You Are Everything

Today I saw somebody
Who looked just like you
She walked like you do
I thought it was you
As she turned the corner
I called out your name
I felt so ashamed
When it wasn't you
Wasn't you

'Cause you are everything
And everything is you
Oh, you are everything
And everything is you
You are everything
And everything is you
(Thom Bell - Linda Creed)

I consider myself a confident gay man. I don’t live my life in a closet. Hell, most of my friends know I leave the closet doors open in my bedroom. It is a symbol of who I am, an OUT gay man. I am comfortable in my shoes, (sometimes high heels). There are times when I walk out of my hyper-heterosexual neighborhood in Inglewood California wearing the most outrageous leopard-print attire. When my ghetto neighbor threw beer bottles in my back yard after listening to me have gay sex, I confronted them. Then why is it when I enter the world of the public gym, I feel trapped in a closet? Is it the horrible memories of 6th grade torture in gym class? Is it the humiliation being picked last for basketball team? Was it that first embarrassing erection in the showers and the laughter and teasing from the guys?

How can I forget
When each face that I see
Brings back memories
Of being with you.

When I have my iPod on, all the sissy queen of the 70’s disco comes out in me. Once I hear Diana Ross in the midst of The Boss, it’s like all bets are off. I caught myself today singing out loud:

Thought I could turn emotion
On and off
I was so sure
So sure (I was so sure)
But love taught me
Who was, who was, who was the boss

To top it off I even tried to sing the OOOH WOOOO part. A sweaty woman on a stationary bicycle stopped and gave me weird glance. I caught myself and locked myself back in the closet.
I finished up my cardio workout without any further incident. I proceeded to the abdominal machine which faced the basketball court. I looked out at the polished floors and netted hoops and thought about the training film I was cast in as a kid who loses his wallet on a basketball court. I was so bad the director had to bring in a double to dribble for me. My close-up of me dunking the ball was done from a ladder. I shudder when I see that video.


I headed to the sauna area for a little steam and whirlpool after my workout. The basketball game has broken up and the players head to the locker room too. It is then I notice one of the players is female. I don’t want to stereotype her and say just because her hair was styled in a “mannish” cut or that she walked with a male swagger or even deepened her voice that she was lesbian, but for the sake of argument, I will bet my entire collection of Judy Garland movies that this girl was a same gender-loving female.

As I sat in the whirlpool half listening to their conversation, I got a little angry. Here she was being accepted into their macho world, no snickering, no teasing, and no ostracizing. I think about the butch lesbians I see out and about in grocery stores and in public wearing clothes more masculine than anything I own and nobody stares except me! I am jealous because sometimes I want to wear a sarong skirt and some wedgies. I always re-think the wardrobe choice because I refuse to be stared at like a freak of society’s standards of what a man should dress like.


I justified in my mind all the times in a hair salon or a ladies clothing store, when a feminine guy bonds with the women who inhabit that environment. The Sex in the City girls can have their “GAYS.” That butch lesbian was simply bonding with the men of the gym with whom she shared a common interest. She faces the same discriminations in life that I do. She can play ball with them, but they wouldn’t vote in favor of her being able to marry her female lover. She walked like a dude, talked like a dude, but she wasn’t.

oh darling
I just can't go on
Living life as I do
Comparing each girl with you
Knowing they just won't do
They're not you

Was I still jealous? YES. Was I still angry? YES. I was jealous that I always found it difficult to bond with heterosexual men. I don’t like sports. I was angry with a society that still places us in categories based on how we dress. I was angry with myself for allowing myself to go back into that closet (even for that short time) I fought so hard to break out of that damn closet in 1976. It became my personal mission to teach all straight people that gay people are basically no different from them. We don’t have three heads. Most of us aren’t even recognizable. What is there to be afraid of? We just have sex with the same sex instead of the opposite sex. Everything else is pretty much the same. I don’t dislike heterosexuals just because they have male / female relationships. I am just mad that society doesn’t treat us all as equals.


A buddy of mine, not knowing I was gay, once went on incessantly about a hot lap dance he’d received from a busty female at a strip club. Instead of pretending that women were my sexual interest, I shared with him an experience I’d had with a male stripper at a gay bar. After he picked his face up off the floor, he had to admit that he respected me for being open and for treating my gay life just as normally as he treated his straight life. Yeah, that’s me, 30minutes before tomorrow spreading universal acceptance by teaching one straight person at a time.

You are everything
And everything is you
Oh, you are everything
And everything is you
'Cause you are everything
And everything is you