ESCAPE FROM STRAIGHT

I sit here in my new city apartment, looking out into a whole new world.  Not new in that it has been undiscovered, but new because I have never been able to enjoy the adventure.  Let me give you a little background.  I was born to working class white parents in rural Indiana in 1970.  I grew up knowing love and compassion.  My parents had their rough spots, but they have remained married through it all.  Maybe this is where my life’s “lie” began.  I like to say “the lie” was cultivated and nurtured early on in my life.  I always liked boys, and played with the girls.  But growing up in rural America in those days did not make it easy to be homosexual.  I dated girls and had a great “straight life”.  Or so everyone thought.  That brings us to a more current time.

I married my best friend in the spring of 1996 and life seemed perfect.  We both knew that things were not “right” between us, but we were living the American dream:  married to your best friend, living in the perfect house, in the perfect neighborhood, preparing to raise the perfect family.  We tried for nearly 5 years to have children, before turning to fertility specialists and bringing the most precious baby boys into the world in the fall of 2000.  From there the perfect family moved through the daily grind.  Then it was time for REALITY to set in.

My wife and I had both known for years that there was something “missing” in our relationship.  That was “sexual desire”.  I had no real desire to have sex, with her.  She was a beautiful woman, my best friend, and I could not seem to perform.  I chalked it up to the years of “trying” when we were unable to have children.  During that time sex had become more of a job, than a pleasurable experience between husband and wife.  That is when all the feelings from my youth started coming back.

I began to realize that the male body turned me on.  I was attracted sexually to men and no woman could change that.  After eight years of “faking” it, my wife and I decided it was time to end the marriage.  Not because we did not love each other, but because we LOVED one another so much, but could not satisfy one another’s deepest sexual desires.  No amount of faking was going to make the marriage last.  No amount of counseling was going to help free the desires within, and keep us together.

When we separated she told me, “Phil, you are gay, you don’t want me, you want a man to make you happy”.  I had to agree, and after a year of being separated the divorce was final, and the real change (or return to self, as I call it) began.  The truth was I did not “want” a man.  I “NEEDED” a man to make me happy, to fulfill me completely. 

The “coming out” period was truly an exceptionally exciting experience for me.  I have some many supportive friends and family.  I never felt alone, or condemned.  I was amazed at how everyone seemed to understand and accept what I was telling them, that I am a gay man, and I have ALWAYS been a gay man.  I am a homosexual, and I am proud of that fact.  I had been hiding in a straight world my whole life, and finally found my escape from straight.

As previously stated, I have many supportive and accepting friends.  Some of them questioned if I was sure.  Not if I was sure I am gay, but if I was sure I wanted to “come out”.  I was given several books, and pieces of literature about the homosexual lifestyle. I was given material that included “formerly” gay men telling their stories of “becoming straight”.  Other material contained “scientific” diagnosis and tried to explain what “caused” people to become gay.  Well.  I don’t buy into any of that garbage. 

You see, I grew up in a society where homosexuality is not accepted.  People do not have trouble accepting heterosexuality.  Heterosexuality is the way things are “supposed” to be.  So I find it hard to believe that these people had to “hide” in the gay world.  I do not believe that it was so difficult for them to be straight, that they felt they “had to be gay”.  That concept does not sit well with me, because I “hid” in the straight world for thirty-nine years of my life because homosexuality was not acceptable.  I can not understand how someone would have to hide in the gay world to hide their heterosexuality, unless it was to benefit and profit from publishing a book that addressed that aspect of life.  Understanding homosexuality, or heterosexuality for that matter, is not as complex as the “professionals” would like us all to believe.  It is quite simple.  You either are, or you are not.  It is not a matter of when you become one or the other, it is a matter of when you acknowledge you are one or the other.  I have always known I was gay, from as early as when I was ten, but I did not choose to acknowledge the fact until I was forced to face reality.  Facing the reality that I am a homosexual was the best thing to happen to me, other than the birth of my children. 

“Coming out” was such a liberating experience.  I was finally free from the shackles of living in the heterosexual world.  I was now free to be me, to be the me who loves the male anatomy, and who loves the thought of passion and sexual desire between two men.  In the midst of the freedom, I have come to realize many things.  I came to realize that being me is the best thing I can do for myself and for my life.  I started writing this to be a book detailing an emergence from the straight culture that was my life into the gay world which is my life.  I have found that I am writing this as more a compilation of feelings and expressions of my life, about my life, and about those in my life who make every day worth living.  The people in my life are all important to me, and it is important to me that they be recognized for their contributions to my world.  These contributions are what make me who I am and allow me to continue to grow as the person I am finally happy to be, ME.

So the following are “journal” entries that chronicle the emergence of my new life from the shell of my “old” life.