Going Gay: A Case Study in Denial

Have I always been gay? I don't know. I honestly don't know. Looking back over the first 29 years of my life I would almost think so, but then retrospection is treacherous: we tend to see what we want to see, what fits our identity at the moment. No reliability there, so no point in speculating, I really don't know. But let me tell you a few things I can remember:

I must have been about eight or nine, elementary school age. I dreamed I was a cowboy accompanying some wagons out west. We got into a fight with Indians, a pretty nasty battle. One guy was hit by an arrow and went down. I kneeled down next to him and knew he was dead or very nearly dead. And I felt this incredible desire to open his zipper, stick my hand in his pants and touch his dick. But I remember thinking in my dream "don't do it, everything would change". And I didn't.

Shortly thereafter began my games with Ralph, which he first initiated. I would never have thought of showing him my dick, I think, but he coaxed me into it. It was in the summer, in his parents' basement, I can remember it was hot outside. I was nine, he had just turned ten. And from then on we played sex games on and off, sometimes he started them, sometimes I did. I didn't like to initiate them though, I didn't like the power it gave him over me. The last time we played those games I was 13 and he nearly 14, I remember that there was something on TV about the Falkland War. I was spending the night at this house, we'd turned off the light and I still remember him asking me to take my dick out and shine a flashlight on it, because he thought it looked cool, all tall and erect. I'm cut, he wasn't, maybe that turned him on, I don't know. Shortly thereafter he announced that we wouldn't be doing that sort of thing anymore, and I think he implied that he'd discovered something much more fun: jerking off.

Mind you, I was looking for that very thing myself frantically, couldn't quite figure out how to do it. I knew all about it, I mean, what are encyclopedias for? I just wasn't quite sure how I was supposed to bring about an orgasm. And now you will learn the reason I'm eternally grateful to Charles Bukowski. I'd picked up a short story collection of his at the library, had no idea who he was, just the first story looked sort of interesting, I think it was something like Hitler had survived the war and was in a nursing home in the US and in the end got his brain transferred into a younger body. So after I'd read that story I started on the next one. Which was REALLY different. Welcome to pornography. And I was lying in bed, with my dick rock hard. And I don't know how I finally figured out what I was supposed to do, but I did. And it felt good, man, did it feel good. From then on of course, there was no stopping me. Remember when you were 14-17? You'd be horny all day every day. I was. I didn't jerk off five times a day but at least once most days. See, more often would have been difficult because I was pretty religious then and it gave me real bad guilt feelings. Hmm, maybe there's a reason it took me so long to realize I was gay. If you believe that sexuality is dirty, "normal" straight sexuality may be all you can handle. Believing I was gay in addition to sexuality being a problematic issue in itself might have cracked me then. I was also pretty darn obsessive-compulsive at the time, counting rituals and everything, so I certainly didn't need any additional guilt feelings. Got rid of the obsessions a little while later so j/o just left me tired, drained and cranky. Still does today, to an extent, although not nearly as bad.

It wouldn't have occurred to me then that I might be anything but straight, but I do remember that it excited me quite a bit once when there was a naked guy on TV, just for a split-second, they didn't normally show that then, even a woman's breast was a big deal, but it must have slipped by the censor and for a second you could see his dick. Very exciting but nothing that would make me wonder...

Anyway, all my fantasies were straight, although I never felt anything for girls when I saw them face to face. In my fantasies they were great, but outside of that, no crushes, nothing. I always thought guys were cute though, but since I'd sort of always felt that way I thought it was just normal and that the girl thing would develop over time.

Nothing developed, of course. I felt nothing for girls, they were nice, good buddies, fun to talk to, more intelligent in conversation than most guys, but no attraction. I had crushes, but they were always on guys. And that's probably where I started practicing denial, which I was eventually going to turn into an artform. Those guys were, uhm, interesting, right, interesting, and I wanted to be friends with them, right, that's it, friends, buddies, you know, no more than that, don't be ridiculous, are you implying I'm gay? HAHAHA, not me, no sir.

Except my fantasies were getting bland. Boring, no life in them. And honestly I have no idea when I discovered that I could make them a lot more exciting, tons more exciting, by adding just a little bit of a gay element to them. Denial, stage 2. Moving right along into stage 3: jerk off to fantasies of guys and have a girlfriend. That you're not really interested in, of course. She was fun, she was wild and we never got beyond kissing. I was 19, she turned 18 while we were together. Did it make me wonder that we never had sex? Nah...

At that time I didn't jerk off to guys all the time. I tried to keep it under control, think about women as much as I could, only threw in a guy when I really had to get junior to stand at attention and women just weren't doing it. As soon as junior was happily attentive I'd turn back to women. Yeah, it does seem ridiculous in retrospect but that's the way it was.

