Gordon Storrs and Orlan Owen – 10-20-09 (Interview starts at 4:22)

Jeremy: Alright… thanks for joining us. If you want to, go ahead and introduce
yourself and maybe say what your relationship to each other is; talk a little bit
about how that came about.
Gordon: Okay. My name’s Gordon Storrs and, what’s your name?
Orlan: My name is Orlan Owen.
Gordon: And we’ve known each other for a while. I always tell the story, so I think it’d
be good for him to tell it…
Orlan: Oh, I think you tell it better. It’s rehearsed.
Gordon: Because I tell the story a lot. It’s a wonderful… it’s kind of a fairy-tale. So
how much of the story do you want to hear? Do you have an hour and fifteen minutes?
Jeremy: We have plenty of time.
Gordon: This happened… I – I’ll just give you some background. I was recently out of a
relationship with wonderful Jeffrey about six months and I was really anxious to meet
someone new. But I’m very, very bashful and very,very shy in those kind of
circumstances, so I don’t meet anyone at the bars or anything. And in this particular day,
I was out with a friend, named Eric, who was staying at our house – he was homeless and
didn’t have access to things, supplies, things he needed – his bicycle tire popped and was
traveling all over town looking for an inner tube for his bicycle. And I went to Fred
Meyer. I looked all over Fred Meyer and couldn’t find where the bicycle tires; they told
me they were upstairs, so I went up the escalator. As I was going up the escalator, I
looked to my right and there was my friend, Russ Gorringe and a friend of his, and they
were talking with Orlan – turned out to be Orlan. Orlan was working there at Fred Meyer
at the time in the Men’s clothing store. I went over to say hello to Russ and in the
process was sort of introduced to Orlan, only I didn’t know his name; but Russ knew him
because he was there often and so we talked for just a minute. And then Orlan walked
away; he excused himself and walked away, because he was at work. As he was walking
away I thought, “Hmm… he looks just exactly like the person I’m looking for.” Then I
said goodbye to Russ and went and got the tire and I went back downstairs to get my car,
and I needed to get some vegetables, so I went over to the vegetable counter and there
was Orlan standing there; he was down there getting something to eat or something.
Orlan: I was on break.
Gordon: He was on break. We said hello again for a minute; it was nice that he still
remembered me from the twenty minutes before, or the ten minutes before and then I
went home. And that night, I was thinking, “You know, I really should – I wonder if he’s
gay – I really should get to know him. How would I do that?” So I called Russ Gorringe
to see if he knew him, because they were sort of friendly and I thought maybe they knew
each other and he said, “No, I don’t know him, but he’s usually there on the weekends
when we go over to Fred Meyer. So, I thought, “well, I’ll just go over there.” I guess
maybe that was a Friday evening, then Saturday morning I went over because I really
wanted to meet him.
Orlan: It was Saturday evening.
Gordon: It was Saturday evening was when I met you, and it was Sunday morning
Orlan: It was Saturday evening, because you came back ‘cause you were going to the
Huntsman party.
Gordon: Oh, that’s right. It was… So, Saturday, during the day, because I needed a date.
I was helping Jon Huntsman on his campaign and there was one of the very early
campaign meetings was at his Dad’s chalet, his Dad’s house in Deer Valley. So I was
going there and I really wanted everyone to know I was gay, so I wanted someone to
come along with me and I didn’t have anyone that I could take. And I thought, “Well,
I’ll just go meet this fellow at Fred Meyer and take him up there with me.” Well, it was a
pipe-dream, probably, but. So I went there and I went up to the Men’s section and looked
around, pretending to shop, and looked around and looked around and couldn’t find him
while I was pretending to shop. And then I saw him headed over toward the shoe section.
So, some of this is good. He’s here! This is gonna work out! So, I went over to the shoe
section and just as I was getting there, he went into the back room with another tall,
good-looking fellow and I though, “oh no, he’s going into the backroom to have sex with
that guy and I’m too late!”
[Jeremy laughs]
Gordon: And I thought, “I’m too late! Oh no!”
Orlan: A vivid imagination.
Gordon: But I stayed around anyway and after a while he came out and I was pretending
to look at shoes and he came over and said, “Can I help you?” You remembered me from
the day before… didn’t you?
Orlan: I did. Of course.
Gordon: And so he says, “Can I help you” and I say, “No, not really. I just came here
because I wanted to meet you.” This is me talking – I’m very, very bashful and shy and I
thought, “ohh” and then I says, “Don’t hit me or anything, but I have to ask you a
question.” I said, “Are you gay?” And I kinda thought he was, because my gay-dar was
all ringing, you know, from the day before. And he said yes. And I said, “Well, there’s
another question I have to ask you: Are you with someone?” And he said, “No.” And
then I says, “Well, I really wanna get to know you better.” And we’d exchanged names
and everything. But I don’t remember it much after that, except, I says, in fact, “This
evening I’m going off to Jon Hunstman’s kind of campaign.” I don’t think I asked if you
were Republican then…
Orlan: No. No, you were headed up to Park City right then. Right then, right then.
Gordon: Oh, I was on my way and I wanted to come with ya. And what did you say?
Orlan: I said, “I’m scheduled until midnight. Sorry.”
Gordon: Oh, see. And my hopes were all dashed to pieces. But then, he said, “But you
can call me on Monday; I work tomorrow.” He said, “but you can call me on Monday.”
And my hopes were higher.
So, I went up and felt okay at the thing with Huntsman, even though I didn’t have
anybody with me there and got hugged by everyone. Got to hug Mary Kay and hug the
Governor-to-be-elected. And it was a good experience, but it would’ve been better if
Orlan had been able to come along. But he couldn’t. So, he said, “Call me in the
afternoon on Monday.” So, on Monday, I was at work and I was watching the clock. At
12:01 I called him. I think it was exactly then, because Orlan said, “afternoon.” So, I was
calling him the minute – and then the number I got was actually his real number. So, I thought,
“whoah, this is really good!” Because, I had heard all kinds of stories about gay guys who give
people fake phone numbers if they really don’t want to get to know them, so. But he wasn’t
there, but it was an answering maching. So, I knew that I’d gotten the right number and I left a
message. Then he called back and I think I missed him and maybe I called back and I got you, or
I can’t remember that part. And then we talked and we got together for dinner that night at Mister
Z’s Cucina, but it’s a real bummer it’s not there anymore; it’s out of business. I hated that part.

