Being homosexual has always been a touchy subject for me. It’s not that I am ashamed or contrite regarding my proclivity. It’s not even that I wish I had been Heterosexual, even though I once felt that way. The main issues I have with my sexuality do not reign with shame or even religious condemnation. I have always tried to maintain some semblance of privacy and steer clear of any association that might come from the lack thereof. I have always felt that what I do with my penis is my business and no one else’s. The essence of my position may appear as self-hate or some guilty pleasure, but I only have ever reacted as my ego would allow. I’m sorry, it may be going backwards to many but I would rather you not know. When people discover the secret, they automatically have access to your  propensities. I would like to be considered for how I am rather than what I am. I am more than just my sex life. It is not my identity. I am more than just your disgrace. My entire adult life has found me chasing normalcy. I simply wished to be viewed based on the content of my character, not the contents of my sexual appetite. I do not wish to go back in my time and change anything. I do wish that I had maintained slightly more control over who had access to my personal information. Granted, it is a much different world than when I first discovered my truth. People are more accepting and far less radical in their hate for all things homosexual. Some people still detest those different than themselves but this position stands as a destructive and unnecessary posture. Any finger that once pointed out my debauchery now directs itself at those who would condemn rather than try to understand. It’s okay to be gay, no matter what all the haters may claim. Oh how the tables have turned.

            When people get to know me, they are usually surprised that I was engaged to marry, twice. It’s strange but wonderful that these days, one has to point out that I was engaged to two women, not two men. My time in hetero-land was not sexual in nature. It was more like a foil rather than a blank statement. I met Sharon in grade 11, mutual friends brought us together. After a fallout with my then-girlfriend, we became rather inseparable. I suppose she was my hag in a literal sense, although she didn’t have a clue. We got engaged the next year, just before she headed to Toronto to work in placement with a legal firm. Sharonwas mousy and plain and very, very Christian. She made it easier to hide behind Jesus. At least, I didn’t feel any pressure to consummate our relationship. Sometimes scripture can be our friend. During her tenure, she met someone else. She summoned me to the city to tell me. I was thrilled by this development. Sharon was the first person that I revealed my sexuality to (outside anyone who I had already copulated with). She took the news rather poorly. Sitting in an underground concourse, she let me have it hard (so to speak). She screamed out loud for all to hear. For a good Christian girl, she sure knew how curse and judge me. Her judgments against me were valid. I had lied to her and I had led her astray. She pointed out my sin so I pointed out hers. If I was immoral, then what was the state of her salvation, considering she had admitted to fucking this new guy’s brains out? Isn’t all sin equal in God’s eyes? It was the last little dance we had together. Obviously, the engagement to marry was called off.

            During the mid-1980s, I worked at the VictoriaHospital campus in London, Ontario. Just across the street, at Commissioner’s Road and Wellington Street, sat a 7-11 and a Coffee Time donut shop. Joanne worked just around the corner. For months, we sat for a time each morning and we talked. I told her right away that I was gay. I didn’t want to, not really, but I learned through Sharonnot to lead others into a false sense of intimacy. She was a valued friend and eventually we began to see each other in a more social way. It was actually Joanne who did most of the lying. She came up with a plan to fight the constraints of a very Italian and very Catholic family. We got engaged for deception. She simply wanted to be free. The fact that I was homosexual did not appear to slant her position, at first. We did the “couple” crap. I met her family and she met mine. We attended a few work parties, hiding behind each other for all to see. It worked, at the beginning. For over a year we played the game. I did what I wanted and she did the same. Unfortunately, one day it ended badly. She could no longer deny her feelings and she wanted more than I could offer. I might have continued to be her friend if she hadn’t pointed out to me that I might get help for my “condition”. I think she wanted to hurt me as much as she believed I had hurt her. She, apparently, just didn’t get it. She knew going in. Despite the years together, calling off the facade was not an issue for me. It wasn’t the end of our engagement that gave me great pause, her judgment did. Thinking back, I’m so glad I was gay.

            We met the girls during our time at LambtonCollege in Sarnia, Ontario. My first partner and I were heavily involved in the student association and eventually, we both found a place to be. We could not be ourselves. Initially, it was simpler not to come out and tell anyone we were a couple. The media program, at the time, was heavy with the standard ”guy next door” approach. Radio was not a friendly place for a Sodomite. We knew it going in so we did not venture into the mistake. To be honest, it was exactly the way I would have wished for it to be. Every Thursday after work, staff and student rallied together for drinks at the Campbell Street Station. We blended in because we learned how to. It was on the dance floor that I met Charlene. Soon after, Doug was introduced to her friend Judy. It was cute to watch them throw themselves at each of us. Doug and I never touched them. We never said we were dating. We didn’t engage them in their heterosexual rants, not once. Our lies were from omission. We never told a soul. When our time in Sarnia was over, we relocated to Toronto. A year later and the funeral was heavy with regret. The girls came to pay their respects, hoping their questions would finally find some answers. When Judy asked why Doug never liked her, I told her. Judy’s response demonstrates one of the reasons we put up the hiding wall. “He was a faggot?” was all she said, then she turned her back on me and crossed the room. I never heard from or saw her again. Charlene was a different matter. After the funeral, we started talking almost daily on the phone. I believe she was trying to save me from my sin. She tried and tried, over and over, to get me to give myself to the mercy of Jesus. When I told her she was too late, that I had been there and done that, she made it clear that my sexual immorality made it impossible for her to further associate with me. I pointed out to her that it was a good thing offering me a blowjob the year before was the high ground when it came to morality. I haven’t heard a word from her since.

