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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 7, 2000)
f » mM 5 Continued fr om Page 2 ) All the while he was growing more and more attracted to male classmates, and his crushes felt good, but there was a growing dis cord between his inner and outer lives. Wario says: “I could see no possible way to actuate this. I didn’t see how I could live my life as a gay man— there was nothing like that in my culture anywhere, not at all, no resources whatsoever.” All he had heard about homosexuality in his country was that “it was an evil, decadent thing that Western tourists did in hotels.” After graduation Wario taught at a Catholic high school in Kenya for a few years and clung to the hope that he would somehow outgrow his tendencies. Instead, he fell wildly in love with another man. Although it was unrequited, his deep emotional involvement signaled to Wario that he had reached the point of no return. When an opportunity arose in 1986 to attend college in the United States, Wario grabbed it like a drowning man grasping at a life raft. But during his last months in Kenya he was wracked with fear and doubt. Though he had always wanted to return to the States, he won dered if homosexuality “was some illness I picked up as a boy in the U .S .” Which led him to hope that the United States might also be where he could be cured. T he good news about his years at York C ol lege— a small, conservative liberal arts school in York, Penn.— was that he was able to live with a family who provided him a lov ing home and connections to his family back in Kenya. The bad news was that this family was part of the same church that was sponsor ing Wario’s father’s work, which meant he was still stuck in a strict religious environment and any transgressions might be reported to his parents. r ' 1 1 i f** : I It: i Li i / « .'1 I gjr 1 f < ’l l & Kahunya Wario, age 10, sits on the arm of his mother’s chair in a family portrait just before they returned to Kenya in 1975. The couple in the background are the people w ith whom he lived during his college years. " I wondered if hom osexuality was some illness I picked up as a boy in the U.S., and then I began to hope it was also where I m ight fin d a cure. So he hid his sexual confusion. At 22, Wario became a freshman in college and did everything he could to fit in, be the pier- feet eldest son and maintain his good family name. He also searched for a solution to his secret problem. “1 needed to get a cure. I intensified my church activities, I prayed and fasted and did everything 1 could to purify myself,” Wario remembers with a shudder. “ I made all these promises to God: I’ll be a missionary, I’ll do anything to be cured!” Before long he wrote away for a pamphlet from a ministry promising to turn gays straight, and Two years after high school, Kahunya rWario (right) in 1986 with two of his students he scrutinized it a long time, thinking at first this was his salvation. But Wario couldn’t bring himself to contact the organization and responded instead to inner guidance. “This was the goddess talking to me, telling me that I was OK,” he says. Though forced to live in the closet, Wario began slowly and secretly to explore the entic ing, exotic facets of Western culture— such as he could find in rural Pennsylvania. In 1988, a gay man spxike to his human sexuality class, which prompted Wario to come out to his teacher, who assured him he was just fine, that he was not, as he feared, bio logically defective. Through her Wario met other queers and discovered a metaphysical bookstore run by a gay couple. Though encouraged by these develop ments, Wario still had misgivings. “If this was going to be a viable lifestyle for me, I needed some validation from someone in the church, so I came out to my college chaplain,” he explains. To Wario’s astonishment, the chaplain was able to direct him to writings by people in the church who had positive things to say about sexual minorities. A fter college, Wario knocked around from place to place, even toured Europe with the saccharine singing group Up With People, but eventually made his way back to the States, the only place he had found where it seemed possible to live the life of freedom he imagined for himself. He returned to York, but he moved away from his overprotective American family and away from the evangelical church. Though he was making peace with his sexuality, he hun gered for a more inclusive spiritual path. Even while in Kenya he had been exploring other ideas that he found in his father’s books. “The route out is reading; I read endless books,” he says, acknowledging that he’s always had a rebellious, irreverent streak. “Church was my world view,” Wario explains, adding that he eventually realized a lot of the moral condemnation he had experi enced was politically motivated. That helped lead him to more mystical pursuits and to a fascination with the New Age movement. One of the books that affected him the most is Handbook to Higher Consciousness by Ken Keyes. He knew he wanted to meet Keyes, who at the time ran a metaphysical institute on the other side of the country— which is how Wario found himself in 1993 in Coos Bay, Ore. “ 1 was as far away from my background as 1 could be,” he says, recalling his own amaze ment at where his journey was taking him. Though he was the only gay person among the institute’s 25 staff members, Wario felt welcomed and stayed on for sev eral years, expanding his own ideas and helping Keyes with his workshops, which promoted the philos ophy that each person creates his own reali "I mode a ll ty “What I was look these promises ing for was a spiritual community, and 1 to God: I'll be found that there,” a missionary, Wario says. To his parents, he I'll do anything said only that he was “pursuing his spiritual to be cured!" growth.” Then one fateful day in 1995, Wario read a newsletter from the Breitenbush Community that promoted an upcoming national gather ing of something called the Radical Faeries. Intrigued, Wario battled a February snow storm to wend his way to that remote retreat center in central Oregon, and what he discov ered there changed his life forever. Wario says he was completely blown away by the revelation of this group of gay men who had managed to integrate a rich, vibrant spiri tuality into their lives. “1 couldn’t believe that anything like this could exist— it was wonderful and frightening at the same time," he says. “It was an all-out celebration of being gay— from every perspec tive— I was in absolute awe of those 165 gay men from all over the world." Totally beguiled, Wario knew immediately he had found his true family. “This was the first time my sexuality and my spirituality came together,” he recalls, adding that he returned to Coos Bay a differ ent person. (For more on Kahunya Wario’s experiences with the Radical Faeries, see the article on Page 35 of this issue.) Continued on Page 27 PHOTO BY MARGO GIRARD january 7.2000 » Jut Mit