I went to the gay community center tonight and we watched a movie (Whose name I do not recall) which focused in on these two gay teens in Britain and how they realized they were gay, and eventually fell in love and came out. It caused me to remember my coming out story and it has me depressed, so I thought writing about it might break my funk.
My first knowledge that I was gay came when I was 9 years old, as a result of experimenting with a 10 year old neighborhood boy. It just ‘felt’ right. Not just in a ‘sexual’ way, but just ‘right’ as to who I was. From the time I was 10 on I knew I was ‘different’ I just did not know how or why.
Then came the summer between my junior and senior year in high school. The summer I met “HIM!” Him was my first puppy dog crush….he was all that and a bag of chips….2 years younger than I, but shorter than I, slender, dark black hair and just….WOW! But there was just one problem.. He was straight. No problem, I thought…I still did not tell myself I was gay, I did not know what I was other than confused. I just knew I had to be around HIM!-- when I did everything felt right. I did not know that this made me gay or what it made me, sex was not a part of it, more then that it was a longing to be near him, to be besides him, to be with him.
As the summer went on my feelings grew and I realized who I was, and what I was….and what he was not. I eventually told him of my feelings. He was OK with my feelings as long as he accepted that he did not share them and that nothing would ever come from them. I was heartbroken. The first time I found true happiness and it was, in my mind, yanked --- unrequited love.
So, I did not know what to do. I ended up doing what I thought was my only choice… trying to end the pain the only way I knew how -- to end everything. I OD’d on medication. Well, after a stomach pump and a hospitalization my life changed a lot. Word got out at school that I was gay. I was lucky to live in an upper middle class suburb at the time so I was never physically attacked, though I was subjected to verbal abuse. Life for me was over… I did not want to go on, I knew what was true happiness and I had lost it.
Then came graduation and college. I was out at college. I am very ‘straight acting’ and in fact (as a funny aside I’ve stories about almost not being allowed into a gay bar in Alabama during grad school since they thought I was straight and there to cause trouble but that’s a story for another day). But I told people I was gay and I did not hide it. I met a group of friends and they accepted me for who I was and I felt like life was good, people accepted me.
I went to U of Michigan at Dearborn which is a commuter version of The University of Michigan and so I met many people who I became friends with, however when we did party we did in other suburbs of Detroit and on the weekends. Thru one such party I met Nick. Nick was, I guess you could say, everything I was not. He was the right brain to my left. If HIM! -- was puppy dog love, Nick was my first case of real, honest to goodness love. We met thru mutual friends and I just fell and fell hard. He was two years younger than I as well.
Because of the age difference and other issues we never “Dated” -- outside the weekly parties I never was able to see him, but he was gay and so was I. But he was still in high school and of a conservative family and there was no way he could date, especially to a college freshman. So we just spent as much time together at the parties as we could and enjoyed the times as much as we could.
Time passed and the parties grew less and less, so I had to settle on seeing Nick less and less. I was going out of my mind, but I had no other choice. We still had contact thru mutual friends so I kept up to date about him but it grew apart, but I was never far from him in my heart and thoughts.
Then on April 4, 1991 my world ended. On that day I got a call that Nick killed himself. He killed himself for many reasons I will not go into here. But suffice it to say….on that day life ended for many of us, his friends. I will not go into great detail here other then to say from that date until December of 1993 I became an active drinker, drinking about 1 fifth a day, going to the bars 3 or 4 days a week, having unprotected sex with multiple partners, engaging in any and all high risk behaviors I could, wanting nothing more to be united with Nick, but too much of a coward to take the direct way out.
But thanks to good friends and sobriety I managed to bottom out and slowly but surely start to straighten my life out. In early 1994 I applied for and was accepted to a terminal masters program for psychology, and then from there I survived enough to enroll in the Ph.D. program in 96 for my eventual Doctorate of psychology. But my life now after my degrees is a time and a half separated from where I was. Not a day goes by when I do not think of Nick, of where I could have been and how life works out as it does.
I am not sure what I hope to get out of writing this other than to just unburden myself of my past and to give hope to kids who are growing up gay now… it might seem intense, it might seem as if things will never get better, but they can and do. Just give it time. Life will get better. I’d give anything to bring Nick back, and I hope and pray that one day again I will see him. But I know that I am doing now whatever I can to try to make him proud of me and leading the best life that I can.