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Hey guys
I guess it is about time I introduced myself. I kind of feel like a peeping tom sitting here reading all of your post and not saying anything. But to tell you the truth reading them is what is giving me the courage to actually talk about myself. Believe it or not you guys are the first ones that I have ever let take a peek into my closet.
Anyway my name is Tony I am forty-five years old. I am married to a wonderful woman who I knows loves me and I truly love her. The only problem is that I am not sexually attracted to her. Never have been. Sounds awful I know. I feel guilty as hell about it. We do have sex, not as often as she would like but enough to keep her happy. I do not think she suspects that I am really a gay man living a lie. She just thinks I have a low sex drive.
I have been living this lie all my life. I knew when I was about ten or twelve that I was different. For those of us who grew up in the sixties and seventies being openly gay was not an option. If you wanted to live in peace anyway.
I found out early in life that I had better keep this secret to myself. When you first realize that you are attracted to boys and not girls you just can’t help yourself, you just have to look, especially when you are attracted to certain people. Well sometimes you just look a little too long and people take notice. I found out the hard way about this. The boys I was looking at noticed and from there on my life in middle school was hell. I am a smaller person stand only five foot seven now. I was not very good at defending myself and paid for it.
I grew up in a home with my mother and sisters. I made the mistake of trying to talk to my mother about this (in very vague terms) but she kind of saw through it and said “your not trying to tell me your are some kind of a sissy are you” told me right there to keep this to myself, I did not want her to hate me too!
Well high school was a little better because I had learned how to hid my feelings. Still never really dated just kept to myself. Just trying to get by. I never really had any friend’s just people I knew, not that people didn’t try but I could not let anyone get to close or they might find out my secret.
Well I made it through school thought I was home free. Thought I could finally be me. I got a job saved some money and decided to move to some place where no one knew me, someplace where I could be me. I packed up and moved to south Florida. I found a job started going out to clubs and trying to meet people who were like myself. I guess I neglected to say that I am also painfully shy and do not meet people easily but I was going to change that.
I found the area of Ft. Lauderdale to be a place that was easy to hide in. Had a few gay bars where you could go and not get your ass kicked for being there. Homophobia was not as rampaged as it was up north. I was sort of happy for the first time in my life. Not happy about being gay but if I was gay, I was going to try like hell to find someone I could be happy with.
Of course you all know what happened next. Well those of you who were around then know. Yup AIDS. Once this hit the news that it was affecting gay men and that it was deadly with no cure in site and that it was a contagious disease, homophobia spread like wild fire. Back in the closet for me and I have been there ever since. Here I am twenty some years later with a wife and three kids I know I will never be able to come out. Not without hurting too many other peoples lives. So I open the door every once in a while and peek out and wonder what life could have been. I found this site by accident while searching for stories about how people came out. What it was like for them and what problems they had. If I can’t live it for myself at least I can live it through them.
It feels good to get this off my chest even if it is to a bunch of people I have never met and probably never will. One good thing I can think of that has come out of all of this. I have three wonderful sons now and when they would come home from school and tell me about a boy that they suspected of being gay and what the other kids would do to them. I was able to teach my sons that it did not matter what the person sexual orientation was. That he or she was still human and still needed friends. Probably more so now then ever and encouraged them to be that friend. They have never let me down.
I guess I have run on long enough but thanks for listening.
Tony
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