MY SPIRITUAL AWAKENING

My brother and I were not brought up in what anyone would dare to term a spiritually nurturing household, so we rarely attended church services. Our mother and father both worked, leaving little time for us, though I suppose they were never truly remiss in their responsibilities. My mom really enjoyed sleeping in on Sundays. Once in a while, my parents would take on the auspices of a religious rekindling—probably brought on by guilt applied by the rest of the family. On those occasions, we would be forced to go to church for a few Sundays in a row. "What is this all about?" we would ask. Michael and I hated it, preferring instead to stay home and watch the weekly episode of "Superman" and suck the Bavarian cream out of the only true Sunday constant in our lives, eclairs.

God was only spoken of in our family by my Grandfather on my mother's side, who lectured on something most of the time. Religion was the subject at hand at Christmas, because even if we kids didn't go to church, we sure as "shootin'" would learn the true meaning of Christmas. He introduced us to Dickens' "A Christmas Carol." But, being as young as I was at the time, I failed to grasp the true meaning of the story. I could never get past certain puzzling details regarding the period in which the story takes place. I couldn't, for example, get past the fact that they used a tiny piece of coal in a small pot-bellied stove for heat in the office. Or that the goose and other poultry had necks, heads, and sometimes feathers—rather than just being frozen in a plastic bag. And, of course, the lame games that they played to amuse themselves at the holiday parties. Probably the main reason that I did not embrace this traditional tale at an earlier age was because our Grandfather forced it upon us. Since I have always inwardly rebelled against authority, I couldn't understand that my Grandfather meant well. From what I know, I think that I have inherited several of his characteristics.

My brother and I had the great honor of setting up the nativity scene beneath the tree each year. We both enjoyed this task and treated the small ceramic figures and the straw-covered stable as an unusual dollhouse for the rest of the season. The various characters would be subjected to natural disasters, such as tornadoes and thunderstorms, as well as to not-so-natural disasters, including atomic bomb blasts, during the next few holiday weeks. After all, this was the time of "duck and cover," and we had to make sure that the baby Jesus would be saved in the fallout shelter.

Exploring the occult gave me a sense of power that I really enjoyed. I was tired of having sand kicked in my face, and I thought I had found something that I could kick back at a distance with. The art that I created in school reflected my new hobby, and it contained lots of fangs and blood. Always the drama queen, I dressed darkly to reflect the changes and make the mystery more complete. Fortunately—or unfortunately, depending on your viewpoint—I couldn't get totally into the occult, unlike many teens who fall into this dark practice and go on to make animal—or human—sacrifices to the craft. I was having a really hard time with one important basic practice inherent in the whole thing: giving yourself to Satan. Although I had no firm belief or understanding of Christianity, or any other form of religion, for that matter, I wasn't sure that I wanted to go that extra mile for a creature who has always been portrayed as a hideous being who reigns over Hell. Perhaps, because of the homosexual thoughts and feelings that were more frequently invading my mind, I thought that if I just played cards with the Devil without actually seriously dating him, that if my new unnatural desires took me to Hell, I'd at least have a nice apartment when I got there. But, deep down, I knew that it probably didn't work that way.

It wasn't until my junior year of high school that I began aching for some spiritual understanding in the more conventional sense. My only close friend had recently moved away, and I found myself relatively alone. I was also tortured by the emergence of those new male/male feelings. I was more then a little confused. It was at this point that Beverly Hinman, the girl whom I would later take to the junior prom, coerced me into trying out for a part in the school play. I got the part of a sibling yes-man in "Meet Me in Saint Louis." .I think the director picked me because he saw one of his own and thought that I could understand a "gay" role—little did he know that I was fighting that unfamiliar impulse and trying to overcompensate. How crazy—yet somehow correct—is life anyway? Poetic justice indeed.

The important detail is that many types were attracted to the theater department, which, at our high school, was quite good. The drama director was a closet Bob Fosse type who cracked the whip on his students the way one would expect only in off-Broadway productions. "Stop, stop, stop! A person could drive a Mack truck through the pause between your lines!" I suppose that many other students—athletes, cheerleaders, hippies, Christians, and outcasts (the ones who didn't fit in anywhere else)—seemed to find the need to seek out the family-type environment offered by the theater department. This is where I found my first Christian community, and also where I realized that I was not alone.

The first person I became friendly with was the director's right-hand person, a slight, tallish girl nicknamed Mitch who also always dressed in dark boy-like clothes. She had also dabbled in the black arts, but she had found something that she liked better. It was Christ. I never knew much about Mitch's family, but I didn't think that it was a very happy one. Even more unhappy than I considered my own. I liked her, and so did my brother. In fact, he seemed to form a special bond with her.

Mitch was a member of the Methodist Church on a major street in Hammond that I like to refer to as Church Street, since one side of the well-treed street seems to be lined with churches. She encouraged us to join a youth group there, and we did. I also started attending some of the Sunday services as well. From a rather removed viewpoint, I became somewhat interested in what was being presented at the services, and I wanted to believe that there was a divine being who would understand and take care of me. I just couldn't make sense of something that I couldn't see.

