Coming Out

 Also see coming out videos by other people by clicking here.

See a video I made when I was coming out in the 1980's by clicking here.

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This is a resurrected version of the "Coming Out" Journal that I posted online back in the late 1990's.   The original journal was one I kept on my computer and later transferred online on a website I used to manage.   I rediscovered this while going through some old data backups kept on CD's that I was moving to DVD's to save some space in my shelf.   I am reposting these journal entries as they were last presented over a decade ago...

I N T R O D U C T I O N

These are excerpts from my personal journals that I kept while dealing with my own homosexuality. I present them as one person's journey in dealing with a very difficult personal issue.


Hi, I am now a 50 plus year old gay man...proudly gay and appreciative that my sexuality isn't the only thing that defines who I am. But, that wasn't always so. I came out when I was 23 years of age and well through my sophomore year of college. I pursued two majors, worked over 30 hours a week, and held myself to high academic standards but had to deal with this "issue". I am not going to pretend that the process was smooth, pain free, or very dramatic. It was, however, my experience that I tried to come to grips with...I knew no gay people personally and knew no gay role models. I felt very alone and very afraid of what was to come if I accepted that I was gay. Ultimately my "coming out" was via a speech that I had written for a speech class presented on March 23, 1986.

With the airing of  "Dawson's Creek" in the early 2000's about dealing with internal conflicts, gay or straight, I was brought back to that time in my life where I was struggling with my own sexuality and the difficulty that I had adjusting to being gay. I am not pretending that my coming out is important or even remotely significant to anyone else. I do offer these journal entries with the interest that someone will find some commonality that coming out can be painful, but also can be overcome, dealt with, and ultimately appreciated as a gift of sensitivity. Thank you for visiting and taking this journey back in time.

Some discussions contained within these diary entries may refer to sexual conduct or sexual feelings. If you are offended by discussions of sexual issues pertaining to homosexuality and the coming out process, please exit.

"From the Inside, Out: The Battlefield"

presented on March 23, 1986 -  for a Speech Class During My Senior Year in College

The battlefield is littered with dead and dying soldiers. Their blood was not shed over a war of international aggression or of a war of national, civil liberation. The battlefield rather is internalized inside of me with two distinct and diametrically opposed factions declaring war on each other with whatever destructive means are available for complete annihilation of the opposition. The issue that these warriors dispute centers around my sexual orientation......

......for I "fear" that I am a homosexual.

ON THE ONE HAND....there is the me that each of us sees when I enter a classroom: the passive, no attention directing individual. For I am shy and insecure about where I lie in relation to everyone around me. I do not want to be different-- I beg of everyone around me that I want to belong...to be like everyone else. Damn it! I am scared!

My parents didn't prepare me for this road of my life. How alone I feel on this journey dodging cannonball and musketfire. Who do I talk to about this? Who won't judge me without sabre or bayonet?

...Why, when I am out with a group of male friends, and if they say, "did you see that babe?"...I didn't and they did! What is wrong with me? I know that I am supposed to like girls---but I don't notice them...I see through them...they don't exist to my eyes. I wake up each morning hoping that this....this disease will be gone and that through some magical, divine intervention, I'll be changed into a straight person. I feel weak...I couldn't even bring myself to go through with a suicide to get this disease out of my body.

ON THE OTHER HAND....there is the me that wants to be left alone. "Doesn't he see that--that is how his life has been?" He keeps trying to outrace me...trying to outdistance me...trying to outflank me....and ever trying to suppress me. He has tried to even kill me...he is a 23 year old that feels as if he ages by decades with the passing of months. He wonders why is so exhausted by early afternoon.

....he is afterall, engaged in a war of annihilation of himself; where no victors emerge and all shall perish leaving a hollow and empty shell devoid of feelings and compassion......

Yes, I am gay....damn it! He tries to deny that I don't even exist. He is really not a bad guy. Oh, he is intelligent ...so intelligent that he can find anything on homosexuals and homophobic panic in research journals. He hopes that through this research he can deal me a deadly blow. But each research session just reinforces the panic he feels because the answer is the same.... HE IS GAY, TOO!

