The car was still running and for some reason we didn’t get out of the car.  I was scared.  I felt something big and serious was about to happen. I remember my heart thumping through my chest the moment he asked me. I couldn’t breathe air into my lungs…yet my heart beat like an orchestra’s only drum.  It was a simple question he asked, but in a roundabout way: “Are you like Uncle Jimmy?”

I was Somethingteen years old and in the front seat of my fathers car, his voice a tad slurred in that Budweiser brogue that I remember.  After a frozen blur of a couple seconds,  a spontaneous jolt of panic delivered one single syllable from my lips:  “Nooooo.”  (and then “NO WAY,” I think I added….for emphasis!)

It was the first time in my life that I had heard the question.  Childhood bullies never quite asked the question. They simply TOLD ME that I was gay with their taunts of “gayboy”,   “queer”  and “faggot”.

After college several years later in London my friend Julian asked in a much more straightforward way, “Are you gay?”… after we had slept (and only slept) next to each other in his flat’s bed….something we had no problem doing.  I was scared that nocturnally I got frisky.  Of course my denial was crisp and immediate.  Denial doesn’t make the reality go away. It actually became quite painful, especially when I started meeting some of Julian’s gorgeous squash player friends…hangers on….et al. Living a lie was easy but being gay alone inside your head is not.

This closeted existence carried me deep into my twenties…and my career.  I was always amazed…and a bit terrified, by how my old friend  and CBS  Olympic Flame Diner Lunch Bunch buddy Andrew Cohen (who went on to Bravo ingenuity and great success as a young pop culture icon.) was so comfortably gay from the get go….even as an intern.   I’m convinced he was proud of being gay before the phrase “Gay Pride” was coined. I remember blushing when he’d note a hot young man walking by, in mixed company (with straight people present).  I couldn’t do that.  It was insane and there was a lot more than Catholic guilt going on.  In a weird way, he helped me learn to be comfortable about me, myself and I being “THAT way.”   Andrew planted the seed.  Took a long time, though.

Crazy as it sounds, the shame grew and grew and got worse.  In my early 40’s during its first Rennaissance period, at Good Morning America, I had to help cast a live speed dating contest segment (yes, you read that correctly)… with my colleague Jeff at the Drake Hotel in Chicago….selecting boys and girls. When we got back to NY to update our bosses, Jeff mentioned that I had picked the boys and “looooved them” or had a crush on them…or something to that “VERY DISGUSTINGLY GAY”…..effect. (…So my brain screamed)   I wanted to die. Jeff meant no harm and had no idea how my shame brain ingested things.

The shame was ridiculously exponential, cluttered but also fed by a busy life, jumping on airplanes, being a funny person, staying addicted to food…and my crazy busy job I so loved.

In my late 20’s I met a guy at a Hoboken party who asked me what I did for a living and  if I was “out at work”.  I said “Do I wear pink sunglasses and a Judy garland friend of Dorothy T shirt in the office?….”No”.   His face blanched and I soon found out why when I asked  him what HE did for a living.  TRUE STORY: “I’m President of National Coming Out at Work Day…” and he was.  You cannot make this stuff up!!

Calgon did not take me away.  My solution salves were shopping, (including useless stuff I never used),  air mile accrueing…(I flew 2 million miles before I was 35) ….and international travel that required a minimum three continent vacation every July…food and lots of it…. and a delicate slow twenty something year long dance with my buddy John.  Ok, his real name is Jack.  You may have heard of him.  He’s a bit harsh…and tough and a bit hard to swallow at first.  He’s from Kentucky. I am sure you know him: Jack Daniels.  (Thank you, Nora Ephron.)   He was my biggest, baddest and most effective …companion …and shame reducer.

And I never cheated on him. Jack and Coke is all I ever drank.   And the actual drinking never became a serious issue.  No lie: I only drank on average maybe twice a month.  No blackouts, no drinking all day.  Never had wine with meals.  Ok, now that I have rationalized, here come the lies:  I only saw double from drinking…maybe 2 times in my life….or well maybe 19 times.   And I never had more than 4 drinks in one evening…ok maybe 7.  Alright, it might be eleven, but who’s tallying.  (Thank you, Amy Schumer.)

