Yeah—there’s a girl like that in every high school . . .
You mean the one who “dates” the semi-closeted school fag? 
I knew when I was maybe 6 or 7. About the same age that other kids are becoming aware of the differences between girls and boys, I knew already that I wasn’t at all interested in the girls. I came to realize that this was “wrong” over the next few years, but I accepted and was OK with it when I was about 12 or 13. I didn’t tell anyone else until June 2001, when I started coming out to friends and co-workers, and I officially outed myself to my mother on June 22nd, 2001.
BTW, welcome to the party, Captain!
No, I mean the one in school “almost every dates . . .”
You mean that girl behind the bleachers? Well, I did do her hair once.
39 year old gay man here (gad I can’t be that old.)
I grew up in rural Alabama and never really even heard the word “gay” until I went to college. I too knew I liked men (especially naked men) from a young age. I really got into watching wrestling on TV and looking at the underwear ads in magazines and catalogs like GQ and Sears. But I never spoke a word of “my secret desires” until I went to college.
One night after going to a concert with my then GF in college and making out and heavy petting at her place, I left and got up the nerve to go to the local gay bar and within minutes (after being terrified of entering the place) everything clicked and I have never looked back. Then next day I told my good friend in college and she said, “that’s good that you finally realized it, I’ve known it since I met you.” So I was 19 when that happened. I am now a happily partnered man of 11 years.
Hmm… judging from this, it looks like the beginning of March this year, at least to most of my friends. I know that about a week before that I had told a couple of other, less close people as kind of a “test coming-out.”
My parents got told a little while later, and since… oh, about the beginning of 2004, it’s been an “if you ask me, then yes” thing, but I’m not going to walk up to anyone, tap them on the shoulder, and say “Hey, I’m gay.” And I’m not exactly feminine, so it kind of weirds people out. Most people don’t believe me, even when I tell them that I’m gay. Like in Quiz Bowl. I knew more than the girls about make-up (weird, since I don’t even wear it), and cooking.
LOL… conversation went:
Me <buzz> “Braising!”
Girl: “Wow, what a fag! giggle” (She was joking. She’s been doing it for a while.)
Me: Yes. <buzz> “Blanching!”
Girl weird look
Me: <buzz> “Flambé!”
Girl stare “You weren’t serious, were you?”
Me: “Yes.”
Girl: incredulous stare “No!?”
Roommate: “Yes.”
Girl: “Huh? Oh, hmm.”
oh, whoops. I missed the “discover your sexuality part”. Suspect: 5th or 6th grade. Knew: 7th or 8th grade.
Well looking back I had funny feelings in elementary school and we would have sleepovers and braid eachother’s hair. I felt really really funny when a girl would braid my hair. But I was totally into boys so I didn’t make the connection. Until high school when a bi girl took a liking to me. She would hit on me outrageously and I would pretend not to like it. Then one night I spent the night at her house. I was maybe 15. She tried and tried to get me to make out with her, but I wouldn’t. Finally she gave up and rolled over to go to sleep. That’s when I realized I didn’t want her to stop. I sat up and took off my shirt. THAT woke her back up. The rest of the evening is not suitable for this forum. 
So yeah, 15 when I finally admitted I was bi.
Forgot reactions, etc. Came out to my friends at 15, no big deal, most of them were gay too.
My mom found out when I was about 18, from snooping around in my personal papers. She was kinda freaked but mostly really curious. We were having dinner at Sizzler and she’s practically shouting: “Does that mean you like to have sex WITH WOMEN???” I was more embarassed than she was. She hasn’t really mentioned it since. That was 11 years ago or so.
My twin sister knows, I’m not really sure how. Probably around the same time as my mom. She couldn’t give a shit.
All other siblings and dad don’t know. So I’m semi-closeted, which is very easy for a bisexual woman.
Ditto on both. (I’m 38.) One reason I wasn’t sure I was gay sooner was that I’d heard all my life that “fags” were evil people who liked to molest little boys and had marches where they dressed as women and I knew that neither one appealed to me. (I’m also from a family that refused to believe Liberace was gay even when he was sued by Scott Thorson because “he seems so nice and loves his Mama”.)
The evolution of my coming out:
Well, I kinda went back and forth for awhile until I’ve settled on ‘bisexual’. The first time I noticed I was attracted to girls was over a series of summers when I was 10-12 at girls camp. I fought myself over this attraction until I was 14 or 15. When I was 17 I decided that boys were dumb and I would dedicate myself to the pleasures of women. I came out as a lesbian to everyone that would listen (I got varying reactions, as expected). That worked reasonably well until I was 19 and fell madly in love with one of my best guy friends, while I was dating a girl. Things went on like this for a few years. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
I’m 26 now and I’m engaged to a wonderful man who is reasonably accepting of my pliable sexuality. I am very active in my college’s LGBTA group.
