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Every since I was a child I've been attracted to members of the same
gender. While everyone in 6th grade was talking about dating girls
I was thinking about the neighbor kid down the road. I enjoyed
being friends with him. I sometimes thought it would be cool if we
lived together. But I was only in 6th grade so my thoughts were
pretty innocent. I didn't want a sexual relationship with anyone at
that time, let alone another guy--I just wanted wanted to be really
good friends. 7th grade came along and Jeremy moved away. I cried when he moved, but I was 12 and I soon got over it. Seventh grade was fun for the most part. But at times I felt like a stranger. Everyone around me was talking about girls and sex--they all wanted to sound like they had years of experiences, but I knew they were full of it. At least I hoped they were, because I had no experience and I didn't want to be the only virgin. But to be honest, the thought of having sex with a girl turned me off. I figured I would grow out of this thought because everyone hates girls when they're a kid. But geesh, I was already through puberty. I wondered why I didn't want to date girls. Some girls had even asked me out, notes were passed my way every once in a while, but I never wanted to. I was shy, but that wasn't it. I just really didn't want a girlfriend. I was sort of afraid that if I had a girlfriend that they would want to have sex and well, that was gross. But that's not to say I wasn't filled with sexual urges. In fact, they often got tested. For starters, there was gym class. After gym class all the guys had to take showers. Yeah, naked guys--talk about confusing the hell out of me. I tried not to look at the other guys, but it was so hard. So I looked. I told myself I was just looking to see how I sized up--I figured all guys must do that. But occassionally my eyes betrayed me and looked too long. "What are you looking at. Are you gay?" The words came from a guy named Jonathan. I have to be honest, I thought he was really good looking. He had a cute face, and I had to see if the rest of him was as appealing. I guess I was shocked to see that he hadn't yet gone through puberty, and my eyes looked longer than normal. "What, no way," I shot back defensively. I was hurt from his accusation. I was no faggot. I really wanted to be good friends with Jonathan, but now he thought I was gay. How could he. I was mad. Mad at myself for staring to long. Mad at Jonathan for accusing me of being gay. Mad that I seemed to be the only person alive who didn't have a girlfriend. And mad at the school for making us take showers together. I decided that day that I wasn't going to look at another guy in the showers again. I didn't want anyone to think I was gay. I was not going to be gay. Only perverts and sick people were gay. Not to mention if anyone thought I was gay I was sure to beaten up after school. In seventh grade faggot was a cuss word that you did not want to be called. Trust me. But I survived seventh grade. I never became friends with Jonathan, but at least he never again brought up the subject of that day in gym class. I was really curious about sex around that time. I had to know what this sex thing was all about. I had heard of other kids on the bus joking around about how they had found their dad's stash of porn magazines. I knew my dad used to have some because I had run across one once... Back in 6th grade me and Jeremy were working on a project for class one day. We had to cut out pictures of animals from magazines. I took my mom's collection of magazines from the hutch and we began to skim through them looking for animals to cut out and paste to our poster board. At the bottom of the stack of those magazines there was a Playboy. "Woah, what's that doing here," I wondered aloud. Jeremy didn't say anything. I took the magazine upstairs to my mom, "Mom, look what we found." She seemed a little caught off by guard by her 12 year old son bringing her a copy of Playboy magazine and just said, "Give me that, I don't know what that's doing down there." I went back downstairs and we finished working on the project and that was the end of it. Later looking back after hearing the stories on the bus, I wondered why I hadn't at least wanted to sneak a peek when I had that magazine in my hands, but the thought never crossed my mind. Naked girls, who would want to look at naked girls anyway? But after hearing all the other guys on the bus bragging about their father's porn collection I decided I had to find my dads stash. I looked back in the magazine pile but there was nothing there. I looked everywhere. I felt bad about looking through my parents things, but geesh. Finally I found something. In my dad's bedroom closet I found a pile of Playboy magazines hidden under some clothes. Jackpot. But not only that, in my parents dresser I found a pile of Playgirl magazines that I guess were my mom's. Whenever my parents were gone I took the liberty of going to their bedroom and getting out the magazines. I started with the Playboy magazines because that's what I supposed to be interested in, but I found myself liking the Playgirls more. But I told myself I wasn't gay--no, I was just checking to see how I measured up, that's all. I didn't want to be gay, but I did enjoy looking at the Playgirl magazine's naked men. I liked the Playboys too, but Playgirl seemed to do something for me that Playboy rarely did--it turned me on. I couldn't explain what it was. I convinced myself that I was doing the same thing that every boy my age did. I told myself that all boys look at pictures of naked men, they just didn't admit it. I told myself that I was just admiring the men, that I wasn't lusting after them or anything. But whatever it was, I was sure drawn to that collection of Playgirl magazines. A month later, my parents are gone one night and I go back to the bedroom to look at the magazines. They're gone. The whole pile of Playgirl magazines was gone! And the Playboys were missing too. Only one magazine was left, an old copy of Playboy