I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. Depictions of gay people were not flattering. It seemed to me and from what my mother told me (She was a public health nurse.), all gay men had AIDS. The very few gay men I knew did die of AIDS, though it was rarely spoken about. Other depictions of gay men were flamboyant queens, sissy effeminate men, etc.
Early on, I had hints I was gay, but I ignored them. I remember being enthralled by Harry Hamlin in Clash of the Titans which came out in 1981; It was years later, though, when I first saw it on TV. When I started middle school, there was a new guy in my class. As usual, people were picking on me, and he told them to stop. He was the kind of guy who you knew immediately was going to be the leader of the pack. He was athletic, and my classmates didn’t question him. He was blond and had beautiful blue eyes. I had a crush, and I didn’t even know it. We were friends all through the rest of school; not close friends, but enough that when someone tried to bully me, he’d scare them away. Even the older kids didn’t mess with him. He was not a bully, but people respected him. He was just a nice guy. I had all sorts of fantasies about him. He was my masturbation material in my teenage years, yet, I did not realize I was gay.
When I was in college, I wanted to learn more about being gay, so I went to Barnes and Noble. Not only did I know this is where a lot of gay men hung out, but B&N also had books on the subject. I had to be discreet, though. The first “gay” book I bought was Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin. In hindsight, that was not the best choice. It’s a good book, but it has a tragic ending. Early gay fiction nearly always had tragic endings. This kept the realization I was gay at bay even longer.
Slowly, however, I was coming to the conclusion I was in fact gay. I got some gay videos through the mail, and I read Brad Gooch’s Finding the Boyfriend Within: A Practical Guide for Tapping into Your Own Source of Love, Happiness, and Respect. Apparently, I had to learn to love myself. In college, I had a girlfriend. When we broke up, I realized I didn’t want to date girls anymore. Yet, I still couldn’t admit to myself I was gay. One summer I was housesitting for the dentist my aunt worked for. My college roommate (We lived together all four years.) was taking summer classes and living in the dorm. Therefore, we were both in Montgomery. We decided to get together at the house I was staying at and have some beers. We were getting drunk and started playing truth or dare. During the game, I admitted I wanted to suck a guy’s dick. I knew I was basically asking if I could give him a blowjob, but he didn’t take the bait. Eventually, we both went to sleep; me in one of the bedrooms, him on the couch.
It was during this time of housesitting when I got to really play on the internet for the first time. It was dial-up so it was slow, but I was able to find lots of pictures of naked men. I printed out a few to keep. This got me into trouble because my mother found them and confronted me. It was an ugly scene; I denied I was gay. I said I was only curious. From then on, she suspected I was gay, and it made me go into the closet even further. I wasn’t about to admit I was gay at that point.
I don’t know which book I eventually read (I did a lot of reading on the subject of being gay, and I have always been a consummate researcher.), but I remember reading you had to come out to yourself before you could come out to others. You had to accept yourself for who you were first. This was a difficult thing for me to do. I just couldn’t be gay. I couldn’t be all the horrible things I had been called growing up: fag, faggot, queer, homo, sissy, etc. I didn’t want to be that.
But then things began to change when I went to graduate school. I was finally on my own and away from everyone I knew. For the first time, I was safe. The move was only from Alabama to Mississippi, but it was so different being on a liberal university campus. I felt free.
I think my first honest moment of realization came sometime during the year 2000. The British show Queer as Folk had come out. Plus, there was an American show about sex I had been watching. It may have been Real Sex on HBO; I can’t remember. But whatever the show, it was discussing this shocking scene from British TV in which a guy is rimmed. I’d never heard of rimming, at least not being called that. I remember hearing one of my female friends talking about a boyfriend of hers who would move from eating her pussy to eating her ass. This fascinated me, but I never knew what it was called. So…when this show featured the scene from the first episode of Queer as Folk where Aiden Gillen licks down Charlie Hunnam’s back and reaches his butt, and there is a look of total ecstasy on Hunnam’s face (Yes, I know it was acting.), I was so turned on. I knew I desperately wanted to have that done to me. That’s when the realization hit that I might be gay.
Sometime in 2001, I finally admitted to myself I was gay. I was reading a lot about gay people. There was a story on Nifty Archives, an online site for posting stories (Do any of you remember it?), called “Educating Alex.” I remember I read the whole thing in one night and then couldn’t wait for future installments to come out. I joined InsightOut Book Club, a gay book-of-the-month club. I read all I could get my hands on. I mostly read in the summer months, though, because I just didn’t have time to read anything non-school related during the academic year. Reading positive stories about gay people allowed me to realize I could be gay, and, I could be happy.
