Whenever my family pretends they were surprised to discover I was gay, I like to remind them of my obsession with Donny and Marie. This ABC show from the mid-1970s was a televised wonder with its sparkling sets, ice dancers, and musical medleys. Marie was a glamorous fifteen-year-old who seemed impossibly adult with her hair blown out like Farrah Fawcett and her body draped in Bob Mackie gowns. The real kicker, though, was her charming, sexy brother. Sitting inches from the TV, watching Donny in those oh-so-tight polyester pants, sporting that shiny-perfect hair, and blasting America with his nuclear smile, I was a nine-year-old in love.
Anita Bryant was wrong about the gays recruiting children. The real culprit corrupting America’s youth was Donny Osmond.
Fortunately, there was another person in my neighborhood who shared my obsession with all things Osmond. Sarah Forman and I had been friends since her family moved to Rockland Hills, a suburb of Washington, D.C., when we were toddlers. On weekends, we’d stage our own elaborate version of Donny and Marie on the Formans’ slate terrace, pretending it was an ice stage. We would decorate our set with streamers, Christmas lights, and potted plants, moving the patio furniture out of the way so there was more room for fake skating.
Once the stage was ready, Sarah would play Marie and I would play Donny. Sarah had a certain star quality, reminding me of Jodie Foster circa the Disney years, with her freckled face, tousled dirty-blonde hair, and tomboyish energy. I was an equally freckled kid and a perfect match for her Marie. We even had a supporting cast of some of the younger neighborhood kids as chorus girls and comic foils for our improvised skits. We’d go “on the air” with a studio audience of three: Mrs. Forman, smoking her Salems in a deck chair, and Coco and Kimball, her Dalmatian and hyperactive poodle.
Sarah was the first person who shared my delusions of fabulosity. She understood that, unlike most boys, I preferred putting on shows rather than racing around in circles after a ball. She got how I was different, enjoyed it thoroughly and took it at face value, unlike my own family. When I got home, I would relate stories of our broadcasts, but these fey-boy fantasies never went over well and the topic would be quickly changed to the Redskins game that week. Given my interest in the Osmonds and a propensity for baking, the joke among my brothers was that I was the sister they never had.
Actually I was the one with a sister. I had Sarah.
In marked contrast to my home life, there was a sort of benign anarchy that reigned at the Formans’. At my house, with four boys and two strict Catholic parents, we had countless rules and regulations about what could and could not be watched on television, the volume of music on the stereo, and the proper way to be seated at the dinner table (that is, actually to be seated). Sarah had no siblings and two younger, hipper parents, so things were more relaxed in the Forman home. You could watch television while eating dinner (on TV trays even!), something my parents considered worse than missing church on Sunday.
I remember noting with awe that the Formans subscribed to both The Washington Post and Playboy, reflecting a much looser set of social mores. The living room’s bookcases were filled with lots of seventies self-help books (I’m OK–You’re OK) and racy novels (Jacqueline Susann was well represented), as well as a fairly extensive LP collection, heavy on rock and pop. In contrast, my parents had an encyclopedia set and a bunch of 8-tracks by Henry Mancini. Sarah’s mom used to play “Mrs. Robinson,” that catchy tune about adultery that never quite cracked the top ten on my parents’ wood console stereo. Sarah and I loved that song, so Mrs. Forman would blast it endlessly as we danced around the living room. Back at my house, my parents were utterly horrified when I started singing the praises of Mrs. Robinson.
If Sarah had been a boy, this incident alone would surely have been enough to ban me from the Forman household for a few weeks, if not longer. But Sarah was a girl, and I’m guessing my folks thought they’d better cultivate this relationship, as it might be the only way I might not turn out gay. My parents have since confessed to having conversations with Sarah’s parents in which they actually discussed the inevitability of our future wedding. Yes, around the tender age of eight, it was clear to everyone that Sarah and I were meant for marriage. Of course, this was not to be.
At the beginning of my junior year, I had a falling out with my best male friend for what, in retrospect, was the gayest reason ever: He had a new friend of whom I was terribly jealous. Charlie, who was a man of all sports, had met this other superjock during football camp and they’d become “tight,” as he liked to put it. So for the first time since the start of high school, I was on my own to secure a date for my school’s equivalent of the traditional homecoming dance, known as the Regimental Ball. For the first time, I couldn’t just take some random girl that Charlie had set up for me. Liberated from that pool of second-hand dates, the field was wide open. In my case, that also meant the field was absolutely empty. I didn’t know any girls other than my best friend’s girlfriends. I only knew guys.
Except, that is, for Sarah.
