I think all religions represent the cultures from which they arose. There may or may not be a spiritual dimension to life, and various religions might reflect that spiritual dimension in some way, but I don’t thank religion is the same thing as the spiritual dimension.

I think it’s a mistake to equate a tradition and dogma and our conceptualizations with something that is mysterious and beyond our comprehension if it is real at all. And I think if we have any connection to a spiritual dimension, it would be a mistake to discount our own intuition and our basic desires. I think it’s more likely that our own gut feelings are more in tuned with transcendent reality--if there is such a reality--than our thoughts, words, rituals and laws.

If there is a god, I think that god is speaking to each and every one of us directly in some way, and it’s okay if we don’t all hear the same thing. Maybe our different opinions represent our limited capacity to understand. Maybe we each of us get a message tailor-made for our specific needs. Maybe we each hear a little bit of the truth, but not the whole truth and not the same truth. Maybe the message gets mixed up with our own confusion.

Toxic Messages and Messengers

The Christian Bible is massive. It was written by many people over a period of hundreds of years. I don't think there is any singular and correct way to interpret it or understand it or approach it. But I think it's good if more can be persuaded to reexamine their “Bible based” hostility toward LGBT people. It’s good for LGBT people in general, and for LGBT youth in particular whose families belong to Christianist churches. But I think the emphasis should be on the safety and well being of LGBT people and LGBT youth in particular, and not in reforming these Christianist churches just enough so that LGBT members will stay.

The message that LGBT people have heard at these Christianist churches is toxic. And the messengers are toxic, too. What the preachers and many of the parents have done to LGBT people in their midst is nothing short of vile. To drive their own children and neighbors into the shadows and to push some over the edge is a crime on par with murder in my view. And the perpetrators need to do more than merely reexamine their beliefs. I believe, in many instances, those delivering the toxic messages are full on psychopaths with an immense empathy deficit, despite the fact many claim to be holy representatives of their god. And I believe in many instances the LGBT people who have fallen under their sway should get the hell away from them as soon as possible and learn to think for themselves.

Private Trail

I would like my own private wooded loop trail about a half mile long, and I would like a series of life-sized bronze statues of two young men placed along the trail. The first one would show them holding hands as they walk along. The second one shows them turning slightly toward one another and giving each other a sweet kiss. The third, a more passionate kiss. Fourth, one boy is on his knees in front of the other. Fifth, we catch them in flagrante. Sixth, they cuddle. I’ll bet I’d walk around that loop ten times a day. LOL

I would tell my 12-year-old self...

I would tell my 12-year-old self that those who put you down and make you feel unworthy are wrong. I would tell him that he is smart and funny and kind and capable of many things. I would tell him that he has to make a special effort to take care of himself because his parents are too messed up to look after him the way he should be looked after. I would tell him to make good friends, nice friends. I would tell him to eat better and to get some sort of exercise even though he doesn't like competitive sports, which is perfectly okay. Go for a jog on that country road behind your house. I would tell him to do well in school because that will be his ticket out of the environment he's in now. And I would tell him that when it's possible, he should go someplace that's more hospitable toward boys like him, and he should look for love. I would tell him to dream of romance and affection and tenderness and that he doesn't have to settle for furtive physical encounters with strangers. I would tell him he can have it all. A good job, a nice place to live, friends, special friends, boyfriends. I would tell him to not let those around him try to limit him or hold him back.

McDonald's

In the summer of 1983, I went to work for McDonald’s. By the end of summer, management considered letting me go. They said I wasn’t working well with the team and that I seemed uncomfortable. Basically I was scared and terribly shy. They told me that I had a week to come out of my shell or they’d give me the boot. The truth is, I didn’t really like being there, but I didn’t want to face the humiliation of telling people I got fired, so I tried harder. I found out later that only one of the assistant managers thought I had tried hard enough, but they gave into him and let me keep my job.

Coincidentally, he is the same man who used to come up to me in the kitchen and in a hushed tone give me instructions on how to please a girl using my fingers and tongue. I was a seventeen-year-old, pathologically shy gay schoolboy, and he was a man in his forties pressuring me to have sex with girls, and he regularly forced me to listen to graphic descriptions of hetero sex at work in front of other people. It was deeply humiliating to say the least.

