Tom Cherico, one of my college dorm mates, and I shared birthdays, October 22, 1948, and the closet, yes, that closet. But as our 20th Birthday approached, things changed in a very profound way. Tom came out and I became officially engaged to a woman.

Tom would die of AIDS several years before I finally came out in 1989 so he never learned the truth. And Betty, the woman to whom I had proposed, conveniently cheated on me with my best friend so I was able to end that engagement with a high degree of false indignation and staged self-righteousness. Of course, I was relieved and secretly grateful to both Betty and my ex-best friend. Nonetheless, despite this reprieve I ended up engaged and married to my second beard in 1973. Tom of course, was my first beard. Having a gay friend in those days was like having the grooviest exotic pet on the block. Not only did it reaffirm your masculinity but it demonstrated that you were the ultimate in cool, a sensitive man of the 60s. And teasing Tom, tolerating Tom, patronizing Tom and defending Tom from the dorm jocks created an unimaginable thick smoke screen that effectively hid my own deep dark lavender secret.

A year after my marriage (which Tom attended as the gay friend), Tom coldly and arrogantly dumped us, my wife and I, as friends. In 1974 Tom had joined a militant gay group that eschewed and banned all things heterosexual, including and most importantly any association with heterosexuals. That was the first time I found myself envying Tom; sadly my wife was deeply hurt. She adored Tom. Of course, she did. She loved. gay men. She had married one.

So with Tom gone I had lost my first formal beard. I don't know if I ever really cared much about Tom; I was too busy caring about the service he performed.

I missed Tom in my marriage. He had provided an easy and frequent opportunity for conversations about them and us. This was years before AIDS and gay friends were a very cool accessory--but not easy to come by for a newly married couple. One of the first things you lose when you marry is most of your single friends, and gay friends very much fell into that category.

Finding a new gay friend proved impossible. I was a journalist in those days and unlike public relations, my eventual career, gay men were not commonly out in the media--unlike today. I kept hoping that my stylish wife would bring one home from her Madison Avenue hair salon, but she never did. We traveled frequently, but male flight attendants were still rare in the 70s unless you flew BOAC--the Brits have always been ahead of that particular curve.

But fate had always been generous with me and by the late 70s we had befriended another married couple with an openly bi-sexual husband making me the manly man stud in the group. We would vacation together in the Caribbean and Stephen, the bi-sexual, would go off cavorting with young island boys leaving me to squire the wives in all my testosteronishness. Stephen, by the way, had a beard, a big bushy and unkempt beard, unlike my own neatly trimmed manly adornment.

Erica, the wife, conspired to bed me, anticipating that one day we would leave our spouses and live out lives of fully realized heterosexual bliss. Erica believed that Liliane, my wife was simply not sexual enough for a man of my obvious masculinity and her own husband was half-poof. Of course, Erica's relentless but controlled pursuit and Liliane's prudishness were the stuff of a perfect beard paradigm. With Erica it was "but I have a wife and despite her shortcomings I love her very much. If not for that, well....." With Liliane, "Don't worry about it. I love you. I can be patient."

Not surprisingly, Erica was furious when I came out, feeling more betrayed than even my wife. Erica hasn't' spoken to me in 17 years.

The day I shaved my beard

On November 14, 1989, having downed countless Martinis at the very gay Sazerac House in the West Village I stumbled home and came out to my wife. Despite the hours of gay ambiance at Sazerac House, the Martinis and a life of desperation, it still took me almost four hours to simply explain that I preferred to have sex with men. I wasn't ready to admit or even face the notion of being gay, so I was just another man who preferred same-sex sex. We spent the night and subsequent days negotiating our future. Many accommodations were proposed and rejected and finally we agreed to separate. On January 4, 1999 I moved into my first gay apartment, crashed exhausted onto a just delivered mattress and slept like the newly dead. On the morning of January 5, 1999 I awoke, showered and then faced the mirror. I was horrified. "Beardless" for the first time in my life I faced MYSELF. I was shaken. And suddenly, for reasons I could not then explain, my actual facial beard, a very masculine affectation that I had hidden behind since the age of 16 suddenly looked horribly, terribly, terrifyingly gay and for only the second time in my life, I shaved it. (The first time had been for my wedding day; two beards on the alter seemed one beard too many.)

My face was completely naked, a very alien sensation. I felt more naked than naked.

The boyfriend was horrified. Apparently I was, in his eyes, a bear and bears required beards. This was long before I learned about bears, twinks, muscle queens and yellow hankie left but I did not like the looks I was getting from my first openly gay crush. Furthermore, I was overdosing on exposure and decided that I had most certainly shed too many beards at once. So the facial beard was back and in its full glory within two weeks. But it was most definitely a very different beard. I felt sexy; it felt sexy. I looked sexy.

I've proudly and openly sported my beard ever since and I affectionately accept the fact that it marks me as a bear, albeit as I approach 60 more of a polar bear. And while I think the whole bear, twink and muscle queen thing is rather silly, it now makes me laugh and smile rather than run and hide. Over the decades people often assume that I sport a beard to compensate for being bald. Ha! I grew the beard to hide being gay. Today, I maintain the beard to hide my double chin. It works. Beards are amazing things.