The Long Way Home: A Life Told in Key Changes

 I came into the world in 1960, in North Carolina, back when the air smelled like tobacco fields and Aqua Net, and children were raised on Jesus, casseroles, and the occasional spanking “for your own good.” My parents, Horace and Diane, were good Southern people who believed in hard work, Sunday services, and the kind of hospitality that involved feeding anyone who walked through the door whether they were hungry or not.

My brother Craig arrived two years later, and one of my earliest memories is of us watching the news the day President Kennedy was assassinated. I didn’t understand death, but I understood my parents’ faces — the way the room felt suddenly smaller, quieter, heavier. It was the first time I realized the world could break.

We lived in Weldon until I was seven, in a duplex close to where I attended a Baptist kindergarten and sang “Away in a Manger” for the Christmas pageant with the kind of sincerity only a five-year-old in a paper-plate halo can muster. Then my parents bought a ranch house on seven acres outside of Roanoke Rapids — a place with enough land to raise pigs, grow vegetables, and lose yourself in the woods for hours.

It was also the first time I learned that adults — especially church adults — could say some truly awful things with absolute confidence. When Dr. King was assassinated, I heard things no child should hear. I didn’t understand racism yet, but I understood cruelty. And I understood that sometimes the people who preached the loudest about love were the ones who practiced it the least.

Around that same time, something happened to me that I didn’t have the language for. A teenage boy sexually assaulted me for about a year. I thought it was a game. Years later, he apologized and told me he’d been abused himself. I forgave him. Pain echoes until someone decides to stop the sound. I chose to stop it.

But childhood wasn’t only shadows. I was a Southern boy through and through — climbing trees, feeding pigs, shooting guns, running barefoot, and pretending to like girls while secretly swooning over Keith Partridge. I didn’t know what it meant yet, but I knew it wasn’t something I could say out loud. Not in the 1970s. Not in the Pentecostal Holiness church. Not in my family.

Music became my refuge. I started piano lessons in second grade with Miss Mildred Oxenham, who smelled like Chanel No.5 and had the patience of a saint. By 15, I was improvising like I had something to prove, worshipping at the altars of The Carpenters, ABBA, Streisand, and eventually Barry Manilow — whose chord progressions were so complex they would make Einstein scratch his head and give up.

My baby brother, Michael, arrived in 1970 and I loved every minute of taking care of him. My mom would have to wrestle me like Jesse Ventura to pry him out of my arms.

Christmases were pure magic — cousins everywhere, food everywhere, laughter everywhere. To this day, I tear up thinking about those gatherings. If heaven doesn’t feel like my grandparents’ house at Christmas, I’m not sure I want to go.

At 15, I hit the road playing piano for Christian bands. My dad hated it because he wanted me in my home church on Sundays. My mom — a woman who could stare down a hurricane — won that argument. But one of the men I played for turned out to be a predator. When he crossed a line, I walked five miles home and never told a soul. Decades later, he was arrested on 50 counts of indecent liberties with a child. I still wonder if speaking up might have saved someone else. That’s a weight you don’t ever fully put down. He died from a heart attack before going to trial.

I graduated high school in 1979, joined The Rex Nelon Singers in 1980, and spent six years touring the country, playing the Grand Ole Opry, and collecting Dove Awards like they were commemorative spoons. But behind the curtain, I was fighting myself. The Christian music world had more closeted gay men than a Broadway cast party, and I was drowning in shame.

My first gay bar. My first gay experience. My first gay panic spiral. AIDS was emerging. Fear was everywhere.

In 1984, I confessed everything to a pastor who then tried to seduce me. I left shaking, peeled out of the parking lot, and nearly drove off a bridge. I didn’t. I went home and cried instead. Sometimes survival looks like nothing more heroic than staying alive for one more night.

I tried dating a woman named Nancy. I broke her heart. I broke my own. I spiraled — drinking, drugs, clubs, self-loathing. Being told by the church that you’re an abomination makes you act like one if you believe them…and I did. Also, being told that you deserve to die with AIDs is something no one should say to another human being.