The point is this:  staying busy, content with food intake (taking me to an all time high of at least 265 pounds in 2004.)…and twice monthly rendezvous with Jack kept me sated but little did I know what was brewing…and what nasty friends Jack would introduce me to years later. (More on that …another chapter…)

That heart stopping queasy butterfly-stirring inner-maelstrom case of tsurris that I felt in my childhood driveway in Floral Park roared furiously back in the dank gymnasium-smelling hallway at Seabrook House.  It was a different question, though. But it hit the same nerve.

It was Zach, one of the heroin kids, with a morning greeting like no other:  “What’s up, girrrl!!?”  I froze though kept walking.  I smiled …but was insta-crying inside.  Everything was slo motion. Then, at least I thought I heard cackling giggles from others….. I actually couldn’t hear anything but my own traumatized thoughts.  And in a millisecond I self-declared that he was making fun of me being gay and that I should be ashamed that I am also unworthy, de-esteemed, fat, ugly, weird and useless.  At least, my alcoholic brain told me so.  Rather quick and nasty that alcoholic brain is, huh?    If it were a gay friend who called me “Girrrl”  I might laugh (and its actually not lingo my gay male friends use…save one and he knows who he is.)

But this straight 22 year old South Jersey cute faced boy in his trademark gray hoodie …clinging to life without drugs in those early days of sobriety…threw me for a loop.  And I will love him forever for it.  You see…no one was laughing that he “called me a girl”.  I simply connected it to the nasty junior high school taunting non-glee club in my head.  Due to my Seabrook therapy dealing with a the nastiest shame reducing agent that blew up my life, I came to realize that “Whats Up Girrrl” was a long overdue wake up call…my own come to Jesus…if you will…about being homosexual. 

Eventually, I discovered Zach would occasionally say “What’s Up Girl?” to the others (for shock value)  and even would arrive to our all-boy morning meeting with “Ladies, ladies, ladies.”   He was a goof …a funny boy.   But he was also a human mile marker and an angel in my road to recovery.   Vanquishing the ridiculous gay shame led to my other shames to be dissolved…..a huge leap forward.   When he was leaving Seabrook I had to find him and say goodbye. With sniffles I thanked him for that gift and for being one of my heroes.   To this day he swears that he doesn’t understand how he helped me.  Maybe when he reads this, he will.  (P.S. Incidentally the very first book I read as a sober person was “VELVET RAGE”, an incredibly therapeutic book about….of all things: gay shame.  PPS: The gay shame stuff was just one major component of my story and my need for recovery)

Another CBS Lunch Bunch buddy Diane Ronneau (herself my superhero and an EIGHT YEAR Stage four Pancreatic Cancer SURVIVOR who still lunches with me EVERY month in Los Angeles)  …greeted me in tears after my residential treatment with words I will never forget: “There’s no shame in Recovery!”

My Uncle Jimmy was – and is — a terrific role model and literally a pioneer in being out and “whobody cares” about it all.   But it took years for a smiley-faced boy named Zach (and a few others) to greatly teach me to laugh about life…recovery…stupid shame…our crazy brains…but most importantly: myself.   Which brings me back to the last of my three  CBS lunch buddies and dear friend who planted the seed (and a woman who I might have tried to marry if I were not gay.)  ((How many times have I said that i am gay in this chapter?!!?)

I can’t remember what it was about…but it involved people we knew at work, I think.  And me being gay…(of course!)   I asked Mary Tyler Noonan in a panic: “Do they know I’m gay?!”    To an incredibly funny, sweet, empowering and unforgettable response.  I laugh out loud every time I recall her answer which made us howl the moment she said it:  “Yes, Brian.“   (In the loudest mock-conspiratorial yet comforting whisper )…. “EVERYBODY KNOWS….and its OK!!!”