When did you know you were gay?
How did you know you were gay?
How soon after you came to this realization did you come out, and to whom?

It is just a curiosity thing, as I am not gay myself but I realize that it must have been a difficult thing to come to grips with yourself, given society's take on homosexuality.

And please, if you do not feel comfortable answering the questions or telling your stories... don't. I'm not trying to pry, just understand for empathy's sake.

Hopefully this thread will not turn into a lightning rod for controversy and flaming (no pun intended )

Perhaps not the best word choice, my friend.

when i started doing figure 8's while ice skating, i knew i was different.

Good point, Colin.
Not curiosity in that way, I should clarify.

I think it was when I realized I knew all the words to Dresden Dolls "Coin-Operated Boy."

Oh, wait I'm not gay. No fair.

Pun excused, however accidental; but of course that's what this thread will erode to become.

Uhoh, Todd's kid is gay.

we already knew that.

They're 4 and 6.
And I'm pretty sure that they're not gay.
They both seem to have a crush on their nanny.
And both have spoken of having girlfriends -- already.

and foreskins.

1. i knew about age 8 when
2. i was discussing erections with my friend and he said that he got them when he saw pretty women and i said "i get them when i see cute boys"
3. i didn't come out to anyone until 17 to my best friend and my sister but i told them i was bi for some reason

I had a friend who said he found out he was gay "accidentally". I never bothered to ask him what that meant, mostly because I was afraid to ask, but some because I didn't want to know. I guess I'm not curious.

But to this day, that iota of knowledge eludes me. I'm hoping it gets answered in this thread.

What? Will this eventually be recorded so that when Chairman Dobson in the Fundamentalist Republic of Promisekeepers determines that the Purpose Driven CrystalNacht Cathedral Desert Storm Troopers ship us off to New Manzanar? Hail sushi in high desert.

I am hetero-curious. I lived with my wife until I didn't. I've lived with a younger man as my partner for 11 years now. I am lucky he puts up with me.

I knew I was attracted to everyone, from the time of childhood. But I don't believe in "bi-sexuals" much either. I don't believe in "gay" either... I think this is a sub-cultural invention of 20th centruy western life. I think there are gay acts, not people. This is a minority view in 2005. I believe gender, identity and culture are braided in the zeitgeist. Where the wind listeth, or lispeth...

I am happy living a committed, monogamous life... but I miss women. I would have had a different live in the 17th century, or 500 bc, or even perhaps in 2525.

…if man is still alive.

What do you miss about women? They've been driving me crazy lately.

But I'm so used to hear her say
"Good morning" ev'ry day.
Her joys, her woes,
Her highs, her lows,
Are second nature to me now;
Like breathing out and breathing in.
I'm very grateful she's a woman
And so easy to forget;
Rather like a habit
One can always break-
And yet,
I've grown accustomed to the trace
Of something in the air;
Accustomed to her face.

Awesome. You should be a cult leader or something.

Harry is a man of obvious wisdom, but you can be at the head of the line for that cult.

What if we're not gay but very, very bright or lively especially in color, should we post here?

gay adj. gay·er, gay·est
Of, relating to, or having a sexual orientation to persons of the same sex.
Showing or characterized by cheerfulness and lighthearted excitement; merry.
Bright or lively, especially in color: a gay, sunny room.
Given to social pleasures.
Dissolute; licentious.

well, i guess that's better than, "i'm working on a sociology paper."



qualified distancing statement.

okay, i'll bite.

i became a tomboy when i was 8 and i think it started because i really wanted to play little league but couldn't. (these are the olden days--the 60's) it really pissed me off.

everybody i knew played together and it was fun but around 7th grade i realized that the boys were "liking" the girls and vice versa and i really felt kind of lost. like i didn't fit in anywhere. pretty scary and lonely.

so high school came and i just spent a lot of time doing drugs and furthering my career as a full time juvenile deliquent. i dropped out of high school in the middle of my junior year and left home and had a great best friend and assorted characters of both sexes that i hung out with. i dated a few guys here and there but they were mostly a pain in the ass always trying to tell me what to do so fuck that.

then i met a guy i really liked and we 'dated" for almost 2 years but we were druggies and he had a massive gambling thing and it was fun
BUT THEN
i got very, very sick. i got hepatitis and use your imagination as to how i got it.

so i was bed bound for almost 3 months and had a lot of time to think about what the fuck i was doing and ending up quitting the dope thing and going to college and trying to get my shit together.

i had a friend who had a brother who was a 14 year old male prostitute and we'd go to bars with him. we went to a prty at his house on halloween when i was 19 and we're hanging out with all these homos and then 4 (gay) women walked in. and they didn't have short haircuts and weren't wearing flannel shirts and were quite attractive and within 60 seconds i said that's it. i'm gay. it was like i needed something to relate to or something and it was the happiest day of my life because i decided then and there that i had spent a good deal of my life being fucked up and miserable and not belonging and maybe this was the key. and it was.

then old boyfriends would call and they were probably the first ones i told and most of those assholes were so sure they had turned me gay. except for gambling guy who said so what, would i still go out with him. it was very funny.

so once i was out i was out. i never hid or lied to anyone.
so there's your bedtime story for tonight.
i got a million of 'em.

goodnight, moon.
goodnight, harry.