By high school, we were no longer the inseparable best friends of the Donny and Marie years. We’d see each other around the neighborhood and at the occasional holiday event, but never as often as we had during childhood. Part of this was due to Sarah’s switch to public school and our increased academic workloads. But a larger reason, I think, was my increasing discomfort with myself and my budding sexuality. Other boys didn’t seem to notice this, whereas girls, generally equipped with a keener emotional radar, tended to pick up on this sort of thing. I was not as eager to hang out with Sarah and be subject to a much higher level of scrutiny than I would at, say, a postfootball kegger with the boys.
A couple of weeks before the dance, I was sitting at the breakfast table when my mom asked me for the one hundredth time who I was taking to “the Reg.” For the one hundredth time I mumbled, “I dunno.” She suggested that I take Sarah. I looked up from my bowl of cereal and gave her my trademark that-is-the-worst-idea-I’ve-ever-heard look. She said that I knew Sarah well and that we would probably have “a very nice time.” The way she phrased it actually made the idea sound appealing. I had never had “a very nice time” at any high school dance, ever.
Maybe, I thought, my mother actually had a point.
So I dialed Sarah’s oh-so-familiar number and popped the question: “Do you wanna go to the Reg?” She had no idea what “the Reg” was until I explained that it was like homecoming but a little fancier. Once it hit her that I was asking her on a date to a formal dance, she was thrilled.
I, however, was scared stiff.
After years of family and neighborly gossip about Sarah and me as childhood sweethearts, the day of reckoning had arrived. Though I’d been to countless dances, balls, and cotillions before this one, I had never experienced such anxiety. Those other dance dates were with relatively average girls, most of them now a dim memory. This was Sarah, the once and future love of my life, at least according to Rockland Hills lore. There was a lot of anticipation in our tight-knit neighborhood over the whole affair. We were like a localized version of Charles and Diana, the storybook romance of the era; suddenly the kingdom was filled with excitement over the Big Event.
As the buzz over our imminent romantic coronation grew, I tried to keep the volume at school on low. Unfortunately there was a meeting of moms, mine and Charlie’s, at the local Safeway, where the news of the impending royal date was spilled. After that, the word spread quickly around school. I knew that taking someone to the Reg who didn’t go to one of the five all-girl private schools in the area would be noticed. But my classmates were abuzz in a way I’d neglected to calculate. Sarah, being a public school girl, was a mystery to them.
I was in the cafeteria when Charlie stopped by our table to drop a gossip bomb: He’d heard from a guy on the public school’s football team that Sarah was “a serious nymphomaniac.” I found this news particularly shocking, mainly because I didn’t even know what that word nymphomaniac meant. I was taking biology class at the time and knew that nympho had something to do with the neck. Was Sarah into severe necking?
When I got back to my locker to look up nymphomaniac in my Webster’s, I thought I might faint: “a woman with a compulsive desire to have sex with many different men (often considered offensive).” My neighborhood sweetheart and future bride-to-be was an offensively insatiable slut? This didn’t sound exactly like the Marie that I knew. But then again, what did I know about Sarah’s sexuality? It’s not like we had talked about either of our sexual or even romantic adolescent adventures—or, on my end, the lack thereof. Suddenly, with this brazen rumor, things were getting complicated: Not only did I have to take her to the dance but apparently I had to perform as well! This was going to be a problem because, at that point in my sexual career, I was only a solo artist. Suddenly I was being called on to duet with the alleged Madonna of the high school set.
I didn’t even have to check my Magic 8-Ball to know the forecast for this evening: “Outcome does not look good.”
The Reg was always held on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving and that year the weather was particularly wintry. This cold snap, though, didn’t chill the excitement around my house that had been building up about the big date. My brothers were all joking and jibing me about the whole affair, while my parents were genuinely sweet in their anticipation, wrapped up in the fairy tale aspects of this potentially major night.
Once I was dressed and ready to go, I got collared by one of my older brothers for some predate coaching. Kevin had always been the most concerned member of the family about my nascent masculinity. He’d provided endless lessons in baseball, careful instruction on the art of weightlifting, and explicit advice on the best pickup lines to use on girls. His helpful hint for the Reg? I needed to get Sarah liquored up. He’d even taken the liberty of procuring a couple bottles of André (the three-dollar champagne that says class) just for this purpose. As much as I appreciated the effort he’d put into buying alcohol for minors, the evening already had enough potential for disaster without adding booze to the mix. Kevin, however, was undeterred when I tried to decline the offer. Completing this illicit exchange, he grabbed my hand for a firm, masculine handshake filled with meaning.
“Good luck, bro,” he said.
I just smiled and thought to myself, Good luck, indeed.