In 1986, I lost my music job after being seen at a gay bar. I hit bottom, then found community: a drag queen named Kathleen, chosen family like Rodney Webster, laughter, and people who saw me.

Then came Ron — brilliant, funny, 19, and eventually HIV-positive. We became like brothers. When he got sick, he moved to California to get better treatment. He met Jeff, the love of his life. Then I arrived in a U-Haul with his dog, Ross, and they welcomed me like family.

Those years were magic — Christmases, cocktails, friendship, my first real boyfriend (Tom…I loved that man and that story could be its own novel). And then Ron declined. Fast. I watched him waste away. I held him as he died. I stayed up all night with Jeff telling stories, drunk on vodka and grief. We stood on the porch and waved goodbye as the coroner drove away with his body. That moment is tattooed on my soul.

Loss piled on loss — my dad, my grandfather, my sister-in-law, my aunt. My relationship fell apart. I came out to my family. Depression swallowed me whole. On New Year’s Eve 1992, I drunkenly tried to end my life. I drank too much, took too many pills, and threw them all up. I woke up covered in vomit and regret.

But the important thing is: I woke up.

That’s when Marilyn Graham entered my life — a counselor who helped me deconstruct the shame of evangelical Christianity and rebuild myself from the inside out. My 30s became a renaissance. I worked out. I healed. I grew.

In 1997, I returned to music — opera lessons, theater, conducting, performing. I played Daddy Warbucks eight times, Sweeney Todd once (and loved being the villain), Jud Fry, Horton the Elephant, and even Oscar Madison with four days’ notice. I sang a lead role in La Boheme. Theater gave me back my confidence.

In 2005, I was laid off from Sprint after 18 years. I took a year off, taught voice, partied, took my mom and aunt on a cruise, and went to Disneyland more times than is medically advisable.

Then came James.

I was 45. He was 25. I almost didn’t go on the date. He barely spoke. I thought he hated me. Turns out he was just shy. Twenty years later, we’re still here — married, battle-tested, loyal, imperfect, and deeply in love. We’ve survived unemployment, illness, financial collapse, grief, and the occasional disagreement about whose turn it is to take out the trash. That’s marriage.

In 2012, we lost our condo in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Hard choice, no regrets. It freed us. We rented. We rebuilt.

Then — irony of ironies — after 26 years away from church, I took a job as a Methodist accompanist. I told them I was gay and married. They said, “Welcome home.” I stayed 13 years, decided to go down the path to become a lay minister, and learned that spirituality can be expansive, not suffocating.

In 2015, we bought our dream home in California. Ten years later, the world shifted, and we felt the need to find safer ground. We sold the house in three days, packed up our lives, and moved to Washington with no home lined up. We found our mid-century gem in Aberdeen — trees, rain, quiet, space to breathe. It feels like the right place for this chapter.

But here’s the truth: turning 65 hit me harder than I expected. I feel slower. I feel invisible sometimes. I feel “less than.” James jokes about my memory — not maliciously, but it stings. My mom died of dementia. The last time I saw her, she didn’t know me. That fear sits in my chest like a stone.

I’m anxious about losing friends. I’m anxious about my health. I’m anxious about becoming irrelevant in a world obsessed with 18-to-35-year-olds who think they invented everything from fashion to music. Meanwhile, I have more disposable income now than I ever did in my 20s. Come at me, tech bros.

But here’s what I know:

I’m not done.

I’m learning new systems at work. I joke about retiring “soon”, but the truth is I don’t want to. I’m diving into community. I’m exploring my spiritual path again. I’m renovating a house with the man I love. I’m grieving, growing, laughing, doubting, and reinventing — sometimes all in the same afternoon.

Life hasn’t been easy. But it’s been full. And I’m still here, still curious, still singing, still becoming.

Stay tuned. The next chapter is already humming in the background.