Orlan: Gordon was so well-organized, he said, “I have three places for us… chosen three places
for us for dinner. Which of them do you want to go to? And can you go at 6:30 and, you know,
meet me there?”

Gordon: Yup. So then we met there and we visited for three hours, maybe three and a half hours,
sitting there on the patio, we were outside seated on the patio. Then he invited me up to his house
and he had a wonderful fireplace and we sat around and drank wine and talked. Then when I left
to go home, he gave me a big kiss and I though, “Oh, this is good!”

And then we set up a time to get together the next night. You picked me up, I think, because we
were in your truck. But, I won’t tell him the whole story about that. I was a little worried that he
was going to be a little too uptight for me. But there was an exciting event that happened in the
truck that caused me to understand that that wasn’t the case. [Everyone laughs].

So, from then on, we saw – the next night we got together and he gave me the key to his house,
which was pretty shocking. So that meant he must like me a little bit. I thought he might like me
a little bit. Then we saw each other every day – every day from then on until there was a little
two-month period we didn’t see each other because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted out of
life and then ever since we’ve been together.

Jeremy: So when about did this story happen?

Gordon: A hundred years ago. But about five and a half years ago. So, it was about April 23rd –
that’s when we met.

Orlan: Yes. Well, that was the night we had dinner.

Gordon: Oh, that’s the night we had dinner. April 23rd. Yup.
Orlan: You have to have a date to count.

Gordon: 2004. Yep.

Jeremy: Oh cool! So, what’s been your experience as you’ve been living together and
dating and – I mean, relationships like this there’s this stereotype that long-term
relationships don’t happen in the gay community. What are your thoughts on that?

Orlan: The stereotype that long-term relationships don’t happen? Or that don’t happen for
people in our age–group? Or…

Jeremy: Well, I mean, gay guys in general, I guess.

Gordon: Well, you didn’t really fit the stereotype and I was brand-new. I know that’s kind of a
stereotype, but I…

Orlan: Well, but I think it’s largely true; but I think it’s people’s unwillingness to commit and
work for a relationship.

Gordon: It’s not been easy but it’s been really simple for us. We just loved each other without
question from the beginning, right?

Orlan: Almost.

Gordon: No discussions. Nobody sleeping on the floor. None of those things.

Jeremy: That couch looks pretty unused. So, what is it that you find valuable in this kind of
relationship model; this kind of monogamous relationship model?

Orlan: I think our relationship is good because we’re very different kinds of people. And I think
we complement each other in that sense. Not that opposite attracts, which is just another cliché.
But, our skills are very different: Gordon’s very organized and a manager, and I’m not. I tend to
be more aesthetic and artistic, maybe?

Gordon: And he’s smart and I’m not so smart. [Orlan laughs] And he’s gorgeous and I’m not so
gorgeous.

Orlan: Oh, right. The camera will let them know that… no.

Jeremy: So, it’s kind of a complimentary relationship that you want to find.

Gordon: Right. But the kind of relationship we both wanted wasn’t the same from the beginning.
We had lot of long conversations about the kind of relationship we both wanted.

Jeremy: Mm… So what was that conversation like?

Gordon: So, there had to be some compromises about that in the process.

Jeremy: So, what did that conversation look like? What were some of the issues?

Orlan: You take that one.