No, this post belongs in the "Piebald members of the Obner community" thread.

Are you a rainbow?

Ok, I'll share.



Pretty much known all my life, even as a child.



Earliest incident was in elementary school when I had a crush on these two guys who use to tease me alot. I cried alot. Waaaah.



I didn't really come out to anyone until high school; first person was my first b/f, after some incident where his dad beat the living crap out of him and was feeling bad for him. My closest friend found out, and didn't really give a shit, which was great (except for those who were absolute twats, which there were a couple). Parents found out shortly afterwards, when I lazily left out some, er, documents that said I was screwing the guy I came out to (who, of course, lived next door to us O_o). Needless to say, this is the moment when, to them, I became a child of SATAN!!!

But, things get better. Came out to my dad in utter mortification, only for him to react better than most of the people on my mother's side. Really, the entire process sucks, since you constantly have to do it over and over again, but things could be alot worse.

Sorry for turning this into a LJ entry.

I knew I was gay basically as soon as puberty hit; that would be when I was 12, in 1974. My sexual feelings, when they arrived, were for men right from the start (no twinks please--give me those "secondary sex characteristics").

I do believe you are born gay, and in hindsight I can see evidence that it was there from a young age--like a childhood interest in men's bodies, which at the time I attributed to curiosity over why men could take their shirts off in public but women couldn't.

Even more telling was a reoccurring dream I had when I was probably 6 or 7 which gave me a strange warm feeling when I would think about it later; it was blatanly homoerotic as I look back on it now. It took place on a pirate ship. I can say no more.

Unlike a lot (majority?) of gay kids (certainly for 1974), I was very lucky in that I was never conflicted about it--for about a week I said to myself "Maybe I'm...bisexual! That's it!" Naaah, I was a homo, and I just completely knew that there was nothing wrong with it. In a way, I think I decided my attraction to men was OK before I really understood that most people thought it was a sickness. I was in the process of losing any belief in god around the same time (we were Episcopalian, which hardly even counts as a religion), so I was already settling into the idea that the Majority isn't always right.

My only torment over being gay was that it was going to be so much harder to get laid (on the off chance that I ever would get laid). Since I didn't have access to porn (Playgirl or Viva--who knew there was actual gay porn?!), I was clipping and collaging pictures of the Marlboro Man or anybody with a '70s porn mustache.



Oh how I wish I still had those collages, and the two Playgirl books I managed to buy through mail order when I was about 15 or 16. I kept them at the bottom of a drawer with a Playboy and a Penthouse that I happened to have; some friends and I found a bundle of them on Junk Day and we each took a few. You can actually believe me when I say I read them for the articles!

My father found the Playgirls, Playboy and Penthouse about a year later. We were both too embarrassed to say anything about it, and he pretty much wrote it off as a phase I was going through. I was (was?) a total nerd, and my parents later admitted that they thought I was pretty asexual.

The first person I came out to was an obviously gay guy (I myself can "pass") at the convenience store where we both worked; I was probably 19. Then it was a couple other people at work. To me, that was easier than coming out to friends or family--I had no emotional stake in the people at work.

I came out to my two best friends when I was 21. A college friend and fellow dork and I decided we would send postcards to all our friends over the summer if either of us managed to lose our virginity, so at 23 I came out to about a half dozen people by postcard. One of those half dozen immediately admitted to being bi; two others came out as gay over a decade later (none of them the friend I had a crush on, dammit).

I didn't get up the nerve to come out to my parents until I was 28; not that I was particularly worried they were going to reject me, it's just that we're very WASPy and as such are thoroughly uncomfortable with all feelings and emotions. It being 1990, my mother immediately thought I was going to get AIDS and die. This is when they admitted that they figured I just wasn't interested in sex. It was a little weird for a while, but they got used to the idea over the years.

I've been out at pretty much every job I've ever had. The fun part is those first few months when nobody knows and I can sneakily guide the conversation around to the topic of the ghey and find out what they really think about them homos (since they have no idea they're talking to one). Meanwhile, I'll just keep dropping broader and broader hints until somebody figures me out. Fucking with straight people is fun!

Hmmm...

It's hard to tell when I first knew I was gay. I suppose I had some idea all along. My first gay experience was when I lived in Greece (I was about 14) and I performed oral sex on a boy in school. And then it happened again. And again. It was then when I finally realized that I liked this whole dick sucking thing.

As far as coming out...that didn't happen until later in life. Growing up in a strict traditional Greek household, I wasn't too eager to share this part of my life with my family, but as it turns out, my whole family knew before I even did.

These days, I couldn't be happier living my life as a gay man. I think it's because my family and friends have totally embraced it and that helps.