Speaker 1: Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. How
Speaker 1: long have you known you were gay? She asked? Since
Speaker 1: I was a child, then why didn't you come out?
Speaker 1: Then the world was a different place. Being gay wasn't
Speaker 1: an option, I said, But why did you wait so long?
Speaker 1: Why did I wait so long? Why Because I made
Speaker 1: a promise to never be like my father, Because my
Speaker 1: mother sucked me up every single day by saying being
Speaker 1: gay was disgusting and that I would never be happy.
Speaker 1: Because I thought being gay was disgusting, and if I
Speaker 1: was gay, then I was disgusting. Because I thought I
Speaker 1: would go to hell, because religion sucked me over by
Speaker 1: telling me my feelings were sinful. Because I was broken,
Speaker 1: because I couldn't look at your sweet face and say sorry,
Speaker 1: Daddy can't live with you anymore, because he wants to
Speaker 1: have sex with men. Because I thought your mother would
Speaker 1: kill her self. I lied for so long that I
Speaker 1: didn't know how to stop. I created an entire world,
Speaker 1: and how could I stop that from spending? That's William
Speaker 1: Dameron reading from The Lie, a memoir of two marriages,
Speaker 1: cat fishing and coming out. Bill's story is about a
Speaker 1: secret he did his best to keep from himself from
Speaker 1: most of his life. But as we all know, secrets
Speaker 1: don't like to sit quietly in corners. They don't appreciate
Speaker 1: being stuffed down in the silence. They grow until they
Speaker 1: can be contained no longer. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this
Speaker 1: is family secrets, the secrets that are kept from us,
Speaker 1: the secrets we keep from others, and the secrets we
Speaker 1: keep from ourselves. I like to begin by asking you
Speaker 1: to describe the landscape of your childhood, where you grew up,
Speaker 1: the family you grew up in, what it was like
Speaker 1: for you. I was born in nine in Greensboro, North Carolina.
Speaker 1: It was very a southern town, very provincial. I think
Speaker 1: social Moray's and religion played very big in our family.
Speaker 1: My mother was Catholic, and um, she stayed at home.
Speaker 1: My father was an attorney. I had three brothers. I
Speaker 1: was a second born, so it was a family that
Speaker 1: was very much a part of the social fabric. My
Speaker 1: mother was a part of the junior league. We were
Speaker 1: all into sports. I was not into basketball, but I
Speaker 1: was a swimmer, so, um, it was all sort of
Speaker 1: about being that good citizen. I think tell me a
Speaker 1: bit about your like, your inner life, as a child,
Speaker 1: this boy growing up in Greensboro. I was the second point,
Speaker 1: as I said, um, three years behind my older brother. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I always looked up to him. And he was
Speaker 1: the basketball star. He was, um, the kid who did
Speaker 1: so well and and and that was sort of my
Speaker 1: childhood is trying to look up to my older brother.
Speaker 1: And and I specifically sort of remember him sitting on
Speaker 1: the corner with him and he said, you know, all
Speaker 1: I want in life is two cars a house in
Speaker 1: the suburbs, two point three kids. I knew I was different, Um,
Speaker 1: but I knew the dream or the desires and thoughts
Speaker 1: that I had couldn't be the same. I couldn't give
Speaker 1: voice to what those were. So I sort of adopted
Speaker 1: his dream is my dream. I went to a Catholic school, Um,
Speaker 1: we all did. We attended church every Sunday. Was very important.
Speaker 1: I remember once our car ran out of gas on
Speaker 1: the way to church, and instead of stopping to get gasps,
Speaker 1: we walked to the rest of the way to church.
Speaker 1: So that was kind of an important part of our
Speaker 1: lives well. And so interesting. The idea of being quote
Speaker 1: unquote normal, being average, being like everybody else, that being um,
Speaker 1: that being a goal, that being something to aspire to.
Speaker 1: It was it was a goal to be like all
Speaker 1: the other kids. And it's funny when you're a kid,
Speaker 1: you know how the other kids are, but also you
Speaker 1: don't really know what their secret thoughts and desires are.
Speaker 1: So as a child, you don't really know that until
Speaker 1: you learn it, or you say something out of character
Speaker 1: and then quickly something said, oh, that's not what I'm
Speaker 1: supposed to say or be like. I remember playing with
Speaker 1: some neighborhood kids. The rest of them were playing football
Speaker 1: in the backyard, and there were two other boys that
Speaker 1: had a football, and we were being kind of silly
Speaker 1: and and walking to football down the driveway and sort
Speaker 1: of dancing behind it. And I remember one of the
Speaker 1: mothers saying, y'all are acting like a bunch of girls.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff stays with you, doesn't it. It does.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting to just generally the nature of childhood,
Speaker 1: because no kid wants to be different, and yet every kid,
Speaker 1: every child has an inner life. Um, but the idea
Speaker 1: of sharing that inner life is too scary. It doesn't happen,
Speaker 1: and so there's that feeling of um. Nobody else feels
Speaker 1: the way I do, which is of course where literature
Speaker 1: comes in, because then when we read, we discover that
Speaker 1: there are these characters who feel just like we do
Speaker 1: and have in our lives that are so similar to ours.