Gordon: [Laughs] I’m taking more than I should! Orlan had been in a long-term relationship for
thirty years. And his partner had died after thirty years. Then he was out of a relationship for
about ten years, with a shorter one in-between. And I was fairly newly out. I’d been out four
years. I’d been in – I was in a relationship for two years prior to being out of a relationship.
Then we got together. My idea of a relationship was really different than his. His was that a gay
relationship – that a relationship ought to be monogamous and that people ought to be totally
committed to each other and my feeling was that in the relationship that I wanted was one was
where people didn’t feel like they were the possession of the other, where the relationship was
more open, where friendships could exist outside of the relationship; and where if there were an
event happened that could be considered “bad news” to the other partner, that you’d talk about it
and share it and be excited for each other, or in that kind of environment. So, I kind of went so
far as to draw out how I wanted the relationship to be, where we’d be together and we’d love each
other and our relationship was solid and that nothing could get in the way of that. And yet, we’re
separate individuals and we wouldn’t become “one,” we wouldn’t become - we wouldn’t
assimilate into each other, that we’d have our individual personalities, that we’d have individual
sets of friends and individual lives that came together in our wonderful relationship. That wasn’t
the kind of relationship that he wanted at all. And that was the reason that at one time I thought
that I should figure out something different, because this wasn’t heading the way I wanted it to
be; I could see it becoming a little bit of a possession instead of a partner, in the relationship.

So, we had to work through that and it caused me to need to think about some other relationship,
it was so – it started to become so important to me. But then, we decided that we should get
together and made basically a commitment to each other. I made a commitment to Orlan that I
would be faithful in our relationship and there wouldn’t be others. And that’s been the case and
that’s what he expected for him all along, so it wasn’t a big deal.

Orlan: But, that’s not to say that we don’t have friendships outside of our relationship and that
we maintain friends with people that have been friends before we met. And, many of my friends
had become our mutual friends, but some of Gordon’s friends have NOT become some of our
mutual friends.

Gordon: That’s because one of us doesn’t like them much. But, no. And that’s what you do
when you get together; that’s what you do: you work together to resolve issues that come up or
get in the way. And what results is a partnership, a relationship that is fulfilling to both. That’s
the only way they can be successful. If it’s not fulfilling both partners then it might not be a good
one.

Jeremy: Sure

Gordon: So, what we’re finding is we have a good long-term, wonderful relationship and that
we’ve had to change to get there.

Jeremy: How do you two deal with compromises? Like, what is your process for doing
that?

Gordon: Compromises?

Orlan: We talk. We did, or we’ve done a lot of talking about compromise. I don’t think we talk
so much about it anymore.

Gordon: It seems we don’t have to talk about it much these days.

Jeremy: Cool. So tell me a little bit about your mutual coming out processes, like when that
happened, how it happened, the circumstances that kind of surrounded it?

Gordon: It that, kind of, when we came out together as partners, or whether we came out as gay?
Jeremy: Maybe there’s three separate stories; maybe there’s one/two individual stories, and
then there’s your coming out as a couple. So maybe you’d want to start with individual
story and you can each take that.

Orlan: I think I was very young – I think twenty-one years of age, very young – when I came out
to express my homosexuality and I lived in Ogden at the time and came to Salt Lake to party and
did so with two, three, four friends. One night we got separated and didn’t get back together at
the time that bars were closing and all of that stuff, so I was kind of stuck in Salt Lake and an old
gentleman invited me home. I accepted the invitation and that started that thirty-year
relationship, which was not a monogamous relationship. And it was good for a number of years.
Very good. Other problems associated with our difference in our ages became more acute as he
became more and more ill at the end of his life. So, it did not end quite so well, because of his
family. But, it has good times and certainly was very good at the beginning. I know when I met
Gordon, he was newly out and frisky and wanted to experiment and be gay and openly gay and
all of that and I wasn’t prepared to accept a person as my partner who was doing that kind of
behavior. That was where the major compromise has been for Gordon, I think. But, I still
allowed you to have your friends.

Jeremy: So, when you would go down to Salt Lake City to party, where would that happen?
I mean, was this… gay clubs, straight clubs…

Orlan: Oh, the Radio City Music bar, which was the only gay bar, really, in town. There was
also a place called The Sirloin Cellar, which was owned by, I think, the fellows who had the
Heidelburg, who were a gay couple at the time.

Gordon: I didn’t know they were gay!

Orlan: Oh sure you did!

Gordon: No!

Orlan: You didn’t? Terry Groves (sp?) and… oh, the other fellow’s name won’t come to me. He
was much older and Terry was much younger. But the older man in that partnership maintained
a marriage and his family, separate from his gay relationship with his partner in Heidelberg, at
that time. So, times were much different.

Jeremy: Is that something that happened a lot? Like, that kind of… interesting.

Orlan: Oh yeah. Yeah. A lot of men just were gay on weekends, you know.

Jeremy: Weekend warriors?

Orlan: Yeah. More or less, sure.

Jeremy: So, what was the Sirloin Cellar; I’ve never heard of that one before.

Orlan: Oh, it was a supper club. They served, primarily, a sirloin steak. It wasn’t named the
Sirloin Cellar because it was a “meat rack” in the gay sense. They were trying to do an upscale
kind of dinner restaurant and catered to both straight and gay clientele. They had a piano in
there and someone playing cocktail piano. So, it was upscale for the time – very nice.

