How Do You Know When You Are Gay?

My friends never believe me when I tell them I had no idea I was gay until I was nineteen years old. Growing up in a small South Texas town, one really did not have that as a viable option. Sure I was called “faggot” and “homo” on a regular basis, but that didn’t mean anything to me. I didn’t know what gay was. They may as well have called me douche bag or dumb ass because they were all just insults to me. In the 80’s, there was no Will and Grace or Ellen on television to open up my horizons. All I had was Billy Crystal on Soap. And I still don’t think I really knew what gay meant. It’s hard for people to understand what I mean when I say that, but the definition of “gay” never occurred to me. It was just something that never came up. Except as an insult of course. How does the gay gene work? I loved Judy Garland when I was in elementary school and listened to Barbra Streisand all through junior high and high school. Nobody taught me that gay men love these women; I just did. My formative years encompassed every stereotype of a gay child without me even having to try. Hated sports and always the last one to be picked for the team? Check. Never played with boys but always played house with the girls? Check. Lip synched to Barbra? In the privacy of my room? At age 10? Check! That is gay, people. It really should have come as no surprise when people called me gay, but I took it as a deep insult. I thought I was like every other guy at school who should have had a girlfriend. And I tried to have one, boy did I try, but the girls always liked me as a brother or a best friend because I was “so sweet”. Hello, another clue to my total gayness!

At the end of 1982, when I was 15 years old, I started keeping a diary. I wrote every day and still do. I started in the second semester of my sophomore year. I was really involved in school at that time because I was always desperate to be popular and also went to church. A lot. I went on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and sometimes on Friday night for something we called “fellowship”. It was a night to share a meal with the congregation, play some games and hear some scripture. Although it was not a conscious decision, I think I went to church so much because I knew deep in my heart I was a sinner. It was a Southern Baptist church so it wasn’t that hard to be considered a sinner, but my sin was extra special sinful. The diary was the place I could write and try to identify the feelings that I had. I knew I was different than other boys at school but I had nothing to compare those feelings to. In my naivety, I attributed my attraction to other boys to the only feeling that I could. Jealousy. If I looked at a cute boy and felt funny about him, then I must have been jealous of him. It never occurred to me that the feeling I had was attraction. I was “jealous” of a lot of cute boys. So began my writing and my eventual self awareness.

The following pages are taken directly from my very first diary. Reading it with the knowledge that the writer comes out of the closet in 1987, it’s easy to see all the foreshadowing and how funny it is. On the other hand, living it as a high school and college student I only felt confusion and sadness. It wasn’t until I went to college that I understood what being gay meant. In the second semester of my sophomore year in college when I finally realized that I was gay and it was okay, I told my friends and family. No one was surprised. Not one person I told registered shock. Even my mother told me she wondered when I was going to tell her. Her exact words were, “well at least I know I’ll always have someone to go shopping with.” Seriously, she said. I loved that she said it because I knew that she was 100% okay with it. My dad and brothers were too. I had been called a sissy since I was 7 years old so apparently I was the last one to know. Maybe I should have listened to the guys at school when they told me I was a queer. They were right. I just didn’t know that it was a good thing.