![jimnealsfirstbday112.jpg](https://queerty-prodweb.s3.amazonaws.com/2008/01/jimnealsfirstbday112.jpg)
![jimnealsfirstbday112.jpg](https://queerty-prodweb.s3.amazonaws.com/2008/01/jimnealsfirstbday112.jpg)
AB: What year did you come out?
JN: Well, I was married for ten years and I – a reporter I spoke with here in North Carolina said, “You know, Jim, you’re so honest, frank and people find it so refreshing, however one of ladies in the newsroom said, ‘Well, he lied to his wife.'” And I responded, “No, I didn’t lie to my wife, I was lying to myself. As soon as I quit lying to myself, I could tell her the truth.” That was when I was probably 31 or 32. I got married very young – right out of college.
AB: Did you feel pressured to marry?
JN: No, not all! I was like, “Okay, I met someone I love and I don’t want to lose her, so let’s get married!” [Laughs] I would never advise young kids to get married at age 22, but, I was an independent thinker and certainly went against the wishes of her parents – and mine! But, in any event, I never – she’s a good person, she’s a great mom and our marriage ending was not her fault. I wasn’t being honest with myself.
AB: And after that you felt like you didn’t have a place at the table?
JN: I went through a period where I felt outside. People who come out at a certain period of life – you go through what I call your gay adolescence: all the stuff you never got to do. I just felt like an animal that had been held in captivity and was released into the wild and didn’t know how to take care of itself. All of a sudden I was in this new world that I didn’t understand. I was a part of it, but it was a little frightening.
AB: I can imagine.
JN: So I went through those years where I felt bad – I had young children, I felt like I had ruined my ex-wife’s life, I wasn’t sure about my kids, but as I grew and became older, wiser and more comfortable in my own skin – which really didn’t take very long – I was helped along the way by wonderful mentors, these older men. They inspired me to continue to feel like I could do anything I wanted.
AB: Were your parents politically active?
JN: No – not my parents, but my family was. My great-grandfather, who I’m named after (pictured left), worked in county government all his life, as did my uncle and my great uncle. There was a history of public service in my family. We discussed politics a great deal sitting around the dinner table. My dad would kind of waffle and vote for Democrats and Republicans. He tended to identify with whoever stuck up for the little guy. When I went to college at the University of North Carolina, that’s when I started forming my own opinions, like a lot of young people, about – I began to separate my views from those that had been my parents’ influence.
AB: And what did you learn?
JN: I became a lot more tolerant, I think. I became a lot more tolerant not of people from different backgrounds, but of people with different points of view. I wasn’t as rigid in my beliefs.
AB: That’s a good thing to learn.
JN: Yeah, I mean I had a lot of very good people that I studied under who were provocative. They were good teachers and they challenged us to look at the world in different ways. That represented a departure from – particularly my dad had a more rigid ideology. That was kind of threatening to my parents, particularly to my father. I had an uncle who once told me – a really bright man who had been a college professor and a minister – that when I was young, I was mature beyond my years: “You were always adult like for a little kid and had real intellectual curiosity, more so than your parents. And when you used to express that, it would make me mad as hell, because your parents would humiliate you.”
AB: How?
JN: They would just shoot me down.
AB: Can you remember any particular occasion?
JN: I remember being intrigued by philosophy – my uncle Bob was an intellectual. My dad didn’t go to college and had a bit of a chip on his shoulder for anybody who came from an academic environment. My uncle Bobby had taught me about subjects like philosophy and world history and the lessons to be learned. My dad was always dismissive and would say things like, “You’re a fool if you think it’s worth taking advice from someone who doesn’t make more than $25,000 a year”. Just comments like that, which not only shattered my uncle, but me – and we’re talking about a time before I was ten year’s old!
AB: What were the popular perceptions of gay people during your youth? Were there any kids at school who were bullied for being gay?
JN: Not for being gay – “gay” didn’t exist. The term “queer” did,” but the gay people were very much underground. It was just not talked about. There was the hair dresser, the florist, the interior designer or the bachelor. The term “queers,” I remember, I was first brought in fear. “They hang out at bus stations and bathrooms and pray on young kids,” was the image that I recall having been imprinted on my mind. Oh, and I remember this: my mother once criticized me for the way I walk. She said, “You got a hitch in your giddy-up!” [Laughs] The implication was there was something wrong. I remember trying to figure out how it was that I was walking that caused the hitch in my giddy-up. I still haven’t quite figured it out!
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We’ll post part two of our Neal interview tomorrow morning. Get excited!
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faghag
The new layout sucks,I’m not coming back till you bring the old one back.
Adios.
l
Can’t say I like the layout either. The server is dragging also.
Charley
I like the new intellectual layout. Makes you think about serious political issues changing our lives today. Not just the ho hum (yawn)Entertainment Tonight celebrity fucks.
chandler in lasvegas
The new layout is OK but the serious stuff is so small and all the PORNY ADS ARE SO BIG. It’s like…serious…serious…serious…BIG FUCKING NIPPLE…HUGE CROTCH…serious…serious…serious…
justin bright
huh. i wonder if that repuglican homophobe from alabama us senator jeff sessions knows his re-election ads are appearing on queerty. maybe i’ll start some trouble and send him some screen shots. it’ll probably give him at least a little indigestion.
anyway, neal has about a snowball’s chance in hell to win north carolina but its nice to see glbt candidates run for office.
Leo
If Neal can get his supporters to go to the polls, he does stand a chance to win. Our NC primary is in May and by then the presidential contenders will aleady be decided. So, voter turnout will be low, which can work in Neal’s favor. Dole is joined at the hip to George Bush, and suffers his unpopularity. She also has minimal support in her own Republican party. I expect it will be a ho-hum election, so if Neal can get his folks to go vote, he does have a chance. (Be productive. Wrap your snowball around a $100 and send it to Jim.)
Tim Bonham
“They hang out at bus stations and bathrooms and pray on young kids,â€
No, that’s evangelical ministers. The libel against gays is that they prey on kids.
Learn to spell!