He is scared of me and what I represent. He says that he has worked hard to get where he is. He says if he stays low key then people don't have a reason to dislike him. He spends his life digging foxholes instead of charging up the hill. He feels that if he emerges from outside of his closet he will have to face criticism. He won't go to parties or other social events because he is afraid if he gets drunk, the faggot, ....me.....will come out and embarrass him. Damn it! I am just like him. When he looks into the mirror he sees me though he tries to look through me. I would not do anything to jeopardize his hard work. But, I am him and he got to realize that.....

I am tired of running. I call a truce between these two fighting factions. I am as weak as this individual on the one hand; yet I am as strong as this one on the other hand. This strongest person is as indestructible as I have ever seen. In the ten years of this battle waged within, ever escalating year by year, he has emerged with nary a scratch. Even nuclear weapons would leave him undaunted and me dead.

Those around me have got to understand that I did not choose to be gay. Like the drafted soldiers that fight on either side, I am what I am by some design or some purpose. Yet, I do actively seek to be a whole person...to be a functioning human being. I will these two sides into an resolution of hostilities. This is one battle that I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Ultimately you don't have to like me.....I do!



Wednesday, July 16, 1985

Last night was terrible-I couldn't write. After I left my therapist's office, I went to talk with the one person who might understand my situation--my college advisor whom I had built a rapport with over the last 4 years; she is liberal-minded (ERA, abortion, and gay rights to name a few of them)…someone who knows me and whom I respect. Because she was busy, I was only able to schedule an appointment with her for next Tuesday at 1pm. That appointment might help, but it does nothing to alleviate the anxiety that I am feeling.

This anxiety was tremendous last night. Since my college advisor wasn't available, I called my best friend (we'd tentatively agreed to go out for pizza or to see a movie or something with his wife), but he "forgot" and thought it was Thursday that we were supposed to go out! By this stage I had to get out from under this weight….I was suffocating.

I decided that maybe a nap might help, but the only thing that I could think about was my homosexuality and how wrong it felt. I thought about how I could end this pain that I was feeling. To say that I didn't consider suicide would be lying, for I did so. I even considered the method, however briefly. But, I thought of what I've gone through before when I was taunted because my name sounds like a girl's or how I was joked for being the smartest kid in the class and had that banana shoved in my face in 6th grade and what I've accomplished in the past despite the taunting and gave up the idea. I am trapped in this fear of the unknown and shame yet far too proud to give up. This presented a problem to me though: I was locked within a situation that I couldn't handle by myself and with few people to talk with that I could trust or without prejudging me. At this point the anxiety mounted.

What was I feeling? When I drove home from my therapy session, I drove by a couple of nice looking guys in other cars or walking beside the road that caught my eye…..I was sexually aroused, but when I recognized this consciously, I felt so alone and so shamed….what was I doing checking out other guys? I imagined being with them but knew I couldn't do that because being gay is like a death sentence….well maybe second to that life ending situation….I don't know why they catch my eye-they just do. If I were to act out my immediate and spontaneous feelings they most certainly would have rejected me or beaten me up unless they were gay too. If they were, I'd reject them too because consciously I don't want to be gay. I am tired of feeling different….tired of being half a step out of feeling like everyone else…tired of noticing a guy's butt while totally oblivious to the girls my friends point out. Presented with that unfortunate and illogical dilemma, I tried to hide my homosexual feelings again. How many more times I can do this? I don't know--for I feel like I will throw up from all of this pent up suppression,

Being straight is so easy. Just be like the other guys. Look at the girls and make some suggestive remarks and you're one of them. Talk of girls and occasionally against faggots and you can pass off with only the minimal amount of effort. This is especially true if you give for attention to be drawn to your homosexuality. Stay low and be straight and with a decent track record you're liked and you are not alone. You're not alone, however, if you're one of them. If you're not, then physically be able to fake it, but that intangible sense of belonging continues to evade you.

