Why My First Coming Out Was So Hard

I’m gay. I have been all my life.

And would have known it when I was five years old, if I had known about sex and all that ‘grown-up stuff’.

But we attended a Baptist “Missionary” every Sunday and the word ‘sex’ was never heard in my house.

The first time I learned anything about it, I was ten years old.

My cousin, ‘Mike’, lived on a farm and wanted to show me the loaner hog they got to keep for a month. I followed him past a wild blackberry patch then crossed the cow pasture to the old barn to where we could see the pig pen. It was a barbed-wire enclosure that spanned a slow, wide stream they called ‘the branch’. The pen was shaded, and pigs wallowed in mud holes they’d made in the soaked ground.

Mike pointed out the hog. It was huge and dark-colored while the other pigs were smaller and had pink skin and sparse white hair. The hog was climbing on a pig. I told my cousin they were fighting, and the hog might hurt the smaller pig. He looked at them and got a weird, almost scary, sort of smile and a glint in his eyes. He said they were not fighting; it was sex and he liked watching them do that. They would have more piglets before long. His mama would be happy about that.

So, they were not fighting. It was sex. Making baby pigs. Mike looked at me and laughed, asked me how else I thought animals had babies.

But I still did not know that people had sex, too.

A Moment of Realization

I had heard of sex before, in movies, I guess, and that day on the farm I had a eureka moment; sex was how animals got babies and that was what they meant at the missionary. God made man special, higher than the animals. So, people do not need to have sex to have babies.

Man was I relieved! The way that pig squealed, sex did not look like a lot of fun.

Years later, of course, I found out that sex was not only to make babies. Or even the primary reason.

When I was seven years old, I had a best friend, ‘George’, who lived down the street. He raised frogs from minnows, and I would help him take grown frogs to the creek and bring back more frog eggs. The eggs were jellyfish-like gelatin stuck to grass or sticks in the water. The black spots inside were frog eggs. George’s dad had set up five glass aquariums in their garage and liked to show me how they grew from eggs into tadpoles that grew legs and became frogs. I thought that was cool, but mostly I just wanted to be around George. He was older than me but did not hang out much with other kids in the neighborhood. But he liked to play around the creek like I did. It was far into the woods and none of the other kids went back there, so George became my best friend.

One hot summer morning when I was seven years old, I helped George take some frogs to the creek and bring back frog eggs, then went home for lunch and right back to George’s.

We climbed up to his tree fort, where we could peek over the top and see the whole neighborhood. It was cooler up there, too, shaded by the tree and a light breeze came out from the woods. George had gotten a couple of his dad’s old Hustler magazines and we looked through them. I had never seen naked women before. They were beautiful, but I blushed looking at the pictures. And I felt a strange ‘urge’ I had never felt before.

I still did not know why pictures of naked women was such a big deal.

But whenever I saw a man in a picture I got the same strange feeling in my gut, the same urge, but much stronger than when looking at the women sprawled naked across the page or in fold outs. I glanced up at George and had that same strange feeling in my gut. I did not understand it, so I ignored it.

After supper I went back to Georges. In the summer, neither of us had to go inside at dark so we stayed outside, played in his yard and caught fireflies when they came out. The air was so muggy you could cut it with a knife, still ninety-five degrees after dark, and heat lightning on the horizon.

A typical July night in Virginia.

George turned on the floodlight, made our shadows sharp on the dirt. He had a net on the garage, so we shot hoops, shoes stirring up dust. We shook sweat from our heads, then peeled off sweat-soaked t-shirts. George practiced a lot and was better than me, but I did not care. He had more muscle and I made him have to get right against me, slick with sweat, to steal the ball. The entire time, I felt that strange urge, stronger than before, and liked it. And I liked the way he stood to shoot the ball. I did not know then why I liked those things; I just did.

George was the first guy I had a ‘crush’ on.

Like I said, if I’d known then…

When I was eleven years old my dad moved us to a farmhouse in the county and I did not see George and my other friends after that. The closest house was almost a mile away, but there were other guys, at school, of course. Usually older, or the ‘cool’ guys my age. I was a skinny kid and some of the guys said I acted like a ‘boy scout’, because I was polite, the way I was raised. And there was always a bigger guy who wanted to be my friend, make sure no one bothered me. I learned a lot more about sex at school and I wanted it with those guys but did not know how to go about it.

So, I waited for the other guy to make the first move. They were probably leery about doing that for the same reasons I had.

In high school, I worked evenings at a restaurant near the military base. A couple of times, a young soldier made it clear what he wanted. They weren’t gay, they said, just horny and a long way from home. And that it did not make either of us gay, a lot of guys do the same. So, I had sex with a few of them. And it was good.

Fooling around with a soldier was safe. He would not know anyone I knew so no one else would ever find out. And that mattered. In my county, everyone attended the same high school. And most of the teens hung out in the small town I had known George in, since there really was not anywhere else to go. They (we) went from party to party on weekend nights and everyone from my high school knew everyone else. I knew if I misread a guy, I would be called a faggot at school.

And I was not a faggot, I was not gay.

