COMING OUT OF THE CLOSET.... SOMEWHAT
Well, here it is.. my little story about how I discovered that I was gay. This story isn't complete as I'm not out to my family yet, but that's coming in the future and I'll update this site when it does happen. It’s a bit wordy, so if you’re not into reading text, you might want to leave now….
If you want to know about my thoughts on Homosexuality, follow the link.
Okay.. now for the "juicy" details... The journey of discovering myself as a homosexual has taken many turns, some of which I thought I was the only one taking, but it turns out there are others. Quite a few have read this page and commented to me how they felt the same way.
Now that I've come to terms with my homosexuality, I can pinpoint the first times that I felt different. In my youth, it always seemed that wrestling turned me on. I don't know what it was about it, but something having to do with the proximity of the bodies and the athletic competition must have done it for me. To this day, I find wrestling (primarily collegiate since professional has gotten too showy) slightly "stimulating".
But now that I've had time to reflect, I know exactly the moment that I was first attracted to a man. It was in seventh grade while I was living in upstate New York. We were going to gym class and were changing in the locker room. One of the guys took off his shirt and it hit me then. He was very nicely built, even for a 13 year old. Boy, was I attracted to him. I still have visions of that day.
It would be many years before I did act on any of my feelings. All through high school, I dated women. Wrestling still turned me on, but I did nothing further about these feelings. They were subverted for all practical reasons. I didn't have any role models to follow and the town I lived in in Connecticut was pretty straight laced. I'm curious as to what they would think now, but it really doesn't matter to me.
It was not until I entered the University of Delaware where I came into contact with homosexuals. There is an active Gay and Lesbian Student Union (I think they've now expanded the focus of the group). They used to have Jeans Day which was not announced until the morning of the day in the school newpaper. If you wore blue jeans on that day, it meant that you supported the GLSU. You never saw so many guys go back to their dorm rooms to change.
It was during my freshman year that I came the closest to having my first gay experience. I had a tendency to hang around a bunch of different groups of people. One of these groups included a guy who was rumored to be gay. It wasn't a big thing with me, but one night the two of us were sleeping in bed together. I think something was said jokingly, but never acted upon.
Nothing much more happened. He left school for the summer and never returned. I never gave another thought to the situation. I started dating other people in the school, including a sorority girl. I continued dating right through graduation. During my senior year, I worked at Bennigan's in town and met a woman who I had a lot of fun with. We became pretty good friends and always wound up dancing together when the group from work would go out. She'll reappear in this story shortly.
It was also at this time that I first came into contact with gay pornography. I had never seen it before and wasn't much into straight porn. But one day, as I walked out of the house I was living in, I saw a magazine on the front lawn. I picked it up and brought it into the house. As I flipped through I saw things that I had never seen before. It turns out that this magazine was a copy of Drummer. I saw another copy of it in the local newsstand right up in the racks with the rest of the porno. I saw that there were other magazines so I picked one or two up. I was immediately turned on and used these materials to masturbate, but never once thought about trying to pick up another guy.
In the meantime, my friendship with my friend from Bennigan's really started to blossom. She has been the only person to give me flowers, which she gave to me on the day I graduated from Delaware. She also came to the family graduation party that was thrown for myself and some other relatives who graduated that year. We continued to stay in contact and even see each other even though I wasn't in Delaware any longer. In 1990, my younger brother got married and she was my date.
In May of 1991, I was laid off from my job in South Carolina. She friend and I were supposed to meet that weekend at her parent's condo in Williamsburg for a nice Memorial Day weekend. I told her that with being laid off that I couldn't afford to go. She made the offer to pay for most of the weekend and that I needed the break because the next few months were going to be stressful. Boy was she right!! I was never so glad to take her advice. It was at this point that I relaized she really did care about me and that I really couldn't do without her.
In August of 1991, I finally got a new job in Lynchburg, Virginia. I decided shortly after I got settled that I wanted her in my life permanently. On Friday, December 13, 1991, I proposed marriage. (Yes, on Friday the 13th… I should have figured it out then.) I did it in an interesting way which is not really the point of this story. She accepted and we started our life as an engaged couple. I started visiting Delaware once a month while she came down to Lynchburg once a month.
