A good place to begin might be what I knew and what I could never have imagined while growing up during the 1950s and 60s in a small Upstate town.
What I knew was that I was somehow different and that my best chance of survival lay somewhere outside the South. What that isolated, shy, scared little boy (and later teenager) couldn’t have imagined was the life that lay ahead, overflowing with joy, experience, love and friendship. Later I could never imagine coming back to live in South Carolina. But here I am now.
After a few wrong turns along the way, I landed a job at a major New York City advertising agency. After settling into my walk-up apartment on East 89th Street on the Sunday before my first day of work, I walked over to sit among the crowds on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That’s when I think I first comprehended I’d arrived at my new life. I had a place to live, no airline ticket back to South Carolina and a job waiting for me in the morning. I did what the stereotypical gay man would do, I started crying.
Three years in, I met a man — no, make that THE man who would transform my life. Suddenly it wasn’t all work and no play. Life was now art museums and galleries, concerts, operas, ballets, restaurants, antique shops and auctions, summer vacations on Nantucket, trips abroad, a weekend house in the Hudson River Valley. And just in case you are wondering, no, he was not the proverbial rich, older gay man on the prowl for a younger man to keep. In fact, he was four years younger than I.
Joseph Bruce is a retired advertising executive and board member of the Columbia Museum of Art. (Photo provided)
Sometime along the way, I began more frequent visits back to South Carolina, particularly to the Columbia-area where my sister was then living.
What? There are now Gay Pride Marches in South Carolina? Columbia has a serious art museum with an international collection? A first-rank regional philharmonic? When the time came to retire, suddenly I could imagine what had been unimaginable — returning to South Carolina to live.
What I have discovered since returning is that a gay man with, let’s be honest, the full spectrum of stereotypical gay man interests can have a very happy and fulfilling life here. Columbia has proven to be anything but a closed society. I’ve made friends with so many interesting people, queer and straight. The South Carolina Philharmonic, Historic Columbia and the Columbia Museum of Art have all three been especially welcoming, not just to me as a gay man but to the whole range of those who call Columbia home.
I now serve on the art museum’s Board of Trustees. In celebration of SC Pride on Oct. 21, I am leading two tours exploring eight queer artists with works currently exhibited in the museum’s collection galleries. Check out the Columbia Museum of Art’s website and come join the tour. And while you are there, be sure to see the major exhibition featuring legendary gay fashion designer, Alexander McQueen.
This time last year, I joined the museum’s staff at the SC Pride March. We passed out stickers with these words against the background of a rainbow flag— "You Are a Work of Art." Somewhere along the route, I had an experience that somehow mirrored what had happened all those years ago on the steps of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.
Crowds lining the sidewalks — young and old, queer and straight, families with young children — all eagerly reaching out to get a sticker. I could never have imagined such a thing. So once again I teared up, happy to be back home in South Carolina.
And as for being gay, I think it’s the best thing that could possibly have happened to me. It’s what propelled me into a life I could have scarcely imagined and for which I am profoundly grateful.
