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Life Was Hell for a Gay Teen Jock
"I lost everything
I thought was my life"
By Dan Woog
From Jocks 2:
Coming Out To Play (Alyson
Publications, 2002)
Copyright 2002,
Dan Woog
Reprinted by permission
Click
Here to order Jocks 2
By now, millions of Americans have thrilled to
Corey Johnson's
story. Thanks to an insightful page one story in The New York Times, a
positive portrayal on ABC's 20/20, and a passionate speech Corey gave
at the Millennium March on Washington, the tale has achieved almost
mythic proportions. With the full backing of his coaches, the
Massachusetts high school football star came out to his teammates and
received overwhelmingly strong support. Fellow players at Masconomet
High School covered his back on the football field; the few times
opponents tried to taunt him, the team just played harder. On the bus
home after a victory the players serenaded him with "YMCA" and "It's
Raining Men"; when he attended gay youth conferences and pride
marches, they asked for souvenir T-shirts. Corey became an articulate
spokesman for gay civil rights, hung out with senators and movie
stars, and even appeared (wearing football pads and eye black) in an
ad for the Mitchell Gold furniture company.
Greg Congdon is another football player. He is just a year older than
Corey, and lives only a couple of hundred miles away. He is as firm as
Corey in his determination that his story be told. Yet it is an
entirely different tale. Greg says that its message must be heard by
the many gay athletes who may think that because Corey came out to
broad acceptance, even reverence, the coast is clear for everyone else
to do the same.
Greg's story begins in-and never really leaves-Troy, Pa. A dairy-,
pig-, and beef-farming community of about 1,200 in the northeast part
of the state, it is a typical American small town. Most residents were
born and raised in the area. The high school is regional. The closest
gay bar is in the "big city" of Elmira, N.Y. (population 31,000), half
an hour away.
Greg's mother, JoAnn, a registered nurse, comes from Elmira; his
father, Neil, a construction-site job expediter, was born and raised
right in Troy, where most of the Congdon family has always lived. Neil
was an excellent wrestler at Troy High School, and when Greg was 10 he
followed his dad's footsteps and joined the youth program. Wrestling
is big in Pennsylvania, and Greg enjoyed it for several years-at least
until high school, when he felt pressured to drop his already-lean
weight, 135 pounds on a 5-foot-10 frame, to 119.
He also played football, from Pee Wee to high school. He was a
defensive end and center, though small for the latter position. "I
liked just going out, hitting, and not worrying about the
consequences," Greg says of his love for football. "It was a great way
to relieve all the stress. Out on the field, nothing bothered you. You
were in your own world. Practices sucked, but playing was so much
fun."
Feeling Different
Some of that stress related to sexuality. From the time he was 11 and
first realized he was "different" from other boys, Greg tried to
suppress his feelings of attraction to the same sex. He was successful
for a few years. Then, in 1997, his parents bought a computer.
Like many teenagers struggling with homosexuality, the Internet opened
up an amazing world. For the first time, Greg learned there were
untold numbers of other boys just like him. Many gay youths find this
to be an empowering, life-affirming discovery. For Greg, however, the
effect was devastating.
 Stuck in his small town, he realized how much he was missing. "I saw
so many people with boyfriends," he laments. "I didn't know any gay
people around here. I didn't think I could ever have what they had,
because I was here in Troy." And Troy was not a good place to be. The
only time the subject of homosexuality arose was as a joke. It was
never discussed in sex education classes. Even the local newspaper,
the Daily Review in nearby Towanda, ran regular diatribes against
homosexuality, sometimes citing the North American Man-Boy Love
Association as a representative gay organization.
Adding to Greg's confusion was the fact that for two years, starting
at age 13, he had a sexual relationship with his best male friend, who
instigated it. However, when they were 15 the other boy said he was
straight and ended the encounters. Greg--who was also dating girls,
primarily for show, and soon lost his virginity to a girl in an
experience he calls "awful"--wondered how his friend could simply say
he was straight and change his feelings. Try as Greg might--and he
certainly tried hard--he could not become straight as well.
The next year, in a gay chat room, was the first time he typed the
words "I am gay." "It felt so odd and weird," he remembers. "I never
thought just saying it would be so overwhelming." It was liberating in
a way, but also frightening. Greg began withdrawing from friends. He
locked himself in his family's computer room, spending every night
prowling the Web for information and chatting with other gay youths.
He even stopped wrestling junior year, telling the coach he was under
too much stress.
His best friend--the boy with whom he had had a sexual
relationship--asked why he was spending so much time on his computer.
Greg replied vaguely that he was meeting "all kinds of people."