However, there were still some internal conflicts going on. I would visit her for the weekend, then on my way home, stop off at a bookstore and buy gay porn. This was something that I did the whole time we were dating so it was the status quo to me.
Things went well in the relationship even though we had the long distance. In 1992, we decided that she would move to Lynchburg and join me. In June of that year she moved down. She was an elementary school teacher, so she went about trying to get a job, but wasn't working at the time. I continued to buy gay porn, but on a less frequent basis. In August, after she told her school in Delaware that she wasn't coming back, the problems started....
By this time, she was working nights as a hostess in a local restaurant. I had come home from work and had a need which I had to take care of. I pulled out some of the porn I had stashed away and started to go to work. I had the door to the "den" closed. She got home from work while I was in the middle of what I was doing. When she knocked and asked why I had the door closed, I got up and started to dress. At the same time, my keys jingled. She heard but didn't know what was going on. The next day I was leaving for a business trip to San Diego. When I got to the gate in Cincinnati to make my connection, my name was being announced at the podium. They told me to call home so I did. What I got was a tearful fiancee. She hadn't waited until I was out of the state of Virginia to start searching the den. She discovered a stash of gay porno and was greatly upset by it. I spent most of my evenings of my business trip trying to convince her that it wasn't her, but it was me. While I was gone, she decided to return to Delaware.
When I got home, there was nothing I could do to dissuade her. She moved in with a friend up there and I continued to drive up there like I had before. The only difference was that she would not come back down to Lynchburg. I passed off her departure to friends as due to the fact that she didn't like the area. All the times I drove up to Delaware, I'd tell her that I was cruised in the rest stops and that it offended me hoping it would patch things up. Then I'd leave her and buy more gay porno on the way home.
We continued like this for several months. In March of 1993, I went to the Southeast Regional of the NCAA Basketball Tournament in Charlotte with a friend. He and his wife were good friends with my ex-fiancee and I. On the final day, before the game, he called his wife to check in. She told him that my ex-fiancee was at their place. He turned around and told me. I got on the phone and spoke to her. I asked her to stay until I got home, but she didn't think she could. When I got off the phone, I turned to my friend and he asked me what it was all about. I told him it was the end of my engagement. He asked me if I wanted to talk about it and I told him no. He never asked another word. Ironically, he was also the first person that I would come out to, but that would be over a year away.
When I got home, my ex-fiancee was not there. But she had found the stash of porn that I had, since I didn't bother to hide it it wasn't that difficult, on the top of my bed. We tried to work things out again, but it was obvious on both ends that it wouldn't work, so we decided to end it. This is not due solely to my latent homosexuality. There were other problems in the relationship which built up to the final moment. The homosexuality issue was the straw that broke the camel's back. I now know that it was the best decision that I have ever made. If we had continued on, I would not have been happy at all.
However, this did not mean that I was dealing with my homosexuality. I dated one more person, which I thought was getting serious, but in fact she was using me to get an old boyfriend back. At this moment, I decided to give up on dating women, not because I was gay, but because I was tired of the games.
Shortly after this, my new computer arrived. I know this seems like an odd statement at this point, but there's a reason. With the computer, came a disk for an online service called America Online. Since Lynchburg had been snowed in that day, I decided to boot up the computer and log on. I was amazed at what I found. This was in the days when there were about 500,000 people on AOL. Somehow, I found my way into the gay areas.
It was in these gay areas that I started to explore and come to terms with my sexuality. It was much easier for me to do it over the computer than in person. If you're not familiar with Lynchburg, VA, it's the home of Jerry Falwell, not exactly the gay community's biggest champion. Here, I could explore my sexuality without fear of physical reprisals. These were only words, which would disappear with the click of a mouse. I made contact with the guy I had my first gay experience with on AOL and also met my first lover there too.
Well, that's pretty much the story of my coming out to myself and the events leading up to it. Coming out to my family is the next step and something that I haven't taken lightly. When I do decide to do it, I'll include that here.
As this site is coming along, I'm adding more information about my coming out. As I've said, I haven't come out to my parents yet, but I have to some of my friends. Clicking on the links below will bring you to those stories.
This page last updated on: 11/03/97
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