What they told me, versus what I knew in that moment…

• They told me that homosexual men think they’re really women. I didn’t think that.
  (I’ve met transgendered people. Yes, it’s a real thing. But it’s different from being homosexual. I have always felt completely comfortable in my own body.)
• They told me that having sex with one is what makes you one. I was a virgin.
• They told me that being molested makes you one. I was not molested.
• They told me that homosexuals like to have anonymous sex in public restrooms and parks. I had zero interest in that. I thought it was creepy and disgusting. (Sometime later I began to understand that was oppression, especially bathroom sex: we’re taught to see ourselves as human garbage, and so we flush our sex lives into the sewer)
• They told me that homosexuals were fixated on sex and were only interested brief anonymous sex. I was in love. Body and soul. I wanted to be part of his life, and for him to be part of mine.
• They told me that homosexuals preyed on teenage boys. Well, I was a teenage boy, in love with another teenage boy. But there was nothing predatory about it. I was twitterpated. At a word he could have had me body and soul. I was ready to walk through fire for him.
• They told me that homosexuals lived in a constant state of shame and self loathing, and desperately want not to be one. What I was feeling just then was the most wonderful thing that had ever happened to me. I wouldn’t have traded it for anything. All the love songs I’d ever heard on the radio suddenly began to make sense and I realized I’d never really understood them.

Today, I feel like pleasing you
More than before
Today, I know what I wanna do
But I don’t know what for

To be living for you
Is all I want to do
To be loving you
It’ll all be there
When my dreams come true

They told me a lot of things. I believed them once. Then I fell in love.

I realize many of us have had a painful struggle with this. I hear you. I stand with you. Mine wasn’t entirely free from fear and anxiety. I still had to navigate a world full of contempt, loathing, and hate every which way you turned. We can make this world a better place for kids like us to come of age in by telling our stories, our truths. This one is mine. It is also a way of healing the kid within.

I can look back and see there was a lot of luck in how it finally hit me. I’d already walked a good distance away from the religious fundamentalism I was raised in. I’d grown up in a part of the country that gave me a good public school education, during a time when the cold war and the space race put an emphasis on teaching kids science. But if I could wish a happy, wonderful coming out story on everyone, it would be through that wonderful magical first love.

Today, you’ll make me say
That I somehow have changed
Today, you look into my eyes
I’m just not the same…

When all is said and done, it was love that saved me.