I began attending the youth group meetings regularly on Thursday nights. A weekend "in-church" youth retreat was planned. It was a one-night sleep-over in the church basement. I don't remember much of this night, except that I believe that's where the seed of my idea for having a youth-directed evening service was planted. Well, this service did happen, but it certainly was not your typical evening service. We played and dissected the meaning of the song "My God" from Jethro Tull's Aqualung album. I saw that other people, like me, weren't getting the message of the service. What was the message? I still didn't know…but I did know that there was something real under the words.

It was intense. This was the first time that I had ever spoken in public. I gave the "sermon"—i.e., dissection of the song's meaning. Before I began my speech, I was lucky enough to stand behind the pulpit and watch the reaction of the congregation as they listened to Jethro Tull blasted over the chapel's speakers.

I then explained in spiritual detail the meaning of such lyrics as "You are the god of everything, he's inside you and me" and "You from your social graces." I think that it was at this point that I realized that I was different—but that I could make a statement! The service was a hit and a rebellious outlet for us youth involved. If I remember correctly, the adults were quite congratulatory, in a kind of "can you believe what we just sat through" sort of way. Being the naive that I was, I took their compliments at face value—a mistake that I would repeat over and over throughout life.

It was during the production of The Wizard of Oz that I met Beverly Mason and Jason Robbins, the straight boy with whom I would soon fall deeply in love. Bev played Auntie Em, and Jason played the Tin Man. I played the Mayor of Munchkin Land—and I was 5'10". Go figure. Knowing what I know now, I think that the part was thrown to me because the director wanted to keep me interested in the theater. Bev and Jason—who were, at one time, an "Item"—both went to the same nondenominational church in Hammond. Because I wanted to be their friend, I accepted their invitation to attend services. Another friend of mine named Rose Shirley, who had been trying to get me to attend the same church, was one of several children of the minister. Also, there was a 7 p.m. service that was casual dress. Even then, I didn't like to function in the morning. But the most important reason that I wanted to attend was that frightening newly acknowledged feeling: I was developing a crush on Jason.

I attended that service as well as several others. I found this particular church interesting. All the other churches I had attended tried to create a holy grandeur with their architecture, but this particular church had no pretenses. It was, in essence, a rectangle constructed of cement blocks. I actually enjoyed the services, too. Rose's father was a good preacher. In fact, "preach" would be the wrong word to describe what he did at the pulpit. I would consider him more of a Christian educator. He wasn't really preaching, but, rather, explaining Christianity. For communion, the parishioners would pass around two silver trays—one with tiny vials of Welch's Grape Juice and another with broken matzo crackers on it. The ritual was completely symbolic, too. No one actually believed that what they were drinking was blood and not grape juice. I liked that. I also liked the sense of community that I got from going to the late services with my new friends. It wasn't long before Mitch was attending, as well as my brother. Of course, my brother was probably attending for the same reason that I was: companionship.

Soon, between the activities associated with the play and the services at the church, I had begun to feel a sense of community that I never felt outside of my family. I became somewhat more empowered, but, at the same time, I felt that the ice on which I walked might still be quite thin. I began to meet and hang with Bev and Jason's friends as well, as those I had met through the theater. Many of those whom I met were seniors, a year ahead of me, and I felt thrilled. I went from having one best friend and a few acquaintances to having several cool upper-class men that I could say "hi" to and have conversations with in the hall.

After some young time, several of us decided to start a "Prayer Breakfast" one day a week, at alternating houses, an hour and a half before school started. Oh, the exuberance of youth! We actually had a nice-sized regularly attending group at this hour! Breakfast would be served by the host student's parents, and we would discuss a book of the Gospel. We would read aloud one to three chapters (depending on their length) and discuss what we had read. We would also pray and have a short open discussion. The discussions were way more interesting then I thought they would be. There was no adult supervision, since the parents always left the room or the immediate vicinity, so we freely drew conclusions between our lives and the scriptures that we were discussing. Mind you, we were a Christian group of the '70s, a very diverse group of kids from various backgrounds, established religions, and dysfunctional families. Our Christian group actually hung around with "Heads"—that is, the hippies who smoked marijuana. Actually, they were our friends, and we were theirs. We would have discussions about God, but we really didn't preach without well-stated rebuttal, and we existed usually in a creative state of coexistence. There seemed to be something here that brought things together, and it seemed to make more sense than anything associated with the black arts.

Before long, a Christian student network had begun, and we planned a nighttime Prayer Breakfast trip to a Christian coffeehouse revival sort of thing. Until this time, I had been really liking the philosophies expressed in the four Gospels. Well, of course, we were all having problems with Paul's writings—the "red dress" and everything—but I really didn't seem to have the same understandings that some of the others seemed to have. The whole concept of God was still an abstract. God was still something locked in pages, a great concept. Getting to know God could be like learning something from a textbook.

I ended up driving a carload of kids to Hobart, Indiana, on a dark, snowy, winter night in my father's white station wagon. We arrived safely, and I was immediately intimidated upon entering a room full of strange kids whom I didn't know without the veil of the Prayer Breakfast. I was soon put at ease. These kids were nothing like what I was used to. They weren't hanging in cliques, but were instead quite outgoing and gregarious. The unusual difference was that all of these kids were talking about Jesus: "Jesus did this for me." "Jesus did that for me." "Jesus made me understand." I wasn't sure what they were talking about.