Jeremy: Cool. Tell me a little bit about Radio City. I mean, what kind of crowd was there,
what was the atmosphere like?
Orlan: Oh. A lot of professional drunks, kind of hung out there, as well as – and still do –
but I think it’s closed now, hasn’t it? And bars and the gay lifestyle kind of go together,
so that drinking is a way to get out and socialize and the only way to meet people, so it
kind of – and that’s a situation should change and I think is changing. But a lot of
alcohol with gay men. But then there was the weekend crowd where everybody would go
to the Radio City, because it’s the only place to go.
And then I remember when I was a student at the University of Utah, when it was
notoriously THE gay bar in Salt Lake. So, on Halloween, we’d all jump into the car and
sit in the parking lot and watch the drag queens come in and go out of the bar and just
have a ball!
Gordon: Was this before you were out?
Orlan: Yeah, this was before I was out.
Gordon: Was this when you danced with the ballet at…
Orlan: Yeah. And a lot of theater students and ballet kids would do that just for
entertainment.
Jeremy: Cool. So how old were you when you first went to the Radio City?
Orlan: I was twenty-one. I was of legal age. Yeah.
Jeremy: So, what was the Heidelberg?
Orlan: The Heidelberg was a restaurant north of Lagoon, very, very close to Lagoon in
Farmington. The original building was, I believe, a flourmill, wasn’t it?
Gordon: Yeah, I think so.
Orlan: Yeah, and a rock structure. So it was on several levels and they had just
remodeled it into a German restaurant.
Gordon: It was a famous restaurant.
Orlan: It was. It was considered a good restaurant. It was THE place to go for Senior
Prom, you know, it was…
Jeremy: Cool. So, you came out around twenty-one years of age?
Orlan: Mm-hm. Twenty-one years of age.
Jeremy: Why then? Why did you come out at twenty-one?
Orlan: You mean, not earlier or not later?
Jeremy: Yeah. Why not earlier, why not later; was there anything specific that was
happening at that time? was it because you were old enough to go to the bars?
Orlan: Well, and because I had spent two years at Weber State in Ogden, which was my
home-town, and going to school, then transferred to the University of Utah. There was
kind of a transition and a break in my life and it seemed, then, that it was just be easier; I
would be in different circumstances, not have the same people, the same peer-groups,
church groups, everybody observing what I was doing, so I could enjoy the anonymity of
Salt Lake City, pretty much.
Jeremy: So was this relationship with the older gentleman that lasted thirty years,
was that your first gay relationship?
Orlan: Mm-hmm!
Jeremy: Ah… very first one going thirty years!
Orlan: Not my first gay experience, but my first gay relationship.
Jeremy: Sure. How do you think it lasted so long?
Orlan: As I said a little while ago, at the beginning it was very, very good and then
toward the end it just lasted by default, you know. You don’t see other options, you don’t
think it’s worth separating and going through the pain and trouble of doing that. And
then, certainly, at some point I didn’t want to feel that I was abandoning somebody that
had counted on me. So, there’s a certain amount of “duty” and responsibility involved
there.
Jeremy: Interesing. So, what do you think has been the effect of – this is kind of an
old, different strata of socialization in gay worlds, kinda based on the bars, person-
to-person interactions, and now there’s a lot of interaction, a lot of community
building takes place over the internet. What do you think has been the effect upon
this more face-to-face, inter-personal relationships, in that it’s kind of the older way
of doing gay community. Like, what do you think the Internet has done to that?
You can both answer if you have thoughts on it.
Gordon: Oh, it’s really hard to say, you know, for me, because I really wasn’t part of the
gay community early on. And when I came out, my association was mostly with the
young people that I was the advisor to the gay club at the Salt Lake Community College,
to Coloring Outside the Lines. And at that time, people were [unintelligible] about eight
years ago; people were still meeting kind of face-to-face, so coming to a group like that
was a place for them to come and meet other gay people and there’s still lots of trauma
involved with coming out. I imagine there still is. I don’t think there is so much now,
because there are made other sources of information. But, I don’t know how people really
meet these days, because I’ve seen – I’ve had roommates here when I was single, that
would get a date every night, mostly for sex, not really to go out and just meet people to
fall in love with. They would have one or two or three dates a night sometimes, that
they’d just meet online and go out. And so, it was easy for people to meet people. For
me, I didn’t know how to do that, didn’t care to do that, really; but I really wanted to
meet someone, so I’d go to the bars where I’d never meet anyone, because I was the
oldest one there. And, until I met Orlan, he’s a little bit older than me. I was always the
oldest one there. I’d never really talk to anyone. No one would ever really talk to me,
except for the friends that would come up and say hello and hug. So, I don’t really, you
know, I imagine today, because everything is so easy on the internet, that people, I don’t
know, I don’t think people just have relationships on the internet, I think they get
together. I do have friends who met on the internet, then they ended up in long-term
relationships. But I imagine that’s the easiest way for people to meet people these days.
Even going to the bars, the atmosphere in the bars has changed since those early days
when I came out.
Jeremy: How so?
Gordon: About eight years ago… well, it seems less friendly, less involved. There seems
to be less actual involvement of people with each other. But it may be that I’m just not
seeing it, because we don’t go that often these days – once every month or something.
But the atmosphere there seems to be different and it’s probably – I don’t know if it’s the
atmosphere or if it’s me that’s different. It just seems less involved, less exciting, I
suppose is the kind of word. People seemed to be really enjoying dancing and really
enjoying each other. What I do see is people texting each other when dancing. I can’t
