{"id":12541,"date":"2023-11-02T10:02:38","date_gmt":"2023-11-02T15:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/?p=12541"},"modified":"2023-11-02T10:06:55","modified_gmt":"2023-11-02T15:06:55","slug":"who-are-you-going-to-believe-me-or-your-beating-heart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/12541","title":{"rendered":"Who Are You Going To Believe&#8230;Me, Or Your Beating Heart?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/11\/moment_of_truth.jpg\" alt=\"Moment of Truth\" \/><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: left;\" align=\"center\">What they told me, versus what I knew in that moment&#8230;<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">They told me that homosexual men think they&#8217;re really women. I didn&#8217;t think that.<br \/>\n(<a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/939\">I&#8217;ve met transgendered people<\/a>. Yes, it&#8217;s a real thing. But it&#8217;s different from being homosexual. I have always felt completely comfortable in my own body.)<\/li>\n<li style=\"text-align: left;\">They told me that having sex with one is what makes you one. I was a virgin.\n<\/li>\n<li>They told me that being molested makes you one. I was not molested.\n<\/li>\n<li>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&#8217;re taught to see ourselves as human garbage, and so we flush our sex lives into the sewer)\n<\/li>\n<li>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.\n<\/li>\n<li>They told me that homosexuals preyed on teenage boys. Well, I <em>was<\/em> 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.\n<\/li>\n<li>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&#8217;t have traded it for anything. All the love songs I&#8217;d ever heard on the radio suddenly began to make sense and I realized I&#8217;d never really understood them.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p align=\"center\">Today, I feel like pleasing you<br \/>\nMore than before<br \/>\nToday, I know what I wanna do<br \/>\nBut I don&#8217;t know what for<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">To be living for you<br \/>\nIs all I want to do<br \/>\nTo be loving you<br \/>\nIt&#8217;ll all be there<br \/>\nWhen my dreams come true<\/p>\n<p>They told me a lot of things. I believed them once. Then I fell in love.<\/p>\n<p>I realize many of us have had a painful struggle with this. I hear you. I stand with you. Mine wasn&#8217;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. <a href=\"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/acos\/acos-main.htm\">This one is mine<\/a>. It is also a way of healing the kid within.<\/p>\n<p>I can look back and see there was a lot of luck in how it finally hit me. I&#8217;d already walked a good distance away from the religious fundamentalism I was raised in. I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p align = \"center\">Today, you&#8217;ll make me say<br \/>\nThat I somehow have changed<br \/>\nToday, you look into my eyes<br \/>\nI&#8217;m just not the same&#8230;<\/p>\n<p>When all is said and done, it was love that saved me.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What they told me, versus what I knew in that moment&#8230; They told me that homosexual men think they&#8217;re really women. I didn&#8217;t think that. (I&#8217;ve met transgendered people. Yes, it&#8217;s a real thing. But it&#8217;s different from being homosexual. I have always felt completely comfortable in my own body.) They told me that having [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,65],"tags":[223,190,43],"class_list":["post-12541","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-thumping-my-pulpit","tag-gay-love-and-romance","tag-the-gay-kid-chronicles","tag-the-gay-scarecrow"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12541","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brucegarrett.com\/brucelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}