Two years passed and I had another girlfriend. This one was cool, and I was determined to have sex with her. After pretty much exactly two months we did. It wasn't anything to write home about, that's for sure. Her bed was small, we were both beginners, had no idea what the fuck we were doing, I touched her all over, she touched me, I kissed her, sucked her breasts a bit, all that time keeping junior under control who was very excited. I mean, yeah, she was a woman, but I'd convinced myself I loved her and she was a body, a real body. I had sort of an erection, the kind where just a little touch would push you over the edge but junior wasn't rock hard. I'm sure junior knew exactly why, sometimes the little head is a lot smarter than the big one. I was determined to go in anyway, when she asked me the worst question ever: "Do you think I'm pretty?" Welcome to No-Win World. No, I didn't think she was, actually. I mean I didn't like her for her Ms. Universe looks, but what are you going to say to somebody when you're lying on top of them? Right, you lie. I didn't really care, all I wanted was to be inside her. There was just the tiny problem of junior getting somewhat uninterested. I tried anyway. I doubt that I ever entered her, and it doesn't really matter, because I came in literally 2.3 seconds. I spent the night on the floor, not on the bed next to her although she would have liked me to, I was too ashamed.

Two days later, I broke up with her. And I clearly remember thinking "I'm probably going to turn out to be gay anyway, so it's best for her if I cut her loose." I planned our breakup so she could be mad at me, because I figured it would be easier for her. And she was. I left, feeling free and unburdened. On the drive home, I fantasized about sex with a guy for an entire hour.

I'd already decided to transfer to another school at that point, so our breakup came at a most convenient time. But I was still not ready in any way to admit to myself anything more than a slight gay streak. My fantasies turned to guys more and more, women didn't excite me very much at all anymore. And then I discovered porn.

Yeah, I know, I was naive but it took me a while to find a porn movie theater. After I'd walked past it a few million times, I did find the courage to go in. It was a bit weird, three relatively small rooms, two showing a straight porn, one a gay one. The straight porn movie was boring. So I thought, I'd check out the gay one, not because it would turn me on, of course not, just curiosity. I wouldn't even walk into the gay room, just stand in the doorway for a minute. I wasn't the only one who was "just curious". If I think about it, it was really funny. There was one guy sitting in the gay movie room and watching the movie, and about 6 or 7 guys in the doorway, pretending to be stopping only very briefly on their way somewhere else. Hehe, so I watched for a while until I started thinking "why is this ugly guy standing so close to me?" I moved away a few inches, he moved with me. That's when I got it, au frotteur, as our French friends say.

About half a year later I discovered booths. I found places that actually had a choice of gay movies in their booths, variety, twinks, and total anonymity. Put in money, watch, jerk off. Sometimes, not always. But the booths opened up a whole new world for me. Suddenly I had access to gay sex, could watch it as often as I wanted. I'm serious, there were weeks when I went just about every day. I must have spent almost a $1000 there over the course of nearly 4 years. But of course I wasn't gay, noooo, not me. I watched Asian twinks fuck each other in cheap motel rooms and came without touching my dick but I wasn't gay, uh-uh. I jerked off only to guy fantasies or very nearly exclusively but I wasn't gay. All my sex dreams, wet or dry, were about guys but of course, I wasn't gay. Denial, stage 4. You totally blank out a part of your life while you're living the rest of it. During the day I was hardly aware of what I'd seen the night before and would see the following night. I totally repressed it.

Until I had a crush on a cute guy. From a distance, very distant. I talked to him twice, very briefly, I never knew his name, but he was definitely cute and porkable. I knew I had a crush on him, I even sort of knew I was somewhat more than just straight but I never did anything about it. I guess the thing was that I had a group of very good but also very homophobic friends, or so I thought. And I had sort of a public image at school and around it, I was the golden boy of the department, I got a job teaching right after I was done, and I liked it. I couldn't imagine destroying it all to be gay, which of course I wasn't, you must remember. I know now that I would have needed role models, people showing me that it's okay to be gay and that you can be still be really cool. There wasn't anybody there. So I stayed in my comfortable, clean, well-lit closet.

I actually realized I had a problem and went to see a therapist in the summer of 1995. More precisely, I went once for a free consultation. The guy was very nice, and said I should do "psychodynamic therapy" with a psychiatrist they had. Somehow it didn't appeal to me. I don't know why, but I didn't want to do it. So I didn't. So I went on living the outwardly straight life. A gay boy caught in a straight body *g*.