Speaker 1: But there's such an isolating feeling. I think that is
Speaker 1: universal in childhood, but more so when there's something within
Speaker 1: you where you really do feel like you're different from
Speaker 1: the large your group that's trying to be quote unquote
Speaker 1: normal average. Tell me a little bit about your mother.
Speaker 1: I can see looking back now that she really wanted
Speaker 1: the best for all of us. She wanted us to
Speaker 1: excel at everything that we did, whether that was jobs
Speaker 1: or sports um or for me, I played the piano
Speaker 1: as well. So it was really important to her that
Speaker 1: we presented our best image um to our family and
Speaker 1: friends and society, and there was sort of one image
Speaker 1: to portray that that was the best. In the sixties
Speaker 1: and seventies, there was no internet, so there was no
Speaker 1: sort of way of finding different people or connecting to
Speaker 1: other people. You only knew what was happening in the
Speaker 1: town that you were in, in that small radius, and
Speaker 1: my mother was very much that way. Tell me a
Speaker 1: bit about your dad. My father was an attorney UM,
Speaker 1: and he was a litigator, so I think he used
Speaker 1: up all his words during the day in court. When
Speaker 1: he came home, he was a man of very few words. Uh.
Speaker 1: He came home, dinner was on the table. We did
Speaker 1: have one sort of fun thing when he came home.
Speaker 1: Sometimes he would have chewing gum in his pocket. We
Speaker 1: would all sort of punch each other and run to
Speaker 1: the door to be the first one there to grab
Speaker 1: the chewing gum out of his pocket. But then we
Speaker 1: would sit down at the table. My mother would have
Speaker 1: dinner ready. He would drink down scotch very quickly. He
Speaker 1: would eat his food in a minute or two. And
Speaker 1: so there were very few really words spoken between us.
Speaker 1: And when I look back, I sort of see that
Speaker 1: he was. He was missing a lot of the time.
Speaker 1: Even before he left us, he was sort of not there.
Speaker 1: Did you feel like you knew him? No, I don't
Speaker 1: think I ever really knew exactly who he was. Looking back,
Speaker 1: I know now who he is. He had a difficult
Speaker 1: childhood as well. He was an only child and his
Speaker 1: mother was an alcoholic um so he was sent to
Speaker 1: live with his grandparents in Fletcher, North Carolina for a
Speaker 1: while while his mother recovered. So as an adult, I
Speaker 1: understand that as a kid, I didn't was in this
Speaker 1: image conscious childhood in this traditional Southern family. There was
Speaker 1: also the matter of the body, as in Bill's body.
Speaker 1: I think our bodies are for many of us, a
Speaker 1: source of embarrassment or shame. There's just something so messy,
Speaker 1: so exposed, so physical about our bodies. This shame came
Speaker 1: into play in Bill's early life. I was a swimmer
Speaker 1: for most of my childhood. My brothers and I were
Speaker 1: all painfully skinny. We just could not seem to gain weight.
Speaker 1: And as as a boy, you don't want to be skinny,
Speaker 1: and also too, it's sort of portrayed this weakness on
Speaker 1: the outside that I felt the inside. And I remember
Speaker 1: swimming at the City swim Me getting out, my mother's
Speaker 1: sitting in the stands, and I go up and sit
Speaker 1: next to her on the bleachers, and I remember her
Speaker 1: comment was, you're so damn skinny. You need to press
Speaker 1: weights like those other boys. Um so, so there was
Speaker 1: no there wasn't really a comment about, wow, you did
Speaker 1: a great job, you know, swimming. It cemented that feeling
Speaker 1: that there was something wrong with me, not only inside,
Speaker 1: but on the outside. You internalized that I did, and
Speaker 1: then you, and you carried it with you. I did
Speaker 1: carry it with me. I think when you have something
Speaker 1: you consider ugly on the inside, that's all you can
Speaker 1: see on the outside. When I looked in the mirror,
Speaker 1: I just saw all of the flaws. What Bill considered
Speaker 1: ugly on the inside was the awareness, not necessarily conscious knowledge,
Speaker 1: but something else, something thrumming deep in his interior that
Speaker 1: he wasn't attracted to girls. He felt something for boys,
Speaker 1: something he knew he wasn't supposed to feel. I was
Speaker 1: in college for two years at a piano performance major.
Speaker 1: I had an opportunity to have a summer job with
Speaker 1: my aunt, who lived in Denver, Colorado. She knew a
Speaker 1: couple who owned the Lost gold Mine. It was a
Speaker 1: gold mine where you could take tours through and I
Speaker 1: would live with her. I remember my mother sitting me
Speaker 1: down in the living room. She was a nurse, so
Speaker 1: she was wearing her starched nursing whites, and she sat
Speaker 1: down and said, okay, Bill, I want you to know
Speaker 1: that your aunt is and she lowered her voice a
Speaker 1: lesbian because you couldn't say that out loud. It was
Speaker 1: almost like it was a curse word. And she said
Speaker 1: to me, I want you to promise that you won't
Speaker 1: let Sheila change you. I is that okay? And I'm
Speaker 1: still not quite certain why she let me live with her.