magazine. What would I do? I turned the house upside down looking for those magazines, but they were gone. In the process of turning the house upside in a mad search for them, I found something else. Porn videos. My God, I had some horny parents. Almost as horny as me. There were only 3 tapes, but they gave me plenty to work with. I was addicted. I knew pornography was wrong, but I was hooked. Without getting into the sick details of my addiction to pornography lets just fast forward to 9th grade. High school was pretty cool too. I never had much trouble in school. It was fun. I didn't have a lot of friends, but I had some and I enjoyed hanging out with them. But I still didn't feel like one of the gang. Everyone was talking about sex, and I still had no experience and didn't really want to have sex. It's not like I had some moral reasons for staying a virgin at this point (that would come later), I just wasn't interested in having sex. It was all ironic because I was still addicted to porn. My addiction by this point wasn't that bad because I'd already seen everything my dad had and it was sort of boring now watching the same ugly people have sex. But I remember one day on the bus overhearing someone else talking about their dad's porn videos. "Yeah my dad has a big collection of porn videos. I just watched one with a friend last night. We had to fast forward through all the blow jobs, but it was a damn good video. You should come over some time." He wasn't talking to me (he never talked to me), but I was listening. His comments stuck with me because I remember thinking "really?" when he said he fast forwarded through the oral sex. There were only two parts of the porn videos that I even cared to watch--fellatio (watching the guys get sucked) and when guys were masturbating. It really made me wonder. Was this guy lying about fast forwarding to sound more macho or was I really that different? I tried hard to not seem different in high school. I wasn't dating anyone, but I still didn't want anyone to think I was gay. A couple of times I would be accussed of being gay, but I would deny it, laugh at em, walk away, and pretend they were crazy. Once before getting on the bus to go home one of the school bullies got to me and shoved me down asking "what are you, a faggot?" I got up and said "I'm no fucking faggot" and walked onto the bus and took a seat. It was one of the very few times that I ever cussed in high school. Tenth grade came along quick enough and I soon met a friend, Jerry Crist, who invited me to his church's youth group. I didn't have a lot of friends so I took him up on his offer. I started going every Wednesday night to the youth group. Then I started going on sunday mornings with Jerry and some other friends to the church's Sunday School and morning service. Perhaps this was what I needed--God. I had always believed in God. But I didn't have a relationship with God. In March of 1993 I prayed "the sinners prayer" asking for Christ to come into my life. Along with Christ came another understanding of homosexuality. In addition to learning from friends and family that gay people were sick and gross, the church taught me that homosexuals were evil sinners destined for hell. Well golly gee, that sounded pretty cool so I decided then that when I grew up I would be be one of those homosexuals too so that everyone could think of me as sick and gross and an evil sinner and that way I could go to hell. Well, not quite. I told myself then and there that there was no way I was going to be gay--I was not an evil sinnner and I was not going to hell. Yeah, okay, I might have had some bad thoughts in the past, but when I became a Christian I decided to repent of all of those feelings and all of those thoughts and start out fresh. I was done with looking at naked women, and I was certainly done looking at naked men. Never again. Jesus would help me. But then I found out about the world of internet pornography. And it didn't take me long to find the world of gay pornograhy. I had never known a homosexal. I had heard lots about how sick and gross they were, but I had never met one. Sure, I had a great uncle who was gay--my grandpa's brother, but he seemed to have been pushed away from the family so I never knew much about him except that he moved to the east coast and we didn't talk to him anymore. But on the Internet I found lots of these people, these homosexuals. Especially in chat rooms. I didn't go into the gay chat rooms, because I wasn't gay (how many times do I have to tell you that). Instead I would go to sites like hotsex.com which back then used to be an online magazine and which used to be free (now it's a pay site, and fairly stupid). Anyways, they had a big section of pictures of naked women and stories about men having sex with women. But they also had a little section called man2man that I soon found myself going to all the time. I would start out by looking at the naked women and then thinking to myself "well I might as well read everything" and I would go over to man2man and read the stories about men having sex with men. Wow. I was hooked. It was amazing. It didn't make me sick like everyone said. The stories about men having sex with women were sort of gross, but I didn't find the man2man stories to be gross. I was a Christian during this time and I knew very well that viewing pornography was a sin. I hid this sin very well. I don't think anyone knew I was viewing pornography, let alone gay porn. Yet I also knew that I wasn't gay. I was a Christian, there was no way I could be gay. I wanted to serve Christ and follow God. So I began praying. I prayed for God to remove these thoughts I was having for other men because I did not want them. I did not want to lust after anyone, and I surely didn't want to be guilty of lusing after other men. "God, I'm not gay, so you just need to get rid of these feelings. You just have to." I prayed a lot. I read the whole entire Bible that year. By my senior year of high school I was really into the church scene, and I was growing with Christ. I even had made up my mind about certain