The Big Bang, by Phillip Hoyle

I don’t easily relate to the expression “The Big Bang” because it sounds too much like a public relations title for a military campaign, religious movement, or rock group. It lacks the respect that my theistic background would deem necessary for anyone’s cosmological explanation. Ironically, the idea was first conceived by the Belgian Roman Catholic priest and scientist Georges Lemaître. Other scientists kept working with the idea that eventually was called the Big Bang by some distant relative of mine, Fred Hoyle, for a 1949 BBC radio show on cosmology. The theory was denounced by most American fundamentalists as atheistic. Eventually Roman Catholic and protestant proponents of a variety of creative evolution approaches offered more sanely conciliatory ways to view the Big Bang idea. There’s much more to it, but I’m not here to philosophize; rather I’m here to tell a story—the story of my own Big Bang.

In contrast to the Big Bang of science, mine did not begin at birth (although my mother may have had a conservative view of my life as beginning at coitus). My big bang took place in a San Antonio motel room when I was thirty-two years old. That night I for the first time got posteriorly assaulted. But do not mistake my use of the verb assaulted. I wanted it to happen.

My primordial homosexual atom showed itself present a long time earlier, if not as early as my mom’s experience, certainly when I began to respond to men as a sexual, emotional, and relational necessity. My awareness began to take form when running around with my childhood best friend and learning to kiss with my male teenage lover. It matured when I experienced what I supposed were extraordinary attractions to men in my young adult years, feelings that went far beyond the pangs of sexual desire toward some fuller kind of love like that described in a poem of the biblical hero David who at the death of his adult friend Jonathan lamented, “your love to me was wonderful/passing the love of women” (2 Samuel 1:26 NRSV). I had a quite fulfilling life with my wife and kids, but still I knew I was missing more, a missing that felt fundamentally important.

That night in the motel I came to understand something more I needed. That night I had kisses and the open male-to-male sex I wanted with an adult. The man, a really bright, educated minister and a passionately expressive lover introduced me to the complications of gay life I had read about and was in that motel experiencing. I was thrilled and fascinated. Apparently it was something different for him as well—not the sex of it—for he had lived in New York City as a young man and I’m sure there he learned or at least practiced up on the ways of gay sex. He had settled into a straight life with gay sex on the side. But the night of my Big Bang he also experienced something extraordinary that prompted him to say, “I think I could fall in love with you.”

Like in the scientific theory, the bang set off an unending series of results. I was quite taken by him, especially when he followed up later with a contact to see how I was doing. His care seemed more than pastoral. I would fantasize much more from our connection but in a couple of subsequent phone calls I heard in his voice the workings of guilt feelings. At that point I cut off our potential affair. I wasn’t going to mess up my marriage and developing career to run around with a guilt-mongering and perhaps paranoid person even if he was male and sexy and smart. Besides I already had a man I loved and who loved me although we didn’t have sex.

The Big Bang opened me to a world of gay complication, something both like and unlike the Eden preached by heterosexual-championing, marriage-normalizing clergy and Sunday school teachers, to say nothing of American culture and law. It taught me that all life occurs in an expanding universe that is potentially as treacherous as it can be satisfying. That universe continues to move me into much more life and imagination. I don’t say this as a slogan, but it has been a never-ending process of expansion since my big bang night. That expansion is the truth I continue to live.

© 22 July 2014 

About the Author 

Phillip Hoyle lives in Denver and spends his time writing, painting, and socializing. In general he keeps busy with groups of writers and artists. Following thirty-two years in church work and fifteen in a therapeutic massage practice, he now focuses on creating beauty. He volunteers at The Center leading the SAGE program “Telling Your Story.”

He also blogs at artandmorebyphilhoyle.blogspot.com