Billie Joe’s Journey Book I

Prologue

Each of us, man, woman, or tweener, has his own coming out experience.  Some of us come out without hesitation. Others have a rough road to hoe, while others decide not to come out at all.  Each of us finds a way to deal with the hurdles placed in the way of honesty and openness.  Some of you may be facing the decision to come out or not as you read these lines.

Billie Joe Walker Jr. comes out hard.  The suicide of his best friend, Ralphie, sends him on a journey of discovery that sends his life spinning out of control.  He wants to know what it means to be gay.  He seeks the “gay” community where he’ll be welcome and accepted as he is. 

Ralphie decided not to stay and fight, leaving a note, “I won’t live in a world that hates me.”  And Billie Joe is angry.  Why didn’t Ralphie come to him?  Why didn’t he tell him that he was gay?  He would have accepted him, embraced him as the lifelong friend he was.  Billie Joe has another emotion: he’s ashamed for not having been brave enough to tell Ralphie that he is gay.  Neither knew about the other because of fear, and Billie Joe is left to pay for their mistakes. 

Determined not to give up, Billie Joe develops a plan to leave his safe rural Minnesota home to find the “gay” community he’d only heard about.  He refuses to stay in a world that hates him, so he’s going to seek out people like himself, who will understand his desire to be free of the hateful voices that diminish him more each the day.

There is security in numbers.  Sometimes a family is enough to get you through.  Then there are families that reject their gay offspring and force them to leave home before their time.  Most kids are safe at home, even if they are gay, but Billie Joe isn’t certain.  His father’s comment about Ralphie’s “illness” has Billie Joe looking for a way out.  The despair over his friend’s death has him thinking the road is a better place to be.

Billie Joe contacts his brother in Seattle.  He arranges a trip there to cover his tracks.  From there he’ll make a brake for San Francisco, “the gayest city in America.”  Certainly he’ll be welcomed; he will find companionship and community, or so he thinks it should be.

Billie Joe has other thoughts on his mind.  What is love?  Where will I find it?  How do you know it when you do find it?  What’s it like to be in love?  Will I ever find someone to love who will love me back?  So many questions with nothing to go on.  

Being gay and not knowing anything about affection or dating, he can’t be certain about these larger questions, although the hope for love burns strong in his heart.  He is sure he could love the right man at the right time.  He is sure he was ready for love.

When Billie Joe takes the Greyhound out of St. Cloud, he presses his face against the window glass to memorize the last time he sees the main street of the only town he’d ever known, convinced he’ll never return.  He is fearful but moving forward.  He’ll find what he’s looking for, of that he’s certain.

Bored with the magazine he’d bought at the bus station, he falls asleep after a couple of hours.  He’s startled awake by a vision in a uniform.  It’s a big vision indeed, not to mention menacing.

“Move kid.  I’m too big to sit on the isle,” the interloper growled.

Billie Joe searches the bus for a more friendly riding companion, but it is jammed full.  He sleepily yields up his seat to the Cretan in the uniform without a word.  For fifty miles he thinks of all the things he should have said to keep the window seat, but he decides to let go of his anger.  It is a long way to Seattle.

To add insult to injury, the soldier falls asleep in Billie Joe’s seat.  Not satisfied with just one seat, he spills over into Billie Joe’s.  Resting his arm on the sleeping soldier’s side, he finds the closeness exciting, and so begins Billie Joe’s first flirtation with love.  As unlikely as it seems, you might find love even on a bus to Seattle.

Carl and Billie Joe become fast friends when Carl brings him a soda at the first stop and apologizes for his rudeness.  He’d been waiting in the bus station for half a day to catch the connector to Seattle.  Billie Joe accepts the peace offering graciously and the two boys become closer in more ways than one. [IN MIND AND BODY?] as the miles pass.

Spending Carl’s last five days in the States together in a hotel room in Seattle, Billie Joe answers most of his questions about love.  The two boys pledge their devotion to each other before Carl boards his plane for Japan. 

Carl reluctantly accepts Billie Joe’s rationale for going to San Francisco, even though he doesn’t like the idea.  He’s already aware of Billie Joe’s strong will and gives in to it rather than risk losing his love.  It won’t be the last time Carl is forced to yield to Billie Joe’s plans.

