Via Facebook Reels I see, Every Gay Man Remembers At Least One Of These. I dunno…maybe I just had such an oddball path growing up, or I’m just getting old and forgetful (a Real possibility) but the only one of these I still remember much of is my first Pride Day in downtown Washington DC, in the gayborhood around DuPont Circle. It was Anita Bryant’s win in Florida that pushed me into going.

1)   The First Time You Realized You Might Be Different…

Somehow I always knew I was different in some way that I couldn’t explain, even when I was small. My family situation, not having a dad in the household, the unspoken tension regarding my dad, my being an only child, the constant, overpowering yankee baptist religious atmosphere in the household, my constant need to create art, my constant chattering curious always asking questions thing that really irritated my elementary school teachers, getting bullied all the time and not just by the other kids for reasons I could not back then understand. When you live in these situations they always seem normal to you because it’s all you know. But I could see how the other kids in my neighborhood and at school lived and I knew my life wasn’t like that.

2) The First Gay Character You Saw On TV…

I do not remember the first gay character I saw on TV. For most of my childhood and adolescence in the 50s/60s/70s you just didn’t see those. You saw comic sissies, sexual predators and dangerous psychopaths but those were seldom openly identified as gay back then, probably because of TV censorship. So I read, the first openly gay character on TV was a toss off foil for Archie Bunker in 1971. I must have missed that episode because I don’t remember it. Post 1972 I was out to myself (see A Coming Out Story) and began actively looking for the gay characters, but you still mostly had to read them between the lines, and just as often as not when you found any they were still largely based on the most ignorant and prejudicial stereotypes. It wasn’t until VIto Russo wrote The Celluloid Closet in 1981 that I began to understand why.

3) The First Time You Told Someone…

I don’t remember this exact moment either. I remember a bunch of times I had to dig in my heels about it. I think the first time I voluntarily said so was to crush #2, but not even sure about that. It might have been one or more classmates in the little group I fell into after high school. I never told either mom or dad. Pretty sure my brother knew from scanning my website and reading my blog.

4) The First Pride You Followed Even From Distance…

First Pride was the block party in front of Deacon Maccubbin’s Earthworks store. I think Lambda Rising had already moved around the block. It was an amazing experience, more so than even walking into my first gay bar which I don’t remember now. I sat on the porch in front of Earthworks with a go-go dancer from one of the clubs who would periodically hop up onto one of the stone walls and dance for the crowd, and a cute guy from the suburbs who invited me back to his apartment. That was when learned something important about myself, and letting myself get picked up by cute guys I had no actual romantic interest in.

5) The First Time You Felt Like Yourself…

I have always felt like myself. To quote Stephen Fry, not a noun, but a verb. And it has always felt weird. I think even before I came out to myself I’d accepted that.