Here’s a transcript of the video:
“I lived with a secret, but didn’t know it was a secret. I didn’t even know I was living with it for many, many years.
My grandfather died about ten years before I was born, and the circumstances of his death were so not discussed that I simply assumed he had died of cancer or something. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that my friend Clark Crampton told me what I needed to know — that my grandfather had killed himself, had taken a shotgun and offed himself in the family home.
This was shocking to me because I couldn’t imagine why no one had ever told me. But now that I look back on it, it’s really clear to me what it was. It was just part of that ailment that Southerners have of needing to keep things secret. Always.
The interesting part of this is that everybody knew that this had happened. I found some letters in my grandmother’s bedroom one time — very kind but too-gushy letters about what a fine man my grandfather was. They were clearly meant to reassure my grandmother in some way. And I knew something was off, but I couldn’t tell what it was.
Years later, mostly in reference to the closet and my being out and all of that, I made the statement: ‘the world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives’. Chris has always told me that this quote was his favorite of mine over the years. And I thought recently about how it applies to everything — not just being in the closet, but about telling the truth about yourself whenever it’s possible.
And it’s always possible.
“The world changes in direct proportion to the number of people willing to be honest about their lives.”
Don’t have any secrets. Secrets are what get you in trouble. And that was what happened with the treatment of my grandfather’s suicide. My family didn’t talk about it, but everybody gossiped about it. And it was a source of great pain, I’m sure, for my grandmother. And it’s just not necessary.
I think that coming out of the closet taught me that. That was one of the great gifts of being an openly gay man and being free to talk about it — and unintimidated by the silences that were mandated at the time. So I think that that aspect of my coming out helped in every aspect of my life.
I don’t understand people who have secrets about themselves. I just don’t understand it. I feel like this Southern obsession with keeping up appearances and keeping quiet and being discreet comes directly from England, from the UK. I feel that more and more as I live here in London — that there are people who just keep their discreet silences, and it always gets them in trouble.
It’s an Anglo-Saxon disease, I suppose — this business of ‘stiff upper lip’ and shut your mouth. It’s very English, and it translates very nicely to the South, as I experienced at the time.
In modern times, though, it’s gotten better. We’re not afraid to talk about mental health. We’re not afraid to talk about what’s beyond the norm. We’ve begun to celebrate people who do.
I have realized that the current anti-woke movement is just a new version of that old-timey shut up and get on with it attitude. And that’s another reason why I’m so impatient with it. It’s just the modern way of saying, ‘be quiet. That’s none of your business. You shouldn’t talk about that.’ It’s a way of silencing people — to make something bad about being woke, about evolving as a human being, to make that something that should be mocked.
That movement is a way of shaming people who have the courage to speak out and say who they are when it violates the laws of white Anglo-Saxon behavior.
Some of the most courageous people I know — trans people, queer people speaking their truths — are heroes to me. Their job is much harder than mine, this old garden-variety queer just saying what he thinks. They are the brave folks.
And by extension, these anti-woke people are cowards who don’t have the courage to be themselves and want to punish anybody else who does.
You know, I wish my father had been able to tell us about his father’s suicide. I wish he’d been able to discuss it. I think I could have put his mind at ease. He told me years later that that wasn’t such a big deal to him, but I didn’t believe it at all. It obviously was a big deal. He lived with it all his life and tried to keep the secret, and punished my grandmother — and, well, the entire family, really — by not being honest.
It takes courage to be yourself, whatever that might happen to be. And I wish that people in these repressed conservative areas would see that, and would realize what an improvement it could make on their own lives if they confront their own truth.
It was Chris who encouraged me to pursue this line of thought. I was a little hesitant because I thought maybe I’d already delivered the message. It’s one I believe in, and there’s never too much truth.
Sadly, truth is a scarce commodity these days.
So I want to celebrate it — in every one of you who has the courage to speak your own truth.
Thank you for coming along, and I’ll see you soon.”