In the fall of 1995 I discovered the internet, and saved a lot of money that I would have spent on porn movies otherwise. I just surfed the net and collected pictures. 29 floppies of guy pix, need I say more? Of course I continued playing the straight boy to the world. Wasn't difficult because I didn't have to test it by having sex. How could I have? Girls didn't turn me on, guys were out of the question. Can you imagine not having any sex life beyond Mr. Hand for SEVEN years?! I did it. Let me assure you, it ain't fun.

Finally, in August of 1997 I went to Hawaii to do grad school. Of course, grad school was only part of the deal, I'd at least half-consciously thought to myself that maybe I'd have a chance to explore my gayer side. But you see the problem was I had no idea how to go about that. That was soon to change. In September, I was picture-hunting on Lionmane's list of twinks sites, when I saw Aaron's site. I'd been there before a few months earlier, glanced at his journal and thought it was boring. This time, I read it. And it changed everything.

Of course I didn't really understand very much since I'd sort of jumped in right in the middle and he was talking about guys called Tommy, Mikey, and Troy. But it was shortly after he'd congratulated Troy on his coming out and linked to him. So I followed the link and read Troy's coming out entry. And Kalev's article that Troy had posted. I didn't realize it then but I'd found my role models.

The next few months I became a journal junkie. I read everything Aaron was writing and had written, same for Troy. I can still remember the first time I sent Troy a message, I set up an AOL alias, tried to hide as much as I could, deadly scared I would be... what? Exposed to the entire internet? Seems ridiculous today, it was a big deal then, I could hardly sleep.

Troy became the one I could relate to, he was as undecided as I was. Not like we communicated a lot, he answered a few of my messages, and others he didn't, but it was fine. His journal was enough role modeling for me. Aaron's was interesting, entertaining at times, but he was too secure in his gay identity to be a role model for where I was. His writing did something else though: it showed me that you can be gay and have fun being it. No need to make excuses, no need to feel ashamed, no need to hide in dark rooms and behind fictitious accounts.

But I was not all the way there yet. Excerpt from an email to Troy from early November:

Just had dinner with a girl, cute, interesting, beautiful eyes. We talk
about a mutual acquaintance who's gay, she asks me if I'm straight. I
almost drop my water glass. And instead of taking it somewhat lightly
and honestly and saying something like "for the most part" or "as the
store's called, 80%" I mumble something incoherent about not being aware
of the opposite etc., blah, blah. Of course, the minute I get home I
point my Navigator at www.allpaths.com/manpics. When will I ever get out
of the habit of lying? This place was supposed to be a new beginning and
it's starting to turn into more of the same old, same old. And the worst
thing is: I don't even know if I was lying, I've never even come
anywhere near trying it with a guy (not that I never had a crush on one
or two or three, but they were all hopelessly straight, or so I
thought). But not a million times with a girl either. "A reticence to
milk, and suck, and claw the marrow from the bones of life", a friend
called it in a poem once. Guess I'm just not the milking, sucking and
clawing kind.

... I've since been forced to revise that opinion *g*.

So Thanksgiving rolled around. I went to a Thanksgiving party that some students had organized at a dorm. It was fun, lots of fun, there was lots of alcohol, lots of great food, and these two girls, let's call them Ms. NC and Ms. Cz. Yes, exactly, the very same one, although before that night I'd hardly been aware of her. So we ate and drank and were merry, very merry. And when the time came to leave, the girls offered to give me a ride. Thanks, I said, but it'd be way out of your way, it's fine, really, I have to get my bike home too, it's only a 10 minute bike ride. It was difficult but I did manage to persuade them to let me ride home by myself. So I did, and sat down to write an email to my friend K.man, far across the ocean. And then my phone rang. The first time it was Ms. NC, saying she'd misdialled, which was more than unlikely since she'd never dialled my number before, but she wasn't making a lot of sense, so I didn't contradict her and just said good night. About ten minutes later my phone rang again. This time it was Ms. Cz. She'd called to thank me for some advice about classes I'd given her at the party. Right, and she desperately needed to do that at 12:30 in the morning, totally trashed. But I had fun and played along, and we made pleasant conversation. And then she said:

"Can I ask you a personal question?"

I grinned to myself. What now, I thought.

"Sure", I said, "ask away."

"Are you gay?" she said.

I was drunk, I was well-fed, the turkey's tryptophane was working on me and making me feel very relaxed, so I kept grinning and said:

"I've been wondering about that myself lately."

And that one little comment changed everything. I'd said it, out loud, that made it real. She assured me that was perfectly fine, her best friend in the whole world (Jay, cf. some of the April entries) was gay. Apparently, it did not impress her very much because she tried to set me up with Ms. NC right afterwards. But then she was drunk and had a British accent, so that's understandable...