Speaker 1: If she was so afraid, she must have had some
Speaker 1: sense of of who her son was. But she still
Speaker 1: let me live with her for that summer. So two questions.
Speaker 1: One is you you had a consciousness that you were
Speaker 1: gay at that point? Yeah? Did you have language for it?
Speaker 1: I didn't have language for it. You're exactly right. I
Speaker 1: I could not say in my head that I'm gay,
Speaker 1: and I never did. It just wasn't how I identified
Speaker 1: and it wasn't an option. I knew it wasn't an option,
Speaker 1: but I knew I had these thoughts and desires. So
Speaker 1: I lived with my aunt for the summer. The Lost
Speaker 1: gold Mine was owned by a couple of gay guys,
Speaker 1: and it was a great summer. She eventually took me
Speaker 1: to my first gay bar in Central City, of all places,
Speaker 1: which is such a conservative passion. So we went into
Speaker 1: the bar. I met a friend of hers don who
Speaker 1: was twenty three. I was nineteen. I had a few drinks.
Speaker 1: We walked out to the parking lot, and it was
Speaker 1: the first time I kissed a man, and it was
Speaker 1: the most amazing feeling. It was right and it was wrong,
Speaker 1: and I knew that could never happen again. So now
Speaker 1: you're twenty and you're back from your summer. Yes, And
Speaker 1: as a matter of fact, that summer too, I remember
Speaker 1: I um got a gym membership in Denver, and I
Speaker 1: went to the gym as well, so I was a
Speaker 1: little more fleshed out too, And so I was actually
Speaker 1: feeling good about myself for sort of the first time.
Speaker 1: And it felt good to have, you know, two or
Speaker 1: three months of just being myself. But I came back
Speaker 1: to North Carolina and I knew I had to tell
Speaker 1: my mother. I knew I had to let her know that,
Speaker 1: you know, the things that she said and the things
Speaker 1: that I heard about gay people were wrong. I still
Speaker 1: was not strong enough to say, Mom, I'm gay. What
Speaker 1: I said was, you know, Mom, the love that Sheila
Speaker 1: has for her girlfriend and the love that these other
Speaker 1: people have, it's the same. And she was immediately incensed
Speaker 1: and said, no, it's not that's disgusting. It's it's not
Speaker 1: were her views informed primarily by her Catholicism, or by
Speaker 1: community and culture, or all of the above, all of
Speaker 1: the above. Yeah, I have actually spoke, you know, talked
Speaker 1: to her, interrogated her a bit, since it was taboo,
Speaker 1: That's what she told me. It was taboo, and I
Speaker 1: didn't want you to experience that pain. You know, the
Speaker 1: world would never alter, so I had to. So, now
Speaker 1: you're back from your summer and you're feeling pretty good
Speaker 1: about yourself. You've you've been able to be yourself for
Speaker 1: three home months. What happens next? I was thrown right
Speaker 1: back into this was so, I was thrown right back
Speaker 1: into society in North Carolina. When you escape hundred miles
Speaker 1: away from home, you fill this freedom. But when you
Speaker 1: come act, it's sort of like the humidity of southern summer.
Speaker 1: It's oppressive and you start to feel it and there's
Speaker 1: your church again, and there's all the people you know.
Speaker 1: And here was my mother saying this is wrong, this
Speaker 1: is disgusting. You're never going to be happy. And it
Speaker 1: wasn't just a one time thing. It was sort of Okay,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. As I came home from school
Speaker 1: every day, do you want to talk to the priest
Speaker 1: because the priest can help you. Do you want to
Speaker 1: be a woman to My mother asked me, um, and
Speaker 1: I just it was immediate. It was like, okay, this,
Speaker 1: this is wrong, this is not good. Also, at the
Speaker 1: same time, the AIDS epidemic had become national. It was
Speaker 1: hidden for so long. I remember my aunt telling me
Speaker 1: don't do poppers because they thought that's what caused it.
Speaker 1: There was, you know, nobody really knew. But suddenly was
Speaker 1: on the news and men were wasting away and here
Speaker 1: was my body dysmorphia coming again. Okay, this is gay.
Speaker 1: People are getting skinny and wasting away. And and so
Speaker 1: it was the combination of all that guilt and shame
Speaker 1: and being back that sort of drove me back into
Speaker 1: the closet. We're going to take a quick break. We'll
Speaker 1: be back in a moment. So Bill returned to the norm,
Speaker 1: you know, wife, two point three kids, white picket fence.
