Richard enters the office in a pair of well-cut, fitted slacks pulled a little too high, as old men often do. He stands straight and tall, like a cowboy overlooking the ranch. Bright green eyes look around through a pair of wire frame glasses while adjusting to the dimmed office light. His reddish-brown hair, with no trace of gray, is combed to one side and allowed to fall forward like Robert Redford. When he speaks, his soft southern drawl lets you know immediately he is not from around here. He begins to tell his story, the one that is about him with a clear confident voice. It’s late in the day and he has just finished a full day of work at a rest and rehab center where he has worked at for nine years. He has been in a long-term relationship with his partner, Chris, for all of that time and is hoping to continue the relationship.

     I was born in Shreveport, Louisiana— Louisiana Physicians and Surgeons hospital on March 30, 1961. If you need to know, I’m 50. By the time I was six months old, I was living in Texas. I might as well get the dirty laundry out in the open. When I was about four months old, my father came home and told my mother that his girlfriend was six months pregnant and he told her she could either take the station wagon and leave or he would take the station wagon and leave. So she did the only thing she could – she packed up her child then and drove that station wagon away. So from the time that I was about six months old until the age of 41 years old, I lived in Dallas. I was happy there.

     I was unmercifully tortured in school. Course I was hit on. I was abused by every kind—emotional, verbal, psychological, the whole enchilada. This memory sticks out in my mind for some reason. I must have been 12. My mother and I spoke with the counselor at school about it. She said “if you’ll just give me the names, I will take care of it.” So a week later, my mother and I went back to her with the names, and she said, “Well what do you want me to do about it?”

     I’ve been in an out of therapy for years, starting I guess back when I was 14. Because I was, I guess, terminally shy. There was nothing I wouldn’t do to avoid people. When I finally realized I was gay, I told my mother that I wanted to go to therapy, because if I am (gay), I’m not gonna be ashamed of it. She was like, “okay fine.” You need to go to the therapist. I saw a therapist in the gay community. She took me over to him to make sure I had a smooth transition, that I was not gonna be one of those self-haters. One therapist asked me when I realized I was gay. And my comment was, “I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t.” Back in first grade, all the boys were buddies and all the girls had cooties. I have never grown from that point. All the guys were buddies, I just never had an interest in girls. I did have a couple girlfriends in high school—that was mainly because of parental pressure, you know. My mother’s idea of talking to me about sex was getting me a series of books. I wish I had kept them. It only had one, albeit large, one paragraph on homosexuality. It basically summed it up as it’s a passing phase. Forget about it. So that was my education about homosexuality, at least that part. I used to have a lover and a boyfriend. They knew about each other, matter of fact. One time, one said to the other, “at least we always know where he is.” To which my response was to laugh and say, “Really”? I do love a challenge. I actually, for the heck of it, tried to see if I could sleep with a different guy every day for a month. I know you’re dying to know—30 days, 31 guys, that’s my total. I had a couple days where I was very busy.

     I grew up basically in the Dallas-Fort Worth region, and it wasn’t until I moved to Washington and got more active in politics that I found out that Texas is as conservative as it is. In the regions I was in, Dallas and all was very Democratic. Of course, in the gay communities we laugh at the log cabin Republicans. We wonder about the gay Republicans. What’s wrong with you people? Like many people said, me included, “how can you belong to a group that wants to get rid of you”? So I was happy in my little Democratic liberal circles and thought that the rest of the world was that way. I surrounded myself with the gay community and that’s, of course, a very Democratic party. I don’t know if it’s just that things just changed in the last 15 years or if it’s just things are just so much more intense in politics now than it used to be. For example, it’s been just the last couple of weeks that Allen West said that Obama and Pelosi and the Democrats should get the hell out of his country. Throughout our relationship, Chris kinda wanted to come back to Washington but I did not want to change climates. I was happy there (in Texas). Chris caught me in a weak moment. He had just been fired from his job, and I’d been fired from mine. Chris said let’s just go to Washington. We’d been together for six years. I was tired from six years of saying no. He caught me in a weak moment, and I said fine. I will go to Washington, as I remind him every time I’m driving in half a foot of snow. I say, ‘let’s move to Washington.” You said, “it’s a warmer climate and the change would do me good.” You said…

