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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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It has taken me a long time, but I have realised that it is only the rather peculiar and stupid decisions I have made in my life that have stopped me knowing this.
I like being gay.
I'm comfortable with it, I like it, I like everything about it.
Now I'm sure I would like being str8 too, but I never have been, so I have no way of knowing.
[Updated on: Wed, 04 February 2009 11:24]
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Even though I am still in the closet apart from my internet friends, I enjoy being gay and don't think I would want to change. It certainly never features among my wishes that certain e-mails invite me to make.
Hugs
N
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I would like, I think, never to have BEEN gay. But BEING gay is fine. There is nothing about that I want to alter. Just my stupid decisions
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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e
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On fire! |
Location: currently So Cal
Registered: May 2002
Messages: 1179
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I used to be confused about it. Except to myself, I have never admitted it. I am terrified of it. I used to wish I could change it. I have never lived it. But I can't say that I dislike it.
Think good thoughts,
e
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You know, I have never really considered myself to be 'gay'. Not because I was not aware of what we now call my orientation but because I always just accepted it as a part of what made me me. I never really gave the implications much serious thought. In the era in which I was a teenager and later an adult it was clear to me that I would have to choose between being accepted socially or not. Without thinking, almost automatically, I put career and calling first and that was that. I have no serious regrets.
PS I am really not yet strong enough to fully participate here, but I do lurk from time to time - in case there is something interesting  .
J F R
The paradox has often been noted that the United States, founded in secularism, is now the most religiose country in Christendom, while England, with an established church headed by its constitutional monarch, is among the least. (Richard Dawkins, 2006)
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Your post probably puts you in the ninety percentile of the posters here, J.F.R.
I'm glad you at least have the strength to lurk. Tell me when you feel at least 75% back to norm and I'll pop a cork to celebrate.
Youth crisis hot-line 866-488-7386, 24 hr (U.S.A.)
There are people who want to help you cope with being you.
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I used to think I was good at introspection. Now I'm not sure. I think I used to think I was an introvert, but nowadays I think I behave extrovert.
I think I have suffered less from self doubt than other people and although I certainly wanted not to be gay I wasn't made to suffer for it.
I think I would have suffered just as badly - perhaps worse - from lack of loving contact with a girl if I had been heterosexual.
I think I may have excused my homosexuality to myself as just a consequence of knowing no girls. I don't think I ever beat myself up about it as I think some people have.
The sexual desert between puberty and socially acceptable loving was something that a great many people suffered when I was young and my wife and I agreed that we would spare our children that and we did and it turned out well. Now we have four grandchildren on the verge of puberty it will be interesting to see how the family gets on.
And yes, Timmy, I like being me and I like me and I get less and less ashamed of how I am and the things I do and more and more outspoken about what I think is right.
And APOS and iomfats have helped me a lot because, as my friend Peter Burton used to say "How do I know what I think until I hear what I say!"
Being able to say it has helped enormously.
Love,
Anthony
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I've always known that I was attracted to other males. There was a while where I thought it was a phase I'd probably grow out of, but I can't say that I ever really *wanted* to do so ... perhaps the closest I ever got was to kind of echo Saint Augustine's famous prayer "Oh lord, make me celibate ... but not just yet" as " ... straight ... but not just yet"!
"The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. ... Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night devoid of stars." Martin Luther King
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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May I suggest, Nigel, now that I have met you, that you consider something. Reject it by all means, but consider it.
I think your working life ensured that you stayed in the closet. I think you are wisely remaining circumspect about leaving that closet. Any form of coming out is because WE wish to, not because others say it is a good idea. In some cases it is a bad idea. In many cases it isn't even relevant.
The thing I would like you to consider is whether it is important, any more, to stay hidden. You've experienced the relaxation that being with other gay men can bring, and seen that en masse we are just blokes who happen to like blokes best.
Everyone's mileage may vary. So far I have had no adverse experiences when telling a friend that I am gay. I expect I will get some one day. I have a cousin whom I am not about to tell, though he is welcome to read my personal website and discover it for himself. I have friends whose noses would be put out of joint. My relationship with them has nothing do do with any form of sexuality, so they are wholly irrelevant to tell.
What I have found is an immense feeling of anticlimax every time I've told someone. They ask questions, of course, and I answer them with a smile. The only one I will not answer is whether I have ever been with a guy. If I say yes or no they will assume yes anyway, and, since my wife is involved in this, any assumption is unfair on her. So I tell them that.