These feelings of not belonging to any one group has really haunted me. Sometimes I feel like I am too gay to be straight and too straight to be gay. I really have only known of two gay guys in school and both of them talked like faggots and were more like girls than guys but I don't act that way. I want to be a guy not a girl. If I can only be liked by these straight guys through playing like a straight guy, then I cannot be liked for being myself…they never get to know me for who I am cause I am so worried about being ridiculed. In literary terms, I cannot take myself out for a test drive to see what he'll do for fear that the straights will block the road, take the road away, or even worse, blow my damn car off the road (my sense of well being). This feeling makes me afraid to come out…afraid I will lose what ever sense of well being that I still have. Saying I am gay loses all of that pathetic game that I am playing without replacing it with anything better.

Faced with that internal dilemma of straight versus gay feelings fighting for the viability in my conscious being, I decided I go out for something to eat and go out to a movie alone. One problem remained….I was alone……..again! Damn, if there was only someone I could talk to and with.

I really feel like a faggot right now at this keyboard of my computer. What I have just done is to put down on the computer things that I never tell anyone else about what turns me on about guys. How I watch them when they bend over to see their butts or the waistband of their briefs as it rises above their jeans giving me a hint of what is lurking behind the denim. The guys that I find sexually interesting (I mean this in the sense of increased heart beat, penis arousal, and other sexual thoughts) are either younger than me like just getting out of high school or about the same age as I am...rarely ever older than me. I guess I miss what I didn't try in high school, but the build of guys in their late teens and early twenties excite me. I don't know why but older guys don't do anything for me... I see through them like I do with girls (which don't exist in my line of sight unless I am directed to look at them).

The guys that turn me on have firm stomachs and cute butts that are covered in tight jeans. I am not really turned on by guys with lots of muscles, but I do like it when their chests are defined and they are tanned. I love looking down where their crotch is but I am afraid that I'll get caught and beaten up for it so I have to sneak a look. I love to look at guys with blue eyes or green eyes, but brown eyes are nice too. I am not really particular about hair color though I do like blonds or brown hair more.

When I go out to the mall or someplace where guys are, I feel so funny...I look at them like I am shopping for something yet feel repulsed by the idea that I am actually doing this. I can go out and remember the smallest detail of a guy's butt or front side yet remember nothing about any girl. I will go out of my way to look at a guys body, but wonder why I am doing this when I shouldn't. I really don't like this gay stuff, but I am drawn to it and can't turn off the desire to keep doing it. Where is my drive to do the same with girls? Other guys feel what I feel for them when they look at girls yet I cannot seem to find those feelings for girls.

It's getting late now and I gotta go to work in the morning. I sure hope I feel better in the morning. I don't know how much more of this I can take hiding what I feel and not feeling what I should.


Thursday, July 17, 1985

Today was better than yesterday, but I still feel different. When a guy at work makes some remarks about women, I feel I still have to respond accordingly. Even worse, when he responds that he may be upset because he didn't "get any" last night (his girlfriend had a headache!), I think to myself that I haven't "gotten any" in eight or nine months...this doesn't make me feel very well at all and it was with a girl at that!

I don't know why, but I haven't had any strong dissonant feelings about being gay today. Yes, there were times that I feel bad about it (wishing I could simply deny it and go on as a straight), but overall I don't feel nearly as confused or as badly as I did on Tuesday and yesterday.

I woke up today with a gay dream and it felt good...real good! I don't have any bad feelings about it now because the person that I was with cared about me...well at least I sensed he cared about me. I really don't know who this guy was cause he wasn't anyone I had seen before, but I appreciated feeling his staring in my eyes. I remember thinking that this was comfortable to be liked and returned the feelings back to him. Yes, the dream was sexual, but instead of being empty like a lot of my dreams or like the couple of times that I had sex with my only girlfriend, the dream was provocative and interesting. What I can remember of the dream revolved around this guy I used to chase around high school staring at his butt as he walked down the hallway.. oh, I knew his schedule better than he did and could always catch a glimpse of that firm butt in his corduroy jeans as they held his butt tightly within the fabric. The guy in my dream reminded me of him...not quite the same face, but I do remember that butt! I also remember feeling comfortable with him and not afraid of being gay or being found out. Maybe it was the fact that the dream reminded me of high school and being able to relive the better moments.

