The Day the Gay Athletes Invaded NYC

It was 1994. I was deeply homophobic, particularly towards myself. I was trying to go straight for Jesus and everyone else–not an easy thing in NYC even on a normal boring day. I lived in NYC with constant temptation to break my resolve to avoid anything gay. Then they descended for the Gay Games. Thousands of gay athletes in skimpy clothing.

Hearing Sarah Fishko speak about this moment in NY history during her recent broadcast on WNYC Radio, I was transported back to that weird time and space. For Fishko Files she did a short piece about the groundbreaking play, Angels in America. She recaptured that time period–the HIV/AIDS struggle 10 years on and the art that tried to make sense of it all.

Hearing that report got me remembering.

I remember how the city filled with gay men for the Gay Games. I trembled–not with excitement but with fear. I had been living in NYC for 10 years and the whole time I felt desperate about being gay and sought a “cure” through conversion therapy.

As the HIV/AIDS Crisis began and grew, there was an underground scene of gay men trying to go straight for Jesus. LIFE Ministries, an ex-gay, gay conversion therapy group a began in NYC in the early 1980s. It soon became part of a larger network of Exodus “ex-gay ministries.”I was 19 when I first attended in 1984, a Christian studying at nearby Nyack College. I plunged headlong into a world of support groups that tried to pray and counsel the gay away.

While gay men partied, organized, and suffered, another group of us hopped onto a Noah’s Ark of sorts. From prayer therapy to exorcisms, I was desperate for a way out of being gay. Why? My Christian faith played a role, as did the fear of AIDS. The rise of Conservatism and Ronald Reagan made me feel small as a queer working class Italian Roman Catholic in a very white Protestant butch heterosexual rich world.

Then the gay athletes came to town and I hopped off the subway at midtown to hang out at the hotel where many of them stayed around 34th street. I walked and gawked and longed for connection, community, anything, knowing that once I had it, I would slink back to church to repent of it.

That was a long time ago. Shortly afterwards I stood on the subway platform feeling hopeless and ready to give up. I went through even more intensive conversion therapy at a residential facility in Memphis. Then in 1999 I came to my senses and came out gay. Since then I have been using art and therapy and community to make sense of my experiences.

Those were desperate times. And the times we are in today feel similar in parts of the world. For some queer folks in the USA, it is dangerous. These are times when people may harm others and harm themselves in the midst of political madness. I have hope though this time that most gay (and bi, trans, lesbian, genderqueer) kids will not fall for the bait like I did, and instead stand up, act up, and live life fully.

Learning in the Backseat

Do you drive? If so, I imagine you remember your first driving lesson. Where I grew up in rural New York, one could get a driver’s permit at age 16. My birthday is dab smack in the middle of February, and I wasted no time getting behind the wheel. That first time though is memorable for lots of reasons. I write about that driving lesson and others in the current issue of The Porch magazine.

When I was 16 years old, two half-drunk men in a car more than twice my age taught me how to drive on a frozen lake. One of the men, my dad, Pete Toscano, had helped a widow in her distress by taking a 1950 Ford four-door sedan off her hands. Then he gave me this classic automobile as a birthday gift. The car looked like a small black and white tank and weighed about as much.

Extreme Conditions

One thing I learned on that frozen lake was how to drive in the most extreme weather conditions. Back in 2013 my man, Glen Retief, and I took a cross-continental road trip that included a harrowing ride over the Canadian Rockies in a snowstorm. My dad had passed away the year before, and I inherited his car. I imagined he would have been proud to see his son brave the storm without a hitch. Glen, who grew up in sunny South Africa, seemed genuinely terrified by the steep slippery road and in awe of my ability to stay on the road.

My dad, Pete Toscano, with a trunk load of bread

In addition to learning all weather driving techniques, my dad taught me many other lessons in the car, most of which had very little to do with driving.