Billie Joe’s brother is equally complicit, knowing his brother well enough to realize he can’t stop him.  Getting out at the first Interstate 5 exit, Billie Joe enters the unknown world on the road.  His first ride comes from a trucker before he even gets his thumb out at the end of the ramp.  It’s his lucky day.  His odyssey has begun.

He ends up hitchhiking with another boy, who is difficult, to say the least.  They are accosted by a man in a car with dark tinted windows, then befriended by a huge Swedish trucker, who swears to protect them, once he hears their tale of woe.  The truck takes them south into California. 

Billie Joe leaves the truck to make it the last few miles to San Francisco.  Once he arrives in the city, he discovers that the “gay” community doesn’t have room for the gay street kids who come looking for people like themselves.

Besides the gay men who want them for a few minutes to a few hours, no one else does.  The street kids are left to bargain with the only thing they have of value, their bodies.  If they want to eat they need to learn their trade.  With nowhere left to go they learn all they can about the city, especially the safe flops and places where you could score a meal without giving up your soul.

The street kids are shadow people, invisible to the moving mass of those flowing past on their way to bookstores and bars.  Once the sun sets, the boys know which corners to stand on to secure enough bucks to feed themselves for another day.  

Billie Joe finds himself lost in the nooks and crannies of The Castro.  No matter the circumstances or the latest friend he makes, the one thing he learns is that the friendship won’t last long.  Each boy that offers him solace from the lonely street disappears, but is quickly replaced by another.  If there is only one thing they can depend upon, it’s each other and Billie Joe is a fast learner.

Running from the cops to avoid Juvey, other boys show him the ropes, sell their souls for him, and seek to protect the clean young kid from Minnesota from the ravages of the only “gay” community they find.  As Billie Joe sinks deeper into the recesses of his own mind, he becomes numb to his surroundings, not sure he is tough enough to keep going.  It’s clear to him he’s in trouble and there’s nowhere to turn.

Posters appear with the likeness of a boy Billie Joe once resembled.  As he had figured, his father was searching for him.  His brother had given him up and pointed his father in the right direction.  Even with his new gaunt face, sunken eyes, and thin frame, he feared he’d be mistaken for himself by some do-gooder passing by.  It didn’t come to him that he’d be better off back home.  The streets had reduced him to survival mode and little thought went beyond that instinct.

Reaching the end of his rope, Billie Joe is snatched out of a car by a boy who saved him from danger once before.  Ty shakes him back to the here and now before taking him home to feed him and give him a safe place to stay.

At first relieved, he’s given two options by his host: go back to the street or go home.  Billie Joe realizes there is no “gay” community when it comes to the homeless.  Gay kids are but a commodity that the street tolerates, but no one dares to take one of them in for long, because the law is swift and harsh, when dealing with such men, no matter how benevolent their motives.

Unable to go back on the street, Billie Joe returns home to finish his final year of high school.  Hardened by his ordeal, tempered by love, and sobered by the knowledge that the community he went searching for didn’t exist, Billie Joe doesn’t bend to the rumors that abound about him. 

Determined to meet Carl when he returns to the States, Billie Joe puts his misadventure behind him, not realizing how difficult that will be in the long run.  He devotes himself to his studies and tries to ignore the detractors around him.  But in a small town, word travels fast and if his association with Ralphie, “the dead gay kid”, wasn’t enough, what he did on his summer vacation becomes the latest gossip.

In spite of more adversaries than supporters, an angry Billie Joe finds friends who accept him at school.  There are kids who like him even if he is gay.  Billie Joe’s new resolve has him ready to fight before he realizes the bullies have no sway over him.  He’s grown wise enough to accept his new friends and laugh at the boys that try to torment him.

The strain of his final year at home is lifted as he heads west to meet Carl’s plane.  They’ll travel east to Carl’s family home in Alabama.  There they’ll live happily together on a plot of land between the house and Carl’s father’s garage.

Billie Joe knows his dream has come true, when Carl gets off the plane and can’t wait to be in his arms.  Reuniting, they start their life’s journey together, but Billie Joe needs to tell Carl about his time in San Francisco, even though Carl is less than anxious to hear the details. 

