When I discovered sports as a way to cope with my chaotic home life during high school in the mid-1970s, about half of my softball teammates were gay. The girls who turned out to be my two closest friends on the team, our catcher, and our centerfielder, were both gay. I had a huge crush on our coach, who we all called Monte, a shortened version of her last name. She was gay as well, and although none of us knew it for sure, our “unofficial” assistant coach was her partner.
I’d never questioned my sexuality before, but immersed in that culture, I began to wonder if I was gay as well. I felt comfortable hanging out with my two close teammates away from school. On the weekends, I’d go over to one's apartment, and we’d do bong hits in her bedroom and listen to Kansas records. I don’t remember whether her parents were home. If they were they never bothered us.
At home, I had no one to talk to about my confusion. My father was sober by then, but he’d retreated into the depression he’d been medicating with booze. When inebriated, he was verbally and emotionally abusive, with a cruel and sarcastic tongue. Sober, he was just mean. My mother was working to support our family; once my father lost his job, he never worked again.
In college, it was the same. And after college, I played in the New York Advertising Co-Ed Softball League and partied with the men and women from all the different ad agencies at a bar on Third Avenue. I never got........