Speaker 1: In the South. In those days, people married young and
Speaker 1: got on with it. His brother, his friends, they were
Speaker 1: all getting married. He meets Catherine, the friend of a friend,
Speaker 1: and he's drawn to her. She seems like a kindred
Speaker 1: spirit to him. First time I met Catherine, there was
Speaker 1: something I saw in her eyes. It was this this
Speaker 1: look vulnerability. I can remember it so specifically, looking at
Speaker 1: it and seeing something there that I connected with, and
Speaker 1: I think it was the same thing I saw in
Speaker 1: my eyes. She was adopted, and I've heard that adopted
Speaker 1: kids often find each other because there's something about them
Speaker 1: that connects them. I wasn't adopted, but it was feeling
Speaker 1: like it didn't have parents, and so I think, you know,
Speaker 1: we really connected on that level. It was our our
Speaker 1: shared pain that we we didn't externalize, but you know,
Speaker 1: we had it inside and so we connected. And how
Speaker 1: long after that did you marry and begin a family?
Speaker 1: We dated for a year. We dated for a while.
Speaker 1: Um I remember introducing her to my brother and he
Speaker 1: sort of said, she seems a little immature, And it
Speaker 1: mattered to me so much what my older brother thought. Um,
Speaker 1: So we stopped dating for a while. But then my
Speaker 1: older brother got married and and Catherine, you know, I
Speaker 1: called her up and said would you come with me
Speaker 1: to his wedding and she was like, well, you didn't
Speaker 1: call me, so I thought we were off. And when
Speaker 1: I saw her again, um, well, she dolled up, right,
Speaker 1: she was dogged up. You know. It was a nineteen eighties,
Speaker 1: and she had the big hair and the shoulder pads,
Speaker 1: and she had this tiny waist. And I remember all
Speaker 1: the men they are sort of looking at her, like, wow,
Speaker 1: she's beautiful. And I felt proud, like this is great.
Speaker 1: And and she always had an amazing sense of humor,
Speaker 1: and I think I love that about her too. So
Speaker 1: I think at weddings, that's what happens, right you you're
Speaker 1: with someone and you see all of this happiness and joy,
Speaker 1: and you want to capture that and have that for yourself.
Speaker 1: And was this the wedding of your older brother who
Speaker 1: was admired and emulated and wanted to be like So
Speaker 1: Bill and Catherine start to plan their wedding. The details
Speaker 1: kind of take over the way wedding details. So often
Speaker 1: do you talk about flower arrangements and place cards and
Speaker 1: whether to serve chicken or duck breast, rather than actually
Speaker 1: talking about what you're doing, which is committing to another
Speaker 1: person for life. Bill had all kinds of doubts, but
Speaker 1: he didn't articulate them, not to Catherine, not even to himself.
Speaker 1: He was going to make the best of it. A
Speaker 1: beautiful wedding would lead to a beautiful future. I remember
Speaker 1: the night before my wedding, we had a rehearsal dinner,
Speaker 1: and I remember thinking I should feel something different, I
Speaker 1: should feel this immense joy and wonder and love, and
Speaker 1: I'm not feeling it. But it's too late to change it.
Speaker 1: Everybody's been invited, all the gifts are here, and I
Speaker 1: can't go back. Yeah, you're reminding me of I mean,
Speaker 1: I had a brief, ill fated marriage when I was
Speaker 1: in my twenties, and I remember walking down the aisle
Speaker 1: on the arm of my nineteenth century literature professor who
Speaker 1: was standing in from my dad, who was no longer living,
Speaker 1: and just thinking, this is a mistake. This is a mistake.
Speaker 1: This is a mistake. Um. Yeah, it's not what you're
Speaker 1: supposed to be feeling on your wedding day. Yeah. Katherine
Speaker 1: and Bill begin their lives together, first in Tampa, Florida,
Speaker 1: where he had a job working at a bank, but
Speaker 1: Catherine was terribly homesick, so they packs up their stuff
Speaker 1: and moved back to Greensboro, North Carolina. After a year,
Speaker 1: Bill found another job and that's where their children were born.
Speaker 1: Bill throws himself into his life as a family man.
Speaker 1: He stuffs any feelings he has for men even further
Speaker 1: down into the recesses of his psyche, it just isn't
Speaker 1: going to happen. He loves being a dad to his
Speaker 1: young daughters. He's a really hands on father, unlike his
Speaker 1: own father, who not only was distant and absent, but
Speaker 1: was known to be a full landerer. So this is
Speaker 1: yet another reason why Bill is never going to cheat
Speaker 1: on Catherine, not with anyone, so that part of his life,
Speaker 1: the sexual romantic part, just ceases to exist for him.
Speaker 1: The family moves a number of times as his daughters
Speaker 1: go from babies to little kids to teenagers, and he
Speaker 1: works his way up with the corporate ladder in the
Speaker 1: banking business. I had moved from North Carolina to Virginia
Speaker 1: for a job. That company declared bankruptcy and I found
Speaker 1: a job in the northeast. My kids were teenagers. Then
Speaker 1: we made the decision to move for my career. So
Speaker 1: suddenly I was out of the conservative state of North
Speaker 1: Carolina and Virginia and in the very liberal bastion of
Speaker 1: New England. Same sex marriage had just been approved the
Speaker 1: year we moved, and there was this cognitive dissonance inside
Speaker 1: of me. So there was the combination of the move.
Speaker 1: The kids were teenagers and not relying on me anymore.