I feel like my sexual identity has been a textbook example of what my mom told me when I came out to her, “You can’t help who you fall in love with.”
I was clueless. Utterly clueless. Until I was about 34 years old. I don’t recall being taught it was sinful to be queer (at home or in my Lutheran church) or if it was even mentioned, for that matter. It simply wasn’t on my radar. I dated a few men over the years but never really felt “in love” or even seriously attracted to any man out there. There was a whole genre of “love songs” that made absolutely no sense to me.
After several years of therapy to overcome depression and generally figure out who the heck I was and what I wanted, it finally dawned on me one day that the reason I was so fixated on Scully from The X-Files is that I thought she was hot. Looking back, I was attracted to all sorts of women from my fourth-grade teacher on, but my upbringing left me so sheltered from the possibility of being not-straight that it honestly didn’t even occur to me that I might be a lesbian.
Had my first relationship about a year after realizing I liked women and gradually came out to everyone over the next year. Friends first, then my aunt and cousin, and finally my immediate family.
My parents and other relatives have been great. Accepting of me from the moment I came out and really supportive of me and my partner. I’m so lucky.
“LGBT” sounds like a sandwich.
Lettuce Gefilte Bacon and Tomato anyone?
I knew I was different from a pretty early age, probably around ten. I didn’t know what was different, just that what other boys said about sex and girls didn’t make a lot of sense to me. I remember hoping that it was just because I was a late bloomer and that I was still in my “girls have cooties” phase.
A year or two later, when going to the neighborhood community college swimming pool (they had open pool hours for the community during the summer, and my friends and I went fairly often), I happened to see a fully naked man on our way through the locker room to the pool deck. I realized right then that I was attracted to men much more than women (having seen naked women in magazines and so forth). And I immediately realized that I was damned for all eternity. Oh, did I forget to mention I was raised Roman Catholic?
I spent the next several years in heavy denial and self loathing. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the slightest amount of heterosexual tendencies. Though there were a number of girls I counted as friends, I never dated any of them. I was so busy trying to figure out how I was going to lead a straight life (get married, have kids, etc.) that I never had time to actually date. Now I laugh when I think back to those days.
By the time I started College, I had become accustomed to the idea that I would remain celibate for the rest of my life. I had had one furtive encounter with another gay man, and knew I did not want to live life as a gay man. Random encounters with other gay men in bookstores or bars, acting nellie, dressing in drag, and all of those other things that gay men were obliged to do held no attraction to me. (To this day, I wonder how I got those images in my mind during the early eighties, a time of burgeoning gay liberation.)
Then, one day when I was 23 or 24 (I’m a bit hazy on the actual date), while still in college and with a very large peer group, one of my women friends gave me the gift of a small teddy bear. She said I always looked lonely and that I needed some companionship until I found my certain someone. That broke me. I thought I was doing a good job coping with being alone, but it was a thin mask that cracked that day. I realized that I needed to be held, to be loved, to be told that everything was going to work out. And that wasn’t going to happen if I were to remain alone, and it would be a harmful lie to try and find that in the arms of a woman.
I spent some time anonymously participating in gay discussions on USENET and BBSes. I met many, many gay people who were nothing like the image I had of gay people, and some who seemed to be an awful lot like me. I realized that being gay did not condemn me to a certain lifestyle, but was just a part of my identity, much like being a computer geek, or an artist, or an avid reader. In time, I came to accept that part of myself. Eventually, I started to come out.
The first person I told was Gwen, the woman who had given me the teddy bear. She was honored at the time to be the first person I told. (We then compared notes on the rest of the male computer geek peerhood at school :D) She, myself, and two other people were planning on renting a house together for the next school year, and I needed to be honest and up-front with them. So, I came out to the other two potential housemates. Their response could be summed up with one word: “Okay.”
I spent the summer working up the courage to get out into the gay community in SLO. I made some friends in the gay community, and eventually attended a gathering being held at a local beach. Knowing that I was going to be heading down the path to self discovery, I decided that it was time to let my family know. So, before the beach party, I wrote a letter to my parents. I hate using the phone, and I didn’t want to wait until the next time I saw them. Besides, a recent visit with them turned ugly when my brother expressed some homophobic rhetoric and my parents tacitly backed him up by not calling him on it, and I needed to explain why I had found the comment hurtful and acted out.
The beach party was very successful (and I’m forever in the debt of one of my straight and accepting friends and former housemate who agreed to go with me to lend moral support). When I got home, I made the decision to come out to my peer group. The school year was just about to begin, and I felt empowered by my recent boldness. I knew there was likely to be some rejection, and I feared the reaction from some people, but I felt I had to do this.