I arrived at Sarah’s exactly on time, seven P.M. Her mom answered the door with a smile that was wide and welcoming. It was the first time I’d been in the Forman house in quite a while and everything looked basically the same, just smaller. The bookshelves seemed shorter now, with fewer records and books in them than I remembered. The staircase that led up to Sarah’s room seemed tiny, too, like I might hit my head on the ceiling if I tried to go up. Of course, the house had not shrunk at all; I had just grown a bit. But the feeling of not fitting in the house anymore was disconcerting.
Sarah entered the living room wearing a floor-length, sky blue prairie-style dress with long, lacey sleeves. The outfit was tasteful, yet slightly groovy, too, a far cry from the plastic poofy quality of most formal wear circa 1982. It’s what Stevie Nicks would have worn if she’d been invited to the Reg, which I thought was cool. Not sexy, mind you. Just cool. I mean, who wouldn’t have wanted to take Stevie Nicks to homecoming?
As we all chatted, there was none of the usual stiffness that I experienced at other dates’ houses. I kept thinking I would’ve loved to stay there in the Forman living room and ditch the dance entirely. I would have much preferred sitting on the floor and singing along to “Mrs. Robinson” than going to a high school formal.
Given the chance, I guess anyone would return to their childhood rather than face the uncertainty of adolescence. It’s just not often that the opportunity to do so seems tangible and yet impossible at the same time.
As she snapped photos, Mrs. Forman said we both looked adorable. We did on the surface: two goofy and gangly sixteen-year-olds in formal wear, smiling with a sweet awkwardness for her Kodak Instamatic camera. I’d like to imagine that Mrs. Forman was a little wiser about my impending sexual proclivities. Whether she did or did not intuit that there was a future homosexual taking her daughter to the Reg, there was a real, genuine happiness radiating from her. In retrospect, I believe her joy was likely the effect of seeing Sarah and me together again in her living room after a few years’ absence.
We got in my midnight blue Chevette and headed down the hill to my folks’ house for more photos. The scene there was slightly less casual. My mom had dressed up for our arrival, as if she might be hosting the Reg in our living room. There was a Henry Mancini 8-track playing on the stereo as we stood in front of the fireplace for an extended photo op. Unlike at the Formans’, the photos this time were not just of me and Sarah. There were multiple combinations of Sarah with my parents, and then with my younger brother, and then with all three of my brothers. It felt like a wedding with my parents recording all the permutations of family for the blessed event. In all these photos, I look uniformly terrified, as if I’d been married off at age sixteen and was on my way to a premature honeymoon.
On our arrival at the Woodley Park Sheraton, we made a ridiculously grand entrance. Each couple arriving at the Reg was announced at the top of a grand curving staircase before gracefully descending to the floor of the main ballroom, step by agonizing step. In a weird way, the whole scene was like a real version of our backyard Donny and Marie productions, except that now we had on actual costumes, there was a truly classy set, and a huge audience, too. But when they called our names and the spotlight hit us, there was none of our usual jokey banter or the campy musical numbers that lit up the Forman backyard. I just smiled blankly in the glare of the white light as we gingerly made our way down the stairs to scattered applause, quickly walking Sarah to our table.
The rest of the night was filled with endless awkward silences and stares. I didn’t know what to do, how to act and, worst of all, what to say. As kids, Sarah and I used to be able to talk a purple streak about anything and everything under the sun. But stuck in formal wear and placed in the uncomfortable context of a date, I froze up, which was not too surprising given the fact that we hadn’t really had a serious conversation in a couple years. It’s so puzzling to me now, because I could have easily filled hours’ worth of conversation with a lively dissection of our productions of Donny and Marie. But those seemed like childish things to talk about. The Reg was a big, supposedly adult evening. And I felt like a kid who didn’t belong there.
Fortunately silence in a massive ballroom with two hundred other couples was easy to manage. There was a lot of distraction, noise, and general hubbub to provide the illusion that we were having a decent time. There were friends who stopped by to say hi, though most of those greetings were fraught with a wink-wink, nudge-nudge goofiness regarding the nympho rumors. When Charlie stopped by our table, he was a little toasted and proceeded to say, loud enough for everyone to hear, that Sarah was “hot.” As Sarah blushed, I was like, Really? The fact that I had to be told that Sarah was sexy should have been a major clue as to how clueless I was to my real orientation.
On the long drive back to Rockland Hills, Sarah was very sweet. She kept saying that she’d had a good time, trying to make me feel better for the total lack of good time I’d provided her that night. I’m sure now that she must have sensed my unease and probably mistook it for the awkwardness between two friends on a date. But it was more than that. It was the awkwardness of one friend who no longer knows how to talk to the other about the fact that he wasn’t attracted to her, or to any women at all. The fact that Sarah was hot continued to echo in my head as I wondered why that fact was more a curiosity to me than an actual sexual spark. In some ways, this was the beginning of my understanding that I was pretty different from other guys.