That was the first and last driving lesson with my dad. The rest were outsourced to Coach Elko who taught drivers’ ed. I still learned things from observing my dad in the driver’s seat. For instance, whenever he drove at night on our country roads, he always used his high beams. When he saw the glow of headlights ahead, he diligently dimmed them down. But God help the drivers who failed to dim their lights! My dad blasted them with a string of expletives. Then he flashed his high beams one time as a warning shot across the hood. If the oncoming driver did not relent and brazenly kept the high beams on, my dad flipped his high beams back on—a nighttime, road rage, middle finger.

Learning Empathy

In writing the reflection of my first driving lessons and the other lessons learned, I realized how much my dad taught me about empathy. It is an important part of my performance art to step into other people’s shoes. Just like my performance has been influenced by my dad’s kooky humor, his ability to empathize with others is also present.

You can read all of my piece, Driving Lessons, for free over at The Porch. If you are looking for a magazine that provides thoughtful discussion about difficult and beautiful things, consider subscribing to The Porch. You may also want to submit some of your own writing.

Coming out an ex-gay survivor — Again?!?

Putting the past to bed

Back in 2008 I retired my play, Doin’ Time in the Homo No Mo Halfway House and handed off my responsibilities for Beyond Ex-Gay to other survivors like Dr. Jallen Rix, and Gail Dickert, who were telling their stories as witnesses. I moved onto LGBTQ Bible scholarship and most recently creative responses to climate change.

And now? We have a new president with vice president who promotes gay conversion therapy and a Republican party platform that endorsed it. So what is an ex-gay survivor to do?

Bearing Witness

Perhaps I anticipated this. Back in May when creating my newest show, Everything is Connected–An Evening of Stories, most weird, many true, I decided to have a section about the ex-gay movement. I wanted to look at the lure of white male power and privilege that fed into the desire to de-gay myself for Jesus. I wanted to highlight the sexism and anti-fem attitudes in the churches where I tried to fit in. There were lots of other factors, but this idea of being “normal” was potent at the time.

I wrote about it this week in the Huffington Post. I reflected on the early 80’s, a period in history that reminds me a lot of where we are at politically right now. There were strong forces pressuring me to conform and to resist anything that wasn’t masculine and straight.

Beyond the methods, what I find more curious though arethe motivations that held me to this futile and ultimately damaging ex-gay path.

Literally coming out of the closet in my new place on Watauga Street in Memphis, 1999

Fear had a lot to do with it. I felt so much fear about the consequences of coming out gay. I felt terrified I would lose things that were precious to me: my parents’ love and support, society’s approval, physical safety, job opportunities, the possibility of having children, respect, membership in the church I loved, the love of God, and eternal salvation. I also feared for my life. HIV/AIDS had a 100% fatality rate, and at first people were unsure how it was transmitted. I lived in terror that I would get AIDS, die a horrible death rejected by my family, then spend an eternity of punishment in hell. That was a lot for a teenager to bear. So I caved under the pressure of it all.

Along with all those fears was another. In a world where rich, white, Anglo-Saxon straight, heterosexual masculine Protestant males ran everything, I was a gay, Roman-Catholic, Italian-American sissy boy from a working class family. I felt the fear of being powerless in a world that was so unlike me. In reaction to these fears I attempted to assimilate. I became a born-again Christian, enrolled in a conservative Christian college, and determined to decimate my gayness. Having felt the cabin pressure of power and privilege drop, I scrambled to win back as much as I could.

You can read the whole piece for yourself: Daring to Dream in a Time of Donald Trump–An ex-gay survivor speaks out

The honor I feel in these awful times

My man, Glen Retief.

Are you Afraid?

I hear this a lot from friends and people I meet as I travel around.

You read a lot about climate change and the social justice threats on a rapidly warming planet. You read the science about what is going on–Does it frighten you? Are you afraid?

I can say I am concerned. So concerned that I took a year off to study climate science. These days I spend almost all of my time devising creative ways to get people see they have skin in the game. I work hard to convince them they have the power to make a difference.