The next day I woke up from a deep, turkey-induced sleep and thought "did I really say that last night?" And I realized that I had and that it felt good and that weirdly enough it felt absolutely right saying it to her.

A few days passed and my little mind was busily working in the background without letting me know what it was working on. Then, the following Monday, yours truly was sitting at his desk, deadlines just a week away, heaps of work to do, and was totally incapable of doing anything. I just sat and stared. And I knew what I had to do, I just refused to acknowledge it for a few hours. It was time, "you can't be somebody you're not" (Troy), I'd been somebody I wasn't for far too long. So I wrote an email to K.man. K.man, friend of 23 years, for 15 of them one of my closest friends, for most of that time the single person I felt closest to in the entire world. Make or break. Here's the email:

Subject: SIT DOWN before you read this

There are things about me
you don't know.

There are things about me
nobody knows
with the possible exception
of Ms. Cz
(who was too drunk to remember).

The funny thing is
it doesn't really make a difference
whether or not you know
because I'm still the same
I was before.

The even funnier thing is
I don't even know
if I know.
It just feels like I do.


The way I see it, you have 2 choices: EITHER you visit the website listed below where you will find a link to another website which will explain everything, better and in more detail than I could. OR you erase this message completely and irretrievably right now.
Whatever you want to do...

http://www.oocities.org/....

R.

The website I talk about has since been deleted and it only had one purpose: to provide a link to Troy's entry of 9/18, his coming out entry. I don't normally link without asking and I felt a little bad about not writing something up myself, but it had to happen right there and then. So I connected to Prodigy and spent half an hour staring at my screen, thinking if I should press the damn SEND button. And I thought of all the guys whose journals and websites I'd read, Troy, Kalev, Aaron, Jay, they all had the courage to say it out loud and stop living a lie. So I took a deep breath, moved my mouse pointer over the damn button and pressed it.

Right afterwards I called K.man to make sure he'd check his email. He can only read it at work, so I called his office--where his officemate told me that he wouldn't be in all day. I was disappointed, to say the least. If you want to torture me, make me wait. Anyway, I reached him at home later, and he told me he'd go to the office right away just to see what I'd written. Of course, I hadn't told him on the phone, just hinted a lot. I went back to bed and a few sleepless hours later he called. I don't think I've ever been so nervous in my life. I don't know what I would have done if he'd told me to get out of his life. But he didn't, and I figured he wouldn't. We talked about Troy's page and that things were far from clear-cut for me, that I felt attracted to both sexes, that the person mattered more to me than his/her gender, that I find a lot of men a lot more erotic than a lot of women but that I don't find the gay lifestyle very appealing and certainly don't intend to run around in leather or drag any time soon. He took it all very well, was somewhat relieved that my mysterious message had not been "something more serious", at first he'd thought it was going to be a suicide note. He should really know me better than that, but then again, he probably thought he DID--and didn't know a big part of my life at all. We parted jokingly as always, he actually thanked me for my trust--like I was doing him a favor... His email the next day was reflective, wondering why it hadn't affected or shocked him at all. He decided that it was because I was still the same person I'd been before and he welcomed the color my stories would bring to his life. Great, I thought, glad I can be entertaining. But I was more relieved than ever before in my life. I never seriously doubted it would turn out okay, but there is always that last bit of insecurity, what if...

I went home over Christmas and found to my great relief that nothing in my relationship with K.man had changed: he hugged me hello as always, we were comfortable with each other and touchy-feely in our own way as always. And I have to tell you, in case you haven't noticed, I felt great. Loose, relaxed, centered. After my obligatory Christmas church visit with my parents my mom said to me, slightly surprised: "I've never heard you sing that loud before." Note she didn't say "that well" *g*. But it was true, I just felt so liberated and strong, it was amazing. So I decided to take on my second best friend, ß, a guy where I had even less doubts than with K.man.

So on a cold, windy Christmas day afternoon, we took a long walk. And when we'd left the town and the last street light behind us I said to him: "I'm not exactly straight." He looked at me quizzically. So I added: "I also go for guys." He grinned, and said "You bastard, you just doubled your target population." And that he wished he could feel that way since he found a lot of guys a lot more interesting than a lot of women but the sexual desire just wasn't there. It became a long walk, I mean a really long walk. He asked me a lot of tough and very good questions, nobody is as good at making me think things through. Of course, it was fine with him, didn't change anything about our relationship. We went on to talk about his girl situation and a million other things, as we always do.

On the flight back to Honolulu I started designing this website. And the rest, as they say, is history...

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