Out In CT - Mel Thomas

Born and raised in Hartford, Mel Thomas has been a musician, vocalist, husband, father, grandfather, interior designer for The Travelers, activist/educator around issues of HIV/AIDS and LGBT People of Color, songwriter and poet.  He says he “has far exceeded his own expectations.”

During his thirteen years as pianist and vocalist with Connecticut’s legendary R & B group “The Downbeats,” Mel sang lead for the group’s hit recording “Over My Room” and performed with Stevie Wonder, Chuck Berry and numerous Motown recording artists.  The group reunited in the mid 90’s for the first of what were to be more than a dozen reunion concerts.  Mel was one of two original members of the group when the Downbeats staged their final reunion concert in October of 2009.

An openly gay man since 1969, Mel was a member of Men of All Colors Together CT and served on its Outreach Committee.  In 1985 Mel co-founded the African-American Men’s Group and served as the Connecticut representative for the National Task Force on AIDS Prevention.  His efforts were honored by the Connecticut Coalition for Lesbian & Gay Civil Rights and the Hartford Gay & Lesbian Health Collective in 1990.

In 1992, Mel joined the Urban League of Greater Hartford as a result of their heroic decision to include a gay outreach program in their HIV/AIDS prevention efforts.  He co-founded the Kwanzaa Project with his longtime friend Regina Dyton in 1994.  Mel is also a published author of poetry and was the founder/editor of the Kwanzaa Project News, a bi-monthly newsletter addressing the issues of gay and lesbian people of African heritage.

Mel has served as a volunteer for the American Red Cross’ African American HIV/AIDS Instructor Training Program and in 2000 he and Regina Dyton were the first African American Grand Marshalls of the Connecticut P.R.I.D.E. Parade.

In 2005 Mel retired and moved to New Haven.  He still travels regularly to New York City and Massachusetts to visit family and to Ogunquit, Provincetown and elsewhere to relax, write, and take photographs.  His varied interests include the arts, cooking and entertaining friends.

TRANSCRIPT

I’m Mel Thomas and, keeping it real simple, I was born in Hartford, Connecticut.  I attended the public schools there.   At age fourteen or fifteen I joined a band.  We were the only interracial group back there during the fifties.  We named the group “The Downbeats.”  As a result of that thirteen years that I spent with the band, I played with Stevie Wonder, Chubby Checker, Chuck Berry,  a host of folk out of Motown, the early days of Motown, so that was really hip.

I had my first sexual experience when I was maybe thirteen or fourteen and fooled around with of these two friends of mine.  It was just something that we did, it was very personal, but was just something that we did.  Back in those days "gay" was defined as someone who looked a lot like Little Richard . . . . who wore four pounds of pancake makeup on their face and pranced around in flamboyant clothes, silks and all that good stuff.  So, in view the fact that that's not what we were doing, by no means could you consider us gay.

I was in my late teens when I met my wife and we got married, had two kids, got a divorce and I ended up with custody of my son, my oldest son, Greg.  I had gotten married a second time and it was during that second marriage that I started really getting in touch with my feelings.

Between the two marriages I had fooled around with guys a couple of times.  Once again they were friends but still, you know, I was not identifying myself as being gay and it was at the same time, around the same time, that all hell broke out in the village at Stonewall and they had the riots.  And as a result of the riots, what happened was that there was a documentary on TV one day and they were interviewing these different guys.  And one guy was talking about how he liked to go after young kids and everything, and I’m saying, “Well, that ain’t me.”  Another guy talked about how he used to cruise the tea rooms and men's rooms and all that stuff and I’m saying, “That ain’t it.”  Then they focused on this guy who had on a shirt, tie, you know, and he was sitting behind a desk and very cool, you know, and he identified himself as being gay.  And that was the first time I’d heard someone call themselves gay who I could identify with, okay.

Once I came out it was really awkward because I had custody of my oldest son and there was always this fear looming over me that I could lose custody of him.  If people at my job found out or something of this sort, that really didn't bother me, but the idea of possibly losing my son weighed very heavily on me.

Eventually, I think I came out to my son when he was fifteen or sixteen and it really blew my mind, you know, when he said, well, he kind of suspected, you know, anyhow.  We always had a very open relationship and to be truthful with you that was one of the things that was really driving me up the wall, because we always had this open relationship and it just seemed like for so many years I had just been lying to him.

Shortly after I came out to him, I came out to my mother and, come to find out, she knew, you know.  [Laughter]  They say the mother always knows, alright.   And it was like, after that I, you know, just started coming out to everyone.  My closest friend, I came out to she and her husband and my sister, you know, just different ones, I just started coming out and that was it.

When I think of my concerns of losing my son and therefore, you know, I was kind of like forced to, you know, stay in the closet.  Those kinds of things have changed at least in Connecticut and in a few other states.

I've always had a problem trying to lump everyone into this, you know, “the gay community,” ‘cause to me when you say “the gay community” well, is there . . . . do you have a community of people who are left handed?  No.

To me, I guess it all depends upon one's definition of community, and my definition is a group of like-minded people and that's not necessarily the case when you come across someone who is gay.  I can meet another person who's gay who is a racist.  I mean there can be any number of ways that we are just so different and the only thing that we have in common might just be the fact that we like sleeping with people of the same sex.  Well . . . . so?

Now if you want talk about a group of people that’s struggling and call that a community, then, yeah, you know, now I can kind of go along with this thing on the gay community and say, yeah, we're talking about gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgendered.

There are definitely areas for improvement within the community itself.  There are gay people today who are out, they're out and proud, and yet they are still having some issues with either internalized homophobia or internalized heterosexism.  Alright.  They are still having those kinds of issues even though they call themselves as being out and proud.  And, I mean, I still hear how we tend to put each other down in the community.  I can remember being shocked when I first started going to the bars, being shocked at the attitudes of gay men against lesbians.  Blew my mind!  Okay?  And I’m thinking to myself, we’re all in this together, you know, what's going on here?

I guess, you know, my thing is whether you’re gay, straight, whatever . . . . life is what you make it.  If you sit up here and you let people dictate to you how you should live your life, and everything, you’re going to end up being a pretty sad cookie.

It's the old thing of, you know, if I had to live my life all over again is there anything that I would change and I'd have to say no.  And the only reason I say no is because I love where I'm at today .  I love where I'm at today.

I enjoy getting older.  There are parts of it that you have a choice, you can either laugh or cry; I choose to laugh about it.  [Laughter]  You know, that’s it, I laugh about it.

And I guess that's one thing, when I think about it, throughout my life regardless of all the ups and downs and everything, ever since the beginning there was a lot of laughter my family and no matter what went down, we always laughed.

I tend to still laugh at a lot of stuff, you know.  Here it is, I'm sixty-nine years old . . . . I can't wait until I turned seventy, man.  People keep asking me what am I going to do for my seventieth birthday and I'm telling them, I’m partying for one solid year, man, you know! [Laughter]