The Coffeehouse itself was in the storefront of a building. The interior was low-lit, with candles scattered about the room on mismatched end tables flanked by a variety of different donated chairs and small sofas. There was a small kitchenette set up from which coffee, tea, and donuts were served next to a large donation jar. The atmosphere was warm and cozy in spite of the strangeness of this experience.

We milled around, sat on the large area rug in front of one of the sofas, and met a few of the regulars for about half an hour before the program began. Someone began to sing a popular hymn and was soon joined by the rest of the room. This was followed by a prayer of guidance and of thanks. We sang a lot, and the songs were sung from the heart with a great deal of exuberance. I remember wishing that I were better at remembering lyrics, since I didn't have the luxury of having been raised singing these songs. The best I could do was to sing out a sentence or two, followed by a bar or two of lip-synching. I felt conspicuous, but I was enjoying myself. There was a period of scripture reading and discussion, more praying, more singing, and more talking.

I began to pray, and was soon joined by several others in the room. Amens were popping up everywhere. The mood of the room took on an electric momentum, like a meteor burning hotter as it approaches Earth's atmosphere. After reciting my prayer repeatedly, I began to feel something strange. It started meekly at my fingers and toes, the tingling that occurs when a part of your body falls asleep. Then, in only a few moments, this tingling worked its way up my limbs and throughout the rest of my body. My arms seemed no longer to be within my conscious control, and they began to flail about on their own as I was filled with an ecstasy that was beyond my experience both then and now. I felt more whole and connected than I had ever felt before. I began spewing an involuntary litany of praises to Jesus. I had been "born again."

Was this truly a spiritual experience, or was it something that could be neatly explained away by psychology? I would ask this question several times of myself in the next twenty-some odd years to follow. Perhaps I was just caught up in the moment. After all, I had gotten into this whole Christian thing to make friends and be more popular in the first place. Maybe I was just progressing to the next social step dictated by my peers. Despite how some people may explain it away, this experience marked the beginning of my life and has kept me alive and able to cope through many insane years.

The hardest part about being a "born-again Christian" is that it is not as it is advertised on television. If you're a "born-again Christian," you're labeled a right-wing conservative, and, if you don't fit this profile, you have to sift through a great deal of ancient psycho-babble. Unfortunately, there is a large vocal and visual group of Christians who seem to have accepted Christ so that they could turn off the minds God gave them and have Him be their servant. Or who think the Bible stopped being written after the canonized versions that exist today were published.

God does not tell me to ostracize and judge those people whom I come in contact with—I can too easily do that on my own. He instead tells me to open my heart and accept everyone. Accepting Christ is also not the magic cure-all for your addictions and other problems as advertised on Christian television. There is a magic moment of release from your vices and problems that lasts anywhere from a few weeks to a few years—sort of a drying-out period, as I see it. But after that, it becomes a struggle again. Happily, you have Christ as a guide to help heal you in the natural slow manner in which everything really happens.

There was, of course, the obvious problem with this newfound reality: What about my homosexual desires? Well, as you will discover in future chapters of this biography, I tried to understand and address this issue in college and was met with intrigue, disgust, politics, and hypocrisy. The balance of Christ and my homosexuality came into balance only a few years after I moved to Chicago. I am of the firm belief that being gay is certainly genetic and that I have God's blessing. I don't put God in the "Bible box," and I certainly don't purport to understand everything that He does. I have, of course, reasoned it out like so many other gays and lesbians have done, using the following typical rationalizations: If homosexuality was such a major abomination, wouldn't Christ have mentioned it in at least one of his sermons—as He did every other major sin. And what about Jesus, at the Last Supper, leaning across the breast of His favorite? Personally, I believe that everyone was intended to be bisexual and that I have fallen short by being too much to one extreme of the sexual spectrum. Of course, this is not a new idea. Can you say The Kinsey Report? There has always been, and there always will, be a need for procreation. But throughout history, as well as hidden in the present, homosexuals have always been the spiritual leaders, from shamans to priests. Nothing that anyone in today's media can say can, or has ever been able to, change what is God's complex plan or our own history. Luckily, none of this concerns me anymore. The saying "age is a great teacher" certainly became a cliché for a good reason.

Anyway, after that totally orgasmic experience, I was pumped. We all sang again, and I sang with free abandonment, not even worrying if I was flat. It was as if I were drunk or high without the drugs or alcohol—cliché, I know. On the drive home, I was like a drunk on the road with bad driving conditions. I was singing and praying and banging on the steering wheel—actually, we were all singing. For some reason, someone in the car ahead of us slammed on the brakes. I was probably following too close—I had just gotten my driver's license—and I slammed on my brakes as well. We spinned, we screamed, and we praised God…weird. We all survived, and so did the car. Eventually, we came to a stop, and we all collected ourselves. Unfortunately, one of the passengers, my friend Rose, was just recovering from a major car accident where she was almost killed. When I think back, this was par for the course.