Speaker 1: And I met this guy who sort of affect and
Speaker 1: me in a way I had never experienced before. He
Speaker 1: was an ideal, He was funny, he was generous, he
Speaker 1: was kind a lot of men in the South, they're
Speaker 1: kind of guarded, you know, and they don't really express
Speaker 1: their emotions and their feelings. This was the first guy
Speaker 1: that did that, and it really affected me. Bill's feelings
Speaker 1: for this man can't be expressed. It's way too dangerous.
Speaker 1: So instead he finds another outlet for those feelings. The
Speaker 1: skinny kid whose mom told him he really ought a
Speaker 1: lift weights. That kid asserts himself big time. So I
Speaker 1: began to feel those feelings and it became stronger. Because
Speaker 1: of all of that, I was still feeling like that skinny,
Speaker 1: ugly kid, and I wanted to sort of shore up
Speaker 1: the outside to help shore up what was crumbling inside.
Speaker 1: So I began going to the gym working out. It
Speaker 1: was an obsession. It was a way to control something
Speaker 1: in my life when everything else was spinning out of control.
Speaker 1: And I remember the first I'm sort of clicking on
Speaker 1: the by for steroids on the internet and it was
Speaker 1: like all my life, I've been the good boy. I'm
Speaker 1: going to do something now that is just for me.
Speaker 1: I'm going to control this thing. And how did that
Speaker 1: play out? With the steroids and within your I mean,
Speaker 1: you're you're living this family life. You're in this house,
Speaker 1: You've you've got Katherine, You've got your daughters, and you
Speaker 1: have this other life, this secret life. It's sort of
Speaker 1: like a double secret life. It's a secret on top
Speaker 1: of a secret. It is. I remember getting them in
Speaker 1: the mail and Katherine and the girls were sleeping. It
Speaker 1: was a Saturday morning. So I got up and I
Speaker 1: had planned it all out. I had printed out how
Speaker 1: to do a steroid cycle stack. I did all my
Speaker 1: research like the Internet was the greatest teacher. Looking back,
Speaker 1: of course, now that's so foolish, but you know, I
Speaker 1: felt like, oh, I verified it with several different sources
Speaker 1: on the Internet. It was foolish. I got this in
Speaker 1: the mail. I had no idea who the supplier was,
Speaker 1: except it was someone in Eastern Europe. I actually, in
Speaker 1: order to get the steroids, my father had died and
Speaker 1: he left me in I ra a and I needed
Speaker 1: to cash a check every year, and I used that
Speaker 1: money to buy the steroids, and I wired it to
Speaker 1: the supplier. I went down to the bathroom, closed the door,
Speaker 1: and I remember looking in the mirror, thinking, all right,
Speaker 1: am I really going to do this? Is this what
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do? And I filled up the syringe, pulled
Speaker 1: down my pants, stuck it in, pushed the plunger in,
Speaker 1: and then pulled the needle out. And I sat there waiting,
Speaker 1: thinking how fast is this going to work? Is this
Speaker 1: going to make me strong right away? Is it going
Speaker 1: to cause a heart attack? Of course, none of that happened, um,
Speaker 1: But over the weeks it became more of an obsession.
Speaker 1: And then I began to see the scale move from
Speaker 1: one sixty one seventy, and I became really hungry, finishing
Speaker 1: my plate, finishing the girl's plates. It's interesting because I
Speaker 1: was spiraling down, but somehow Catherine was becoming stronger in
Speaker 1: a way. I'm not sure if she saw, Okay, something's
Speaker 1: terribly wrong with her husband, um, but she had struggled
Speaker 1: for a while, you know, in finding her birth family
Speaker 1: and and all the results of that. But she started
Speaker 1: to sort of question me, like what's going on? Like
Speaker 1: you're a lot bigger and like, you're going to the
Speaker 1: gym all the time, is you tell me if something
Speaker 1: was wrong? And of course I was like, no, no,
Speaker 1: I'm just stressed at work and this is just my
Speaker 1: way of just beating distress. Within your marriage to Catherine,
Speaker 1: during those years and the years prior, was there a
Speaker 1: kind of accommodation in terms of intimacy. Catherine Um struggled
Speaker 1: for a while with i'll call it sadness, just just
Speaker 1: to call it that. Um she was adopted, she found
Speaker 1: her birth family, who was wonderful. It was a wonderful
Speaker 1: birth family, and as it turned out, her birth mother
Speaker 1: married her birth father and they had another child, so
Speaker 1: she was given up so that she could have a
Speaker 1: two parent family. Her adopted father died when she was five,
Speaker 1: so she didn't have that. But here was this family
Speaker 1: that gave her up, who did have that, and a
Speaker 1: sister and that, and she struggled with that. She always
Speaker 1: wanted a family that would sort of choose her and
Speaker 1: not regret their decision. So she struggled a long time.
Speaker 1: And so intimacy in the beginning, it was we were
Speaker 1: very intimate. As the years progressed, it became less and
Speaker 1: less frequent and I would say, oh, this is what
Speaker 1: all married couples do, this is what happens to all
Speaker 1: married couples. And because she was struggling with some of
Speaker 1: this sadness too, she was less frequently interested in it.
