GayCuriousTodd Wrote:
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?
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!