So my long winded thought is for you to consider whether it is now appropriate for you to begin to relax over your very reasonable defensive wall. You may find that you meet a charming gentleman of an age to suit you with whom to share anything from gentle conversation to your home. That could be rather fun.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Wonderful, NW, and the difference is that I NEVER thought that I KNEW I was really straight - all I needed was to meet Sylvia! And of course I did and it took me quite a long time to realise that I REALLY wasn't.
So we both played 'Let's pretend!'
But you gave (pretending) up a long time ago and I was only really aware of it quite recently (less than five years).
Love,
Anthony
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Thanks, Timmy. Please don't think that this is a quick answer. It isn't as i have been through most of the thought processes you have suggrested.
When I met you and the others in December I felt relaxed and in good company. Oddly I did not feel particularly gay and did not think gay thoughts when I was with you, with two exceptions and one was when a particularly interesting boy was sitting in the corner of the coffee house. But then I can boywatch when I'm in str8 company. As an indirect consequence of our meeting I'm going to meet another board member next month.
I am not particularly worried about the effects of coming out on myself, but on my nearest and dearest. I certainly would not contemplate doing so while my father is alive. I have one close friend who is simply incapable of understanding anything about being gay, another who is, I regret, vehemently anti-gay. I think that is typical of our generation and that younger people are either more understanding or indifferent. One might say that they are not the sort of people I should have as friends, but I would only repeat the mantra that you like or love people either for or despite their faults.
Timmy, you are right about my working background. To have come out would for many of those years have meant the sack, albeit under another name, even though it was not against the law. Why is it assumed, once you say you are gay, that the only thing you're interested in is penetrating another bloke's bottom? Why aren't hetero schoolmasters immediately assumed to be predatory with girl pupils? Or schoolmistresses with boy pupils? One part of my career which was particularly successful involved my being subject to QRs where homosexuality was definitely illegal, but not in civilian life.
If I meet a new gentleman friend I will encounter that open mindedly. Perhaps I ought to make the point that I am quite content with thie gay aspect of my life as it is now and that I can work through any frustrations that I might have. Thank you, Timmy, for the thought you have put into what you said. Don't think I am rejecting it out of hand, but my life as it is works for me under present circumstances. It did take a lot of determination to come and meet you all in December and I appreciate it still as a worthwhile experience.
By the bye a year or two back I had to visit a male couple in their house as part of my work with a charitable organisation. Although sympathetic, I did not feel comfortable with them. I have never been able to work out whether it was the set up or simply that I did not fancy either of them.
Hugs
Nigel
I dream of boys with big bulges in their trousers,
Never of girls with big bulges in their blouses.
…and look forward to meeting you in Cóito.
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Benji
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Likes it here |
Location: USA
Registered: August 2007
Messages: 297
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How to answer that?? Gay guy takes the straight road out of fear and acceptance? Well, many here have done that, do I wish I were not gay? Yes, there was a time in my youth that I despised myself and fought against my 'true' feelings. Where did it get me? No where, I'm still gay and married to a wonderful women who is suffering dementia and other medical problems. As much as I love her, I hate myself.
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Any answer will sound like a platitude. I think you should consider that you did what you needed to do in your youth. Your circumstances sound very difficult, more so than most. Hating the dementia not yourself or the sufferer seems like a plan, though hard to implement.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Dear Benji,
I can't imagine the state I would have to be in to write "I hate myself."
And I have done things I am deeply ashamed about.
But although you have done things to despise that doesn't come near to self hatred and I wonder what it is about you that makes you write that. Surely you have been good to your wife. I can't believe you are that much worse than the rest of us on here.
What can I do to help you see that you aren't hateful at all?
I too, would have said, for much of my life, that I wished I were not gay, but I was worse - I said I *wasn't* gay (although I now see I was) - but gradually I came to realise that I was the person I was and that wishing I was someone else was not so much doing me no good as impossible (although it was doing me no good as well).
You can't wish you were someone else. You can utter the words but can't imagine it. You are, inside, still YOU doing the wishing and the stronger you wish the stronger is the self that is doing the wishing and the *more* you are affirming that you are you.
And I am me, warts and all, and I still do things I wouldn't like to admit to and what I have to do is recognise that it's just me and I'd better get over it.
