I am persona non grata on the Dave Cullen BbM forum.
I am not yet bored with the discussion of Brokeback Mountain in any of its forms, Annie Proulx's Original Short Story (the book or magazine version); the Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana screenplay versions, or the Ang Lee Movie version.
This is the first story that I have read and the first movie that I have seen that reminds me of my own life, before and after the closet, the people in my life, my relatives, my friends, and the lives of gays and lesbians whom I have know in all of my adult life.
Although I am now 63, I have only been out of the closet a little over 22 years. But, I was not out of the closet as far as all of my family was concerned until November 1988.
But, in 1986, when I was in Tulsa with my own car, My parents and I went to see one of Dad's older sisters who lived East of Tulsa. I told Aunt Emma that I was living with a guy named Ed. Aunt Emma fixed us a snack to eat at her table and then she asked me a question which began with, "Joe, do you and your partner . . ?" Aunt Emma was also Pentecostal and had been the pianist at the Inola Assembly of God. I guess that since she had 10 children of her own and lots of grandchildren, many of whom were young adults, she knew more things than the folks did. In the early 1990s when I had moved back here, Mom told me after she had finished a phone call with Aunt Emma that Emma told her she had a lesbian grandaughter.