Speaker 1: So I think that was sort of the accommodation. But
Speaker 1: there was a certainly times where she would say, why
Speaker 1: don't you ever kiss me? Why don't you kiss me
Speaker 1: the way we did when we dated? You know, I
Speaker 1: shouldn't be the one who's initiating it all the time.
Speaker 1: This is what she said. I would listen to that
Speaker 1: and say, Okay, I've got to make a note to
Speaker 1: make sure that I do initiate it. And I do that.
Speaker 1: But I'm sure in her mind it was always playing
Speaker 1: behind it that there's something wrong, and is that thing
Speaker 1: that's wrong me? And so I think she began to
Speaker 1: think there was something wrong with her, which was extremely
Speaker 1: painful for me because I knew what was happening, and
Speaker 1: I was causing her to feel less desirable. And you
Speaker 1: loved her. I did love her. That love comes through
Speaker 1: so strongly in Bill's memoir. His bond with Catherine may
Speaker 1: not have been romantic or sexual, but it was love,
Speaker 1: So it would be a painful thing to know you're
Speaker 1: causing the person you love pain, or that she's blaming
Speaker 1: herself for something that's got nothing to do with her.
Speaker 1: For so many years of our marriage, she always worked
Speaker 1: at home, so I was always sort of the breadwinner
Speaker 1: and the caretaker. Even when the kids were born. Um,
Speaker 1: Katherine had a C section with both of them, so
Speaker 1: I would get up with the kids in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. So I was always the one to
Speaker 1: sort of take care of things. And I sort of
Speaker 1: prided myself and that I love doing that, and and
Speaker 1: I love taking care of Catherine as well, but I
Speaker 1: wasn't taking care of her completely. So this period of
Speaker 1: time where your body is changing, there is a moment
Speaker 1: where Catherine finds the steroids. Yeah, the way that that
Speaker 1: happened is I would I She was beginning to doubt,
Speaker 1: of course, because no man goes from hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: pounds pounds and suddenly as acne on his back. There
Speaker 1: was a package that came in the mail well after Christmas, Um,
Speaker 1: and I had told her, you know, I might be
Speaker 1: getting stuff in the mail and it might be a
Speaker 1: Christmas gifts. Don't open it clever. She did she she
Speaker 1: saw this package. It was from Moldova and um I
Speaker 1: she told me, well, their writing was sort of so
Speaker 1: interesting and intricate, and when I opened it up, the
Speaker 1: vial of steroids was wrapped in this newspaper that was
Speaker 1: very intricately wrapped, and so she thought, oh, it's a gift.
Speaker 1: You know. The girls were with her and she's like,
Speaker 1: should we open it. My daughters were with her and
Speaker 1: they opened it, and unfortunately it was all of them
Speaker 1: that discovered sort of this vial of amber fluid at
Speaker 1: the same time. So when I came home that night,
Speaker 1: she actually called me at work and said, all right,
Speaker 1: you need to come home. Now. We're going to pause
Speaker 1: for a moment. Bill comes home, his wife and his
Speaker 1: girls are all sitting at the kitchen counter, very solemn,
Speaker 1: just sitting there staring at him. Catherine opens up her
Speaker 1: hand and in her palm is the vial of steroids.
Speaker 1: At first, Bill is just plain angry she opened his mail,
Speaker 1: violated his privacy. He knows this is the wrong response,
Speaker 1: but he just can't help it. His daughter, Claire says,
Speaker 1: I think I know where the rest of his stashes.
Speaker 1: She's noticed that Bill has always been protective of his
Speaker 1: work back, he doesn't let it out of his sight.
Speaker 1: She grabs his bag, pulls out a brown paper bag
Speaker 1: filled with syringes, and Catherine Catherine confiscates it all. It
Speaker 1: must have been a terrible feeling on top of a
Speaker 1: terrible feeling, because those steroids are the only way that
Speaker 1: Bill is managing to control his shame, guilt, and desires.
Speaker 1: So how long after this does she confront you and
Speaker 1: straight out ask you if you're gay? It took a
Speaker 1: couple of months after that actually before she confronted me.
