Out In CT - Deborah Tuthill

Deborah Tuthill was born in Hartford Hospital in 1948 to a four-year-old sister, a stay-at-home mom and a dad who worked at Pratt and Whitney.  She lived in Wethersfield in a house overlooking the golf course for the first eighteen years of her life.  She made it through high school with average grades and a great deal of angst.

After a disastrous attempt at college she quit and worked for a time for the United Church of Christ in Cleveland, Ohio.  That happened to be the year that United States cities erupted in violence over “the war” and assassinations.  All this had a negative impact on her attitude and it took her a few years of drifting in the wrong direction to get back on track.

When she did get back on track she returned to college determined to become a lawyer.  She accomplished he goal in 1977 when she passed the Oregon State Bar.  She says, “I had arrived.”  Four years later it became obvious to her that she was emotionally ill-equipped to practice law.  One of her best friends suggested she try her hand at criminal investigation.  She did so and she loved it.

For the next twenty-five years she investigated criminal matters for other defense attorneys.  She says, “I feel blessed to have found a job that used my education, my god given talents, allowed me to work with people I respected and who respected me, and paid a great deal of money.”  The added bonus was that each day she worked to help insure that the right to a fair trial was preserved.  “Such a deal,” she says.

After thirty-five years in Oregon, one failed marriage and in the midst of a second, successful marriage, she returned to her home in Connecticut.  Her mother was still living.  Her sister and her daughter and family lived in Glastonbury.  Her partner and she took up residence in the middle of her family.

Although they had always remained close, even when she was three thousand miles away, living in their midst deepened and expanded her relationship with them.  She is now retired, involved in two service organizations and lives happily with her family close at hand.  “It’s great.”

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Deborah Tuthill.  I was born in Hartford Hospital in 1948 to a world that was wholly unprepared for me [laughter].  I was an extraordinary tomboy.  We had gangs of kids and we would play fort and we would play cowboys and Indians and we would play touch football.  And then all of a sudden somebody said I had to go to school and things changed [laughter].  I did not care for school; it was very stressful and I couldn’t read.

The other thing that happened very early on, when it was five, is I recognized that was different.  I wasn't quite sure how different I was until I fell in love with my second grade teacher, Miss Egbert.  And I realized that the people my father was making fun of on the street . . . . the men on the street you who he would say, “Oh they're a little light in the loafers,” or “Hold him down he'll fly away,” I realized I was like in them.  And I didn't know what the word was, but I knew I was like them and I knew I had to shut up and never tell anybody or I was going to be really in trouble.

As I progressed through school I had good friends and I found friends that I could talk to about, you know, that I was queer, but I did not . . . . I did not come out and, under the circumstance, I was terrified to come out and any activity that I had was clandestine.

I lived across the street from a girl named Candace.  She was beautiful and she was feminine and she took ballet and her parents thought I was a cretin.  And she was wild, they had no idea what she was into and she invited me over one afternoon and poured me a drink of hard liquor.  And we sat there and we had our drink, which went right to my head, and then she planted this huge kiss on me;  so my first drink and my first kiss from a girl was that day and they were pretty much connected from then until about the age 32 [laughter].  But Candace, bless her little heart, was only curious and not interested, so I spend the next year chasing after . . . . chasing after Candace to no avail.

My friends in high school and I had a last fling on Cape Cod.  That’s where I met the great love of my life during that week.  And we were in these cottages and there were two cabins.  And in the second cabin was a family and I fell madly in love with the wife and mother of this family and she with me.  It was so unbelievably complicated and WONDERFUL as only eighteen-year-old love can be.  And that relationship, although we stopped being lovers after a couple of years, that relationship lasted until she died eighteen years ago.  We were very close and she was the love of my life.

So I went to college.  It was a disaster.  I was a disaster.  I was drinking.  I discovered marijuana.  I was SO gay and I was SO in the closet that all you can do is drink at it.  And I ended up having what in those days was called a nervous breakdown.  And I came back here and was hospitalized for a while, but you know really what was going on . . . . REALLY what was going on was me being gay and it not working out.  I  kept trying to have somebody to be with and I picked straight people and they wouldn’t go for it.  And then the humiliation and then the . . . .  it was endless.  My life is a series of the ramifications of being gay and picking up one more substance after another to try and deal with the pain of that.

So, I pulled myself together.  I went back to college.  And during this time (I) fell in love again and this time with someone much younger than myself.  This was where I really came out.  My friends knew.  My male friends, with female friends, people that I cared about and (who) cared about me knew that I was gay.  And I lived openly for the first time, except that I was having a relationship with someone who was much younger than I and that has to be secret.  So yet again I had placed myself in a position where there was stress involved.

