I started blogging almost ten years ago. Only, we didn't call it blogging, we referred to it as a journal. The hip new way to keep up with everything minus the pencil and paper and hiding it from Mom and Dad. I had (still have it) a LiveJournal account. But those have almost always been my daily ramblings about my mundane life. Now that I think about it, my life isn't mundane, nor has it ever been. I'm going to use this blog not to recount my day, but to recount my life. I'm going to put down my coming out story as a gay man in the south. In hopes to shed light. In the hope of giving someone some glimmer of hope. Kind of my "It Gets Better" message, but with all of the stuff before it does.
I remember the first question I always got was "When did you know" that you were gay? The answer if very simple. I always knew. It was never a question to me. I always acted like I had a sexual attraction to women, but that was the pressure of society telling me I didn't have a choice in the matter. Being homosexual was wrong, an abomination, corrupt, immoral, unnatural. You get the gist?
You see I've been an openly gay man for 10 years this coming October. Ten years ago, you didn't have 15 year olds telling people they were attracted to the same sex.
I was raised extremely Southern Baptist. The subject of sex was never spoken of in my house, never mind the subject of sexuality. In early September 2001 I rededicated my life to my faith. By the end of September I was dying physically and spiritually.
People asked me why I came out so young. The only answer I have ever had to validate that question is that I didn't have a choice. I wasn't per se suicidal, although the thought seemed to cross my mind everyday, but I couldn't take the lies anymore. The lying to my family, to my friends, most of all: to myself. I'm sure this all sounds very cliche, but I was a 15 year old high-school sophomore. I was in the middle of the time of life that would, supposedly, shape my whole life. On top of all that, I was 15 in a very small town in East Tennessee. I came from a family of some prominence. My dad was the the captain of the fire department, a deacon, a leader in the community. My mother was in what could have been considered the Junior League, if we had one. I was the oldest child and only son. My parents expectations of me would soon shift.
One day, on a cool October morning as mother drove me to school, the feeling of sickness was overwhelming. We weren't even half way to school, and words started coming out of my mouth before I could stop them. I wasn't exactly known to have a filter and sugar coat what I was saying. The 5 minute conversation my mother and I had went over about like a rock in a windshield.
"Momma, I think I might be gay," I said. My ice breakers aren't usually award winning. I hit my mother with the truth right off the bat. No warning, no preface, no nothing. I threw myself out there, unprepared to follow with any kind of answer.
"What did you say," Mother asked. That's my momma. I was pretty sure it was because the radio was on, so I reached to turn it off and repeat my confession.
"I think I might.."
"I heard what you said." Well why did you ask me was apparent all over my face, but she just stared at the red light in front of us. See, I timed this pretty poorly. We had a good half hour drive in front of us to school. We had been in the car just over 5 minutes before I attacked her with an uncomfortable conversation. "Why do you think that?"
"Well, momma, I'm attracted to boys. I have been as far as I can remember."
My mother then proceeded to tell me that I wasn't "raised that way" and just kept asking "Why, why, why? How, how how?" The embarrassment was already all over her face, and we were the only two who knew. The next 20 minutes of our car ride was driven in silence. When we got to school, I got out and leaned in to kiss her like I had every other morning and she wouldn't even look at me. She didn't bid me a goodbye, good day, nothing. She just kept staring out the windshield, her sight set on something not there. I simply said, "Don't tell Daddy. OK?" and she nodded in agreement. I closed the car door, and walked on in to school. Feeling no relief whatsoever.
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