90-Year-Old Gay Man Recalls Long Struggle With His Sexuality
http://www.npr.org/2015/12/23/460851160/90-year-old-gay-man-recalls-long-struggle-with-his-sexualityNinety-year-old Hector Black has been on Radiolab and StoryCorps, talking about how he forgave the man who murdered one of his daughters.
But he tells NPR's Ari Shapiro a different story — one he hasn't shared before. It's his life as a closeted gay man — a husband and a father — who didn't come out until he was 70 years old.
ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
If Hector Black had written an autobiography, we would interview him about it. But he hasn't written one yet, and he's 90 years old. So we decided to talk to him about his life anyway.
HECTOR BLACK: I felt like I was nobody in the whole dang world - was a weirdo like me.
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I was fortunate to grow up in a family where homosexuality was no big deal.
My grandma and her older sister were born in San Francisco (my great aunt was a toddler during the Great Earthquake and it's aftermath) and later moved to Hollywood. My great aunt was a Hollywood bad girl, she knew everything, had multiple husbands too. I imagine her attitudes were somewhat similar to Elizabeth Taylor, someone she'd made costumes for in the movie business.
Both my grandma and her sister had queer friends.
All my grandparents did.
My most conservative grandfather considered homosexuality some kind of "disorder," not anything serious at all, and he had no problem as an Army Air Force officer during World War II carrying the "get out of jail free card" for various brilliant misfits deemed essential to the war effort. (Sadly, many of these misfits were stuffed back into the closet in the 'fifties, and my grandfather was pushed out of military service when the Air Force was split from the Army. The Air Force still sucks. We're like Jesus, we have nukes, we hate commies and faggots and women! Nope, sorry little boys, not like Jesus at all, in fact the polar opposite.)
My parents are entirely LGBT accepting and celebrating, always have been, although they still have the "what happens among our family and friends stays among family and friends," which is how we were raised, in a time and place where being LGBT could be very dangerous. If we saw two men or two women snogging on the family sofa, it was nothing we spoke of to outsiders.
It can be a little awkward at times with my parents and their generation, my wife's parents too, in entirely safe situations with younger family and friends who live openly LGBT. Public Displays of Affection can still make them nervous.
Here's a photo of my great aunt's dashing older friend Ramon Novarro.
I think my great aunt took this photo when she was still a teen, or maybe one of her friends did, but I have it.
Ramon Novarro was gay. He was tortured and murdered in 1968, an exceedingly sad and sordid Hollywood story.
That's the way things were when I was growing up.
