My freshman year was difficult for me. I was in a new more competitive academic environment away from home. My depression deepened my freshman year due to my academic load and trying to keep "my secret" from being know. I didn't want Alma to become a repeat of high school. I made a lot of new friends at Alma. My best friend was a guy named Scott who was studying for the ministry. The academic pressure left me feeling like there was a huge wrecking ball hanging over my head and like Wylie E. Coyote, I was waiting for it to drop on my head. I don't know what mechanism kept me going that year. My thoughts kept drifting to suicide. I didn't want to live the rest of my life in fear and shame. Being gay was such a horrible thing to me that suicide held a certain lure. Fortunately, I don't think I could have physically harmed myself. My grades began to slip and the thought that I was committing "academic suicide" satisfied my suicidal urge for the moment.  Finally, I decided I had to tell someone before I exploded and so I told my friend Scott.  He was pretty understanding about it and relayed to me his experience of "falling in love with a HS teacher." However, our friendship always had a sense of condescension on his part. Eventually, he would distance himself from when when he entered the ministry and I haven't heard from him since.

In my senior year,  I met my best friend Charlie who was an incoming freshman. He reminded me of myself as a freshman. I met him one day when he wandered into the computer center where I worked and a friendship was struck between us. He was like a lost puppy and I took him under my wing. We became good friends and I came out to him too. We used to talk about lots of things and when I was depressed, I would talk about gay issues. He was a great listener and he often offered good advice. Unlike my friend Scott, he did not come off as condescending towards me and I learned a lot from him. We are still good friends.

After my studies at Alma, I took a year off from school. I worked at Burger King to save money for graduate school. One day I met this really cute guy who the girls told me was gay. One day I got up my courage to call him and to tell him what they were saying about him. He got mad at me. The next day at work the boss comes up to me and says "I won't have any of that around here." Fortunately the summer was almost over and I would be leaving for Kalamazoo and Western Michigan University.

In the fall of 1985, I moved to Kalamazoo Michigan to attend the graduate school at Western Michigan University.  I obtained a job working in the college cafeteria at Davis Hall.  One day in the cafeteria I noticed this really cute freshman.  He looked like he was only 15.  I wondered if he was a boy genius or something to be going to college.  A few months later, he was talking to a friend of my who was a checker and they were arguing about how conservative the university was.  I entered the conversation and wholeheartedly agreed with him.  He seemed stunned that anyone would agree with him.  We went to his room and talked for several hours where I learned his name was Keith.  We became best friends.

I came out to him and he was really cool about it.  He was an only child too and we found  that we had lots of things in common.  His parents split up as a teen and he used to see a psychologist who taught him some really good coping techniques called Cognitive Therapy.  He taught me how to utilize it on myself and by using this technique, I was able to overcome my depression.  He was a no bull type of person and had little tolerance for childish behavior.. If I were to become pigheaded, he knew how to challenge me to make me see reason. I eventually found myself falling head over heals in love with him.  The only problem was that he was straight.  I knew that I would never have him in that way and it was hard for me to deal with it.  I would eventually deal with it when he found his first girl friend. I was furious but there was little I could do other than to move on.

The climate at WMU was particularly homophobic. There used to be religious zealouts on campus that preached that gays, rockers, etc were all going to hell. I recall one weekend where I was eating in the cafeteria and one dude was bragging that some guys room got trashed because he was a "faggot". The point was driven closer to home one summer when I stayed for summer school. My roommate who was this macho Latino dude thought I was gay because I was more empathetic than he was. He thought women were made to cook, clean and do his laundry. I thought he was pathetic. One day, I saw this on the bulleting board "Bill is a fag" and I wondered who wrote that. It scared the shit out of me. Later, I would find out it was my roommate. In 1987, I was harassed; some dudes used to shout anti-gay slurs at my window at night and made obscene phone calls to me. I couldn't figure out who was doing it until one fateful night. One night I was leaving my best friend Keith's room when I was accosted by his roommate and his next door neighbor. They were both drunk. They started making anti-gay slurs at me and I made a retort back at them which angered them. The next thing I recall is that they chased me out of the dorm and to my dorm. I let myself in and thought I had gotten away from them. Somehow they found a way into the dorm and caught me rounding a corner in the hallway. Trapped the next door neighbor then proceeded to start a fist fight with me and managed to get a hit in on me before the RA broke it up. To add insult to the matter, I was called into the Head RA's room for the dorm they resided in and had to explain the incident. I explained to him what happened without mentioning the gay slurs but he blamed me for the incident saying I incited them. I then explained to them that it was a "gay bashing" and he replied "what does that have to do with it?"