imagine what it feels like for someone who’s dating someone or out and they’re texting.
Well, maybe they’re just friends… texting while they’re dancing or texting for... Seems
sort of strange to me. So, I don’t know how it’s changed. I don’t know if I were single
now how I would find someone to date, because now I’m even older, so it would be even
more difficult to find someone than it was, probably. I don’t know the answer to that
question other than it seems like there are lots more options for people.
Orlan: And my sense is not coming from experience, but with the internet generation or
younger gay people, my sense is that people meet on the internet and hook up for sex and
then, if they see something in the person they like, they might date them or they might
meet up and have sex again and see how well that goes. But I see, in general, and this is
not just gay people, but I see everyone kind of losing their social skills; people don’t
know how to have a social conversation with people – just the niceties of introductions,
finding out something personal about them, introducing them to the next person that’s
come to the group that’s a stranger, saying, you know, “this is Gordon, he works at Salt
Lake Community College.” You know, trying to give them a spark of some kind of
conversation that they can have with that person. People just seem to be losing that and I
think it’s because of texting and emailing and the spending hours and hours alone on the
internet.
Gordon: So, it would be really interesting to see how that really is, whether people really
are forming lots of – whether people feel fulfilled in those kinds of relationships or
whether they all kind of get together and all those people that text and form – I guess
people gathered together at parties and get-togethers and things really sort of started by
really texting each other because they’re all going for pizza and then everybody goes to
pizza, too. And it’s just a quicker, easier way than phone calls to get people together, but
I’m wondering – I’m assuming – whether people get together and not just text each other.
But you can stay in touch with people much better and maintain a very close relationship
if you’re texting-savvy or something. People seem to, you know, need to text at all times,
whether day or night. In my classes that I teach at school – well they don’t text there
because I take the phones away.
Jeremy: Yeah, it does get a little excessive sometimes. That’s really interesting. So
you think that this kind of – sounds like you think that this loss of, I guess, just
really basic personal skills is just kind of been one of the costs that we have,
ironically, of having so many communication options that we lose our actual
speaking skills with each other.
Gordon: It’d be good to know that. The only way to do that is to spend some time talking
with people who are living there and see what their lives are like. You know, because it
might be richer than we’ve ever experienced. It might be less.
Jeremy: Yeah, or a different kind of “rich.”
Orlan: I don’t know how we’d really determine that, but it’s my sense of how things are
going.
Jeremy: Cool. Well, what about your coming out story, Gordon?
Gordon: Ah. It’s a long story! Let’s see what these stories… they aren’t very good, but
they’re all long.
I knew, I think I knew that I was gay from the time that I was a little kid, because I…
What I remember the first time that I realized I was gay was when I was reading Better
Homes and Gardens – I was about 7 or 8 – because one article was about Santa Claus not
being real and I was feeling really bummed out about that, because I really believed in
Santa Claus. Then on the next page there was an article about homosexuality. It was
talking about how guys were attracted to guys and I thought, “well, that sounds just like
me.” So, I didn’t think much about that.
All the way through high school, I wrestled. I hated wrestling. I hated sports, pretty
much, because I was really klutzy, so I was always the last one chosen when they were
choosing teams for basketball or baseball. I always got played in right field that’s where
no one hits ever, so I’d never have to catch a ball. But I’d played sports because I got to
hang around with the guys. So, I wrestled, got to hang around the guys and I knew I was
very attracted to them. I thought everybody was. I lived in Filer, Idaho for goodness
sake, and I didn’t know gay people. Nor did I ever read anything because there wasn’t
anything on that – generally on the newspapers – and Better Homes and Gardens didn’t
often have an article; Playboy didn’t have too many articles about being gay, but I sure
enjoyed the pictures, but it was the guys I was looking at.
So I knew that I was – so I knew who I was, but I didn’t have to do… everybody else
must’ve felt the same way, I just… that’s the way I treated it. And I really didn’t ever
know anyone who was gay. I found out later that there were some people who were gay
that I didn’t know were gay. And I was LDS and in high school I always thought, “gosh,
the girls were really safe with me because I’m so moral.” But now, I look back, I wasn’t
being moral at all, I just had no interest in them. They weren’t at risk with me, because I
wouldn’t have ever had sex or tried to have sex with them or anything. It really wasn’t
that interesting. But again I thought I was just better than everyone else – all those guys
who were telling stories of the things they did with the girls. So it wasn’t a big deal.
I went off to BYU and I always avoided… I studied sociology at the university and I just
kind of always avoided anything where I needed to think about me, because I really
didn’t like the conflict that started to come up if I thought maybe I wasn’t just like
everyone else. I dated all those years. I dated in high school and dated when I went to
the university and fell in love with a guy who’s the dorm advisor. It was a distant
relationship because I wasn’t out and he was in the church and I was in the church; he
was a return missionary from France and I fell in love. To this day I – well, until Orlan
convinced me to switch colognes, I wore Elsha cologne, because that’s what Richard
wore. And it turns out that he took a trip down to Arizona when I was a freshman; he
wanted me to go along with him. He drove in his Triumph Spitfire. I was all excited.
We slept together in the same bed and I kept hoping that something would happen to me
