Young, gay and thrown away

Karen exited her honeymoon phase about five months, three weeks, and five days ago.

And once that happens, all the problems residents had with their parents--issues related more to being young than gay--manifest themselves. Like the problems with rules and authority. And just like a parent, Cherry sits down with the residents and explains what will not be tolerated.

"Changes are real hard for them," she says. "What's more scary for them is to have change and not run from it."

Cherry tries to be patient with the kids when they first arrive. But if the resident doesn't take the program seriously, she takes to "riding them" until they get on track.

As the newest resident, Sam knows all about that. When he was unemployed, Tammy made him hunt for a job a full eight hours a day. Every morning at six, she would rap on his door and say, "You got a job yet?"

Sam would say no.
"Then why aren't you up yet, honey?"
Residents' opinions of Cherry's motherly approach range from "she can be a real bitch" to "she's a fierce woman--whoa, man!" Some of her more successful tactics, she reckons, have included removing the VCR from the living room and putting residents on "Nintendo probation." It works 90 percent of the time, she says.

Unfortunately, the 10 percent she can't account for has to do with personality clashes among the residents. You get the feeling these youths would never have chosen to be together, and any hope of "bonding" appears futile. "It's just not going to happen," Cherry says. "They clash more than they bond."

Cherry often recalls those precious first moments when a new resident arrives. She sees a kid who's had no food or shelter, whose clothes are soiled with dirt. "When they walk in that door, the first thing they see is the kitchen, and they say, 'Can I eat?' And I say, 'Yes.' And then they open the refrigerator and say, 'Oh my god--I can eat anything I want?' And I say, 'Yes.' And they say, 'Anytime I want?' And I say, 'Yes.'"

She pauses a moment. "It breaks my heart for about the first 24 hours. And it never fails. Every kid that comes in here is like that."

Suddenly, blaring rock music fills the air. It's coming from Karen's room. A bit startled, Cherry says, "Someone needs attention."

There's a little girl inside Karen, but you'd never know it at first. A petite 19-year-old with red hair, Karen possesses a brat's confidence. On the outside, she seems rock-hard, a loner, but in unguarded moments she's playful and even giggly--all she needs is your undivided attention.

But she does have a tendency to be frank. "They tell me I have an attitude problem, and yes, I do. Proud of it, too," she says. "Hey--I know what's wrong with me, and I like it."

Karen loves sports, especially softball. But most of all, she loves movies. And she's not afraid to tell anyone who's listening that her favorite movie is Tank Girl. "Especially the scene where this guy is hitting on this girl in an elevator, and Tank Girl steps between them and kisses the girl," she says. "I didn't expect this out of the movie. That's my inner personality. That's what I'd love to do. I even used to say I wish life could be like a comic."

But Karen's life has been anything but. She claims she ran away from an abusive household in Plano at 17, and lived like a nomad for two years before finding Hope House. Her lowest point, she says, was having to sleep on the roof of a Plano McDonald's.

At age nine, Karen says she told her parents she was attracted to other girls. They were indifferent. "I've heard that that's one of a parent's denial mechanisms," she says. "They probably thought it was a phase."

Karen would eventually run away. She discovered later that the couple she'd called her "parents" were actually her aunt and uncle. (Karen's relatives could not be reached to tell their side of the story.)

While Karen was staying temporarily with friends in Oak Lawn, wondering where to go next, one of her roommates walked in with a copy of Cathedral of Hope's newsletter. In it was an article about Hope House, explaining that the program had one vacancy.

One phone call and one interview later, it was filled. "I always knew Hope House was out there somewhere even before I knew it existed," Karen says. "As a little girl, I knew there was a place out there for me."

A month after she spoke those words, however, Karen would abruptly leave Hope House to live on her own. Hope House officials wouldn't comment on the reasons for her departure, citing confidentiality rules, and Karen didn't return several phone messages left at her job.

Hope House live-in counselor Mark McCue is an atheist, and proud of it. He believes mankind has too much faith in churches, and not enough in people. Don't ask him to pray.

McCue was honest about his beliefs when he talked to Bob Ivancic and Tammy Cherry about being on the Hope House staff. Soft-spoken and flip, McCue, 28, got involved with the program after answering a classified ad in a gay newspaper.