Lately, Twitter has had people posting when they realized they were gay. It’s usually pictures of TV or movie scenes. Most of it is somewhat lighthearted. If I were to answer that question, it would be with the picture above of Charlie Hunnam’s face when Aiden Gillen first teaches him what rimming is.
So that’s my story. When did you realize you were gay?
13 comments:
Bi, so for me, it's slightly more complicated, since I definitely was interested in women.
But I think watching old Hercules and Tarzan movies on AMC was part of it. And one time on vacation when I was ten (early bloomer) I couldn't get enough of this one boy, about 15 or so, in the hotel swimming pool: His suit had no liner and was a light cyan. Yeah, I saw everything.
My main obstacle was always, I never liked anal. These days I understand seeing anal as "the" gay sex act is just internalized homophobia.
At age 37 I finally admitted to myself I was gay and it was OK. Things developed positively from that point on, but I was married with two kids. At 50 we divorced; the kids came with me. One had just graduated college, the other was a sophomore in college. At 57 I was partnered with the guy I married. We have been together 20 years now.
1959. Spring of junior year in high school, 16 yrs. old, at an interscholastic event in Cambridge, MA. A friend invited me to go for a short run along the Charles. It think it was just to get out of earshot of our classmates. After a bit he stopped, and said, "You should go out for track." Then he told me that he had fallen in love with one of the girls in the organization. (I think this was a courtesy because he thought I might be interested in her.) He added that he was pleased to have fallen in love because he had begun to wonder if there might be "something wrong" with him. That line hit me like a ton of bricks. In that instant I realized that all my feelings of admiration and friendship toward other guys (never girls) were manifestations of the thing he called and I considered "something wrong."
From that moment on, I was shut tight in the closet. I could no longer just be myself. I had to be careful not to do or say anything that would let people suspect I was gay. I've been on guard ever since. Perhaps, I've loosened up a little bit over the past 10 years, meeting up very sporadically with other bloggers for concerts etc. But I don't really want to have sex with anybody.
I was 11, it was summer '93 and I fell in love with a lifeguard... The movie 'Priest' (1994) only confirmed it.
Born in November 1950, I'm a babyboomer so that generation that couldn't say that we were different from most of our human folks.
I always knew that I was attracted to guys, boys at first as early as I was 5 yo.
I still have a B&W photo of my first crush, François T. who was quite a cute boy in my kid's eyes. I also knew that I had an artistic soul and later became a fine art artist and art teacher. Maybe it's one of the reason my «artistic eye» was attracted to male beauty and still is… LOL!
Further on, and with the social and religious pressures of my generation, I married a woman in 1977. Had three nice children in the years after. Those are now nice fine adults and they still love their father even after my divorce in April 1999.
That is the date were all broke down in my brain and heart.
Since around 1992, I began to meet men at first in other places like their homes and after one told me about the gay saunas, I did go there to have sex their.
But it wasn't only about sex because I met there very nice men and one of them is even my best friend since 1993.
So now, I can live freely my real gay life and did my coming out in 1999 too.
The lesson is that you can never put on the back burner your real sexual orientation.
One time in your life, it'll come back very hard on you.
For me my 40's yo crisis did it all tumble and made me realize who i really was: but that I always knew but didn't have the courage to realize and more to take action.
I also didn't want to let my ex wife with kids and I waited that they were young adults to separate and divorce.
That's my story like many others of my generation.
I was born in 1957. I always knew I was gay. Even while I was in 1st 2nd grade. I had a fondness of my father's friends that came over to visit. I was forward. I wanted to sit in their laps. I come from a very brutal childhood-verbal abuse, divorce, father who had knock-down-drag-out fights with both wives. I recall wanting to have kids to prove I could be a better parent, but once I figured out how that worked that was off the shelf. I remember being fondled by my assistant principal and my uncle. So I pretty much shut down. I knew I enjoyed the feelings so that confused me a little.
