My Instructor Said I Should Title This Essay ‘Uncovered’

An essay, and a couple announcements—

Note: this essay is rated PG-13.

Growing up, I heard homosexual slurs taunted on the playground. Whispered in the classroom. Snickered in the BMX gang. Shouted across the outfield. And blared from the TV.

My brother and I grew up on VHS tapes of the comedies and light-hearted adventure movies of the 1970s and 80s.

The humor in those movies is very often racist, usually misogynistic, and almost always homophobic.

“Gay” was an insult.

Young, dumb and naive, I too lobbed around the word.
I’m embarrassed about it today.

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Middle-school-era summers meant hanging out with my two best friends. It was bikes, baseball, basketball, football and adventure. On TV, we watched professional wrestling, sports, or—with our new VCR—those aforementioned movies.

We were on the cusp of puberty.

One rainy Thursday, relegated to play inside, we were alone at my friend’s house.

We turned his bedroom into a makeshift wrestling ring and replicated the moves we’d seen on TV: suplexes, body slams, dropkicks and leg drops.

I can’t remember exactly how it happened, but somehow at a certain point that afternoon the three of us ended up laying side by side, under the covers in my best friend’s bed, our pants around our ankles, our penises in our hands.

I feel the need to add that we didn’t play with each other’s penises. (But then again, why do I feel the need to add that?)

None of us knew enough about masturbation to actually complete the job at hand.

We just fondled ourselves, giggling in delight.

Once it got near the time my friend’s dad would be coming home from work, we rolled out of the bed, pulled up our pants, and went down to the living room to watch TV on the couch, blankets and throw pillows on our laps, wondering if our penises would ever stop pointing upward.

This happened a couple more times that summer, but we never spoke about it outside of my friend’s bedroom. Or inside his bedroom, for that matter.

In fact, writing this essay, nearly four decades later, is the first time I’ve ever acknowledged it even happened.

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That same summer, a pamphlet showed up on the countertop in the bathroom my brother and I shared with our parents. The booklet was entitled, Ann Landers Talks to Teen-agers About Sex.

Ann Landers Talks was the closest we got to the talk—this was the full extent of sex education in our home.

That’s a lot of pressure on a pamphlet about the size of a flyer you’d pick up in the tourist information display at a roadside welcome center, but, it worked.

Sex? We were tourists. Aliens, even. And this was information.

We learned about pregnancy, about sexually transmitted diseases, and, on a more practical level, what certain terms and phrases even meant. (Honestly, the section on “heavy petting” was the hottest thing I’d ever read.)

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Then there was the time when WFFT-55 was showing Xanadu.

Our mom called out that it was time for dinner.

We didn’t…wouldn’t…couldn’t…move.

We had to believe it was magic.

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Given our obsession with the NFL, with baseball, with college and pro basketball, my parents got my brother and me a subscription to Sports Illustrated as the football season kicked off in the fall of 1983.

We loved Sports Illustrated. We cut out photos of our favorite athletes and made collages of them on our bedroom walls.

Each weekend, we raced out to get the mail—SI showed up on Saturdays—to see if one of our favorite players was on that week’s cover.

The first week of February 1984, though, the person on the cover wasn’t an NFL player or basketball player or any professional athlete we idolized at all.

No, the person on the cover that week was Paulina Porizkova.

We’d just received our first Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

Which we learned to idolize in a whole new way.

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Home alone a little while later, my brother and I climbed on top of the washer and dryer. Who’s to say why? We reached as high as we could and lifted ourselves up to see what was on top of the cabinets above the washer.

We found a box of light bulbs, a layer of dust about 3/8” thick, and, in the far back corner, a magazine: Oui.

Oui, which is the French word for “yes,” featured tasteful pictorials of women who happened to not be wearing shirts. They weren’t wearing bras, either. Or swimsuits.

Yes.

Oui.

We’d climb up on the washer and dryer any time our parents left the house, until one of us tumbled and put a large dent in the top of the washer.

