Wyoming

I've been to Wyoming.

The guy who played Hans Solo, he lives in Wyoming.

I think his name is Harrison Ford.

I once hung out with a gay man actor who used to do movies with Harrison Ford.

This gay man actor rented a house up on a bluff in Pacific Palisades.

We met each other in New York when we were both living there in the 90's.

That gay man actor is dead now.

He could never let Harrison know that he was gay. He told me that Harrison was a phobe.

This does not mean that Harrison is a phobe, at all.

In fact, I believe the gay man actor was just, overall, very afraid to let anyone know he was gay. He often played tough guys on T.V.

But whenever I think of Wyoming, I think of Harrison Ford having my gay man actor friend over for dinner and how that friend felt obliged to remain entirely closeted.

I remember, in 1993, sitting on my gay man actor friend's couch, smoking pot, and singing along to all of Joni Mitchell's album, For the Roses. We almost had sex. But I would have been doing it more for the house than for the guy so I just didn't do it. Or more truthfully, I knew he'd want to keep doing that sort of thing and I couldn't imagine myself with the closeted mini movie star for the long haul. Plus, he chain smoked.

My gay man actor friend stopped hanging out with me when he said he could not spend time with me if we were not going to start dating. He had talked to his shrink about it and his shrink advised him to not spend time with men he wanted to date that did not want to date him.

I never saw him again after that phone call. When he died of a massive heart attack, I felt sort of cold.

I have felt cold about the death of a lot of gay men. It was the AIDS days and all I wanted was to survive. So I carried on. I am not proud of this. But perhaps the reason the gene of selfishness is so rampant on the planet is because it has saved the lives of quite a few people.

I imagine the career of my gay man actor friend was saved because he was afraid to come out to anyone.

I think of the poor Matthew Shepard, whom I just Googled, who I can't believe how sweet and cute he was. I am sure the guys who killed him were attracted to him. Simple enough. So they had to kill him. Big fucking square state. I did not feel too much for Matthew at the time. I was just freaked out that he did not learn, like I did as a teen, to keep your mouth shut, tell no one about who you really are, and to run away from strangers that had any inkling that you liked guy-on-guy sex.  Clearly, I was traumatized and terrified for the poor young man, left tied to a fence to die. I cannot believe how horrifying that night had to be for him. It is truly disgusting. My rage is so huge, I guess I'll just have to have another swig of my ginger tea and continue editing this blog entry.

Wyoming isn't the only place where gay people were once killed. It is happening everywhere on earth, still.

Welcome, Wyoming. You monstrous cowboy town of a place. Welcome to the modern era. We know you weren't all killers of gay people, of course. Of course. Of course. But there's that image...and people generalize. I'll let you off the hook.

I recently found someone online who used to endlessly torture me as a child in the suburbs of New York, so much so, that I hid inside my house for about three years. I asked him if he was who I thought he was. He did not respond to my request. Of course, it may not have been him.