Speaker 1: That's so interesting because I think we only ask what
Speaker 1: we're ready to know, and it would seem so completely
Speaker 1: clear once that discovery of the steroids were made, plus
Speaker 1: everything else that had come to for that that was
Speaker 1: the case. But it seems like she couldn't take in
Speaker 1: more than she could handle until she was able to
Speaker 1: ask the next logical question. Right, She had to be
Speaker 1: prepared if she asked that question for what the answer was,
Speaker 1: and that answer might destroy everything she always knew. So
Speaker 1: I think it was a series of steps to discovering
Speaker 1: what the true nature of the secret was. We were
Speaker 1: driving to Walmart to get some supplies for the girls
Speaker 1: for school, and I could see she was very quiet
Speaker 1: and she was mulling something over and she said, very quickly, okay,
Speaker 1: just pull over, pull over, parked the car. I got
Speaker 1: to ask you this or I never will. And I
Speaker 1: knew in I had what she was going to ask me,
Speaker 1: but I didn't know what my answer would be until
Speaker 1: we parked there, and I owed her the truth. When
Speaker 1: you love someone, you can't lie to them. You've got
Speaker 1: to stand in the truth. And even though I knew
Speaker 1: it would destroy everything I built, because everything was built
Speaker 1: on that lie everything, I owed her the truth. And
Speaker 1: what was your response to Catherine when she asked you
Speaker 1: if you were gay? I don't want to be. And
Speaker 1: it was exactly what I was thinking. And that was
Speaker 1: also the truth of your entire life, which is you
Speaker 1: didn't want to be exactly I had tried so hard
Speaker 1: not to be. So after telling Catherine, there was this
Speaker 1: immediate sense of relief. Oh my god, I've finally told somebody,
Speaker 1: and the person I've told is my wife. In some
Speaker 1: ways it felt really right, and in some ways it
Speaker 1: felt really wrong. Catherine had been with Bill all those years.
Speaker 1: She deserved to be the one who knew the truth
Speaker 1: to begin with. For a while, the two of them
Speaker 1: had a renewed connection because they both knew a secret
Speaker 1: no one else knew. They clung to each other. They wondered,
Speaker 1: where do we go from here? Do we stay together?
Speaker 1: Because we got the kids, the house, the job. Each night,
Speaker 1: as they laid in bed, they talked it through. Eventually
Speaker 1: they came to the conclusion that they both deserved to
Speaker 1: be happy and they needed to tell the kids. It
Speaker 1: wasn't fair to lie to them. Their girls were at
Speaker 1: this point fourteen and sixteen, Bill and Catherine call a
Speaker 1: family meeting on a weekend afternoon. Okay, girls, I want
Speaker 1: you to know something. I'm the same person today that
Speaker 1: I was yesterday, but I want you to know this
Speaker 1: about me. I'm gay. It was the thing he never
Speaker 1: wanted to say to them, to anyone. Well, that makes sense,
Speaker 1: one of them says, are you getting a divorce? The
Speaker 1: other asks, we're talking about it? Your parents respond, does
Speaker 1: this mean we'll have to move again? So many questions
Speaker 1: and the sound of a house so carefully constructed breaking apart.
Speaker 1: You wrote a really beautiful modern love column in The
Speaker 1: New York Times about the last time that Catherine cuts
Speaker 1: your hair. She had always cut your hair throughout your
Speaker 1: entire decades long marriage. Was it two sixty four haircuts?
Speaker 1: Two and sixty four haircuts? And it's this beautiful piece
Speaker 1: about her giving you the last haircut. You know it's
Speaker 1: going to be the last haircut, and actually you asked
Speaker 1: her to just shave your head, and she shaves your head,
Speaker 1: and she's crying as she's shaving your head. It's really powerful.
Speaker 1: So after after we decided to get a divorce and
Speaker 1: I came out to the children, I was sort of
Speaker 1: so racked with shame and guilt. Then Catherine didn't have
Speaker 1: a support system in the Northeast, and she felt like
Speaker 1: she just had to take the girls back to Virginia,
Speaker 1: where we had lived for nine years, where they would
Speaker 1: have a support system. So she had moved back, and
Speaker 1: I helped them buy a house and I set up
Speaker 1: the house, and I would go back every weekend, using
Speaker 1: all these miles to spend time with them, to set
Speaker 1: up the house, to get things ready. And finally, after
Speaker 1: a while, Catherine had had enough, like we can't keep pretending.
Speaker 1: You can't keep coming back here every weekend and pretending
Speaker 1: that we're a married couple. It's too hard on me.
Speaker 1: I've got to move on um. And she had always
Speaker 1: cut my hair. Nobody else had cut my hair. I
Speaker 1: don't know why I was so particular about it, but
Speaker 1: she had done it all of those times. And I
Speaker 1: remember just getting the briefcase because we wouldn't even say anything.
Speaker 1: If I got the briefcase that had the haircutting equipment
Speaker 1: in it. She okay, it's time for a hair cut.
Speaker 1: So I got it. She puts the cape on me
Speaker 1: and she's cutting my hair, and that's when she's saying,
Speaker 1: you can't stay here again. And so she asked me,
Speaker 1: who's going to cut your hair? After all this time,
Speaker 1: it was our most in a way, our most intimate
Speaker 1: act because she would have her hands on my head
Speaker 1: and in my hair. And so I thought, well, I
Speaker 1: don't know who's going to cut my hair, so I
Speaker 1: just want you to shave it all off. And so
Speaker 1: she did. And when she saw me, she saw me
Speaker 1: the person with no hair shaved off, and it was
Speaker 1: a different man. And so for her that was shocking,
Speaker 1: and she knew she was never going to cut it again.
Speaker 1: And here was this man who's no longer her husband.