Billie Joe becomes haunted by the faces of the boys he tells Carl about.  He is alive and well and most of them are still in peril, and Billie Joe, who has vowed never to return to San Francisco, tells Carl, “I’ve got to go back.  I’ve got to do something about the homeless kids I left there.  They kept me alive, showed me how to survive, and cared about me.  I’ve got to help them now that I can.”

Carl knows it will do no good to argue.  Billie Joe is determined and Carl reluctantly agrees to wait for him.  He still has more time to serve in the Army, and they’d be separated in any event.  Their love is strong enough they both think it can tolerate one more separation.

It’s not until he’s half way back to San Francisco that Billie Joe realizes he doesn’t know what he can do.  Once again walking the streets he walked over a year before, he’s not sure which way to turn.  With limited resources he can’t spend a lot of money on housing, while he figures out what to do.

As an adult it is easier, and there are people who will take him in and steer him in the right direction.  Slowly and with the help of his newest friends, a plan develops, as do more complications than he can count. 

Keeping his eye on the ball, determined to make a difference, he does.  He makes a difference not only to the gay street kids, but the “gay” community he came in search of as well.  They are willing to listen and do whatever it is they can do to help.

It’s never easy.  The gay homeless kids aren’t willing to accept help from anyone who smells like the authorities, and good intentions alone aren’t enough to win over the boys he seeks to help.  But determination, a sympathetic priest, as well as gay and straight people all over the city step up to create a network to help homeless street kids. 

First they provide food, clothing, and health care.  They look for a creative way to get the kids off the street without running afoul of the law.  Once people become aware of the need, they are willing to give up a night in the bar or a dinner out to donate to the cause.  The “gay” community is alive and well and willing to help.  They  simply need to be made aware of the problem before diving in.

Billie Joe puts his heart and soul into the endeavor, but he misses Carl and finally accepts he’s done all he can, given all he has to give.  He tells Carl he’s ready to go home. 

Homeless gay kids reside in most major cities.  They wander the streets in a subculture that has long ago learned to survive, even when all the kids don’t survive.  They do what they need to do, trusting no one, doing it their way, because our society provides no other solution.

We as gay men and women need to accept responsibility for the next generation of LGBT and resolve to make their journey easier than it was for us.  A community means all parts of the group pull in the same direction for the common good.  No good can come from ignoring the need of so many people who haven’t or can’t come out. 

No gay child should ever feel alone again.  If they are put out of their houses for being gay, we need to be there for them.  They must have a place where they can go and feel safe if they can’t stay home because of physical or emotional danger.

We are doctors, lawyers, writers, and Indian Chiefs.  [I DON’T KNOW ABOUT INDIAN CHIEFS.  WHY NOT POLITICIANS] We should be able to solve this problem.  Soon the gay rights movement will be forty years of age.  Most people have matured by forty. 

We can’t base our existence on our ability to party more vigorously than anyone else.  We can’t feel safe in a community that leaves the next generation of gays to fend for themselves and fight the same lonely battle we fought and won.  It’s up to us to reach out and offer our knowledge and experience to help them in a way we couldn’t expect help.

Fifty years ago it was illegal, ILLEGAL, to be a homosexual.  We’ve come a long way on the backs of drag queens that fought the law and the drag queens won at the Stonewall Inn in NYC 1969.  They’d been beat down so long they simply refused to take another beating at the hands of the NYC police.  They stood up to be counted, because they knew they were right.

We need to revisit the roots of gay liberation.  We need to fight for the right to be gay, no matter what age we are.  If you are gay you should have someone to turn to, someone to call, some place to go, when you can’t go home.  That is community.  That is our responsibility to one another as a chastised minority.  If we don’t stand together, we will stand alone.  If we aren’t there for the next generation of LGBT, who will they turn to?

Billie Joe lived on the street and when he was older, he returned to do something about what he found.  I think there are more decent men and women who are gay than in any other segment of this society.  We understand what it’s like to be outcast, ostracized, and hated.  If we don’t have one another to depend on, what do we have?  Let’s come together and help Billie Joe make a difference.

                                      *****

There are three books in Billie Joe’s Journey.  Each documents a segment of that journey.  The first book deals with his going in search of the “gay” community.  The second book deals with his return home for his senior year of high school.  Book three covers his reuniting with Carl before he returns to San Francisco on a mission to make a difference.

I hope you enjoy one or all of them.

Thank You.

Peace,

Rick Beck