Pretending not to be gay in old-time Phoenix

Time-travel with me back to 1989, when I had just moved back to Phoenix from Los Angeles, and I had to adjust to a bit of culture shock, which included getting used to people having to pretend not to be gay. And if you're wondering, just because I'm talking about the subject, no, I'm not gay, I'm "grim", which is a term I learned in a humorous article I read when I lived California. I guess "grim" never really caught on, and I've never heard it since, but it definitely shows a different point of view.

Yes, it's true there are a lot of homosexual people in California, and they're not just in San Francisco. LA had a lot, and I'd imagine still do, and when I lived there, in the 1980s, there was no need for a guessing game. Although the word "diversity" wasn't in common use, it was just part of the complex tapestry of life in Los Angeles. There were lots of different people, lots of different languages, lots of different cultures, and I'm glad that I got to be among those people in my impressionable years of my twenties. If you've lived there, you know.

And I knew that Phoenix was going to be different. I had lived there from age 19 to 25, and I knew that the word "diversity" didn't exactly spring to mind when describing the area. I really only heard two languages usually - English and Spanish, and if there were gay bars they were hidden away, or whispered about. I lived not far from Gay Denny's when I was 19, and I never even realized it until I moved back to Phoenix when I was 31.

If you're a typical "grim" who has never been around gays, there are a lot of cliches surrounding them - like "gay-dar" (like radar that tells a gay person who is, or isn't gay - no such thing), or that all gay people are flamboyant (go watch one of Rock Hudson's movies if you want to see what a masculine-looking gay man looks like) - I never met Rock, but I knew several people like him). And since most of the people that I interacted with in Phoenix knew nothing first hand about gay people, it turned into a guessing game for them. I myself, like Jerry Seinfeld, was often asked if I was gay in the '90s based on my appearance, and it took me a while to realize that in Phoenix it was part of the guessing game, and that I wasn't being hit on. I would still thank them politely and reply "No thank you, I'm not gay", because that's what I learned to say in LA.

Because of my background, and especially since I worked in the creative field, I really had no difficulty accepting gay people. Of course in Phoenix I learned to play the pretend game, and never say anything that might "out" them - I even played along with a co-worker who lived with his "butler". By the way, he often found it hilarious when I said, "No thank you, I'm not gay" to people who asked me, because although it was the polite thing to do, it implied that they were interested in me "that way", which of course they weren't, they were just playing the guessing game.

I like to tell people that I grew up in Minneapolis, but I came of age in California. I'm glad that I learned the things I did, and I try to be sympathetic to people who didn't. I'm proud of who I am, my ancestry, my gender, everything, and I'm glad that I never had to pretend to be something I'm not for fear of reprisals, or even worse. That being said, I don't walk around shouting, "If it's not Scottish, it's CRAP!", and I appreciate a bit of decorum.

Hopefully someday all of this will just be ancient history.

Thank you for the encouragement! If you want to see daily pics of my adventures on my recumbent trike in suburban Phoenix (just for fun, of course!) you can follow me on buymeacoffee.com/bradhall, and you can buy me a coffee if you'd like to!