I do know that when I woke up I wished I could have continued with it...dreamed more of him, for it is a lot better than reality right now and how I have this confusing battle with being gay and hating it at the same time. I wish I could pick up where I left off last nite, but dreams aren't like a book you put down where you can turn back to the page where his dick was in my mouth and I liked do it! I often wonder what that would be like in real life but doing it would make me gay and I am not sure I can handle that right now.

This is about the extent of my day today...no new ground gained or lost but I can always hope that I drift off to sleep and look into his brown eyes and feel that warm and fuzzy feeling I felt when I dreamed of him last. Good Night.


Friday, July 18, 1985

What I can't understand about myself is why today I don't feel gay. Yes, I still look at other guys (in the same places and in the same way) and I even saw one guy who was different somehow from the others. I was taking orders at the register and this one guy was next in line and when I finally got to take his order, I looked at him and into his eyes. No problems there. But looked into mine too. For a split second, I felt something--something special. But, then I was through with his order and had to go onto the next one. I wish I could have got to know him.

Maybe the reason why I don't feel as gay as I have in the past is because I feel good about myself. Things went really well today. I got complimented at work by my superiors and even by a customer. That attention makes me feel good. Yet, while I feel good in that area, when girls are mentioned, I feel like a jerk. I don't know why, but the problems that I am having are related to the rejection that I have had in the past by women. When I was in high school, I only had one "girl friend" (her name was Donna). I didn't know what I should do with her. It wasn't a sexual problem...everything works, but rather one of social integration. I was a novice at dating and didn't know the moves like other guys. I wasn't at all popular, nor was I particularly good looking. I didn't go out of my way to socialize--I was shy. But Donna and I only talked...I liked that, but never did we kiss or touch each other. I didn't feel like doing anything more than talking with her. One day I found out she started going out with a guy who had a pickup truck (I still didn't have my driver's license at the time). I felt badly about her going with him...I didn't do anything wrong, yet I lost her. I missed talking with her, but I cannot say I missed anything more than that.

In another example of naiveté' with women was two years ago; this one girl at work didn't have a date to the senior prom. I didn't find out until the week of the prom that she wasn't able to go. But, with a little prodding from the people at work, I asked her out for pizza and a movie. We talked a lot after the movie and I was really interested in this girl. When we got back to her house, I made a move to kiss her at the front door and it felt really nice. My first kiss! But, when I returned to work she was as cold as ice. To make a long story short, shed didn't want me to kiss her and she thought I was out of place. I thought she did...she even waited outside the door for a long time. I really thought I should have kissed her like I did, but man was I wrong!

Recently there was this really nice, beautiful, and intelligent woman at the University and studying in the same department I was in. I thought I would open up in the first place I tell her that I loved her. I really put my cards on the table...but her response was only that she'd think about it. Well I haven't had any response from her even though we have bumped into each other since. We are still friends, bu I think her thinking process is stuck in an endless loop. At that point, I was really looking for someone. Well, I guess I didn't find one

Here I am again, back in the present. I haven't gotten any further along in my adventures with females. I am finding that I am spurning them as I just seem so out of phase with them. My timing is off, my approach is off, and my skills aren't as developed as the other guys...I am more like a Junior High School boy in the dating game than I am a college man. Well, at least I was not only naive, but I was honest.

A couple of week's ago I took home this cute guy from work. He always smiled and had one of the cutest butts I had ever seen as his pants seemed to hug his ass. I remember that my feelings were so confusing. Those girls above that I was with were more intellectual...more thinking than reacting. I really wanted to do something physical with this guy...not just talk. I wanted to place my hand on his leg...I couldn't bring myself to risk doing that. I mean I REALLY wanted to touch him. I kept thinking about him and what he would look like underneath his clothes, but I was afraid. Thinking of those girls reminded me of what I have felt for guys. Here I go again.. thinking of guys when I should be thinking of girls.