Speaker 1: And so for me, that is just sort of the
Speaker 1: heart of the book and why I published it in
Speaker 1: modern Love, because we did have this love, in this intimacy,
Speaker 1: and it was expressed through two hundred and sixty four haircuts.
Speaker 1: And if she's cut my hair all these years, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna shave it and nobody else is going to cut it.
Speaker 1: Is a way to start new. So, speaking of starting new,
Speaker 1: talk about your life today. Life today is really good.
Speaker 1: After all of that. I had a few tragic encounters
Speaker 1: with men, of course, because after forty some years, dating
Speaker 1: men for the first time was a whole new experience.
Speaker 1: But then I met another father named Paul, who has
Speaker 1: three children, and I've written him about him in my book,
Speaker 1: and my brother told me, you make Paul too perfect, Like, well,
Speaker 1: he is perfect. We're married, we have five kids between us,
Speaker 1: three of them still live with us there in their twenties.
Speaker 1: He has a great relationship with his ex wife because
Speaker 1: he was married to a woman before, and his ex
Speaker 1: wife is married and has another child. And my ex
Speaker 1: wife now is engaged to somebody. Um he has the
Speaker 1: same name as me. We talked on the phone a
Speaker 1: week ago and she asked if Paul and I would
Speaker 1: come to her wedding, So we're all in a really
Speaker 1: great place. It took this bomb to explode, to sort
Speaker 1: of blow things apart so that we could come back
Speaker 1: together in a new configuration, which was in truth instead
Speaker 1: of lies, and in real love instead of this sort
Speaker 1: of faking. Yet, so what happens when shame goes away?
Speaker 1: When a secret is no longer sitting in any corner
Speaker 1: or stuffed under any rug? What does it feel like
Speaker 1: to walk through life? Or I don't want to put
Speaker 1: words in your mouth? Is that the case that you
Speaker 1: walk through life now without that feeling of something wrong
Speaker 1: being on the inside? You're exactly right, it is. It's
Speaker 1: gone away. You have an energy you never thought you
Speaker 1: would have before. You don't have to hide pronouns, you
Speaker 1: don't have to hide you know, when you're in the closet,
Speaker 1: it's not just a part of you, it's all of you.
Speaker 1: And when you step out of that, you can suddenly
Speaker 1: see things so clearly. And I always wanted to write,
Speaker 1: but I couldn't write because my words weren't authentic. Now
Speaker 1: I had this sudden creativity and this energy, and I'm
Speaker 1: writing and reaching out to people who were in the
Speaker 1: same situation and helping them, And it is night and day.
Speaker 1: It is night and day when you get rid of
Speaker 1: a secret. And that's I think the way to see it.
Speaker 1: It was dark before and now it's light. I asked
Speaker 1: Bill to me a pass from his memoir, the Lie
Speaker 1: that to me perfectly encapsulates the beauty and the pathos
Speaker 1: of his story and the way ultimately that love wins.
Speaker 1: Oh and when it comes to love, there's one more thing.
Speaker 1: After our interview, Bill wrote to me to make sure
Speaker 1: I understood that his mother, the same mother who once
Speaker 1: berated him and shamed him for being gay, is his
Speaker 1: fiercest and most loving supporter today. So there's that in
Speaker 1: the richness, the fullness, the amazing span of a life
Speaker 1: he never could have imagined. If this were a film
Speaker 1: playing out in the camera, pand you would see a
Speaker 1: family of four standing silently by the front door, with
Speaker 1: no sense of whether they were coming or going. Pulling
Speaker 1: further back, a set of upset kitchen chair is lying
Speaker 1: on their backs, and then drifting above the house, and
Speaker 1: then old branches of leafless trees hovering over the roof.
Speaker 1: We're chattering squirrels, anst and mocked. A barking dog just
Speaker 1: behind this house, where other similar homes, where warm yellow
Speaker 1: lights began to illuminate windows, and the headlights of cars
Speaker 1: cast yellow triangles in the dark driveways. Behind the doors
Speaker 1: of these homes, you might hear the muffled cries of
Speaker 1: excited children running toward the front door, holding out their
Speaker 1: hands and shouting Daddy's home. I'd like to thank my guest,
Speaker 1: William Dameron, for sharing his story today. He is the
Speaker 1: author of The Lie, a memoir of two marriages, cat fishing,
Speaker 1: and coming Out. You can find out more about Bill
Speaker 1: at www dot William Dameron dot com. Family Secrets is
Speaker 1: an iHeart Media production. Dylan Fagan is the supervising producer,
Speaker 1: Lowell Bolante is the audio engineer, and Julie Douglas is
Speaker 1: the executive producer. If you have a family secret you'd
Speaker 1: like to share, you can get in touch with us
Speaker 1: at listener mail at Family Secrets podcast dot com, and
Speaker 1: you can also find us on Instagram at Danny Writer,
Speaker 1: and Facebook at Family Secrets Pod and Twitter at fami
Speaker 1: Secrets Pod. For more about my book Inheritance, visit Danny
Speaker 1: Shapiro dot com. For more podcasts. For my Heart Radio,
Speaker 1: visit the I heart radio, app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you listen to your favorite shows.