Yes, I see risks ahead, more suffering in the world, climate instability. These are serious issues. But typically I do not feel gripped with fear. I am concerned but not frightened.

Open ceremonies of National Museum of African American History and Culture

What is the opposite of fear?

Instead I feel: What an honor to be one of the people on the planet today. What an honor to join in with fellow earthlings to pursue solutions, not simply to avoid a catastrophe, but to work together to make the world a more stable, just, and peaceful place. It is an awful honor in ways, but one all the same to be not only witnesses to these vast global changes, but to also be able to take part in looking after each other as we provoke our specie to be humane in a time of climate change.

And strange as it may seem, I feel hope and faith–particularly in humans. I know it is the default setting these days to expect the worse in everyone. We have carved out our lives into warring camps. It is easy to lose confidence in government (corrupt! rigged! dysfunctional!)

Looking ahead and behind

But in addition to looking ahead to what the future may hold for us, I also study history. I look at how our ancestors faced massive challenges. They never responded perfectly. They made mistakes. At times there were outright abuses by some. But so often they rose to the challenge. They acted in extraordinary ways. They committed extreme acts of humanity.

I do not feel fear. I feel hope. I feel determination. I feel honored to be on the planet today. And I feel confidence that you will be historically significant in these strange and uncertain days ahead.

A Ridiculously Serious Look at Cancer

Cancer Sucks!

It is a proven scientific fact that cancer sucks. 9 out of 10 cancer patients surveyed will tell you that cancer sucks. It would have been 10 out of 10 but that last guy got too sick to respond to our survey. And while I have never had any form of cancer myself, I too can attest to the fact that cancer sucks. Both of my parents–Pete & Anita Toscano–had cancer before they died.

My Mom, Anita Toscano

No doubt it was a crappy, painful, scary time all around. Yet in the midst of the most difficult moments, there were bits of humor to get us through. I come from a funny family. Even my mom’s announcement about her last wishes she delivered with her signature dry humor.

Don’t Triffle with Mom!

At that time we already knew she had lung cancer. We heard the doctor’s report, and knew it was bad. Still we did not fully grasp the finality of the diagnosis. This was terminal. Some of us still held out hope that chemo and kale juice and a prayer to any number of saints would provide the miraculous intervention needed to stave off the worst possible outcome–losing mom.

She sat us down around the kitchen table for a serious conversation. She announced, “I already spoke with Patrick.” Patrick was the funeral director. It was a small town so everyone knew everyone. “I already spoke to Patrick, and I told him about my plans.” We protested. “No mom.” “It’s too soon.” She gave us that look, that–don’t-triffle-with-me-look that always silenced us.

She continued, “I told Patrick what I want. When it’s my time, I don’t want a funeral. I don’t want a wake. Don’t lay out my body or have a mass. Just cremate me.” She paused, then took a drag on her cigarette. She used to only ever smoke Lucky Strike cigarettes and other name brands, but since the state of NY put so many taxes on cigarettes, she opted for cheaper generic brands. She continued, “Now if you want to have a memorial because you need that sort of thing, that’s fine–just leave me out of it!”

The Cocktail Party Memorial

We did have a memorial because we very much needed that sort of thing. It was a cocktail party with some of my mom’s signature dishes she served at Pete’s Pub, the bar and restaurant they owned for over 30 years. My sisters lovingly recreated the dishes. It was my mom’s last big party for family and friends.

Now almost 10 years later, cancer still sucks. A good friend of my husband, a women he knew from South Africa and who has become dear to me, is going through a shitty, sucky cancer hell right now. She reminds me a lot of my mom. No nonsense. Don’t give me the wacky cures. Leave God out of this. Don’t sugarcoat this mess.

