to bury who we really are By STACEY MORRIS I loved playing at Charles' house. Spending time with him was always exhilarating, more so than with any other childhood friend. And it wasn't just because he had no sadistic older siblings to torment us at every opportunity. Charles had a doll house. A life-sized doll house, complete with a furnished kitchen, bay windows and a wraparound porch. Afternoons spent with Charles are still imprinted vividly. The memory starts with my father turning his black Imperial onto the road where Charles lived. When the road became a steep gravel hill, he'd prudently press the brakes until we crawled along at 5 mph. The excitement would build by the second as we spiraled a slow descent to the bottom, where Charles would be waiting for me. Charles and I would do something like jump up and down because we were so glad to see each other, before bounding across the acreage to destination doll house. I didn't pay much attention to the dynamics at the time, although there may have been some fleeting thoughts where I noted no other boys I knew played in doll houses. Charles' legendary energy led him to do all kinds of quirky things, like grab a feather duster from his house and maniacally swipe at the boulders and hydrangea bushes that lined the lake's edge near his home. And he wasn't shy about wearing his heart on his sleeve, laughing hysterically until his face turned crimson when he thought something was funny, or sobbing with abandon when his feelings were hurt. I mildly took note of some of the names I'd heard classmates use to describe him. They just didn't understand ... disfigured with self-loathing judgmentalism as they were. But I understood. I always knew. Charles and I never spoke of it and we spent the next 20 years dancing strategically around the topic. Then it came out last week, not long after Charles' 39th birthday. We were on one of our sporadic, long-distance phone calls and he just said it. I wasn't surprised so much by the contents of his revelation, but that he actually delivered it. Eons ago, when we hit our teens, Charles remained silently nonpartisan about opinions of the opposite sex. When most of us were at least talking about our aspirations, Charles took himself out of the running completely, becoming a sort of eunuch. He was still my buddy from the dollhouse days, but just one without any discernible sex drive. Yes, I could have broached the topic, but quite frankly, I didn't have the courage. So I left it at that, respecting Charles' wishes to live in silent sexual ambiguity. The only thing was, they weren't really his wishes; he just felt he had no other alternative. The passing of time and his father helped. "I always knew," Charles said over the phone. "I just didn't know what to do about it ... and my father never could have accepted it." How mean-spirited and bigoted was Charles' father? He made the character played by Chris Cooper in "American Beauty" look like a Romper Room host. I tried to fathom the emotional energy it must have taken for Charles to keep his real self hidden. And it dawned on me that Charles wasn't alone in his closet. You might not be suppressing something as socially unacceptable as Charles was -- or maybe you are. If you're a woman, it's a pretty safe bet (my next two paychecks anyway) that you're sitting on abrasive opinions you don't even know you want to spout ... they're just kept safely under the guise of a knotted throat or a tightly automatic smile. Or you might be a man who keeps that nuisance known as vulnerability chained in the dungeon, not even feeding it the occasional bread and water. What are the things you keep in the protective custody of your closet? Does it center around bigotry perhaps? Or sex, anger or loneliness? Take your pick. Because we live in a society that hardly does much to encourage people to be honest with themselves, or others. Politeness and social graces certainly have their place. But keeping certain realities cloistered behind a veil of denial isn't such a good plan after all. It's nothing more than brew for the perfect storm -- a storm that slogs us miserably through life – half alive. |