Any Gay Seniors Here?
Just curious. I knew I was gay since I was in high school, but I didn’t come out until 1977, my freshman year at the University of Arizona. I was lucky to have the support of the GSO (Gay Students Organization) and the multitude of friends I made at “the [gay] table” in Louie’s Lower Level on the basement level of the Student Union while threw open that closet door and made my entrance to gay life.
For the most part, I haven’t really suffered by coming out. My family was accepting (my dad admitted to me that summer that he too, was gay), although my mom (who was an interior designer) had some initial difficulty, not being able to reconcile my “butch” demeanor with the more effeminate gays she’d worked with all her life, but after she met my friends she finally came around completely. “I like your friends. I used to worry when you’d go out, but now I know who you’re hanging with and will be safe.”
I also haven’t (to the best of my knowledge anyway) suffered professionally by being out-and-proud. I’ve always felt that my employers and colleagues treated me fairly and with respect.
I moved from Tucson to San Francisco in 1986, right in the middle of the AIDS crisis. Somehow I managed to survive “the horrible 90s,” attending what seemed like weekly funerals, and coming out of it all HIV negative and without an arrest record.
Never forget that those of us who are here today are survivors. With today’s state of the world, and watching my the friends who survived along with me begin to pass from all the usual old age ailments, I sometimes wonder if those who we lost thirty years ago had the right idea by getting out early. But I wouldn’t trade the last 20 years since I returned to Arizona for anything; I wouldn’t have met my husband of the last 15 years otherwise!
Anyway, just throwing this out there and would love to hear your stories.
This has been somewhat edited for grammar and clarity from the original post.)
Surprisingly, the responses have been completely and overwhelmingly positive, with a lot of folks thanking me for sharing. In the cesspool that Reddit can often be, I’ve found that sub surprisingly free of the negativity and unflinching one-upmanship so common throughout many other subs. It is truly refreshing.
7 comments
Thank you for your post. I have thought about similar things over the years. I came out in the 80’s when I was 14 years old in a very small, Wisconsin town. Not by choice, I had two separate events happen around the same time. I mistakenly confided in my most trusted friend that I was gay. She was initially very supportive but then was angry with me because I had a problem with her telling people. Sigh… The other instance was when my mother asked me directly if I was gay after finding some “reading material” I kept hidden in my room. It was rough for us both. She said it was a phase and I was too young to know for sure. People like that are getting sick, dying, and going to hell for eternity. “You don’t want that, do you?” She also made it very clear that we shouldn’t tell another soul, and the gay lifestyle would not be tolerated in any way. Needless to say, it was horrible being the gay boy in a small farming town. Terrified of getting beat up, dying and burning in hell, or worse, upsetting my mother any more than I already had. It was a very different time! My mother was, and still is, an amazing mother. She was only trying to protect me the best way she knew how back then. She was scared for me, and knew my life would be very hard. Still, she came around early on and has been very supportive. In fact, she is one of the biggest supporters of the LGBTQ+ community I know! She still feels bad about her initial reactions, and I completely forgive her.
I was convinced I wouldn’t live to see the age of 30 years old. I survived High School barely, thanks in great part to meeting two other gay teens my age during my senior year, who are still my best friends today. One lived in a different small town, not too far away. The other was the new student at my High School who just moved there from NY (poor guy). Still, I lived a pretty destructive life with many anonymous encounters, drugs, alcohol, and severe depression. I had no direction, no goals. My depression got worse, I was a mess. In 1992, I met my current husband of almost 34 years (married 11 years) and also found my passion in social work and nursing, working mostly in STI/HIV care and community health. I cannot believe I survived this long! After all the drugs and drinking (sober now, 10 years and 7 months), the very dangerous situations I put myself in to get those substances and to find any connection through sex, I somehow managed to avoid killing myself or getting killed. I am not sure how, since I know I came very close many times. I’ve lost many friends and acquaintances during the AIDS crisis, I know folks that have been murdered for just existing, and so many more that have battled addiction (some lost that battle). When I think of those people, I am grateful (and feel guilty) to be alive. I never thought of myself as a survivor though. Just a regular Gen X guy! Hahaha!
Thank you for sharing your story. Our stories are so different but I think it’s the differences that both make us individuals and bring us together.
Read your post on Reddit and the replies.
Me. 75, came out in high school in a very small rural community. My high school bf was bi, and had a HUGE piece of equipment. Nickname….WANG!
Met my husband senior year of university. Moved with him to the East Coast (I was Midwest…met on spring break in FL). Lived and loved together for 43 years. Death came too soon.
Moved to FL 2 years later and met my current partner through mutual friends. It’s a different type of love now. Still happy and still active sexually.
I would like to think this will be the one until I depart.
As Edith Piaf sang….”No Regrets.”
I sometimes envy those of you who came out as teens. I kind of came out to my parents at 16 but that was not a positive experience. Religion and therapy and all that. But thank you for sharing your story.
Gay senior here. I knew I was gay by the time I was 14. But I was a very confused and conflicted teenager and remained so into my twenties and early thirties. Coming out at 36 after a difficult labor and therapy. I’ve struggled with depression on and off for most of my life. But then I was OUT and reveling in my gay adolescence. Got involved in every LGBTQ organization and got a job with the State Health Department AIDS program. Met my husband in 1988. Wrote my memoir “Did You Ever See A Horse Go By?” in 2014. [https://didyoueverseeahorsegoby.blogspot.com] My early life was, at times, a bumpy, sometimes scary ride but I finally an arrived at the destination where I was meant to be. Hubs and I landed in the New Mexico desert 10 years ago and he was fortunate to get a job as a park ranger with BLM. I still have bouts of depression and sometimes the desert just gets me down. Need an ocean fix once a year. Getting old kind of snuck up on me and sometimes contemplating the future is unnerving. The present time line sucks at the hands of an idiot and criminal who is destroying everything we hold dear. Amen.
Frank thats wonderful how it turned out for you.I was around 14 when I knew I was different we swam naked in high school I went to an inner city school,so this was a big taboo in 1975.I thought it was just a curiously and a phase but the more I tried to suppress it the stronger the desires became. I had to force myself to be interested in girls,I am married to one for over 37 years .I never had the courage like you guys to come out.I was seduced by an older man whose grass I cut when I was 16.I think my mother had suspicions about him. But it went on for 3 years with him until he moved away.I have struggled with this for many years with depression,suicidal thoughts .Being told by society it was a mental illness and not normal and perverted .Well it took me into my late 50s to realize this was my normal.My wife knows that I like men,she doesn’t know to the extent that I do but she knows.She told me one time as long as you come home to me.The sex with a man is so much more relaxing and satisfying for me with a man than a woman
Thanks for sharing that, Jeff!