doctrinal beliefs such as baptism ("no I don't think it's essential to salvation") and original sin ("I don't think we're born guilty of sin"). Around this time our youth leader left the church because of a personal conflict with the pastor and this split our youth group apart. I left Calvary Baptist Church and started going to the Elkhart Church of God. I felt like I was really following God. The Elkhart Church of God was a pentecostal church which taught that people could recieve the holy spirit and would speak in tongues and with this gift of the holy spirit they would find it easier to live a holy life. Wow, that was what I needed. I still had my secret addiction to gay porn. I needed to the Holy Spirit and then I could be free. I talked with someone about wanting the baptism in the holy spirit with signs of speaking in tongues and they prayed with me until I got it, and I did. I got baptised in the holy spirit and could speak in tongues. Now I really felt close to God. But I was still turned on by gay porn worse than ever. I prayed more than ever to for these thoughts to leave, but they didn't. My desire to speak in some holy gibberish went away over time but my lust for men never left. In college I began to think that there was a chance that I might be gay. I didn't want to be gay and I prayed for God to change my thoughts. I did not want to be gay, and I convinced myself that I wasn't. I began reading material from ex-gay ministries that worked to change people and help them overcome their same-gender attractions. I read it all, I tried it all, I prayed, I fasted. But I still had the same attractions towards other men. I was beginning to look at other guys and think "wow, he's cute," followed every time by "man, you can't think those thoughts, you can't do this." But the thoughts kept coming, "he's good looking." My sophomore year I had several girls who were attracted to me. One kept flirting with me, hanging on me, following me and making it very clear that she wanted to go beyond just friends. I thought, "Yeah, I need a girlfriend, this will help." We began a relationship. It lasted 6 months. The whole time I was still having attractions for other men and I was still into gay erotica. I wanted to come clean and tell this to her but I feared she would break off our relationship and I was trying so hard to be normal and have a normal relationship and like girls. It was hell. The relationship ended with both of us hurt and depressed. And for that I'm sorry. I made up my mind that before I ever got in another relationship with a girl I had to overcome my feelings of attraction towards other men. I prayed longer, I read more info from more ex-gay ministries, and finally I got information on a christian psychologist. I never went to see the psychologist or even a counselor, I guess I was just too embarrased by my feelings, and I didn't want to have to admit that I was having any gay feelings. I was no faggot. Instead I took it all to God. I asked lots of people to pray for me citing it as an unspoke request. My prayers grew longer, but my attraction towards men only grew stronger. One night during my senior year of college I was up pretty late at night reading some stuff on the internet. I came across a page about a kid named Bill who had committed suicide in his teen years because he had attractions towards other guys and no one else could relate to him. Well, I related to him. I related to every fucking word in that article. It was 3 o'clock in the morning, I had class at 9, and I was reading this article about a kid who had killed himself because he was gay and I started cry and I couldn't stop. I kept crying and crying because it was just too much. It was just all too much. At the end of the story I had to run to the bathroom because I felt like I was going to be sick. I sat at the toilet for a long time feeling the need to throw up but not being able to. And the tears ran down my face and I broke down. I broke down crying, and praying. "God, this is me. This is who I am." I broke down and I prayed. 4:00 in the morning on a weeknight in march of 1999 my world was turning upside down because for the first time in my life I was admitting that I was gay, and I knew I was going to have live with this realization for the rest of my life. I was gay, and I had to deal with it. I didn't go to sleep that night, I just went to class wearing the same clothes I had on the night before. And I still didn't tell anyone what I was going through. After many more sleepless nights and many more hours spent praying and crying I came to accept who I am and to not be ashamed of it. In the months that would follow I began being honest about who I was for the first time in my life. I knew there were people who thought gays were sick, immoral sinners, but I had to be honest and I didn't give a damn what others thought. It's now September and I'm out to almost everyone. It was a shock to a lot of people when I told them that I was gay. They couldn't believe it. But most of them have been fairly supportive or they at least tried to understand. I've of course run into a lot of people who backed away from me when I told them the news--never heard from some people again. But I didn't lose that many friends after coming out. Rather, by being honest, the friendships that I do have have become more stronger because I'm not hiding anything any more. Some of the people that I told weren't suprised at all, which sort of surprised me because I tried hard to hide my homosexual feelings. But now I'm out, and now I'm finally being honest about who I am, and if you hear nothing else, please hear that being honest with yourself is a hundred times better than living in denial, living in the closest, or living hating who you are. Have the courage to be who you are.
http://www.oasismag.com/ http://www.youthresource.com/ http://www.hrc.org/ncop/guide.html http://www.youth.org/
And the story that touched my heart and made me become honest withmyself: And as always, I'm here to talk, email me at [email protected].
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