So I graduated from college with straight A's and applied to law schools and my main professor at the University of Connecticut said, “Listen you just need to get away;  you need to get away from everything and start to live your life in an open way and you need to apply all over the country, because you should be a lawyer and you’d be a good lawyer” and blah, blah, blah.  So I applied all over the country and I got into Lewis & Clark.  And I packed up my little U-Haul and me and my Chevrolet and my U-Haul drove to Oregon, where I spent the next 35 years of my life.

I started practicing law in 1977.  I was a wholly unprepared for the stress.  I was a good lawyer.  I was an ethical lawyer.  But I finally . . . . you know, ultimately the only way I could handle the stress was to drink and smoke a lot of marijuana, and act out on the weekends in the bars.  In four years it just . . . . it just ruined me and I ended up in a recovery program and stopped in 1981, stopped drinking and using any drugs, and have been abstinent for . . . . ‘til today.

And then, my best friend from law school, a guy who’s very successful lawyer and just a great guy, suggested I become an investigator and I had never considered that.  And it was fantastic.  And I didn’t have any bosses.  I was my own boss, I had my own company after a few years and I chose . . . . consciously chose to be honest with my peers in work and I just . . . . I came crashing out of the closet.  And, you know, I was in Portland, Oregon and by then, you know, we're talking the 80’s now, it was not only cool to be in recovery from alcoholism, it was starting to be cool to be gay. And it was wonderful.  It was . . . . what a relief.

The next big coming out issue was my parents.  My parents live on the East Coast.  I live on the West Coast so that I can be who I am.  I tried a number of times to come out to my parents. They were in total denial that I was gay.  They would come every single year to Oregon.  I was very lucky.  We stayed close.  I would come to Connecticut a couple, three times a year.  They would come to Oregon once a year, so we stayed connected.  I always stayed connected with my family.  But when they would come the stress would be unbelievable, because I would invariably have a girlfriend or something, and I had to hide.  It was killing me!  It was weird!  I mean, I was an adult.  What was I doing?

I called my sister and I said we have to fix this because either I can't ever see them again or we need to get that straightened out, so I wrote them a letter and my sister said, “I will arrive at the house the day they get the letter and we’ll TALK ABOUT IT!”  So I wrote my big coming out letter and we did that, my sister and I, and it worked.  And it wasn’t comfortable.  Nobody was comfortable.  But it worked and my relationship with my parents really started to deepen and grow.  And we just, sort of, all started to grow up and try to respect each other.  For me, that was a huge piece, but I was lucky.  I had a family who was willing to support that process and my parents ultimately wanted to have a relationship with me and were ready to do that.

My partner and I decided we wanted to have a ceremony and I thought my mother would be the one to be open minded, but my mother was in the kitchen in Oregon one day when they were out there visiting, and I said to her, you know, we're going to have a ceremony and we’d really like you to come.  And I told them when and my mom said, “Oh, we’re busy that day.”  And I said, “OK.”  They left . . . . they went back to Connecticut and she told my father, and my father said, “Even if we are busy that day, we’re canceling it and we're going to the . . . . if we’re were invited, were going.”  And that really turned the whole thing around.  My family came out to the ceremony.  The marriage was a bad marriage, but what happened at that . . . . in that time in my life was the level of acceptance and stress relief that I would not have ever thought possible.

So I was busy, I was having a great time and, after I got divorced from my first partner, I became intimately involved with a very good friend, who I subsequently married.  And it appears that we’re living happily ever after, which means that we work very hard at it, fight fairly, and grow spiritual together and separately

I live now in Connecticut, close to my family.  I, you know, I help take care of my mother.  I’m completely, totally out with everyone.  I don't even feel stressful about it anymore.  I do have my own homophobic reality.  There are . . . . there places where I can still be nervous about holding hands with my partner, not feel safe.  But it's fewer and far between times that I feel that way.  I think as more states move in the direction that Connecticut and Massachusetts and Oregon and Vermont have moved, that there will ultimately be a landslide effect and the federal government we'll have to get in line.  Good heavens, Argentina just made it legal for same sex marriages . . . . Argentina!  They just had a dictator a little while ago.  I mean, and we’re supposed to be a democracy.  What is wrong with this picture?

Except for the civil rights issue, which I think it's a huge issue, and the human rights issue, and I think it's a huge issue, that we should not be discriminated against under the law in any way shape or form . . . . except for that issue, I am fully prepared to just live my adult life quietly with my family and friends and church people and never have to be involved in any political stuff again.  And I think that should be the goal . . . . the goal should be: “Who cares!”