When she arrived, I was the gentleman and let her stay at my place on my pull out bed in my couch.  I stayed in my room.  Late in the night, she came into my room and seduced me into having sex with her.  For the next several days, we would tour New England.  It was a beautiful time of the year since it was mid-October and the colors were in full.  We visited the Cape and took rides in the country.  At night, we would go back to my place and have sex. We fell in love with each other.  Months later she would relocate herself to New England and move in with me.  She found a job at TJ Maxx department store in Worcester and we moved into a new deluxe apartment.  I proposed to her and we went ring shopping.  In June of 1991, we got married at the town hall.  I got laid off and we moved back to Michigan in January of 1992.

We moved in with my mother and she transferred to the Michigan TJ Maxx store and I got a job at Officemax as a stock associate.  My wife wanted to have children and in 1993 she convinced me to allow to get pregnant.  She did and we had my daughter Chelsea on Feb 11, 1994.  I loved my daughter the moment I laid eyes on her.  I called her by her name and she looked at me as if she recognized my voice.  After this, our sex lives deteriorated as my wife suffered from post-partum depression.  She didn't want sex because she was always wore down from the demands of raising a daughter.  We shared responsibility in feeding her by alternating who got up with her at night.  Eventually in 1995, we bought our own home and moved out of my mothers place.  I thought by getting our own place that our marriage would return to the way it was back east but instead things continued to deteriorate.  She got more demanding on me and kept saying it wasn't working.  I would try to please her by trying to change myself in the way she wanted me to be but it would eventually fail.  The fighting would begin again as we passed through several of this problem-solving matches.

The next day when I got home from work, she had moved her stuff out of my bedroom and rearranged the house.  The next several months were a roller coaster.  It was full of ups and downs with my wife.  At one point, she had locked herself in her room for three days and contemplated suicide.  She didn't even pay much attention to our daughter. I was worried about her. We decided to seek counseling.  The counselor was a Christian man and he didn't believe in homosexuality.  He kept taking her side of the issue. He wanted to see up to rebuild sexual intimacy.  He couldn't understand why I didn't want to have sex with her. Instead of helping my wife with her emotional problems, the therapy session didn't help us much. My wife blamed me for not opening talking about my feelings with the counselor.  We tried to have sex one more time and she said it felt like she was having sex with her brother. It was then that the marriage ended. We decided to get a divorce and separate.

My wife outed me to her entire family the day after I told her and was shocked that she didn't get any emotional support from them. Her mother asked her if I could be fixed at one of those reparation therapy places. This forced me to out myself to my mother and my family before they heard through the grape vine.  I came out to my mother and to my middle sister.  My sister told her son and he told my other nephew I was gay before I could speak with them myself.  I still haven't told my brother and that is because he once threatened to beat me up if I was gay.  This was back in 1985 and his wife chimed in how "gay people were the downfall of civilization and families."  In one fell sweep, I was out and there was no turning back.

Before coming out, my mind was full of dark and scary places where I put all of my "secret" thoughts and feelings. A battle raged in my head over whether I was gay or not. After coming out, I would feel the greatest sense of peace because the battle had ended. I was free of the internal battle and I could now concentrate on integrating myself.

The task at hand was battling my inner homophobia and self-esteem problems. I had purchased a book called "Outing Yourself" by Michaelangelo Signorile. I remember sitting at work and writing all of the gay slurs that came to my mind and I took ownership of those hateful words.  This allowed me to defuse their value and meaning. I used to stare at myself in the mirror and reaffirm myself saying that I was a good looking and a lovable person. I had to envision myself being with a guy to defuse the self hatred for the feelings I had for men. I had to learn not to be disgusted by two men making love,  kissing and  being affectionate with each other. Each little step was another notch on my self esteem and finally one day I emerged from the cocoon and was born as an whole individual.  I have never looked back since and the battle for authenticity is well worth the price.  My only wish is that I hadn't hurt my wife in the process but she is slowly healing with time.  She is now once again dating other men.