I was just horny and liked sex with guys more than with girls.

A lot of girls at school had a crush on me so having sex was easy, even though I wanted to be with to be with the guys. But a teenage boy’s hormones are a thing of power, power that is difficult to restrain, so when a girl wanted to have sex, I never turned her down.

Men can be such whores.

When you grow up in a place where most adults know you as ‘so and so’s boy’, you tend to do what is expected of you, so I went out with a lot of girls. But I had more fun with a couple of guys from school who did make the first move. They told me the same thing the soldiers did, that it did not you gay and lots of guys do it when they’re horny. So, I did, too. And it was good.

Still, I married my high school girlfriend, ‘Rachel’. I was in my first year of junior college but had decided not to go back the next year. Too much blowback from some family members about getting a degree that would help me ‘make money’ and a Fine Arts Degree would not do that. I married to keep up appearances and not embarrass my family. We moved to a nearby mid-size city and bought a house. Rachel was gorgeous and the sex was incredible, but I still missed being with men.

I found out at work that I was not alone in my situation. A lot of married guys preferred sex with men but had married to keep up appearances. Often, I would stay late after work and have a couple of beers with one of my buddies and my wife didn’t mind. I worked a lot of hours, anyway. Of course, she had no idea I ‘fooled around’ with a few of those buddies.

But I felt guilty because I was not being entirely faithful to my wife. I was living a lie and hated myself for it.

Since I ‘worked late’ so many nights (and often I really did work late), Rachel said she wanted to go dancing with her girlfriend on weekends. I could not, in all honesty, say no. I was always invited but did not like to dance and told her to go without me. Rachel had been considered the prettiest girl in my high school and I was not surprised when she met another man and soon wanted a divorce. We agreed that neither of us had been old enough to know what we wanted. Rachel had married me because her dad liked me, and she always wanted to please him.

So, I was not surprised the night I came home to a dark, empty house. She had left me our bed, one nightstand and my alarm clock. Nothing else.

It was an amicable separation and we met in a park that weekend to discuss custody, visitation, and child support. I told her I had suspected that she had been seeing another man and admitted I had done the same.

She had suspected me, too.

Still, I was not gay. I was young and horny and liked sex with men more than with women.

The wife of my best friend at work, ‘Carl’, a marine I had hired, worried about me being alone the night Rachel had left and insisted I have dinner with them. Carl and I had taken a couple of day trips, hiking or fishing, and we camped in the mountains one night. We had also stayed overnight in his in-laws’ house on the river when it was not being used and spent a couple of winter nights in my former father-in-law’s beach cottage. He had given me a key when Rachel and I divorced. He trusted me. The cottage was not heated but there was an electric blanket to share. I felt guilty that that Carl’s wife worried about me when her husband and I fooled around whenever we could. Especially on overnight trips.

Still, Carl was a marine and marines are not gay, so neither was I.

Later, I learned there were ‘gay’ bars and clubs in town. I had never gone to any bar alone. It took me months to get up the nerve to go to a ‘gay’ bar. Alone. I was afraid someone I knew might see me but realized anyone who saw me was there for the same reason.

The club had a large dance floor and loud, thumping music. I ordered a beer, then saw video machines in a darker area near the back. I got change for the games and played the classic game, Space Invaders. I pretty much ignored the other people there.

But I was a new face and was not ignored. When I went to the bar for a fresh beer it had already been paid for. The bartender pointed to the man who had bought it for me. I raised my head in a nod, smiled, and held up my beer in thanks. He grinned then joined me at the video game machines and asked why I was there alone; I must have a ‘boyfriend’. I told him I was recently divorced and was not ‘with’ anyone. He said his name was Jeff and he was alone, too. Jeff was a good-looking man, and he was hot.

After a few months of celibacy, any hot man would turn me on.

Jeff was fun to talk to and we laughed a lot. But he was such a good-looking man I wondered why he would spend time with me. Playing Space Invaders, of all things. He could have had any man in the bar, so, why me? I did not think I was good-looking or anything. I was just another bored, horny man, out for a drink on a Friday night.

We ended up at his house and he was even hotter with his clothes off. Afterwards, I pulled him close and fell asleep, his tight body against mine. I had never stayed with a woman all night.

No matter how good the sex was, I had always left and gone home.

But with Jeff I felt so warm, so comfortable. I did not want to leave.

We exchanged numbers when I left around dawn. Once home, I sat on my bed, feeling good about how the night had gone, energized by it all.

And glad I had not chickened out and stayed home.

It was a night of ‘firsts’ for me.

First time I went to a bar alone.

First time I went to a ‘gay’ bar.

First time I spent the night with a man I had just met.

And, more important than anything else, the first time I felt like I belonged.

I thought about the men and women I’d been with since age sixteen. The sex had always been good.

But with men, it felt right.

I stared into my eyes in the mirror and smiled. I liked the person I saw.

I had been in denial for years, living a lie. And I finally said out loud what I had talked around for so long.

I’m gay. And I have been all my life.

~ ~ ~

This story was originally posted on Medium.

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