I Am Not Here

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I was born in a small town on the Tennessee/Kentucky border, just a few miles from the Mississippi, and spent my youth fighting to get out. I wanted education and experience I couldn't find in a very rural town of 13,000, 2 hours from the nearest real city. And I had a budding sense that I wasn't like other people, at least not like most in small towns.

The sense of "otherness" followed me to a larger town where I went to a private, religiously affiliated university. And on to an even larger place in Texas, to a larger private, religiously affiliated graduate school. Although I received a good education, each place stifled me. My storehouse of knowledge grew, but my soul languished.

Then I discovered Austin, quite by accident. My last girlfriend drove me there to catch a plane home for a short holiday. We stayed overnight with her other best friend, who took us to a gay bar. It was the first time I had ever seen "normal" gay people, ones who weren't the stereotypes I had never wanted to be. And even at the height of the AIDS hysteria, no one was being harassed. They were standing outside a nightclub waiting to get inside, talking about bike racing and their latest 10 mile ride.

It was a revelation to me. I could be who I was, as I was, around people who didn't really care one way or another. I had never experienced that before.

I came screaming out of the closet shortly there-after, found my first boyfriend, broke up with him in Portugal, and met my first husband not long after. We couldn't live openly in Waco, TX, and Austin had been in my sight for a while.

It's the only truly civilized city in Texas. We moved here after a few weekend trips that seduced him, too. He wanted to move to Dallas, but I knew that when he saw Austin, he wouldn't want to live anywhere else.

When he died 4 years later, I was afforded all the rights and respect of a spouse, even though we had no formal relationship or paperwork. I told them who I was and what our relationship was at the emergency room, and they sent me to a private waiting room and then sent a counselor to help me. The situation was that bad.

In Austin, at that time, they listened to me when I told them to cut off life support the next day. His father and older sister were there, but couldn't or didn't say a word. I held his hand while he died and said "Good night, sweet Prince. And bands of angels sing you to your rest." The nurses started crying, too. Then they shuffled me out so they could take care of their business. "We need to finish taking care of him now," they said. "And we're so sorry for your loss."

I guess nurses in the CCU get used to that over time, but they didn't treat me any differently than I expect they would treat anyone else.

My boss was the first to show up at my house with food. I told her I was taking two weeks off, and she said to take what I needed. Since he worked at home, Rich had struck up a friendship with the lady that owned the house next door. She came by with food. I ended up with so much food, I had to give it away.

Now I'm an old married man again. We've been together since 2000, living in sin some would say, but not many around here. We live openly without being obnoxious about it. In fact, we have the boring life I dreamed of as a boy in Tennessee.

We have a nice apartment in a nice neighborhood. I have a long-standing and fairly-secure job where I have never talked specifically about my sexual orientation to many people, but one where it is taken with a grain of salt. It's the least important thing about me, and they seem to recognize that.

Austin doesn't have a gay ghetto. When I was doing the real estate thing, clients from other parts of the state or country told me that they wanted to live in the "gay neighborhood". I just told them that Austin didn't have one. We're everywhere. Just pick where you want to live and settle in.

Our neighborhood is a mixture of retired rich people and younger ones buying their houses as they die or get packed off to nursing homes. We have a natural foods grocery across the street, full of good produce and meat, and old people with oxygen tanks who don't like the mega-stores any more than I do. We have more in common than we have different.

I've finally found my home. I found it when I moved to Austin many years ago. Room to breathe. Room to be free. Room to just be me.

Free at last. Free at last. Thank God I'm free, at last.