I first knew that I was different when I was 9 years old and I had my first same sex encounter. I felt “right” for the first time in my life. It seems odd to say, but even at that young age I knew I was different in some way… that I was not just attracted to the girls in my class. I did not know I was also attracted to the boys too… but after the experience it was like an ah ha moment. I knew I found myself. Since that time I have been with way too many men to count, and with 3 women. The women I have dated have been very serious relationships, much more so in some ways then my relationships with me, but they were few and far between.
My self-realization came in 1978. I did not call myself gay or even bi after that encounter, I just knew I had found out that yes I was different. It was not until many years later that I learned the words that expressed who I was.
Growing up as gay in the 80s means I was heavily impacted by Reagan and his hatred of people like me. Due to his incompetence and do-nothingness in the early days of the AIDS epidemic I lost way too many friends to the rampage of HIV/AIDS.
If you had told me, in the 80s as someone who was just realizing that I, in fact was different and who I was, that we would make such strides that we would have legal gay marriage within a few decades and even a serious party political candidate who was openly gay I would be amazed. Although life as a gay teen in the 80s was not nearly as tough as it would have been in earlier decades it was not an easy time to be different.
It was even compounded more when I realized that I was “the” gay for many people in my community...in my school. I came out in high school and I did many stupid things. The only way I “knew” how to be gay was via the popular culture so I became what society thought of us...a butch guy who engaged in way too many unsafe behaviors and was an in your face kind of guy.
It was only later when I realized that I was not being true to myself, or being gay. I had to become who *I* was not who society expected me to be. Why? Because for many people who knew me I was the only gay person that they knew at that time. Did I want them to believe the stereotypes or the reality?
So….I was thinking about all of this recently…. how being gay/bi today is much different than it was before. And how it is, I would assume from talking to friends that are parents, who tell me how many GLBTQI people their kids openly now know. This is very different then when I was a kid.
So my question after all this is… at what age did you meet (If you have met one in real life that is ;) ) your first gay/bi/lesbian/transgender person?