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- July 25th, 1989
-
- He sat in a field with 5,000 Americans. There were families with
- laughing children. There were couples with that "look" in their eyes
- sitting on blankets under that beautiful Georgia starlit sky. There were
- rednecks laughing about some football game they had watched that day.
- There were even the capitalists ambling through the chess board of blankets
- and grass peddling tacky little souvenirs for whomever was a fool enough to
- think he was getting a bargain.
-
- But he felt alone that nite as he sat there with his companion.
-
- He felt alone in this field of 5000 because he chose to love his
- companion. (Who just happened to be male)
- The isolation he felt amongst all those human beings made him feel
- as if his heart would turn to stone, if not as big a stone as the one that
- these 5000 had come to look at on this nite. He had seen hate and anger
- directed towards his kind too many times. He never could understand how
- someone could hate someone that loved. It made him bitter that he couldn't
- reach out and put his arm around the one he loved to express his emotion;
- JUST the same way that the man and woman on the blanket in front of him
- had just done. It was only another priveledge that he didn't have because
- he was gay.
-
- The laser show started with loud music and a dazzling array of lazers
- that painted beauty in his mind as they bounced and danced off of Stone
- Mountain. The show was in several themes, each having its own music and
- pattern of light. He was in awe and had forgotten his bitterness, if not
- just for that moment. He could only think of beautiful images, images of
- love.
-
- It was then that the finale started and he watched as the music went
- to American themes and the lazers played out fireworks and images of war
- and pain and the American flag. He was shocked as uncontrollable tears
- fell down his cheeks and his throat was choked up with emotion. He felt
- a TOTALLY new emotion just then. And that emotion was an ease on the
- bitterness that he had felt earlier. For he realized that he was NOT
- isolated from the 5000 people that sat there. Each and every one of those
- Americans had the same tears in their eyes. And he was probably the only
- one that realized what made him as one with them. He was proud to be an
- American. He cried with his heart full of American pride and at the same
- time wondered how such an emotion could have remained hidden from him for
- so long.
-
- He secretly wished that everyone there in the grass understood the
- revelation that he had just undergone. Perhaps they would understand him
- then. Perhaps thats all they had to do; UNDERSTAND. Perhaps he was just a
- bit idealistic. Perhaps. But he knew ONE thing with a certain clarity;
- He was going to do everything he could to make others understand that he
- lives, loves, hates, thinks and feels the SAME emotions that every one
- of those 5000 assorted Americans did that night under the stars, that he was
- just another one of them; A Human.
-
- And that is why he shares that experiance with you now.
- "We hate what we do not understand......"
-
- Gregory Frankin Gooden
-