Coming Out At The Video Store
In retrospect, it shouldn’t be much of a surprise that I came out at a video store three times.
Going to video stores aligned almost ideally with my teen years. We got our first VCR when I was 11, just about to be 12, and the idea that I could make my own decisions as to what flickered on the screen before me filled me with the excitement of potential. At first, it was a local drugstore that offered a third of an aisle's worth of choices, limited but a fine introduction to the growing possibilities of entertainment that a middle schooler could want. Thanks to my dad and his hand-written “Paul is allowed to rent R-rated movies” on the back of the membership card, the clerk would reluctantly hand over that copy of STAND BY ME or FRIGHT NIGHT and allow me to bask in the rich variety of cinematic spectacle that had previously existed only in a form broken up by commercials and edited for my protection.
This, along with the opportunities I had to watch in my bedroom, got me immersed in the magical land of video. I’d stop by multiple times a week, scanning for new boxes with that yellow “New Release” sticker that often faded to the point of white by the time they remembered to take it off the box. The ability to bike there meant that the drug store was soon replaced by a store that rented videos exclusively as their trade, a kingdom (quite literally called Castle Video) full of aisles and aisles of enticing-looking titles in garish, giant boxes, often too lurid for me to even consider renting. My parents were fine with STAND BY ME, but what would they say if they caught me watching POOR WHITE TRASH II? I stuck to the safe, smaller boxes, but still made sure that I was getting the versions marked as “UNRATED,” the ones too gruesome for the Blockbuster down the street. And I didn’t dare enter the room sectioned off by a beaded curtain, where I would occasionally see an older guy take out some boxes tucked discreetly under their arm, catching a glimpse of a topless woman with hair larger than her head. (In retrospect, the “bring the box to the counter” method of video rental was probably not great for pornography.)
Meanwhile, my hormones were starting to kick into gear, and once I got my driver’s license, I could make my way beyond the selection of the local stores, to the other stores—the ones on the east side, near the University. These were the artier video stores, filled with foreign titles outside of BABETTE’S FEAST or PELLE THE CONQUERER and indie films from studios I’ve never heard of. And sections labeled “Gay/Lesbian.”
There was a tempting section at Video Adventure, located around the corner from the drama titles, well beyond the new release wall. I spent the first few times there cautiously looking toward it from the drama section, handling that box for WALL STREET for a few minutes but really looking toward the wall of movies where shirtless men were pictured next to other shirtless men. If I felt a presence near me, I’d glance back down at the box I was holding, suddenly immersed in wondering if I should take the tale of Gordon Gekko home.
Even in an optimal situation, my anxiety would get the best of me. I was a theater major at an arts high school in a major city, with liberal parents, standing in a public video store run by gay men (I would figure this out later, but the contents of the section and the employees should’ve tipped me off), my heart pounding like hell because someone I knew might see me glancing at the box for QUERELLE. For several weeks, I’d scavenge the section from afar, moving closer and closer and then even examining it directly as a whole...before coming home with THE BONEYARD because I liked Norman Fell.
Eventually, I took a deep breath and pulled the tag (a much better system than bringing up a box) for VIA APPIA, which I didn’t know much about but the cover had a bunch of guys in towels and it was in German, a foreign language which I knew, so if there were any questions I could just say that it was for practicing my language skills. As I took that tag to the counter where the older mustached guy glanced at it for a moment before wandering to the back to get the VHS tape, I could feel myself tense up. This was it—this was, in its own way, my first coming out, to myself, acknowledging that I kind of just wanted to see some other guys naked and didn’t need an excuse for it.
Now, I’d made it a point to see plenty of nudity before. If I got wind that a movie would have a male nude scene, I’d be significantly more inclined to see it—AMERICAN GIGOLO and ROAD HOUSE were recorded late night on Cinemax, and the “Friday After Dark” lineup would occasionally even offer a gem like INHIBITIONS which had a fleeting glimpse of frontal nudity. But my renting of VIA APPIA was a deliberate choice, one that was public (at least as far as the video store’s rental records go) and pulled from a section clearly marked GAY.