It’s a shame that I couldn’t have talked to her openly and honestly about all that stuff. I’m guessing that, given her liberal upbringing, Sarah would have been a pretty sympathetic listener. But I was too scared at that age, and that stage in my sexual development, to take that risk.
As we got closer to her house, I realized that I still had not utilized the André. If I returned home with those bottles uncorked, I knew I would hear about it from my brother. I tried to figure out the best way to manage this dicey situation. As we made the turn onto Sarah’s street, I pulled over to the side of the road three houses down from hers, directly in front of Mrs. Gorman’s house, the woman whose lawn I cut. Mrs. Gorman was roughly 102 years old, so I knew she would not be easily roused.
Sarah looked at me, puzzled, and wondered what we were doing stopping short of her place. I explained that my thoughtful brother had procured some bubbly for us. After some struggle, I popped open the two bottles and, as we sipped from our respective bottles, Sarah and I finally had our first meaningful conversation of the night. I kicked things off by saying how sometimes I wished that I was in public school. That was a shock to Sarah.
“Your school has much better teachers,” she said, being very practical, “and you’ll definitely get into a better college.”
“Sure,” I said, nodding. “But the guys at St. John’s can be pretty obnoxious. Like Charlie tonight.”
She laughed at this, but added that everyone was an idiot when it came to high school dances. This was my cue to confess to my own idiocy, but I didn’t take the bait. I tried to change the subject to something more genuine.
“If I went to public school, at least we’d be able to hang out more.”
I didn’t mean this statement flirtatiously—it was just a sweet way of changing the subject as well as an honest admission that I did miss her in my life.
It was then that I started shaking, not from nerves but from the cold. It was freezing outside, and I had turned off the car. Sarah was also shivering and suggested that we go to her house. Uh-oh.
I started the car up and puttered into her driveway. I walked her to the door, hoping that this would be it. But Sarah invited me into the living room.
I started having a nymphomaniac panic attack, as I began trying desperately to leave, saying that Thanksgiving was tomorrow and I had a busy schedule or something ridiculous like that. She laughed at my excuse and, likely feeling emboldened by the champagne, took my hand to lead me into the house that I knew as well as my own.
We sat on the big leathery couch next to the fireplace, Sarah sitting unnaturally close to me. The only time we’d been this close before was on the Apple Turnover at the Kings Dominion theme park, screaming our heads off while we were thrown into each other repeatedly as the ride turned upside down. Now, in this quieter, more adult situation, there was not a sound between us. There was no avoiding some action. With Sarah leading, we tried making out in a way that was very limited and not terribly exciting. It was basically kissing on the lips with some embarrassing attempts at tongue action on my part. I was fully to blame for our lack of success, as I was not the best partner in this romantic enterprise. I was stiff as a board, just not where it counted.
After a few minutes, the whole thing died for lack of momentum as, frankly, I didn’t know what else to do besides kissing. In theory, I knew what to do with a girl, but Sarah wasn’t a girl. She was my former best friend, my playmate, Marie to my Donny. Sarah was very much like my sister. Not only are you not supposed to marry your sister, but you’re not supposed to make out with her, either. It’s just bad form.
Looking back, I wish I had been wise and evolved enough to express that sentiment at the time. No matter what our parents or neighbors or friends thought, the idea of Sarah and me being a couple was fundamentally so wrong that it’s hard to imagine now that there was a time when people thought it was actually right. Everyone knows that Donny and Marie don’t get married.
After our failed date, Sarah and I never hung out again. It was clear to me that Sarah knew something was up. I felt as if my secret interest in guys had been revealed by our utterly unsuccessful homecoming. If I couldn’t get it on with a hot sixteen-year-old rumored nymphomaniac, then all hope was lost that I might turn out to be anything other than what I truly was: a brownie-baking, Donny Osmond–obsessed, gay boy in training.
As a teenager, there is a common fear that when you come out, you will lose your friends. I certainly ended up losing Sarah’s friendship not because I came out, but because I wouldn’t. Sarah probably would have enjoyed this gay boy in training. It was, after all, who I was as a child when we were the closest of friends. It was only when I tried covering up my innate otherness, when I tried pretending at normalcy, that I became a dull and boring dance companion.
In the twenty-plus years since, I’ve had a number of other female best friends who have shared my big gay life in a way that I never would have imagined as an anxious and closeted teen. It seems preposterous now that I was scared of girls like Sarah. But girls know the score. Given that I barely knew the teams, this was not only intimidating, it was downright terrifying. If I had been a little less scared and a little more open to cultivating our friendship, Sarah and I would not have ended up married, but we would have been left with something even better: We could have been best friends for life.