            Anthony Glavine was a good friend throughout our stay in Sarnia. The entire time we treated him with kid gloves. We liked him and we helped him and we made him feel like we had his back. We also, conveniently, lied by omission. He was short and a hairy beast. I almost petted him once. He was the kind of guy who liked to drink a lot of beer and talk a lot of smack. He would go on and on about how he nailed this chick and screwed another. Over and over we always listened to him and then we laughed in private. He didn’t have a clue. When we moved to Toronto, Anthony stayed with us for weeks at a time. It was your standard “buddy buddy” relationship. There was little depth to it and his constant need to borrow money began to weigh on our friendship. He hunted for me through a winter storm on the night Doug died. He was a pallbearer at the funeral. He even allowed my cats to stay with him as I adjusted to a world without Doug in it. When I finally told him I was gay, it was an instant ending. I was literally told to get out and never come back. I suppose, in the most ironic way, that his debt died with Doug. I never saw a penny from him and I never saw him again. I had never been sure if not telling him was the right thing to do. His shunning made it clear, it was definitely the right thing to do. I have this saying, “When in doubt, don’t.” I am still glad that we didn’t. In hindsight, nothing bugs a heterosexual man more than remembering how he walked naked in front of a couple of queers. The entire time we knew him, he really never had much to offer but we befriended him anyway. Granted, he was more Chia pet than anything else. In the end, he did not offer the same to me. It became clear that any friendship I believed we had was nothing but a means to an end for him. It’s very interesting, and not lost on me, that my homosexuality was an excuse, even though we had accepted him despite his heterosexuality.

            I really believed that if I stopped being homosexual, if somehow I purged the sin from my being, that I could please God and earn some favour. My grief was ripe and limited my ability to think and act rationally. I threw myself on Jesus, in the most sincere way I could muster. My guilt was all encompassing and I believed that God could turn me, make me a new man and free me from my poor morality. I was instantly haunted by my sexuality. I tried and tried to put it out of my mind but I was cursed. I was cursed to be gay, cursed to be unrighteous and cursed to a life without God and all that which flows through Him. I would never get into the Kingdom of Heaven. When the hoping and the praying did not rid me of my folly, I went to the doctor and asked to be castrated. I wanted to prove to God that I was contrite. My physician informed me that “we aren’t allowed to do that anymore.” He did have an alternative. The next day, I started taking some treatment for breast cancer. It pumped me full of oestrogen. In a few weeks, my nipples started to ache. Nothing else had feeling. I could not have been more pleased. I thought I was free, I finally felt free.

            Approximately 6 weeks after the beginning of the treatment, I sat down to watch television. Some girl in a red swimsuit bopped along a beach, her boobs so full that she almost knocked herself out as she scampered on the sand. Her figure was not the only object of attention. Several well-rounded busts danced with the light in some slow motion capture that was meant to titillate me (so to speak). It did not. Suddenly, I realized that my eyes had shifted and my intent had as well. He bounced, if you know what I mean, in the same slow motion that all those breasts had. His red shorts flashing a glimpse here and there. He glimmered in the sun and I experienced a revival. I had searched and searched with expectation but it was all disappointment. All of it was for nothing. I did everything to be liberated and all I got was little man boobs. I wanted to be heterosexual. I wanted to leave the sin behind me. I left Jesus standing at the door shaking his head at me. I was not welcome and I knew it, there was no doubt. There was nothing I could do. So be it. I stopped the treatment and began a manic-driven delve into hedonism. My man titties disappeared, never to return. Ironically, I felt released. The joke had been all on me. I would never be heterosexual. I would never be acceptable. This God would never want me. I was most certainly doomed and I surrendered to hopelessness. I felt alone, truly alone, for the first time in my life.

            There is a reason I am not a Christian. Regardless of any convictions I might carry toward Jesus, the god of the Bible is not my friend. Scripture has made it impossible for me to worship a deity so human in nature. To love something that hates you is a challenge, to say the least. While I continue to use my own Christianity as a focal point, it is in reference only. I no longer believe. It’s strange thinking about the days before I came out of the closet (I hate that phrase). They had to drag me out of it, kicking and screaming and fighting. All I can say is that if the world then had been more like it is today, I would not have encountered all that self-flagellation and self-induced misery. The world is changing and so are the roles of religion and spirituality. I am not the only believer who no longer believes. I keep trying, looking for the answers anywhere I can find them. I see the lessons, very clearly. Believing I could be heterosexual did nothing but make me more gay. Perhaps that is the one truth I can take from all this. I am just glad I did not venture too far into hetero-land to learn it.

https://www.colesclassroom.com/couple-poses/

http://www.ifairer.com/articles/5-best-couple-poses-for-perfect-picture-hand-holding-4-81711.html

https://www.pinterest.jp/pin/669980882045380671/

https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001282632/gay-couple-shot-for-holding-hands-in-the-streets