A little while later, the magazine was gone.

Apparently we’d been caught.

Not that it ever came up.

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As a senior in high school, I was spending my favorite hours of the school day in the art studio, for organized classes and independent study.

Walking down the halls at Northrop High School, my oversized portfolio, brushes and supplies over my shoulder, the elite crowd snickered, “Art f*g.”

My two favorite musical acts at the time were Queen and Elton John. I got made fun of for liking “gay” artists.

I pined for girls, but in high school I was too shy to ask them out, so I didn’t really date anyone. Which led people—my classmates, my coworkers, even my parents—to wonder about my sexuality.

When I was a senior, Queen’s lead singer, Freddie Mercury, issued a press release that confirmed the long-speculated rumor that he had AIDS.

He died the next day.

It was 1991. There was an awful lot of “that’s what he gets for being a [slur]” about Mercury’s illness and death.

For our final project in a public speaking class, we were asked to deliver a speech that takes a stand.

I stood in front of a room full of the same kids who called me “art f#g,” the students who made fun of me for liking “gay music” (which I guess meant music made by someone who happens to be gay), the students who speculated about my own preferences.

I asked them, What was so important about that?

What did who someone slept with have to do with the brilliance of their music,
the integrity of their character,
the opportunity they might have to feel belonging,
or how worthy they were of being treated with fairness and respect?

34 years later, these questions still need to be asked.

And maybe, finally, answered.

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Blackberry Moon Writing

The essay above comes from a program I just finished through the Birren Center for Autobiographical Studies.

Over the last few months, I became a certified instructor in Guided Autobiography (GAB). Part of the certification process was to actually do the work from a GAB class, which is to say, read, watch, study and write. Write and write and write. I have eight new essays from it, including the two previous essays on Most Likely No Problem.

I became a certified GAB instructor as part of a new project that my partner Erica and I are up to: Blackberry Moon Writing. We’ll be offering writing workshops and classes for groups, as well as individual tutoring and instruction.

We recently launched our website.

Much more to come on all that.

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The “B” is for “Back.”

I’m dabbling with resurrecting “The B-Side at One Lucky Guitar”—not as a venue, but as a presenter of performances and events.

My pal Dan Swartz, proprietor of the gallery at Wunderkammer, is keen to host these events.

First up is Joe Pernice (Pernice Brothers, Scud Mountain Boys), whose music we have loved since the earliest days of One Lucky Guitar. We tried and tried to get Joe to Fort Wayne when The B-Side was open, and are thrilled to finally present him.

Thursday, May 15, 2025
Joe Pernice at Wunderkammer Company
3402 Fairfield Avenue, Fort Wayne, IN 46807
Tickets through the fine folks at Undertow.
Facebook event.

More to come on this show—including a Pernice-centric playlist—in the coming weeks.

For now, here’s Joe at a recent living room show in Dorchester, MA.

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WLNP April 2025 Playlist

Each month, I’m making a ~one-hour playlist that fulfills my dream of having a late-night “last-Sunday-of-the-month” show on the local left-of-the-dial radio station.

• “All the Tired Horses” – Tobacco City (Bob Dylan cover)

• “Why Try to Change Me Now” – Frank Sinatra

• “I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face (live)” – Wes Montgomery (‘My Fair Lady’ cover)

• “Deportees (Plane Wreck at Los Gatos”) – Barbara Dane (Woody Guthrie cover)

• “Understand Your Man” – Johnny Cash

• “Maggie’s Farm” – Solomon Burke (Bob Dylan cover)

• “If I Had a Hammer” – Trini Lopez (Pete Seeger cover)

• “Postcards from Paradise” – Flesh for Lulu

• “Another Girl, Another Planet” – The Only Ones

• “Colleen” – HORSEBATH

• “Down in the Flood (live)” – Bob Dylan and The Band

• “Here on My Own” – Swardy

• “Like Him” – Tyler, The Creator ft. Lola Young

• “Moon River” – Morrissey (Henry Mancini cover)

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