She inspired me to share some cancer comedy from when my parents were sick. Comedy happens in many ways. One is when we can predict how people react because it happens so often and in the same predictable ways. Did you ever notice…

It was through answering people’s questions about my mom and then my dad that I first experienced what I call, Cancer Face and Cancer Talk and all those consistently obnoxious nervous questions that got repeated over and over. People mean well, no doubt, but still they can ask some of the most ridiculous things. So for my weekly YouTube video I present to you:

There is Something Funny About Cancer

No Homo?!? A video response

The No Homo phrase has been around for a long time. It’s even in Wikipedia.

Two guys, usually adolescents, but not always, sitting close to each other, feel they need to clear up any confusion about their sexuality and the nature of their relationship. One will say to the other, No Homo. Often their seat mate replies, “No Homo.” Then they settle into some male bonding without the risk being called out as gay lovers.

I love comedy, and I admit sometimes the circumstances that young men employ the No Homo phrase can be hilarious. Still I think that with the atmosphere that exists in the world–that many people still think, say, and legislate that it is wrong to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer, and believe it is far superior to be gender normative and heterosexual, there are queer people who are affected deeper than we realize by these little jokes.

No one wants friends, family, and random gay dudes with fetching hats to suffer any more than they already are in a world that can be intentionally ugly.

My good friend, Shirley McMillan, who is an amazing young adult fiction author from Northern Ireland, and who started the nation’s first Gender and Sexuality Alliance in any high school in the country, tells me that this term is making the rounds in her village school. She asked if I would create a YouTube video with some reflections on this phrase.

So here is my weekly YouTube video!
No Homo?!?

You can check out all of my YouTube videos at my p2son channel. Let me know if you have any requests, questions, or challenges.

The Secret Lives of Quakers Revealed

As a Quaker, I intentionally spend a lot of time in silence both on my own and in groups during Quaker meeting for worship. I can be sitting and quiet for a full hour, which might be a little too much for some people, but after years of being pummeled by words in church, I appreciate a little peace and quiet.

While it may look like I am just sitting there doing nothing, often a whole world opens up inside my head. At times I create whole monologues, solve complex problems, and work through a troubling emotional conundrum.

No doubt some of the times I am bored out of my mind and every minute drags on, but typically it is a positive experience. I decided to create a short video explaining what happens for me in Quaker worship. It is actually very much like running a utility on my computer. Yes, a defrag from my soul!

Revealed! What Really Happens in Quaker Meeting for Worship

Memory, Fantasies, and Guns

A video a week

These days I have been doing a video a week for my YouTube Channel, and I am taking requests! My good friend and colleague Noach Dzmura, requested,

I would like to see you take on the issue of gun violence. Specifically, how do we change our nation into one that makes no war upon itself?

I confess I did not know where to even begin. Gun violence is not something I speak about much, although like most people in the USA, it is often in my face. I let the request sit inside for a bit and began to think about guns and my own personal history with them.

A funny and disturbing memory unearthed

The first thing that came to mind was a funny and disturbing memory from my childhood home. The event actually took place after I had grown up and was home visiting. My dad surprised me with some real live gun action IN THE HOUSE. I had forgotten I lived with a trained killer. Here is my video: It Happened in the Kitchen. The day Dad freaked me out.

I spent more time thinking about gun violence in the USA. I realize we are not the only country to experience violence. My friend Shirley McMillan, a young adult fiction writer in North Ireland, grew up with violence that was all too common. While much of the conflict has subsided (but still simmers) the memories remain and I see it seep into conversations often when I visit.

My imagination has been hacked!

This got me thinking to how our imaginations get hacked by violence. This is the case for me, someone who has enjoyed years of “hero fantasies.” Suddenly these fantasies have changed and have grown troubling.

Here is this week’s video: Revealed! My secret fantasy

What about you?

I want to hear your thoughts and comments. Also, let me know of any requests or questions you want me to consider for future videos. And I would LOVE it if you shared any of my videos with your friends on Facebook and Twitter.