Everyone else, including his parents, thought it was simply a new
interest that would soon die out.
A Suicide Attempt
But 17-year-old Greg had another type of dying in mind: his own. On
Sunday, February 1, 1998, he decided that the only way out of his
misery was to kill himself. "I just didn't know how to go about being
gay," he explains. "I was afraid what would happen if my parents and
friends found out. I had no idea how I could live my life. I had no
role models. The only gay athlete I knew was Greg Louganis, and he was
a swimmer. I couldn't associate with that. There was no Queer as Folk
or Will & Grace on TV. The only gay people I saw were the drag queens
on Birdcage. I never thought I'd find a boyfriend, like everyone else.
If you really believe you'll never find love, you think about killing
yourself."
He thought his mother's blood pressure pills would do the job. He
downed them, then went online and mentioned what he had done. A boy in
California called 911, and from a continent away the Troy police were
alerted. "The cop was more interested that the call had come from
California than in me," Greg laughs ruefully.
As it turns out, his life was never in danger. The pills were actually
diuretics, and they had no effect on Greg's health. But in tiny Troy
Community Hospital, while Greg was being treated by a doctor and
nurse, the policeman urged him to reveal why he had attempted suicide.
He promised the information would remain confidential. Greg, in an
emotionally fragile state, worried that his parents would get in
trouble if anyone thought they were contributing to his problems. He
broke down, told the officer he was gay, and said he could not cope.
The nurse noted the information on Greg's medical chart.
He spent a week in an adolescent psychiatric ward at a hospital near
State College. The only visitors permitted were his relatives.
Meanwhile, his mother had searched his room and found brochures from
PFLAG. She thought his homosexual feelings were only a phase.
The night he got home, Greg called his best friend--the boy he had had
the relationship with. The friend told him that everyone at school
knew Greg was gay. He added that the football quarterback had found
out through his mother, a secretary at Troy Community Hospital, who
after reading Greg's chart had told her son. The quarterback told
friends at Troy High, and the gossip raced through the entire school.
Greg was shocked, stunned, and scared, but his friend said soothingly,
"Don't worry. No one cares." It was his way of trying to get Greg to
come back to school.
The Fallout
When Greg mustered the courage to return, a week later, his best
friend-and virtually everyone else-turned against him.
"I lost everything I thought was my life," Greg says. "Kids I'd grown
up with, played backyard football with, been in their houses-it was
all gone in the flash of an eye. One guy told me he couldn't be my
friend anymore. My teammates said if I played sports ever again, my
life would be a living hell."
It was not only teenagers who shunned Greg. His coaches ignored him as
well. The wrestling coach talked to Greg's father but refused to look
at Greg standing next to him. When the football coach was asked why
Greg stopped playing, he replied, "I never thought about it." Greg
says sadly, "He was a man I knew well. I used to hang out with him
during my free periods. I was close to all the coaches."
Only two people in all of Troy High School stuck by Greg's side. Both
were girls. "They were all I had," Greg says.
Even his teachers and counselors seemed unmoved by Greg's ordeal. He
skipped classes, sleeping in his car in the parking lot--or at a local
creek or cemetery--instead of going inside to be tormented. No one
called his parents to report that things were amiss.
At home, Greg worked hard to put up a false front. "I was so used to
keeping feelings to myself," he says. "When you're gay and young,
that's what you do. You're scared, but you learn to hide your
emotions. So I'd come home and my mom would ask how school was, and
I'd just say, 'Fine.' "
But it wasn't. One month after his first suicide attempt, Greg made a
second. This time he used pills from an extra-large bottle of Extra
Strength Tylenol. He swallowed 33, then went to bed.
In the morning, his mother woke him up. He was furious that once again
his plan had failed. He put the remaining pills in his varsity jacket,
then drove to school and took 10 more. It did not take long before his
stomach knotted up. He threw up, walked out of school, drove home, and
told his mother he did not feel well. She told him to take a nap.
Silently, he took the pills out of his jacket. She hustled him to the
car and drove to the local hospital. Soon, he was in the intensive
care unit at a larger one. After four days he was transferred to the
teen psychiatric ward of a Wilkes-Barre hospital.
Greg never returned to classes at Troy High School. The principal was
not surprised to learn that the quarterback had been a ringleader in
Greg's torment. The principal said, however, that while he could
protect Greg on school grounds, he could offer no help off them. He
advised Greg to get a tutor and finish his junior year at home.
Although the school year ended, Greg's misery did not. After summer
football practice his former teammates often drove by his house,
yelling obscenities from a truck. His neighbors all heard, yet no one
did anything.
