Exploring the frontiers of gay consciousness with ROBERTO BLAIN

Sitting Quietly Under a Tree—Malcolm Boyd on Living an Authentic Gay Life: The author of 30 books, including the bestseller Are You Running with Me Jesus?, Malcolm is poet-writer in residence at Los Angeles’ Episcopal Cathedral Center of St. Paul, a spiritual director, and gay community elder, and I thought he would have some interesting answers on this topic.

I met with Malcolm in the charming Silver Lake home he shares with his life partner of 22 years, the acclaimed gay author Mark Thompson (Gay Soul, Gay Spirit, Gay Body). I had met Malcolm several years prior when I served as moderator and he as panelist at “Standing on the Bones of Our Ancestors,” an intergenerational conference co-hosted by Los Angeles’ Gay Men’s Medicine Circle and the Gay and Lesbian Center, so I knew I was in for some great pearls of wisdom.

Few people have lived as rich and full a life as Malcolm. Now 83, he grew up during the 1920s and ’30s—a period he calls “The Middle Ages”—a time when being gay was “not a possibility.” This self-proclaimed “Midwest, middle-class” boy went on to fame and fortune in film, radio, and television as Mary Pickford’s business partner (Mary Pickford!), became the President of the Television Producers Association of Hollywood, and then left a life many in our town would kill for to become an Episcopal priest (a role he has served in for over 50 years) going on to work in the antiwar and civil-rights movements, which found him marching at the side of Dr. Martin Luther King as one of the Freedom Riders.

Early on, Malcolm discovered the built-in challenge of being gay and authentic. “To be gay in the 20th and the 21st century has been and is incredibly complex,” says Malcolm. “As a gay kid in the 1920s and ’30s, there were few possibilities except that of survival. In effect I had no childhood. I knew from the beginning that survival meant I could never be real with my own family, school, church.”

In his book Take Off the Masks, Malcolm describes the dawning of his inauthenticity: “I was with my family at a social event in the Adirondacks, and there was this kid like me and we were wandering in the forest. We embraced and were loving each other—and then we heard our parents searching for us. I remember the innocence of our sharing, and then we both became aware that we had to be secret and silent. We instinctively realized that whatever we were doing was not permissible and that we were entering a very difficult, dark age that would shadow our entire lives with lies, secrecy, hypocrisy, and tragedy, actually. Except I’m sitting here and I’m not tragic and I have survived.”

How did Malcolm survive? “I learned to be more cautious,” he says. He “managed” high school and “survived” college, but not all did. A fraternity buddy he was close to, arrested in the army for having sex with another man, hanged himself in jail. The heady Hollywood years were not much better. “Hollywood was very closeted, except that certain people would come on to me, very powerful men—claiming something. I didn’t want that, I wanted mutuality and love. I always wanted love.”

The first turning point came at the proverbial Hollywood cocktail party. “I was at this party with a group of world-famous, enormously rich people. I knew most of them were driven—success was the only criterion—and they were very unhappy. I got the message. I realized I did not want to be like those people in 10 or 20 years. I wanted my life to go in a different direction.” He did an about face and left Hollywood to study for the priesthood. “That defining moment gave me the opportunity to get off the fast track and at least be thinking about authenticity and what that might mean.”

But why the church—another type of closet? “There were few choices. For gay men, historically, you had the military and you had the church. The military would be brutality, killing, chaos. The Church had candlelight, beautiful music, gorgeous fabrics. At least there I got to work with the poor and the hungry. So that answered that one. It provided a structure. Better than 20th Century Fox for that.”

In the Church, Malcolm began coming to grips with “the gay question” and his own feelings when he began living with and loving a European monk. However it was still a closeted existence. And the antiwar and civil rights work, while providing a sense of purpose, became yet another framework for inauthenticity. “I don’t think gays were honored very much in either movement,” Malcolm says. “A large number of gay people were involved but it was expected that gay people would submerge their selves and their feelings.”

It is through relationship that Malcolm finally connected with his authentic self. “Being in a relationship with Mark over a long period of time—a relationship that was honest—was liberating,” he relates. “If I wasn’t phony with him then I didn’t have to be phony with anyone.”

I asked Malcolm what advice he would give to those interested in connecting with their authentic selves. “Try to find out who you are,” he advises. “Don’t be so concerned about being loved or about what other people think of you. Give up being the puer aeternus (the eternal child, the Peter Pan), which so many gay men are. Grow up. Move into reality. Adulthood scares a lot of gay men because they think they’re going to have to give up ‘fun’ and that’s kind of a joke when they were in a torture chamber with their ‘fun.’ “

And what of life purpose? How do we break that code and avoid “a life of quiet desperation?” “Shut the fuck up for five minutes!” commands Malcolm. “Sit quietly under a tree of your choice. Engage in reflection. Quit rushing. Be silent and breathe. Breathing is listening. Listen to God. To listen to another person is to listen to God. Start listening, and you will soon get some sense of direction.”

It was late and the interview was over, but I couldn’t help asking Malcolm one last question: Did Mary Pickford lead an authentic life? (Moment of reflection...) “She tried.” Was she happy? (Pause...) “No.”

Roberto Blain is Associate Director of Talent Acquisition at USC and co-facilitator of “Midlife Awakening: Gay Men and the Rites of Passage into the Second Half of Life.” Contact Roberto at robertoblain@aol.com.