Read Online My Husband and My Wives: A Gay Man's Odyssey by Charles Rowan Beye - Free Book Online
Authors: Charles Rowan Beye
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honest conversation.
How strange and sad it is that for the next sixty years I never questioned her response. That she did not sit by me, put her arm around me, tell me she loved me, cry with me over my sorrows, did not seem unusual to me then. Intellectually I have been convinced that the “normal” parent would have; otherwise I still don’t get it. Father Putnam, our Episcopal priest, changed for me into a monster of betrayal. Why did he not come to me first, talk with me, who was his acolyte at Holy Communion almost every Sunday, who was so often the crucifer at the later service, who was president of the St. Vincent’s Guild, the association of altar boys, at the church? How, I have often asked myself, could this brash young priest, new to the parish, have gone up to a woman on the street as indeed he had and delivered such information? How could he have been so blind to the limitations of understanding in a woman who was so obviously a product of a Victorian-Edwardian upbringing? One wonders at the fact that he went on to become the bishop of Oklahoma and was much praised by the people there at his death. At the risk of judging, which the Lord says is a dubious practice, I say that the swine had much to answer for when he met his Maker.
At Mother’s request—“hysterical demand” perhaps is better—I went to see him. He urged that we descend to our knees and recite the prayer of general confession together. When we got to the words, “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,” and I realized that he wanted us to have in mind the behavior that he had brought to my mother’s attention, I could not, would not submit to such self-condemnation. If nothing else, I knew in my heart and would go to the stake in my belief that I was without blame or sin for wanting sex with another male, of this I remained convinced, and I rose and walked out the door and I never entered a church again as a communicant.
I set off for the appointment with the psychiatrist the following day in complete terror. His office was in the psychiatric hospital, not too distant a walk from our home. It was not quite twenty-four hours since Mother had accosted me. Since then she had spoken to me in measured somber tones of trivial matters upon the occasions that brought us together. I truly felt that I was going to go mad, such was the turmoil of emotions that I could no longer identify, sort out, or manage. Most of all I was trying to resist being suffused with guilt and shame. The absolute joy and excitement of sucking cocks, of taking cock up my ass, had suddenly become dirty, degraded. God, Church, priest, Mother all called me dirty. I kept hearing Mother’s “your name on lavatory walls.” In my mind I saw the words Charlie sucks cock as I had never seen them before. The mechanism of denial that had protected me up to this point failed, when, as it were, my mother, our priest, and the institution of God’s Church stood beside me in the smelly men’s room looking at the grimy off-white tile wall with the pen marks on it: Charlie sucks cock. I had never felt so depleted; I wanted to kill myself. Before meeting with Father Putnam I had gone to the library just across the street from the Episcopal church to look up something on mushrooms, on poisons, but I was so sunk into depression that I could not even read what I was looking at. Now I struggled to walk smartly down the sidewalk that took me to the office of Dr. Miller. He, as fate would have it, looked very much like my late father: gray at the temples, a mustache, steely eyes, a severe compression of his lips when in repose. I quailed.
“What is your problem?” he began quietly and soberly. I began to snivel, and, through my coughs, stammering, and sniffs managed to mention as abstractly as possible my sexual interests.
“But, I mean, what is it exactly that you do with these boys?”
“What is it that you are doing, Charlie?” he said again when I could
How strange and sad it is that for the next sixty years I never questioned her response. That she did not sit by me, put her arm around me, tell me she loved me, cry with me over my sorrows, did not seem unusual to me then. Intellectually I have been convinced that the “normal” parent would have; otherwise I still don’t get it. Father Putnam, our Episcopal priest, changed for me into a monster of betrayal. Why did he not come to me first, talk with me, who was his acolyte at Holy Communion almost every Sunday, who was so often the crucifer at the later service, who was president of the St. Vincent’s Guild, the association of altar boys, at the church? How, I have often asked myself, could this brash young priest, new to the parish, have gone up to a woman on the street as indeed he had and delivered such information? How could he have been so blind to the limitations of understanding in a woman who was so obviously a product of a Victorian-Edwardian upbringing? One wonders at the fact that he went on to become the bishop of Oklahoma and was much praised by the people there at his death. At the risk of judging, which the Lord says is a dubious practice, I say that the swine had much to answer for when he met his Maker.
At Mother’s request—“hysterical demand” perhaps is better—I went to see him. He urged that we descend to our knees and recite the prayer of general confession together. When we got to the words, “We acknowledge and bewail our manifold sins and wickedness,” and I realized that he wanted us to have in mind the behavior that he had brought to my mother’s attention, I could not, would not submit to such self-condemnation. If nothing else, I knew in my heart and would go to the stake in my belief that I was without blame or sin for wanting sex with another male, of this I remained convinced, and I rose and walked out the door and I never entered a church again as a communicant.
I set off for the appointment with the psychiatrist the following day in complete terror. His office was in the psychiatric hospital, not too distant a walk from our home. It was not quite twenty-four hours since Mother had accosted me. Since then she had spoken to me in measured somber tones of trivial matters upon the occasions that brought us together. I truly felt that I was going to go mad, such was the turmoil of emotions that I could no longer identify, sort out, or manage. Most of all I was trying to resist being suffused with guilt and shame. The absolute joy and excitement of sucking cocks, of taking cock up my ass, had suddenly become dirty, degraded. God, Church, priest, Mother all called me dirty. I kept hearing Mother’s “your name on lavatory walls.” In my mind I saw the words Charlie sucks cock as I had never seen them before. The mechanism of denial that had protected me up to this point failed, when, as it were, my mother, our priest, and the institution of God’s Church stood beside me in the smelly men’s room looking at the grimy off-white tile wall with the pen marks on it: Charlie sucks cock. I had never felt so depleted; I wanted to kill myself. Before meeting with Father Putnam I had gone to the library just across the street from the Episcopal church to look up something on mushrooms, on poisons, but I was so sunk into depression that I could not even read what I was looking at. Now I struggled to walk smartly down the sidewalk that took me to the office of Dr. Miller. He, as fate would have it, looked very much like my late father: gray at the temples, a mustache, steely eyes, a severe compression of his lips when in repose. I quailed.
“What is your problem?” he began quietly and soberly. I began to snivel, and, through my coughs, stammering, and sniffs managed to mention as abstractly as possible my sexual interests.
“But, I mean, what is it exactly that you do with these boys?”
“What is it that you are doing, Charlie?” he said again when I could
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