All through elementary and high school, I was an observer. No real friends. I refused to wrestle in 9th grade because by then I knew for sure boys were my thing and did not want it to become evident that I enjoyed rolling around on the mat with the boys. My teacher tried to pull the teacher card and I just put my foot down. It was not going to happen. I remember being called gay by a highschool senior at my church. I loved her strapping Italian, Army boyfriend. I saw him naked a few times and he was a god. I was probably in 9th or 10th grade. By then I knew I loved boys for sure. I just didn't know how to go about it. Looking back on it, I had a friend in 11th grade try to get me into bed. My overwhelming fear was what would happen if my parents found out that scared me shitless. because I knew I had to explain. That was not going to happen. The less dialog the better. I remember the year I graduated, 1976-I flunked 2nd grade-my father stopped me one day and had a question. I panicked. My father never cared about his children. Yes, he provided for us. That was required. But nothing more. The kids traveled in different circles. Early on my father called the "boys" together-I have 2 brothers from the first marriage and we are about a year-year and half apart-he stated that he didn't care what we did. But if it involves him or the family he had to know about it. That governed us throughout our teenage years. My father was puzzled because I didn't go to any of my proms, no girl ever called the house, never went on dates, and he wanted to know if I was a homosexual. Here I am 19 years old staring at my father and saying to myself what fresh hell is this. I emphatically said no and moved on. I moved out on my own at 19.
Part-2
I was heavily involved in the church. Knew I was gay but just didn't know how to go about getting laid or meeting men for that matter. I just didn't have the know-how. I even went to the 7-11 and bought Playgirl magazines. That took time for me to muster up the courage to do so. Just before my 27th birthday, I joined the military-Air Force. I had "gay sex" with a married man from my church when I was about 25. That's another story. But this I can tell you, I was told that it could never happen again. We did it right before the 11:00 service at his house. I went to church, lead the services, turned white as a ghost when I saw everyone staring at me, did my thing, sat down and the pastor asked me if I was alright. I went home with the married man for the day and ended up back in bed. By the way, he approached me for sex during the night. I said no. I thought about it. Got my ass up, went into his bedroom woke him up and said let's do it. I was a little bit of a screamer.
I also remember about a week before I had to report for military processing I picked up a guy at Tower of Books. I was cruizing him and he bit and took the lead. I went home with him and had the best time of my life. The first time I was with a GAY man. It was a hook-up. He was once in the Army and we talked about military life. I loved the sex so much that I back-traced my steps and found his house the next night, knocked on his door and wanted more sex. He invited me in and rocked my world. Yes, I was determined because the night before there was dense fog following him to his house. We didn't have Mapquest as of yet let alone iPhones.
I went into the military and was introduced to the gay nightlife in Frankfurt, Germany. And the rest is volume two. Yes, there is gay sex in the military. I was 27 and had to fight off married men who were patients.
I should have realized when I used to sneak off to the underwear aisle in Walmart, to glare at the shirtless jocks on the package. I was probably 8 or 9 years old. But I didn't realize that I was gay until 8th grade, when I also realized that I was in love with my best friend.
1997, I was six years old and my heart was aflutter due to several handsome actors that year. Brendan Fraser in George of The Jungle, Paolo Montalban in Cinderella '97, Jon Seda in Selena, and Shemar Moore in The Young and The Restless. I had never thought about other boys by that point but something about these men just ran me wild. hahahahaha.
I finally admitted it to myself ten years ago (19 or 20yo) during prayer time in my dorm room at a conservative christian university in Oklahoma.
In one of your later posts you discuss how how much better the next generation has it in terms of availability of information. All because of the internet. Think of how much better the next generation has it if they are gay. It's much more accepted today than it was in the 80's or 90's. If I had been discovered as gay at age 17, 18, 19 I would have been thrown out of my house. That still happens, but I think most families are much more accepting of it now. The fact that gay men can easily meet one another now makes a huge difference - thanks gay.com and now Grindr! Years ago it was only the major cities that had gay clubs, and many of those were seedy places. Many guys wouldn't go to those places. Gays at those clubs were beaten up sometimes as they left those clubs.
Things have changed a lot, and for the better, for gay people in the last 20-30 years.
Or the package in the jocks?
20 years. It was still shit in the 90s. (Remember Matt Sheppard?)
Hell, even in the aughts, it was still acceptable to be a homophobe, even in anti-war/anti-Bush circles. There was even a theory (recycled from speculation about Goldwater's mental health in the 60s) that Bush was gay and all his macho behavior was overcompensating.
I saw the show, 'Family' when I was 12-13. They had a late teenaged boy (named Willie), whose friend Zeke was gay. Willie questioned his own sexuality and had a talk with his dad. His father said all boys go through a stage like this, and it was nothing. In the back of my mind, I kind of when 'phew', even though I had nothing to back up my even quasi feelings. Two years later, I saw a guy my sister was dating and internally, I go, "nope. It's not a phase" - and kind of just accepted it with no self-loathing, or trepidation. I wasn't 'out', but I was accepting.
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