and nothing ever did. But I consciously wanted something to. As I look back, I wished
someone had done something to me early on, because my life would’ve been different; it
would’ve shown me maybe who I was. But it didn’t ever and Richard didn’t ever do
anything with me.
When I got back from my mission and went to see him and was interested when the
fellow who answered the door was in a Speedo and he took me on a tour of their house
and there was only one bed in there. And it turns out my friend Richard was gay. Then I
really felt kind of bad.
But I got married; the thing to do was to get married, so I got married. I was really good
at doing whatever everybody wanted me to do, so I did. I got married and we had one
child and then adopted three others. The marriage would be considered by everyone else
on the outside, but I never felt good enough, because I seriously was attracted only to
guys. So, when you’re trying to be intimate with someone that you love, and I love Carol
and I always will, but I wasn’t in love with her. There’s a big, big difference. I always
used to hear the songs about being in love and floating on air, and I’ve never, ever felt
that. But I knew what love was. But I didn’t know what being in love was or what that
meant or the excitement. Orlan and I had that when we met. That was what bound us
together was that feeling of walking on air and being… and just being in love. But I
didn’t ever feel that with my wife. She’d dress in a wonderful negligee and I would
really want to let her know how sexy she was, but there wasn’t any sense of “sexy.” So, I
had to make it up. I never felt really good enough. It wasn’t until I was fifty that I
started to feel like I really needed to figure out who I was, because I really had never
spent any time doing it, figuring it out.
And then, shortly after that, I was asked to be the advisor to Coloring Outside the Lines at
the college; I was to be the straight advisor to the gay club. It was really kind of neat.
What it did... when they asked me to be the advisor – they’d asked for advisors, people
who were interested in being advisors to sign up, then they would send people from the
clubs to you, if they wanted you to be their advisor, so two gay guys came. And I’d been
watching them for a while; their club had just started a year before. It had existed before,
so I knew who they were and they came and asked me if I’d be the advisor. My
immediate though was, “what will people think of me?” And then I said to myself, “why
would I ask that question, even? Why would that be an issue for me?” I was very open
and accepting of everyone, besides and I knew I was gay. So that feeling said I just really
need to do it. So I went home and talked to my wife about it to her, because I knew it
would be kind of an issue. She said, “I wish you wouldn’t but you need to do whatever
you feel like you need to do.” So, I accepted.
Being the advisor to the club gave me lots of opportunity to kind of talk about being gay
with others and see what others were going through; see the struggles that young people
were going through when they were coming out. The first meeting we ever had, there
were eighteen people there and we were talking about suicide and eighteen of the
eighteen had tried to commit suicide at least once. And I thought, “whoa! Why is that?”
because I had never felt bad about being gay. But I would never talk about it with
anyone or ever do anything about it, so I’d never had a gay experience or a relationship or
anything. So, I really didn’t know how all that would come together, but it gave me a
chance to talk about it, being around those people. But around the same time, I had heard
about U-men, which was the naked men’s group, and I was the straight member of U-
men, which is a non-sexual naked gay club. So I’d go off to those meetings and all of
that gave me background.
Then I took a class called “Artist’s Way”, which is a self-development kind of thing for
“blocked” artists. And Rick Graham, an art instructor, which is my figure instructor
when I took art classes – figure class, was leading the group and was sort of smugly
thinking, “You know, this doesn’t apply to me; all these things we’re talking about, all
these people’s marriages and all kinds of things. Then they started going through some
of the exercises. We went through one of them where we had to – we were supposed to
think of five lives that we would lead if we weren’t in our life that we were; we were
supposed to write those down and describe them. My first choice was “flaming gay.”
That plus the college experience and people telling me I really couldn’t be on the fence,
because some of the members suspected that I was gay and convinced me that probably I
was leading a life that I shouldn’t.
Then I was in the bishopric for a good time. I was busy trying to help people be rich and
full in their lives and the way they should live and be true to yourself and all those things.
Where before, being true to yourself all my life had meant do the things the church asked
you to do, what the church expected you to do. And I realized I couldn’t keep doing that,
so I kept getting more and more depressed about all of that. Then one morning, I wanted
to tell Carol that I was gay for over a year. I told her one morning and then she – I was
afraid it would really be damaging to her, because she had a lot of bouts of depression.
Now, I think I probably had something to do with it, unconsciously, before. I was really
worried that it would send her in off into kind of the deep end. But it didn’t. All of a
sudden, she became alive and what she wanted was for us to have a 50th wedding
anniversary, and we had been married thirty-two years by then.
I remember one day that I was thinking, you know, this isn’t right. I’m a planner and so I
always made lists of things. If I come out, these are the positives – these are the
negatives. So, the positives were: “be yourself,” and the negatives were 50; 20 to 50
negatives – “no money, no place to live, you’re gonna hurt everybody you love, you’re
not gonna know what to do, nobody’s gonna like you, what kind of life you gonna live?”
And the writer of that Mormon gay book, one of the writer’s, I can’t remember it, but
she’s one of the psychologists and I finally, what caused me to do it… is this too long?
Am I kind of… So, one day I decided because Carol just kept talking about what she
