Sunday Morning Post (V.1 #18) - My Cousin Jimmy

It was summer 1987 when, armed with a fresh Master’s degree, I finally left home and returned to the city of my birth, Philadelphia.  I needed employment and, having outgrown the dead-end cycle of perpetual retailing in Northeast Pennsylvania, I was ready to start a career in a real vocation.  I lived with friends for that summer, then moved in with my aunt and uncle in the Academy Gardens section of the city.  There I got reacquainted with my cousins and really got to know my (second) cousin Jimmy.

At the time, Jimmy was attending parochial high school, well-versed in Roman Catholicism, and giving every indication that he wanted to pursue a career in the priesthood.  He was also, if you chose to believe the things he said, outrageously homophobic. Jimmy would talk about gays burning in Hell, and assert a hormonal excessive heterosexual attitude towards the opposite sex.   To be fair, he was still an adolescent male at this point and any remarks about the fair sex could usually be countered with the admonishment, “Down, boy, down!”

I wasn’t comfortable with Jimmy’s attitudes.   After all, I had known a few gays in college and found nothing wrong with them.  They were usually good company, very intelligent and witty.  I think, in Jimmy’s case, I attributed his attitude towards gays to perhaps traditional religious dogma and inexperience with the world at large.  

It didn’t occur to me at the time that perhaps his years in Roman Catholicism was giving him more world experiences than I could ever realize.  (‘Hi!  My name is Todd and I am naïve.” “Hi, Todd!”)

After a year in Philly, I moved on, stumbled into a career near Washington and finally got on with my life.  In the intervening years, Jimmy also matured.  He completed his religious education with a doctorate and came out of the closet.

We had a few clues over the years about Jimmy.  Once I caught up with him while we were both visiting Bloomsburg.  He was up visiting a boyfriend at the college.  At the time I thought, “Okay, great seeing you again,” and did not give it a second thought.  There was another chance encounter at a Pennsylvania Turnpike stop a few years later when he was traveling with a boyfriend. I don’t know if it was the same one from the earlier incident, but that didn’t matter at the time.  I just felt it was good to see him again.

I’ve thought about the issue of why closeted gays seem to have the most homophobic attitudes among people over the years.  Please understand, I never took a course in psychology or sociology, so I will admit that I don’t feel intellectually qualified to have an opinion on this, but here goes nothing.

I finally decided that this seeming incongruity between expressed attitudes and self-identity is nothing more than “doing as the Romans do”.  You blend in and adopt the attitudes and norms which are considered acceptable in society until you feel comfortable that you have found people who may be like or understand you and not so quick to judgment and condemnation.

I don’t believe that this chameleon effect is limited to the gay community.  Each one of us has most likely felt the need to behave like the rest of the world around us even as we knew that there was something about us (a belief?  a personality quirk?) that was out-of-sync with the world.  We all go through a period of trial, error and social experimentation until we finally either get comfortable with ourselves in our surroundings or find a niche into which that we can fit.

In Jimmy’s case, there is a happy ending.  Yesterday Warrior Queen and I had the honor and wonderful pleasure of witnessing Jimmy exchange vows with his longtime partner, Michael.  It was a beautiful day in the company of family and friends full of love and spiritual acceptance. 

We wish the couple many years of happiness ahead.

(Thank you for reading.  Okay, world, it’s time for you to catch up to us.)