Spring Tour Begins! Hello New England

Ah, the Coast of Maine

My spring performance tour begins today! I woke up in New Hartford, CT at the home of my friends Fran and Mark. I feel like an happy daffodil ready to greet the world in hopes that there is no more snow and frost. Ok, that sounds corny, but really I’m excited.

Over the next month I will present at universities, high schools, middle schools, elementary schools, Quaker meeting houses, and churches throughout New England.

Where will I be in New England?

MAINE: Lewiston and Portland
New Hampshire: Dover, Portsmouth, Concord, Hanover, and Rochester.
MASS: Cambridge and North Andover.
Rhode Island: Providence.
Connecticut: Hartford, West Hartford and Middletown, CT.
VERMONT: Burlington.
(oh and there is a weird and wonderful diversion to New Jersey in there)

Check out the entire schedule, and if you are in the area, say hi!

Today I travel to Lewiston, Maine to begin with a short residency at Bates College tomorrow March 28. It will be a full day with multiple presentations.

Climate Justice Discussion

I will begin with a discussion: Race, Justice, and Climate Change. We will explore environmental racism and justice as witnessed in New Orleans in 2005 during Hurricane Katrina and today in Flint, MI. I will also bring my character, Marvin Bloom out to make the connections between asthma and race in NYC.

Homo No Mo

This play is retired, but seems there is still material to cull from it. Suffering anyone?

In the afternoon I will share about my sordid past pursuing gay conversion therapy and connect my experiences in churches with a class on Human Suffering. The class is actually looking at the Book of Revelation. After reading the following about my own apocalypse about my sexuality in a church that wanted to desperately fix me or else, she suggested we go with my personal narrative as a jumping off point.

“I was asked by a BBC reporter the odd question, ‘What if you are wrong and you approach the pearly gates only to discover that God condemns homosexuals to an eternity of suffering?’ I replied, Then that God is the worst tyrant that ever existed and does not deserve my worship or submission.

Perhaps not the most original answer, but lightyears from when I sat cowering in the seats at Time Square Church and Holy Furnace of Righteous Rage.”

As a class she wants us to then consider the following questions:

Do humans create images of/ideas about God in response to suffering? Do images and claims about God contribute to more suffering than they console? Console more than they cause? How so? What kinds of things can tip the balance of this equation one way or the other?

How can/do our attitudes and beliefs about suffering affect our willingness to inflict suffering on others? To tolerate or become complicit in the infliction of suffering on others? To resist or refuse the infliction of suffering on others?

New Show!

In the evening I premiere my newest performance piece: Everything is Connected–An Evening of Stories, most weird, many true.

Here is a description

Experience the artful, playful, outrageously funny, and deeply moving storytelling craft of Peterson Toscano. Connecting issues and ideas to bizarre personal experiences, literature, science, and even the odd Bible story, Peterson takes his audience on an off-beat mental mind trip. A shapeshifter, he transforms right before your eyes into a whole cast of comic characters who explore the serious worlds of gender, sexuality, privilege, religion, and environmental justice. His unique personal journey led him into performance art.

Peterson’s bag of tricks

I will do this show a number of times throughout the tour (and no doubt it will grow and change as I go along.) Another presentation that I will do a lot on this trip is A Quirky Queer Quaker Response to Climate Change. Also on this tour I will give two rare performances of Transfigurations. This show is being retired. I still need to figure out where to have the final performance before the DVD comes out. But you can still see it live in Providence, RI April 13 and West Hartford April 17 (where I will also do something even rarer–preach the Sunday service earlier that same day!)

Oh, and I just learned where I will be for next year’s spring tour: FLORIDA and the Southeast. I have been invited to be the 54th Annual J. Barnard Walton Lecturer for 2017 at Southeastern Yearly Meeting gathering next Easter. My theme: Discerning our collective calling: love, hope, and climate justice.

So if you are in Florida, Georgia, North or South Carolina, and want to host me with one of my presentations, let me know.