I watched the film in the dead of a night, a fairly dark AIDS drama set in Brazil. (It was 1991, they were all AIDS dramas. Even the comedies were AIDS dramas.) It filled the nudity requirements, but it also showed me a world where there were multiple queer people, each existing as individuals, going through their (admittedly tragic) lives. It wasn’t the token gay character that shows up in a sitcom once or the random older predator played for laughs in a goofy comedy, this was a story where queer people interacted with other queer people, and, AIDS aside, it opened me up to the idea of gay films.
I’d keep renting from the section occasionally, always careful not to leave the tapes lying around (not that my parents would look into what FUN DOWN THERE or SWOON was about, but some titles like MOVIE BUFF: THE HISTORY OF MALE NUDITY IN MOVIES would’ve been a tip-off) and continued on my semi-merry, closeted-to-others way. I found a job working at a video store, first at Blockbuster and then moving on Tower Records in Chicago, a place where I was surrounded by queer people who were sure of themselves, and likely just as sure of me. (David, if you’re out there, I absolutely would’ve made out with you at any point if you’d caught me a couple of years later.)
Tower also had its own version of the mysterious backroom, an aisle of entirely black cases marked only by printed titles on white paper within the spines in different colors (black was straight, red was bi, blue was gay) with the boxes cut to be visible only when you opened them up. I would occasionally sneak out a red, and then blue, tape, careful not to even check it out on the computer for fear that someone would suspect me to be like...well...like about half the staff. We had a bisexual roommate that I made vague references about myself to, but in the end, she left owing us three months rent, so bonding wasn’t much of an option.
Eventually I ended up back in Milwaukee at another video store, this one just up the street from the store from which I’d covertly been renting “documentaries” and “art house films.” This was Video Visions, a three-room megaplex of random entertainment, featuring titles going back to when they’d opened in 1983, the only available copy of ERASERHEAD in the city, an insanely confusing rental system involving 3 x 5 cards and a lot of guessing, and dust that likely saw the first Reagan administration. It was, and still is, the greatest video store I’d ever worked at.
Part of the allure of Video Visions was Candace, a middle-aged lesbian who worked there full time and with whom I spent most of my shifts. Candace was cheerful and friendly to a fault, unless you were on her bad side, at which point she’d barely grunt at you. (This was the case with a couple of co-workers, as well as the guy who came in first thing on Wednesday when the new releases came out so he could grab them all.) Candace was the heart of the store, always obsessed with any new romantic comedy but too reluctant to pursue romance for herself.
By this point, while I wasn’t yet out by any means, I’d had a couple of negligible encounters that solidified my queer status in my own mind. I’d also pursued queerness in my own cinematic way. I’d gone with a former girlfriend to see THREESOME, the awkward romcom with Josh Charles as a young, closeted gay guy in college who, at the movie’s climax, gets to rub Stephen Baldwin’s ass. I’d talked my straight best friend into seeing Bruce La Bruce’s SUPER 8 ½ because it had Scott Thompson of The Kids in the Hall. (Thanks, Ken, for joining me for the likes of TOTALLY F***ED UP, FRISK and, ugh, LOVE AND HUMAN REMAINS.) I was a gay-friendly tourist, playing the “straight but not narrow” card, just open to any kind of media that came out.
On April 30, 1997, the TV show Ellen aired “The Puppy Episode,” featuring the historic moment when a lead sitcom character (as well as the actor playing them) announced that they were gay. As much of a problematic person Ellen DeGeneres has become, at the time, the event was revelatory, and it seemed like the tipping point for gay culture. And, as humbling as it is to admit that I was inspired not just by a sitcom, but by the MOST BASIC GAY SITCOM EPISODE IN HISTORY, “The Puppy Episode” became the tipping point for me.