The question here is if I am gay or am I anti-woman? I like girls, but just don't feel anything for them. I feel like I am looking through glass...not being able to come in contact with them. I really don't have any desire to do anything with them...not on the same level of intensity that I felt for that guy I took home from work. I don't know if any other guys are going through this same conflict of knowing that we should be going out with women but desiring something else. Sometimes I wonder if I am using these homosexual feelings as a route to escape my amateur approach with women. All I know is that even on days when I feel good about myself and not particularly afraid of my homosexuality, I am left wondering what I could have done differently with those other girls.


Saturday July 19, 1985

It seems like a never ending battle. Those two people inside of me are at each other's throats again. On the one field there is the "creation of my protection"...the straight image; on the other, there is the weak and deflated and scared person. He's gay. I can't get to sleep tonight because the pain is too much. The battlefield is bloody. I just lost again. I don't know why I find guys attractive...this has got to end. I don't want to talk about this anymore. I just want it to end. Good Nite.



Sunday July 20, 1985

I guess one can't sleep being a fag out of one's system.

Financial problems, school problems, work problems, faggot problems and an assorted lot of life's joys are plaguing me now. It's a wonder that this body of mine can function as well as it does. What a tribute to my creator. Create a fag and leave me with no owner's manual on how to deal with being so different and so alone. Unfortunately for me, I am the one who has to live with this perfection. I am going nowhere fast and in reverse at the speed of light. A black hole is devouring me faster than I can reach for help. How much longer can I hold on to the shred of hope that someday things will be better. Someday I'll graduate from college. Someday I'll ge a job that will provide me with some modicum sense of pride and worldly significance. Someday.....some....day....I'll meet someone who cares about me and some day I'll be in the emotional shape that I can care back.

I feel like I am being smothered, and I can't get any air. I really am afraid of what being gay will mean to me. I don't know any gay guys....queer, faggot.....I don't want this...why this... why me?

For sale: a used person. Fair condition. Body...driven off the truck onto the showroom floor. Never taken out. Drive train needs repair. As is. Best offer. first offer. Any offer.

How will I get better? If I admit that I'm gay, then I have to live with the rejection that will probably greet me daily. Sure, there'll be a group of people that I'm currently alienating myself from with whom I can seek refuge. But, what about the people that hold positions of power or love? How can I be respected if I'm gay? It's a disease....yeah, a sick disease and looking for a cure hasn't brought it any closer to being better or resolved. If I admit I am gay I will have no protection against slurs, insults, or abuse. I'm already battle scarred from beating myself up. Can the "Enterprise" take another hit? Can the "shields" hold up during another battle? "Scottie, I need more power..........NOW!"

If I stay "straight", I will be forever in pain as I deny my inner feelings being one thing while always hide another. Pain will be all I will feel as the battle rages within. Constant fear from being discovered for being a failure. My energies will always be used to hide my faggot tendencies. What if I look at a guy's butt...what if I am caught? I will always feel being drained. I will feel like I have mentally castrated myself....no sexual self to experience. In effect, I will be a mental sexual neuter....afraid to experience my attraction to men and unwilling to waste my time on girls.

Tonight, I can't say what choice I will make. I can't say what I'll be the next hour, the next day, next month, or even next year. I just plain don't know. This sense of emptiness is because the concept of homosexuality isn't something that one can talk about. I have heard all the crap about how I picked this...how I am diseased! I picked to feel like hell everyday? I picked being different? This is bullshit. They are telling me I am a pervert. I've had less sex than most of my friends and I am the deviant and pervert?

I have often wondered what it is about me that has caused me to be attracted to men instead of girls. Why do I unknowingly notice every cute guy, tight butt, or bulge in a guys pants and yet I see right through all the girls at school? All I know is that when I see a cute guy's butt, I feel like fireworks are going off in my head. I feel the rise in my dick. I try to will it away, but my heat takes over. Nothing happens to me when I see girls. No matter how pretty, no matter how big their chests are.....nothing. I know I am a fag, but I can't feel good about this...there isn't anything good about this. 


Monday, July 21, 1985

Where do I start? I am getting so tired of this up and down thing. It is summer out and I cannot help but go outside and see some cute guy with his shirt off, get a look at his tight butt in shorts, or find myself attracted to men. Moreover, one of my friends who doesn't know I'm gay asked me if I wanted to walk on the boardwalk this evening. He and a group of some of my college friends were going. I thought "what the hell" and went. Big mistake.