I felt like an outsider, and I was afraid of getting hurt, so it was hard for me to blend in with the crew. I almost got canned as a result. How ironic that the person who saved my job was one of the people who made the environment so threatening to me.

　

Family

This is me in high school making a funny face at my sister. I never thought of myself as straight, and I never tried to be straight, but I was terrified of anyone finding out that I liked boys. I avoided the topic of sex. If the people around me started discussing sex, I would clam up. If asked about sex, I would give vague, noncommittal answers. I’m sure a lot of people suspected, and I was bullied and some were rude to me--I never really fit in--but I didn’t come out in high school. In the early ’80s, that was very rare, especially in West Virginia. When I was growing up, I never met a single person who was out. Not one.

Things changed when I went to WVU in Morgantown. I was away from home and WVU was a large school--over 20,000 students. When I was living in Oak Hill, I couldn’t go anywhere without running into someone who knew who I was. I felt observed in Oak Hill. But in Morgantown, I was anonymous. That gave me the freedom to start looking for a community within a couple of weeks after I arrived.

I went to a service at a local MCC. I attended GLM meetings, Gay and Lesbian Mountaineers. I joined a support group for gay students at the counseling center. I went to the gay bar. I met gay people and became friends with a number of them.

But even though Morgantown was the most liberal place in West Virginia, most were still not out in a general sense. We were out to each other at WVU, but we usually didn’t reveal ourselves to straight people. It was like belonging to a secret society. We referred to each other as “family.” Knowing someone was “family” meant you could be open. “Is she family?” “Don’t worry, he’s family.”

Keeping Secrets

I knew I was different from other boys at an early age. When I was a toddler, I wished I had been born a girl because people, especially my father, seemed to want me to be like other boys, but I wasn’t.

I stole a kiss from a boy in second grade. I came into the classroom from lunch, and he was sitting on the first row. We were the only two people in the room, and as I walked past, I bent down and kissed him on the forehead. I thought he was so cute and sweet, so I wanted to kiss him.

When I was eleven, all the boys around me started talking about sex, and that fired up my libido. I tried to imagine having sex with girls because that’s what the other boys talked about. In my fantasies, I was surrounded by a group of boys and one girl. After a while--a few weeks, a couple of months--I realized that I was really interested in the boys and the girl in my fantasies was just a token. She was there because I thought she had to be there. After that, the girl disappeared, and it was just me and the boys.

That’s when I knew I was gay. I can recall sitting out on our back porch and thinking it over. I wasn’t interested in girls in that way. I wanted to have sex with boys. Boys who want to have sex with other boys are gay. I was gay.

I accepted it immediately, and I relished my attraction to boys. I liked being attracted to boys. I liked that feeling. I liked the sexual fantasies. I liked looking at their bodies and imagining what they looked like naked. But I didn’t dare tell anyone.

By then I was already a fairly private, secretive person because my mother was seriously mentally ill and my father did his best to ignore me. My mother was unpredictable, so telling her anything, anything important, seemed scary. And my father would have a fit if I asked for help with anything more complicated than a hangnail. My father had already made it perfectly clear that he was hugely disappointed in me for not being the kind of boy he expected, and I imagined he would never even want to be in the same room with me if he knew I was gay.

So I kept my mouth shut, and I already knew how to keep my mouth shut. I realized I was gay when I was 11, and I didn’t tell another living soul until I went away to college at 18. Seven years is a long time to keep a secret like that, especially when you’re young. Seven years is an eternity when you’re young. All during that time, I was terrified of anyone finding out my secret. I was even afraid of falling asleep if my parents or my sister was in the room because I thought I might say something about a boy in my sleep. I was afraid of falling into a coma or getting a fever because I thought I might reveal who I really was. I was always on guard, so tense and stressed out.

Living like that for so long did something to me, and I don’t know how to fix it. I’m not sure it can be fixed. Most people instinctually want and need friends and family around them. But I’m kind of like a stray dog. I keep my distance. I shake and quiver with the desire to be touched and loved, but my fear of abuse is greater than my need to be loved.