My peer group consisted primarily of fellow computer science students at Cal Poly. At some point, a few of them had developed some BBS software that ran semi-clandestinely on the school’s central UNIX server. If anything happened in my peer group, it was planned, executed, and memorialized on this BBS. Wanting to let my entire peer group know all at the same time, I made the decision to come out by posting a message to the BBS. I remember spending an hour looking at the submit prompt, agonizing over whether to actually send the message or not. And after sending it, which I did very late at night to make sure that no-one would read it right away, I spent the entire night awake, not being able to sleep thanks to nerves and fear.
In the end, I think I lost one potential friend, and made the relationships with the rest of my peers much stronger. I think many of them had sensed I was holding something back, and now that I was being completely honest, there was a lot more trust and respect. That first week of school, I attended my first meeting of the campus’ gay/lesbian/bi/transgendered support/activism group, and wound up being elected vice-president. That night, bouyed by the incredibly positive reactions, I got home to face the phone call. My parents had gotten my letter.
I choose now to believe they were trying to tell me they loved me no matter what, and that what I told them made no difference. However, I was full of “newly-out pride” and probably over sensitive. When they expressed that they didn’t understand the choice I had made, I got angry at them. We discussed it, though I was horribly defensive. They wanted my assurance that I was going to be careful (“Gay people aren’t the only people who get AIDS, Mom!”), and that I was making the right choice (they meant in coming out, I thought they meant in my sexuality), and that they still loved me. In retrospect, they answered honestly and lovingly. I was the hot-headed one. At the time, though, I only felt hurt. I shut them out of my life for nearly a year.
Things have improved substantially since then. I’m 38 now (does quick math on his fingers and then nods), and my relationship with my parents is pretty strong. I love them both, and they love me. My brothers were very accepting of me, and my being honest with them repaired a lot of the emotional damage I had caused while in the midst of my demon-wrestling. (In fact, one brother asked me to be an usher at his wedding, and the other his best man. I feel so very honored.) They all treat my partner as a “brother/son-in-love” (their term, not mine). I try to maintain close friendships with my peers from school, though time and distance do take their toll. I’m also in the midst of a very wonderful nearly 12 year relationship with my partner-in-life.
So, that’s my story. Kind of long-winded, but it did take quite some time in the making. I’m happy with the final results, but I do wish it hadn’t taken so long…
JOhn.
Looking back on it now, it’s pretty clear that I had a huge crush on my best friend from the age of, oh, six or so up until highschool, when we started drifting apart. That’s the first time I remember having feelings about a guy, but it wasn’t until years later that I found the appropriate label for those feelings.
I was a real late bloomer in high school. Real late. I remember gym class, junior year, this guy asked me if I shaved my legs. I was also a major, major, major geek. Between these two facts, I wasn’t much interested in dating anybody, and nobody was much interested in dating me. (Although in hind sight, I wonder about that guy who asked if I shaved my legs.) Somewhere in there was when I first realized that I was sexually attracted to guys. But, since I was also sexually attracted to girls, I figured that it was just a phase.
By college, I pretty much has to accept that no, it wasn’t a phase. I was bisexual. But, y’know, only a little bisexual. Like, 80/20 straight/gay. No, more like 90/10. Yeah, that’s the ticket. Also, (I told myself) despite the fact that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with being gay, there’s a whole lot of discrimination against them in this society. And since I like women so much more than men, really, there’s no point in ever acting on that side of my sexuality, right? I mean, why go looking for trouble? And since I was never, ever going to act on my attraction to men, there’s no reason to ever tell anyone about it, right? Right?
Anyway, I was able to nurse that particular self-deception for several years. It’s only been in the last year or so, mostly through participation on the SDMB, that I’ve come to accept that I like guys more or less just as much as I like girls, and admit to myself that I’d really like to act on that attraction. I haven’t, yet, for sundry other reasons that I’m not going into detail on right now. And while I’ve mentioned that I’m bi here and there on the boards, I still haven’t come out to anyone in real life yet. Although I do know a couple posters here in RL now, so if they’re reading this… Surprise! Part of what’s keeping me back is the fact that I’ve never so much as flirted with a guy before, and I feel sort of uncomfortable coming out when I don’t have anything to come out about. Which I recognize is stupid and illogical, but there it is.