wanted and I wanted her to be happy. One day at work in the afternoon, I decided I’m
just gonna abandon this search to be who I am and I’m gonna continue in our relationship
and I’m gonna be everything that she wants me to be. That afternoon I started to cry. I
had to leave work early because I was crying. I drove home and I was crying. I got
home and I was crying and Carol asked what was wrong, and I cried for four hours. I
don’t ever – I don’t – in my life I have never felt depression much and I don’t ever do
that. And I said, “hmm… this isn’t good.”
So, then I made an appointment with this person that was referred to me. I can’t
remember her name. She talked and she let’s you talk, mostly – that’s what
psychologists mostly do. Then we – I had two visits with her, then she thought Carol
should come along and Carol agreed, reluctantly, to come along. After our second visit,
there were only four, Carol asked me, in the car on the way home, what I really wanted.
And she had never asked me that before and I have this thing when people ask me
questions, I have to tell them honestly. I just tell ‘em. I said, “You know, I really just
want to be who I am and I want to live life as who I am.” And so she said, “Well, we’d
better separate.” So, she made me call my mom and dad that night and set up a meeting
with Mom and Dad the next day; invited my brother and my sister and everyone who’s
up there. Carol went with me and we went up there and told everyone that I was gay and
that we were getting a divorce.
We came back and met with the bishop, because the bishopric, I told them that I was gay
and we’re getting divorced and he asked if I wanted to see a psychologist, and I said,
“No, I know what I’m doing.” And they released me from the bishopric two Sundays
after that. And I was community council chairperson; I talked to people at the
community council and told them I was gay and that I was gonna be moving because I
was leaving home, and so I couldn’t be the chairman of the community council any more.
Then two ladies, who were there were LDS, they went and told the Stake President, who
already knew, actually. But then they were going to excommunicate me from the church
because I was apostatizing, because of a leadership position. And I asked that my name
be withdrawn from the church and I was off and running. Then, all of a sudden, my life
was rich and full, unlike I’d ever seen.
Jeremy: What was that like, emotionally, to be letting go of all these things in such a
short period?
Gordon: I thought that I would be in trouble. I thought that I would miss everything. I
thought that everyone would hate me. It wasn’t true. When I gathered everyone I
worked with together and told them I was gay, there was almost an outpouring of
support; my boss told me that, “if anybody at the college gives you a bad time, ever, you
let me know and I’ll take care of them.” One of my co-workers offered me a place to
stay in his basement; he and his wife had an extra bedroom down there. My kids all were
– that’s another story – they were okay. We came back from seeing Mom and Dad, and
right after the bishop, we called our kids to set up separate appointments with them all,
except for our daughter who was in the language-training mission. They all appeared at
the first meeting, all of them together.
Orlan: They all knew something was going on, you see.
Gordon: When I told my brother and sister up in Boise, my brother had accused me of
not being considerate of his aging father and mother, and we got in a big argument, but
we didn’t get to finish the argument, because Carol stopped us from arguing. I wish we
had finished the discussion. My kids said, “what will the people think of us.” And my
one son said, “if anyone thinks ill of us or dad because of this, let them be damned.” This
was my young son. And my other son was saying, “how can you take this approach after
you’ve taught us the way you have all these years?” And I said, “this isn’t inconsistent
with what I’ve taught you all these years.” My daughter in the language-training mission,
we had to go talk to – we had to go make an appointment through the Mission President
to talk to her. She didn’t want me to read her letters for six months after we talked there.
She didn’t want any contact with me, over the phone or reading her letters. And we were
best friends before she left… we were really, really close, so it was hard for her – bad
timing for her. But now, well, shortly after she got back from her mission, we were close
friends, and mid-way through the mission, everything changed that.
So, that’s it. That’s a long story and there’s lots more to tell.
Jeremy: What’s your relationship with your ex-wife now?
Gordon: She doesn’t care to talk to me ever. She was very, very hurt and she just got
married last June – very exciting, for me, because she’s got someone to walk down the
aisle with and things like that. As she gets old, she’s got someone to hold her arm and to
see her through all that – it makes me very happy. But, she’s very hurt and she hasn’t
ever gotten over that, really.
Orlan: She doesn’t want to.
Gordon: She’s tried. Well… Orlan doesn’t think she’s tried.
Orlan: I just had a thought while you were telling your story about your questioning
about whether or not you should stay with your life as it is and not be you, and how you
cried for that day if those weren’t tears of mourning, rather than tears of depression –
that you were mourning the loss of who you might be, if you came out.
Gordon: Yeah, I think that was more “it.” I think – and I didn’t – I’d never expected that
kind of response, and we can go to family things together… I haven’t ever met her
husband. She told me that he probably wouldn’t wanna meet me. But, that he probably
wouldn’t like me. We’ll see him in meeting, sometime at a wedding or a baptism or
something, because we go to everything. And my kids invite me to everything. We get
together, my kids, once a month; they sort of trade it off. We used to get together every
other week; we’d trade off with the in-laws, and then when I came out, we wanted to
make sure that we had time together – and it didn’t work for a while, we still met every
other week at Carol’s house. When I came out, I left everything that we had just there
with Carol and took a chair and my blue glass, a single bed – kinda started over. So we’d
