Bill Hull
Even my mother knew that we were all gay.
Chris McGinnis
It just wasn’t spoken about.
Bill Hull
But she would have just have killed us if we had to confront it. As I said, I had my first boyfriend when I was fourteen years old and he was twenty-seven. I spent a lot of time with him. His mother was not very mentally stable and one weekend, when I was staying with Ronnie, and my mother loved him dearly, but it was just sort of an unspoken thing.
Chris McGinnis
Right.
Bill Hull
As long as it was not slapped in her face.
Chris McGinnis
Everybody was happy and nobody was getting hurt.
Bill Hull
Everybody was happy and this woman came up to the house and threw a brick through the window and called my mother and told her that her son was queer and that he was sleeping with her little baby boy and blah blah blah blah blah. Yes, in the middle of the night. Maybe midnight on a Saturday night. My mother called and said for me and Ronnie to come home, for me to bring Ronnie with him, she wanted to talk with us.
Chris McGinnis
Oh my.
Bill Hull
We went to her and at that time of the night she was in bed reading with her glasses on and she called us up and she said that we needed to talk about something and I thought, “Oh [expletive deleted], here it comes.” Because I was not ready to come out, to me it was a quiet, nice wonderful secret.
Chris McGinnis
Right.
Bill Hull
I was very special; it was like being a fairy like Tinkerbell.
Chris McGinnis
Right.
Bill Hull
It was not some social thing that I had to deal with. Her approach to this whole situation was that this woman had called and she couldn’t believe that a mother would be so horrible to do what she did and to try to hurt her child and in turn hurt hers. That she could not live with that meanness that this woman had provoked and the agony that she was trying to bring on both of the families and that she suggested that our friendship be a little more discreet and that is all that she ever said about that.
Chris McGinnis
How incredibly spectacular.
Bill Hull
It was wonderful. But if I had said, “Mother, I am gay.” She would have said, “Well, I can’t live with you.” It was her culture.
Chris McGinnis
Right.
Bill Hull
That is just the way that it was in the 60s or then late 50s.