The Men’s Center By Bill Burleson
Who says you can’t go home again? This is where so much began for me. This is where I came at a time in my life that I was searching for answers. I was searching for connection. I was searching for community. About a dozen years ago I decided it was time to make a change. I went looking for a support group. I had heard of the Men’s Center; a friend had gone to support groups there and seemed to get a lot out of it. I decided I would give it a try. Now here I am again, in this basement office in Uptown, Minneapolis, surrounded by used furniture, mismatched chairs and brochure racks. A humble home for something with such an ambitious name; the center of the patriarchy this is not. On this Tuesday evening, just as with my first Tuesday evening 12 years ago, men start to trickle in around 7:00, with the group starting at 7:30. The men seem to mostly know each other, greeting each other as they enter with a familiarity of family. Or as the man who sits next to me tells me, “The men here become part of your family, sometimes more than your family.” Another agrees, “Some of us are closer than family. We are a family of choice.” The Gay Issues support group has long been the best attended group at the Men’s Center, and tonight there are twenty-five men packed into a tight circle. The facilitator this evening is Tom. Coincidentally, Tom was also the facilitator the first time I went to
the group years ago. In between he left for a while, but he’s back because, as he tells me before we start, “For me, I get more back than I give.” The group begins with a “check-in,” when the guys take turns talking about how their week has been and if they need to “take time,” or use some of the evening to get support with some issue in their lives. After the check-in tonight’s a little different; in honor of there being someone with a notebook in the room they instead decide to talk about what brought them too the group in the first place. For example, this is Charles’s third meeting. He came for the support, and to “not feel so alienated from society.” Ed’s been coming for three years, and has found a “sense of community,” and has “allowed me to accept and like who I am.” Another man who has been participating for two years talks about coming out and how his life was a “complete mess,” and here “they know just what you are going through.” One man has been coming ever since his partner of 23 years died. He found “the straight world didn’t want me to talk about it.” One man says he started at the group when he was 17, and now he’s 33. When he first came, he circled the block in his car for the first two sessions before he could bring himself to come in the door. Another man who has been coming for three years talks about family issues, and found the group to be “amazing. Now I have much more self confidence.” The stories keep coming. Married for 41 years. Depression. With 25 men in the room, there are guaranteed to be 25 different stories. Some issues are about being gay in society and in their families. More often the issues are not directly about being gay, but the men still come to a gay-specific group so they don’t have to explain themselves on this very important part of their lives. One man says that “what we think of as a gay issue is really often a human issue.”
One might say Bobby Schauerhamer has a typical a story. He started coming to the Men’s Center with the Tuesday group, and when he came, he was “in crisis. I was quite a mess. I had a lot of losses, family, jobs.” He felt he needed support in coming out. Complicating things were his mental health issues, having been diagnosed with bipolar and suffering depression. What he found when he went to the group was “the mental health issues were no surprise to them. They were a very welcoming group. I think it’s a very nurturing group for men to come into.” Sometimes the group is about personal growth and regaining one’s confidence; in January Schauerhamer was elected Chair of the Board of Directors for the Center. These are the same kind of stories I remember from 12 years ago. Men who are looking for support in times of change, looking for connection, looking for a friendly face and a hello when they walk in the room. According to Tom, “Every night it’s like watching miracles happen.”
The Gay Issues support group meets every Tuesday from 7:30-9:30. for more information about the group and the Men’s Center, visit www.tcmc.org or call 612.822.5892. Have a group that would like to be written about? Contact me at www.forwhomthebilltolls.org