How Lucinda Williams Helped Save my Soul

Literally coming out of the closet in my new place on Watauga Street in Memphis, 1999

Back in 1998 Lucinda Williams released Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, an album so rich and raw and real it jarred me, in a very good way. At the time I lived in Memphis, TN, not far from many of the places where Lucinda sets her songs. Her country-fried, bluesy, rock with heavy guitar licks and her tender growl came to me at the perfect time.

I was beginning life all over again. I spent 17 years foolishly trying to de-gay myself through ex-gay ministries, and I had just completed two years in the notorious Love in Action program, a Christian residential rehab designed to make gay men straight for Jesus and the homophobic church. In December 1998 I finally came to my senses and begin to tentatively come out of the closet.

A Born-Again Bubble

In addition to needing a new wardrobe and new friends (all the church ones dumped me and the ex-gay ones were forbidden to associate with a “practicing homosexual,”) I DESPERATELY needed new music. From about 1984 I stopped listening to any music that did not glorify God, even if most of the Contemporary Christian Music I consumed was so lousy music it most certainly God repent of creating music in the first place. I lived in a born-again Christian cultural bubble and had not seriously listen to secular music since Billy Joel’s 1983 Innocent Man album (which was far from his best.)

In my new life everything felt unformed, which both was scary and exhilarating. I had a whole city to explore–Memphis–which I had already lived in for two years but was forbidden to go to most parts because it was too gay. I traded in my old car for a brand new 1998 VW Beetle with a sunroof and began to live a new life.

New Music for a New Life

There was lots of press around Lucinda William’s new album. I read about it in Oxford American Magazine, and how Lucinda wrote like a poet, influenced by her poet father, and knew how to write and sing about loss and pain and everyday life. That same day I ran out to the big music store on Poplar and Highland (in what had been known as “The Forbidden Zone”) and bought Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

Then for the next six months I played it on a constant loop in my car as I began a new life. The words of the songs are amazing because they sound so simple, something one person says to another. They sound authentic that way. They sound both familiar and nostalgic.

After nearly two decades of living in the a dark, cramped, dusty closet allowing myself to be micromanaged by church leaders, the title song became my theme song as I sped around Memphis.

Can’t find a damn thing in this place
Nothing’s where i left it before
Set of keys and a dusty suitcase
Car wheels on a gravel road
There goes the screen door slamming shut
You better do what you’re told
When i get back this room better be picked-up

Car wheels on a gravel road

Lucinda Williams

Yeah, I’m outta here! And after living for two years at the end of a dirt track in a house stuffed with oppressed homosexuals repressing everything in our lives, I imagined I was tearing out of that awful time in my life to a new place of sanity and freedom.

But it was the music–the power of it and the meat of it that I needed back then. Even now I hear one of the tracks–Metal Firecracker, I Lost it, or Concrete and Barbed Wire, and I am immediately back in that VW Beetle in the Memphis heat with the AC on high heading to meet new friends at In the Grove or Integrity, still just coming out of the shadows of fear and doubt and shame.

Yesterday I received in the mail the LP (yes, the vinyl LP) of Lucinda William’s latest album, The Ghosts of Highway 20. I have loved all of Lucinda’s albums, some more than others of course, but this new one feels like the first one, but richer–so lush and so tender and so fierce. It tells the story of a strong women who bears scars from the past, still feels the pain, but is still moving forward. Immediately as the first song played I was back in the VW Beetle, but older and wiser and more sure of myself.

In an age of Spotify and digital songs stuck in my head as I make dinner or walk to the store, I am happy to have my hands on this album so I can sit and play it in my room, listen attentively to it, and praise the Lord and Lucinda and the many friends that have helped me embrace a new life.

I went thru hell when i was younger
Deep in the well you’ll see the hunger
To find the strength i got within me
To wrestle with the ghosts of highway 20

Thank you Lucinda!

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Tag: Personal