The Importance of Holding Hands
Written by scott on September 28th, 2013
My
husband Mark and I were coming out of a movie theater in Folsom,
California, yesterday (yes, that Folsom – prison and all), when he
excitedly pointed to something and said “Look, look!”
I followed the direction of his outstretched finger and saw a group
of people, a car, the building across the street – nothing particularly
noteworthy.
Then he said “No, there,” and pointed again, and I saw it.
A young gay couple, walking across the street, holding hands.
Now, Folsom is no right-wing backwater, but neither is it a
progressive mecca like San Francisco (or even nearby Sacramento). Its a
solidly working-class community, a bedroom city, known for its famous
prison, its Intel offices, and its shopping for locals in other cities
close by.
Mark called out to the couple, and they stopped, obviously perplexed
about being addressed by this stranger. We faced each other, two
couples separated by something like 30 years, and Mark told them how
amazing it was to see them engaged in the simple act of holding hands on
a public street.
They were a little surprised – they couldn’t have been more than 20
years old, and I guess that, to them, nothing was more natural than
holding the hand of the one you love.
And that’s the point. We live in a rapidly changing world. Sometimes I forget how fast its changing.
The next generation has no problem holding hands in public because,
well, why should they? They are equal to everyone else, and they know
it. At least here in California.
The whole thing made me realize how far I haven’t come. For all that
Mark and I have embraced the marriage equality movement, a part of me
is still stuck back in 1986, when I was a senior in high school, and
petrified to think that anyone might
find out.
In fact, my first thought when I saw this couple holding hands was
the danger they might be placing themselves in by being so public.
My second thought was how sad it is that I grew up in such a
different time, and that I still carry vestiges of my internal
homophobia with me, twenty two years after I stepped out of the closet.
I wonder what it would be like to grow up gay now, in this place, in
this time. To be sure of myself as a gay man in a way I never was at
that age, and in some ways am still not today.
I wonder what it would have been like to have had a “real” wedding –
one planned with time and care, instead of the one that was forced upon
us by the onslaught of Prop 8 and the impending public vote on our
fitness to be married.
And, if truth be told, I am a little envious of that young gay couple
in Folsom, walking down the street hand in hand as if… as if it were
the most natural thing in the world. And I was intensely proud of them.
We left the two of them there, probably shaking their heads at the strange attitudes of this older gay couple.
And I took Mark’s hand in mine as we walked back to the car.
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