Like stonewall says some people are gay: get over it - I have to say one people is me: I have to get over it.
Can a hug help you to get over you?
Love,
Anthony
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I honestly don't think whether you're gay or straight matters. Just be yourself, and enjoy it.^^ :hugs:
~Josh~
21.
Love who you want to.
~Josh~
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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It matters to me and to my family.
It matters to me because I grew up in terror of who and what I am.
It matters to my wife because she rather expected to be marrying a heterosexual man.
It mattered to my mother because she finally realised what an awful teenage time I had and that she had done nothing to help.
It matters to me because, since I have chosen marriage, I will never have the love of a man to nurture me, and, despite all my best efforts to make it so, the love of a good, decent woman is not enough or at all the same thing.
Nonetheless I like myself as a gay man. It is my decisions I hate.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Who and what you are, is human. Simple as that. The decisions you've made, make up who you are today. That's what I think anyway..
~Josh~
21.
Love who you want to.
~Josh~
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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The thing is, Josh, that you are missing the point. Whether it "matters" or not is truly immaterial. What matters to me is that I like myself as I am today.
Whether being gay matters or not is a whole nother discussion
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Well, I'm glad you like yourself then. People should do that more often. :hugs: Sorry for getting off-track^^ *blushes* (<
Good for you.
~Josh~
21.
Love who you want to.
~Josh~
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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Equally I did not want to give you a quick answer. But I have been thinking hard about one aspect that you have put before us.
My father died in 1982. I had a lot to say to him, some pleasant, some direct and to the point. I was not ready to say these things to myself, so he died with them unsaid.
My mother died in 2007. She and I had spoken all the words we needed to say to each other. We were never close all our lives, but, at the end, I was comfortable with her and she with me.
I believe that a parent has a duty to its child. The duty is nothing to do with love, though love can come into it. The duty is to listen to them, and to be, insofar as circumstances allow, there for them though good and bad times, through good and bad news.
Some parents do not understand this duty. Curtis has an excrescence of a father who harmed him badly physically, for example. Others understand it clearly.
My being gay was unexpected by my mother, outside her experience ("We had HEARD of queer men, of course, dear. They were actors and so on.") And she had a hard time understanding that I had grown up in terror of her. ("You should have said so,dear!" yes, and get ECT for my pains. I think not). But understand it she did. The huge gulf between us started to close.
I have spent my life hoping for permission to be myself. But no-one else has given it. I had to do it myself.
Consider what would truly happen by telling your father who his son is. Consider it using all the best inputs you have. It may be valid to let him remain in ignorance. He may know anyway. You may decide to tell him.
I saw on your face how alien it was at the start to meet others. I saw with pleasure how that eased during the afternoon. I think you were almost yourself at the end of the gathering. So I know how much emotional capital you have tied up in the armour you wear.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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Timmy said
"I have spent my life hoping for permission to be myself. But no-one else has given it. I had to do it myself"
Yeah this is it, all of us need to know this no matter our orientation or proclivities!
People will tell you where they've gone
They'll tell you where to go
But till you get there yourself you never really know
Where some have found their paradise
Other's just come to harm
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JimB
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Likes it here |
Registered: December 2006
Messages: 349
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Gee Timmy, from many of your posts and the questions you have raised I have gotten the impression that you didn't like yourself, didn't like your life and blamed your parents for the person you turned out to be. I'm very glad to learn that I was wrong because I think liking oneself is an important part to having a happy life.
JimB
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I live this part of my life in public, mood swings an' all because I want people to see that they are not alone. I have been a mess for most of my life. It's been a rough road but I am coming through it.
I like who I am. I don't like who I've been. I detest the poor decisions I've made, but I know why I felt I had to make them.
The book I'm writing about my teenage years is helping. It helps me to crystallise why I grew up as I did, why I failed to "be" gay when I ought to have been.
You see I love being gay. As I said before I'd probably love being str8, too, if I were. I like, as in I would love to like, gay sex. I know I love being hugged by a man who does NOT do back slapping Man Hugs.
I have not been able to love being gay before. It's a great feeling.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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timmy
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Has no life at all |
Location: UK, in Devon
Registered: February 2003
Messages: 13796
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I like him.
Author of Queer Me! Halfway Between Flying and Crying - the true story of life for a gay boy in the Swinging Sixties in a British all male Public School
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