There I was walking with my friends who were just cute enough to get me on the defensive anyway, but on top of that, they kept talking about the girls and man, I didn't see any of them. Honest. I did manage to look at all of the cute guys walking past me, but I couldn't stare or my friends might find out. I cannot figure out why I am like this…looking at guys when I should be looking at girls like my friends. The nite air was still very warm with a lot of humidity and this just added to my sense of embarrassment/humiliation and arousal. I was struck by the cologne of one of my friends and how good he smelled. He was wearing Colours and that was just tearing me up not to mention my continual questioning of why I am here in the first place. Each step I took just made me less and less comfortable. I was so afraid that I would expose my secret to my friends. I have never felt so anxious, so alone, and so desperate.

I am probably a little up tight because I meet with my professor tomorrow…the one that is going to talk with me about my "problem"; I know she'll understand but no one besides myself knows I am gay and even she will be a risk. I remember she stood up for a girl in the department who was a lesbian and made sure that she sought the appropriate counseling.

I am so torn. I like being aroused, feeling sexual, and I really go at myself when I am aroused. I guess I can write this because no one is going to be able to figure out how to run my computer to get this, but I jerkoff a lot…two or three times a night. Always to guys. Except for a time a couple of months ago when I tried to jerkoff to thinking about girls, I have been really fixated on guys. Even when I thought about girls, I was having to put a guy in the middle so I would have something to look at. Something to play with. Yet, just as I get so aroused by guys and jerkoff to it, I am left with this lingering feeling that I shouldn't be fantasizing about guys. If I only think about girls, I lose all of my sexual interest and then that kind of defeats the purpose of jerking off.

It is days like this that lead me to believe I'm gay, but how can I come out without losing it all? 


Wednesday, July 23, 1985

I feel surprisingly good today. No, the homosexual feelings have not gone away. I am beginning to think these feelings will be my cross to bear for my life. But, at the same time, these feel ings don't keep me up at night like they did last week. For example, last night marks the first time in two weeks that I was able to go to sleep without having to talk out loud about problems I was having. The only problem with talking to one's self is that there is no one to listen, to give me feedback, or for me to feel some sense that tomorrow will be brighter than today. I end up talking to my self expecting that I'll answer and things will be different. I think Bugs Bunny would say, "What a maroon!"

I suppose I should jot down some words about what happened yesterday with the talk with my former debate coach. Well, as I anticipated, she was eager to accept what I had told her about being gay. In fact she was able to to show more understanding and reasoning than most anyone I could have imagined to have received this "news". She didn't seem to be particularly surprised by my coming out and saying I'm gay, nor did she seem alarmed at my wavering feelings about my sexuality where some days I am willing to jump in and admit I'm gay to those days where I would best be planted six feet under than admit that I have any interest in men, sexual or not. She did wonder why I was harder on other people when the subject of homosexuality came up telling fag jokes…ridiculing those who could be perceived as gay. I mentioned that this is one of those juvenile attempts to keep people from thinking that I could be remotely gay. After all, rarely is the attacker considered a fag if he is joking someone who could be perceived as one. I really feel ashamed that I had done this in the past, but I have never read the owner's manual that came with my homosexuality and haven't quite figured out how a good fag should act and how to accept this "difference" for more than an embarrassment. I can see that I had overdone it, but the damage is done and all I can do is to act more responsibly from this point on.

Today I really don't feel like dwelling on anything particularly negative, but I do need to note that I had told my former coach that I had contemplated suicide many times to get rid of these feelings of being queer and the shame that I felt. My coach made me promise that I would call her before I did anything "stupid" or if I felt like I hadn't anyway out. She knows me too well…the sheer embarrassment of calling her would be enough to deter me from doing something and also she knows that my word is good and that I would have to honor the promise. I am really glad I told her…..finally I have an island of refuge where I can be myself without having to hide who or what I am. I think back just a couple of weeks ago and think about that scared kid who didn't have any outlet to discuss my feelings and was so afraid and paranoid about the consequences of being gay. I can think back that just recently I would have rather have been dead than to dream or think about being with men……scary.. My hair stands on end.