go, for a while we’d do that, but it got too painful for her. So then we stopped and my
kids then set up a Sunday for us.
Jeremy: So, you both – it sounds like – you’ve had experience in making family that
is maybe more tradition or is maybe less traditional; What are your thoughts on
people making queer families, gay families, LGBT families; and how does one go
about doing that, as far as what do we model it off of?
Orlan: I think they should be – that same-sex couples should be able to adopt, do
surrogate parenting, whatever it is that they need – sperm donation for the lesbians,
surrogate mother for gay men that want to have a biological child. There are so many
children that need adoption, that I don’t think – those other methods are extremely
expensive and must – there’s lots of ego involved; I can’t see going to those measures.
But I don’t think there’s any study or statistics or findings that gay people are not as
effective and good parenting as heterosexual couples are. The skills are no less. After
all, every gay person is born into a heterosexual family – so, they have parenting models.
My own nephew did not have good parenting models in a heterosexual family, and he’s
heterosexual, because he has not had good parenting models, he’s had trouble in his
marriage, he’s had problems with his son, parenting his son – they’ve been in counseling
working through it all. I think it’s just very much an individual matter, but has to do with
our parents and their skills at parenting, more than it has to do with sexuality.
Gordon: And even before that, I think it’s really hard for gay – for me, I didn’t know how
to date, I didn’t know how to get someone to fall in love with me, I didn’t know how to
meet people, I thought I wasn’t attractive; I didn’t think anybody – I just literally thought
that no one would like me and I was really so excited when someone did or when more
than one person did. But I didn’t know how; I didn’t know how to date. And the young
people were taught how to get together with a girl and have family. But, I think gay
relationships are the most pure of all, because there’s no reason to get together, other than
the love that you share with each other; there’s no society mandates that say you have to
get married, that’s part of what your life has to be; there’s so gay people get together out
of sheer love for each other and it’s much more pure – it’s not duty to get married. I
think the best of all relationships, but no one’s taught how to do it. Some people learn it
a lot better than others. I’m just really slow – I was just slow, I guess.
But, I don’t want to be married; I don’t think we’d ever want to be married – that’s
someone else’s relationship. To me, that really is something between a man and a
woman. I think one day we’ll have to cross that - figure out that question…
Orlan: Well, the tax advantages…
Gordon: Tax advantage and all those things. But to call Orlan my husband doesn’t make
any sense to me; he’s not my husband, he’s my lover, my partner…
Orlan: And Gordon’s not my wife or husband. It’s just not…
Gordon: So, for me, that doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would that be true of the
relationship; it’s different? Civil unions are really the right thing – to get the legal
benefits of it; but I don’t care about being able to get married, because it just – I don’t
think it fits my stereotype of what marriage means, which is different than the
relationship that I wanna have with my partner.
Jeremy: Sure. It seems that this is a big issue, politically, right now. And this is
kind of the big focus of HRC and a lot of these organizations like this. Based on
what you just said, what are your feelings on the importance of that particular
battle for gay marriage?
Orlan: My own personal feelings are that the battle’s not worth it; to come out swinging
with fisticuffs and put lots of money and energy and anger into it, because thirty years
from now, it’ll be a reality. Because the young people don’t care if you’re gay or straight
or bisexual or transgendered or anything; and it’ll just come. It will come just naturally
as we evolve. So, I guess, there have to be people working at the front of those battles,
just as there were in the Civil Rights and Equal Rights and those things; and that’s where
the gay community is now with marriage, the marriage issues. But I can’t devote a lot of
time and energy and emotion or money to it, because I just don’t have those resources
and I don’t feel like I want to.
Gordon: And yet, whenever there’s a rally, guess who’s there? Whenever there’s an
event, guess who’s there. Whenever there’s an Equality dinner, guess who’s there? It’s
us. And yet, I don’t feel – I feel like we need to be recognized as equal; that’s a big thing
for me. Marriage is the standard for that, doesn’t mean that’s not what’s gonna make us
equal, it’s that people recognize that we’re every bit as important as everyone else. And
whether or not we’re in a gay relationship doesn’t have anything to do with how well we
do our job, with how well we live our lives, with how well we can parent children or any
of those things. Because we can do all of those things better, actually better, than most
heterosexual couples or most other people. I have this real stereotype about most gay
people and that’s we’re a lot more sensitive, you know and I understand we’re different,
and that’s a stereotype, but we really have that: we’re brighter, smarter, quicker to treat
each other well (and I know there are exceptions, but…). So, I’m going to do everything
I can to help us get the rights that we deserve; they’re civil rights and that’s why I believe
in civil unions and I’ll support any recommendation that puts the position of being able
to. But I think the ideal would be for everyone in the United States to be able to get a, to
have a civil union, then to have a marriage, if they want to, in their own religious
organization or faith-based organization or atheist organization or whatever. But that we
all have basic civil rights and I think we’re fighting a really tough… I think that’s the
way it’ll turn out. I don’t know if it will, or if we’ll all just have the right to get married –
to me, that’s not a necessity, but to have the similar rights that everyone else has is
absolutely important. That’s my take on that.
Jeremy: Yeah, definitely. I think it’s a really important point. And actually, that is
about our hour…