The next day, I was working with Candace and she’d brought in a recording of the episode to watch in the store. We’d both seen it already, of course, but we were glad to be able to relive this moment of TV history, especially since it was a quiet evening. Afterwards, I said, half-jokingly to her, “so, would you like to get a toaster oven?” referencing a joke in the episode where Laura Dern’s character jokes about receiving a toaster oven as a reward for “converting” Ellen. “Because I think I can help you with one.”
Candace smiled slowly and then laughed, and a few random jokes later addressing the situation with similar references to jokes from the show, she said, “So let’s go to a bar this Friday!”
And that’s how I came out in the video store a second time, this time to someone else: making off-handed, indirect comments based on a sitcom while occasional shoppers asked when TURBULENCE was coming out on tape. It was on-brand.
I slowly began feeling more comfortable with myself, at least at the video store. While not out to roommates or family, it became the place where I didn’t have to filter my thoughts on the likes of IN & OUT, or how Cheryl Dunye’s THE WATERMELON WOMAN spoke to me even as a white dude, or the likelihood of seeing Ewan McGregor’s penis in a movie (very high at that time). I even took up the offer to go to a customer’s apartment to watch THE CELLULOID CLOSET and went on an actual date with another customer to go see the most romantic film of the year, the Howie Long epic FIRESTORM. I’d even dare to occasionally check out a title from our limited selection of “all-male” category in the little corridor hidden in a back alcove behind the barely-used action section. (While living with roommates, I still had a VCR in my room and a TV with a mute option.)
Coming out, of course, isn’t a one-time process – it’s something that you end up doing with a good percentage of the people you know or meet, at least until it’s common knowledge. The next couple of years had a whole bunch of these moments with friends and family, including the aforementioned ex-girlfriend asking me, “Is that why you wanted to see THREESOME?”
But I kind of wanted a fresh start, and moving back to Chicago was that start, despite the fact that I’d already tried moving there twice before. This time, I didn’t know anyone and could be pretty forward about who I was from the outset. Getting a video store job wasn’t much of a problem, and I soon landed at a store called Nationwide Video, which, despite its name, was mostly confined to a trio of locations around the Boystown area. The main floor of the location I started at had a decent variety of mainstream movies, but the bulk of our clientele passed by the new release wall to go down the stairs, where the porn lived.
The new location allowed me to come out at the video store a third time, this time from the start, in a queer-friendly locale where even the porn was equally divided between sexual orientations, a long way from the previous stores where the gay section was a dozen or two rotating titles dwarfed by the behemoth of heterosexual couplings available. Surrounded by other queer and queer-friendly people, I wasn’t hesitant to talk to co-workers or customers about the differences between Dennis Cooper’s twisted novel Frisk and Todd Verow’s film adaptation, or the homoerotic themes of A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2. (I talked a lot about A NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET 2.)
The big difference was that I was no longer afraid to be visible to strangers. My “staff picks” section containing the likes of HUSTLER WHITE, PARTY MONSTER (the documentary) and the mostly-forgotten gender-bending mind game thriller SURRENDER DOROTHY alongside films like SIMPLE MEN and WHAT HAPPENED WAS… to let browsers know that this guy was not just gay, he was edgy. It was a weird sort of performative queerness, through the lens I knew best – the video store.
I continued working at video stores for years after that, up until the point where “working at a video store” became as much of an anachronism as being a milkman. But there wasn’t any reason to come out again, as I was already me on all fronts, thanks to the magic of home video.
The years since have changed my own tastes as well as my sense of my own sexuality, and filtering my own changes through the colander of cinematic tastes has allowed me to make connections with so many other great people who use movies and other media as a way to reflect and view themselves as well. I’m in no hurry to rewind to the past, but I can’t help but sometimes think about that teenage kid who was too intimidated to even look at the “Gay & Lesbian” section, and I’m thankful that I finally found the nerve to take a tag for a German AIDS drama up to the counter.
Happy National Coming Out Day.