A Media Frenzy
That same summer, using the Internet, Greg found a boyfriend: A
16-year-old living 45 minutes away. While reading XY, a publication
for gay youth, Greg's boyfriend thought it would be a good idea to
send a photo of Greg in his football uniform for an upcoming issue.
The picture appeared at the same time ESPN was searching for gay
athletes to interview for a television show. When that aired, a media
frenzy began.
For the first time, the local press looked into Greg's situation. The
Daily Review's story on Greg highlighted a lawsuit he had filed
against the hospital for breaching his confidentiality.
Today, Greg regrets that newspaper coverage. His uncle and older
sister were harassed at work; his cousins, attending a different
school, were teased. Another cousin, at Troy High, got it the worst.
"It was constant, every day," Greg says. "There was no one to stand up
for me, and no one in my family knew what to say." The closest support
group for gays and allies was an hour away in Binghamton, N.Y., and no
one in the Congdon family knew it existed.
Greg spent his entire senior year "doing basically nothing." He was
told to wait until his class graduated before earning his GED. He
attended football games and wrestling matches but felt unwelcome. He
often stood on the opponents' side, trying not to stand out. He
learned later that the ploy did not work. Football players, he was
told, would see him and make jokes on the bench. They were the boys he
had been friends with all his life.
The murder of Matthew Shepard in October 1998 terrified Greg. Up to
that point, he ascribed the reactions of his former friends and
teammates to ignorance and small-mindedness. After the gay University
of Wyoming student was tied to a fence and left to die, however, Greg
wondered whether the hatred he felt in Troy might lead to violence
there too. He stopped going out alone.
'Part of My Youth Was Gone'
Despite the hard times, Greg was learning to cope. He traveled nearly
two hours to Scranton to visit his first gay club, where he finally
met in person some of the friends he had made online. The experience
opened a new world for him. "Wow!" he marvels. "It was so beautiful.
It was exactly what I'd heard about and looked for for so long. I felt
like a 5-year-old kid entering a candy store." As Greg entered the gay
community, he tried to build a new life for himself. Still, he
acknowledges, it was impossible to replace what he had lost.
"A part of my youth was gone," he says. "Everybody says high school is
supposed to be the best time of your life. You've got sports and
friends and no worries. But all that stuff was taken away." Missing
graduation hurt the most. No longer considered a member of the class
of 1999, he did not receive an invitation.
Greg is perceptive enough to realize that despite all his losses,
there were some gains. He cites inner strength and a better knowledge
of who he is as positive outcomes. "I've been to the bottom of the
barrel, and I know what it's like. I don't want to be there again, but
at least now I know how to handle it."
If he had the chance to do things differently, Greg says he would have
come out to his parents first and would not have tried to commit
suicide. After realizing his homosexuality was not a phase, they have
become strongly supportive. He would also not try so hard to live two
different lives: his straight life and his Internet one. "They just
never met," he notes. "If I could do it over, I'd try to integrate
them into one. Maybe I'd tell a couple of people I'm gay and let them
handle it so there wouldn't be this massive witch-hunt. I think if
people didn't have this thrown at them in their face by the
quarterback, they wouldn't have freaked out so much."
Greg completed two semesters at Central Pennsylvania College. Yet even
at that two-year school across the Susquehanna River from Harrisburg,
he found it hard to concentrate. One day someone (he never learned
who) got into his dorm room and hung photos of nude girls everywhere.
Today, he works in Elmira for a grocery chain. He is completely out
there, and everyone is friendly. He hopes one day to return to college
and become a policeman.
He has done some speaking appearances on behalf of the Pennsylvania
Department of Health. His messages, he says, are important: letting
gay teenagers know they are not alone, and raising awareness that even
in the 21st century homophobia exists.
Greg's speaking profile is not as high as Corey Johnson's. He makes it
clear that there are other differences between the two openly gay
ex-high school athletes as well. "The more I hear Corey's story, the
more compelled I am to tell mine," Greg says. "I'm always afraid some
teenager will read about Corey, who has a perfect story, and believe
things will always be like that. But they have to be careful. Most gay
youth live in small towns.
"When you're older you can move to a city, but when you're a kid you
don't have that option. It's great Corey had such a happy ending, but
that's not always the case. I think there are two sides to every
story. And even though some people have come pretty far in terms of
accepting gay people, there's still a long way to go. I'm proof of
that."
And so, he might add, are nearly all the 1,200 citizens of small-town
Troy, Pa.
Outsports editor's
note: Greg Congdon can be reached
via e-mail
Related:
"Jocks 2" author plays on
Sept. 24, 2002 |