What makes it worse is that I know for a certainty that no one in my immediate family or circle of friends would give a shit. My parents have lots of gay friends, and always have. When I was a wierd teenager with no apparent interest in girls, my mom used to drop these comically broad hints that if I was gay, I could tell her because she’d be totally okay about it. And among my friends, I’m far and away the most conservative of the bunch. (At this point, I’d like to invite the reader to do a search of my posting history, and then reel in horror at the implications of that statement.) I’ve got absolutely nothing to lose by coming out, and potentially quite a bit to gain, but… there’s still that little fearful voice in the back of my brain saying, “Don’t do it.” And it’s very tempting to listen to that voice, because I could stay in the closet, and live a happy and fulfilled life pretending to be heterosexual. I can only imagine what it must be like for someone who’s homosexual, who cannot spend their entire lives closeted and happy, and who has a very legitimate fear of losing friends and loved ones when they come out.
I guess I was precocious, cause my cousin and I used to get nekkid and rub our stiff lil’ pee-pees together when we were eight. I had a lot of guilt about it though, and decided I was going to become a (Catholic) priest when I grew up, so I could avoid the issue entirely. Little did I know…
In 1969 (I think it was) when I was about 15, Life magazine had a cover story on “The Sad Gay Life of the Homosexual”, and that was what gave it a name in my case. Needless to say, the article filled me with further dread regarding the future.
Going from a relatively sheltered Catholic elementary school to a public high school, I stuck out like a sore penis, and was assaulted daily by the rougher boys. I got no sympathy from the school’s staff, and began to hang out with the drug-taking misfits and hippie outsiders. I skipped gym and hid out in the art room, home of the one teacher who actually seemed to like me.
After the Stonewall riots hit the news, I assumed the hour of sweet, sweet liberation was finally at hand, and came out, at 17, to my gang of friends, one by one. All claimed to be okay with it, until they apparently conferred about it, and within a month I was thoroughly ostracized. Soon after that, I quit school and took to the streets, where I found the acceptance of men who liked me so well they gave me money.
I came out to my family when I was 21 and living in a relationship with an older man in Boston. Despite the fact that they’d all known for years who I was, we’d never discussed it, and doing so only caused further drama. They did come around after a few more years, but by that time the damage was done.
I’m so very glad that many, if not most, kids these days have a better chance of being accepted for who they are, at least by family and friends, if not by the current regressive social conditions brought about by right-wingery and evangelicalism – though I’d really hoped we’d be living in a much more ‘enlightened’ context by the time I got to fifty.
(And Hamish – I sure can relate to your story, brother.)
Nothing all the different from most of the other stories here, just a lot more prolonged. Raised southern Pentacostal. Knew early on (around 8 or 9?) that something was “different” but never associated it with sexuality. Started to be more aware of it in high school (12-16), because I never had interest in girls but kept having random “improper” thoughts about guys. Never acted on any of it. Suppressed it completely through college (17-21), and my first job (22-24), staying completely asexual and throwing myself into school and work. Moved across the country, had awkward relationship with woman friend I’d met online that ended very badly when I realized I had absolutely no sexual desire. Tried two more attempts at finding the “right woman” (24-26), ended a little better but still very awkward. Finally acknowledged I was at least a little gay (26), and took on a plan to get it all out of my system (26-30) – random (but safe) hook-ups followed by enormous guilt and months of celibacy, until it flared up again. Finally realized I was 100% gay, not bi (30) but it’d be okay because I would never tell anyone and just keep up the random hook-ups (30-32). Finally gave up (32) and figured I’d be completely celibate for the rest of my life because I was miserable having nothing more than shallow encounters.
Met a guy (33) who I really liked a lot, the first gay guy that I’d ever met that I actually liked being with and could see myself having a long-term relationship with. He told me his story about coming out, said he hadn’t lost any friends and it wasn’t a big deal to anyone. He was completely out and comfortable with himself and comfortable with being out, and didn’t live like a stereotype. I decided that it didn’t have to be such a big deal for me either, and I should just accept it. Told a friend from work one night at a bar, because he kept asking me why I’d seemed so distracted for the last couple of weeks, and his reaction was “are you serious?” and then: “good on ya!” (He’s Australian). It’s impossible to feel insecure or worried about anything when someone’s saying “good on ya!”, so I started telling my closest friends.
Exact same reaction from everyone I’ve told since then: first ask if I’m serious, then say congratulations, then say they had no idea and didn’t really care one way or the other. A couple of my oldest friends, from high school, told me that they’d suspected I was for years, but hadn’t thought much about it.
That’s where I am now. I’ve told my friends, I’m open about it at work when it comes up, and if anyone asks or brings it up, I’m out. I still haven’t told my family, because I’m waiting to have a real reason to, specifically, when I’m dating someone and it’s serious. Most people tell me that my family already knows, and I’d only be confirming it.
Yeah well, according to Google it went alot farther than “friendship”, buddy.
BTW, Google says you snore.