That brings me to an interesting point. What would I be like if I was gay? Would I be different if I looked at a guy with interest of getting in his pants, planting a kiss on his lips, or wanting to do the nasty with him? I had long feared that admitting my homosexuality would make me want to dress up in dresses and pumps, but I have never wanted to dress like a girl, so I guess I'll just be myself. I know I don't want to be like those stereotypes of limp wrists and lyspes when I speak. Thankfully, I am more like the rest of the guys in that I have a clear voice, deep and masculine, and I don't wave my wrists around like I was quadruple jointed. For what its worth, thankfully God created a fag that can pass as a straight if only I could stop enjoying men's butts or starring at their wonderful eyes.

I wish I had dealt with these feelings earlier, like in high school where there were a couple of guys I would have liked to have tried to get. Vincent, the cute dude who wore those tight jeans that hugged his round ass….ah, that one! The one that I knew his schedule better than he did so that I could get a chance to scope out his ass as it passed during the hallway. I had contemplated trying out for the soccer team as he was on that team and I could have seen him unwrapped. Oh, I couldn't even bring myself to shower after gym class cause I was afraid I'd get a boner in the showers after trying not to look at the goods standing near me. While I had played soccer in junior high, I am not the most athletically inclined dolt and would have probably fallen on my ass the first time I went to send the ball to one of the wings. Yeah, so much for thinking about the what ifs…… 


Thursday, March 17, 1988

I must say that I am truly amazed tonight! I haven't written much since my early days of trying to deal with my homosexuality. I have spent so much time in therapy trying to come to terms with this and in one night I have found the answer. I am normal.

Tonight I went to my first gay support group; it was at the College that I graduated from in 1986. They didn't have anything like this when I was in college! It was held at the Catholic Campus Ministries building. I remember driving by the building a couple of times because I couldn't believe that it would have been in a building like that. I parked the car in a parking lot across the street and then walked across to the building where the meeting was going to be held. I remember being truly afraid of what I might see or hear, but it was Saint Patrick's Day so maybe I could have the luck of the Irish tonight.

I could see in the door through the glass that there were people meeting in there; I was still early, but there were about 15 people (mostly guys) there and though I couldn't see their faces clearly, they were normal enough. I reached for the door and opened it. I had committed to this course of events.....what would happen next? I entered the building, closed the door behind me, and like an idiot asked the group "is this the gay support group?" half expecting that I had found the Bible Study group instead and would be a real idiot. To my surprise, they offered that it was the gay support group! Oh, my God! These people were normal! Look at them! Cute guys with beautiful faces and definitely good enough looking to eat! The girls didn't look like they had just finished a long haul trucking session. My stereotype of faggots has been blown away! I cannot tell you how relieved I feel that I won't have to wear a dress or act like a girl. These guys talked like I do...no hint of them being gay...they weren't effeminate...just like me. They were very much like a straight guy except they wanted dick like me!

I was so death fully afraid that being gay meant that I had to live the stereotype of homosexuality; I was astonished through the group that these guys and gals were just regular people who were themselves coming to terms with their homosexuality. Some were farther along than others. What was said in the room, its specific language, is staying right there, but I can say that this guy named Brad was profoundly beautiful. What a perfect sculpture of manhood. He must have been 19 or 20...beautiful face, wonderful teeth...great smile, cute ass. Oh, he was wonderful. Oh, I about died when he asked me to sit next to him! His lover was next to him on the other side, but I was nonetheless taken by his kindness and his sexual aura that circled around him like I wanted to!

I must say that I shall never forget this nite! St. Patrick's day will forever be my holiday! My coming out anniversary shall always be celebrated for I have arrived. No longer am I ashamed of being gay. I have witnessed the "other side" of homosexuality that being gay isn't the totality of who or what I am. That I can be myself while being a fag is so profoundly obvious, but I missed it. I just love the idea that I can be as I am with a man and that there are other guys who share my feelings and insight that don't wear their homosexuality on their sleeve.