     Chris and I met in February of ‘96. Basically I’ll be blunt, we met in a bar one Sunday afternoon. He picked me up. We went home. We had sex. We’ve been together ever since. It doesn’t get much shorter than that, does it? Anyway we had a wedding ceremony in the backyard of our home in Texas, officiated by a pagan priestess, with vows written ourselves. We had a few friends there, and we had witnesses to our wedding. Half the people there were straight. They were there for the curiosity of seeing a gay wedding. Ironically, when I look at that tape today, Chris and I are one of the few people still together—everybody else’s divorced. Most of them are straight. A legal marriage is not an option in Texas. Texas did not recognize my relationship. We didn’t even care. Remember most gay relationships are not long-term. Course, that’s my general opinion based on my growing up in the gay community through my 20s and my early 30s. And of course, that’s the group that’s most flighty.

     As I said earlier, my mother left and moved in with her mother. My mother and her mother were both Southern Baptists and Sunday school teachers. I was born and raised in a church, a Southern Baptist church. The Southern Baptist Church and I have since gone our separate ways. I did not like the way they felt about me and my lifestyle. To be honest, I have a big problem with organized religion. I actually dated one Catholic priest, and one Baptist minister preacher. So I have had several talks with religious figures. I am an agnostic. I don’t believe in the Big Bang theory either. I firmly believe there is something supreme out there. I don’t know if you should call it an entity, a spirit or kismet, but I believe there is something. I think as mere mortals we are never going to know. I did go on to college. I went to Southern Memphis University for two years. I was a psych major. I wanted to be, of all things, a sexual therapist, but unfortunately, college is expensive, and hard. Going to school full-time and working full time, I had a breakdown and had to drop out.

On Tuesday February 14 2012, Governor Christine Gregoire signed into law a measure that makes Washington state the seventh to legalize same sex marriage. Opponents immediately filed a referendum to challenge the new law to allow voters to have the final say.

     The older I grow the more the more political I am becoming. I am a liberal progressive Democrat. What do I think about the new gay marriage law? Through this whole process I’ve never been asked that question, what do I think about it? The argument used by my side is that marriage should be for two people in a loving relationship. The argument that marriage should only be for procreation I don’t agree with. How do we think about couples who don’t ever have children? Should their marriages be nullified? Chris and I talked about what we would do in Washington state when the law gets passed and we’re legally allowed to marry. We both felt that we weren’t really bothered by the fact that when we got married in Texas our union wasn’t recognized, that it wasn’t legal. And here in Washington state it wasn’t either. The state didn’t recognize our relationship. We agreed we would table conversation till it finally came around to be a legal option, at which time we would bring it back out of the box and discuss it. Of course, now the law’s been passed, but just like in California—there’s going to be an assault, by the so called National Organization of Marriage, to get the bill repealed and voted down. Hopefully, we won’t go the same way as California. In California, it’s still an ongoing case and it’s going to be in the courts for a long time.

     When I take my dogs out for a walk at night, I feel safe in my neighborhood. Nothing has ever occurred here that I felt like I was in harm’s way or endangered. When we first moved to our little town there was a lot of speculation, but after they seen us here, now for nine years, and there’s not all these little boys disappearing and not the wild sex parties every weekend, everything they specifically feared never materialized. Now most of them look at us and say, okay, they’re just another couple. Chris and I have disagreements. We never really argue, we never fight. The more they know us, the more they see. I can’t tell you how many women I spoke with, that looked at us and said, “You guys are just like me and my husband.” Yeah. Hello.

~Interviewed & transcribed
by Bob Kyllonen