Something about me

I’m 41 years old. Well, 42 this summer but as a gay man I’m holding onto 41 as long as possible. Or was that 24? Yes, 24. What an amazing age that seems to be.

I don’t remember much of 24 anymore and it’s not from some early form of senility, though some might argue otherwise. It seems more from the fact that 24 is not just 18, um 17 years ago but a whole life away. A straight life; a life with a wife, two daughters, a dog, a cat, some gold fish, car payments, a mortgage, and working the 9 to 5 in not so shinny black dress shoes and all too often a tie.

I was never truly that person. It was the expected thing. It was the normal thing. It was safe.

Safe. So much focus there for me; perhaps for us all. It was 1974 when I discovered my sexuality and fully nine years later before I accepted it internally. 1983, Fag, Gay-Cancer, AIDS, Expectations. There was a lot to feel safe about deeply stowed away behind my white picket fence and my two weeks of summer vacation.

The early 80’s and it’s realization that AIDS was real, here, and not going away was a scary time for many – unless you were straight. Oh, and not a heroin addict. Well, I hated needles anyway, how hard is it to set aside this inner self. This anomaly of life; I’m sure all men feel this way, have this attraction. Right? It natural. You’re okay, you’re straight; safe – I’m safe.

Safe. I hate that word now. I want to jump out of airplanes, ride motorcycles, dance until 5 am on a Wednesday, buy day-old bread, color outside the lines. I want to be… me - or who I would have been.

I have a boyhood friend - actually my first lover - who, at age 18 died face down in the living room of some rented beach-front condo in South Florida. Heroin and cocaine. An overdose. A party gone wrong. Maybe it was a hookup. Maybe it was a trick. It’s unclear. But for me it was the clincher. That was me; or would have been if I was out and in the scene. I never had a chance to say goodbye. I guess that’s the way it always is. I never told him how much his laughter lightened my heart. I was off at college with a girlfriend and a 1 year old daughter back home. The clincher; AIDS, drugs, sex - he was gone and I was - safe.

I told my wife and family I was gay in the fall of 2005 shortly after my 40th birthday. Lots of support from several new gay friends I had made in Atlanta. A real family I was to discover. My real family took the news with mixed reviews. My wife was devastated and I became devastated by the pain I was causing my family. My daughter of 24 still does not accept this choice. My then wife and I raised our children fairly agnostically and I am happy that my oldest daughter developed her spiritual and religious beliefs outside of parental socialization. But that must certainly make a lot of this harder for her as a newly initiated Christian in the south. And I’m okay with that. My youngest daughter is a lesbian but I think she may have internally taken this even harder because of that. I was still her father, should be married to her mother, and should be there with them. But she must at the same time support me as gay. I can’t even imagine how that works psychologically, emotionally for her. The dog and the cats took it well though so I did have support there.

Family. Compared to the straight community the GLBT community is close; family close. So we’re family I guess. Maybe that’s because our own families have often rejected us or at best just don’t understand or maybe just don't want to talk about it. Maybe it’s the social stigma that is placed upon us, or the popularity of publicly discriminating against gays. Regardless, every day I am thankful I have this new family (catty as it may be sometimes ;-)

As a newly-out male I found that being invited to family gatherings like trivia at Joe’s or a campy drag show at Blake’s became my outlet; my salvation. The summer before I came out I’d often spend afternoons working from some Midtown coffee house just so I could be close to the gayborhood - close to an open and accepted community as is perhaps possible in the south. Certainly as close as it gets in the red-state of Georgia. Here was a comfort, a level of acceptance I had truly never experienced nor expected before. Here there were people, students, professionals, musicians, teachers, cooks, bar tenders - all variety of people who were like me or, even better, were unlike me but saw me as just another person; one of them, who I was. Comfortable.

I met new people and made more friends. Expanded my circle of support while working through the challenges ahead if, wait – when I came out. It was certain now. I had hidden myself behind my shield too long. Safety came from within, not from without and I knew - I knew.

So I suppose that is the short version. My life from then until now. I'll see if I can dig up some older journals and repost them if there is any interest.