My Coming-Out Story, Part Four

Note: If you have not already done so, be sure to read Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of my coming-out story so this part will make sense a bit more.

My Coming-Out Story, Part Four: Personal Exposure

When I returned to the States from my abbreviated time in Europe (see earlier posts for context), I bounced around aimlessly for a bit before finally landing in northwestern Illinois in May 2003. It was that month when I would finally begin to make choices that would help me to move in a new direction away from the cycle of frustration I had been in for so many years. I would indeed begin a new life. But, as with any new life, there is inevitably some birthing pain.

When I moved into my new Midwestern apartment, I did two things almost immediately. First, I found a new church to attend. Call it force of habit or whatever you will, but I had attended church my entire life, and the thought still had not occurred to me that not attending church could ever be an option. Instead of being an active participant in a pastoral role, however, I took much more of a spectator's position in the new church, not really wanting to attract any more attention to myself. And second, I decided I really needed to figure out this whole "gay thing" through some method other than by going to church people for advice or by just ignoring it and hoping it would go away.

The problem was, I had no idea how to meet gay people. I was two months away from my 28th birthday, and I was still one of the most sheltered people you would ever meet. I had never knowingly associated with another gay person. I had never entered a bar of any kind (much less a gay one) except once in Wisconsin to call for assistance when my car broke down in a blizzard. I had never danced. I had never tasted alcohol, smoked a cigarette, or done drugs. And yes, I was a virgin (to all sex, straight or gay-- I never even had a romantic kiss!).

Fortunately, technology was advancing quite nicely by this point, and I remembered something I had observed when checking my e-mail on Yahoo. I saw this fascinating site called Yahoo Personals, in which you could say whether you were a "Man seeking a Woman" or a "Woman seeking a Man." But, amazingly enough, you could actually change the option to be "Man seeking a Man." Simultaneously terrified and aroused, I went to the site and, for the first time ever, saw personal ads for gay men.

I looked at the ads and pictures for a week or so, and finally, I worked up the courage to reply to one. Looking back, I am amazed at my good fortune in that first tentative contact. Any of us who have been on an online dating site know that, when you are contacted by someone with no picture posted (which was the case with me, as I was terrified someone I knew would find out I was on a gay site), more often than not, the person is ignored. But the guy that I e-mailed actually responded. He was a handsome college student, just a couple years younger than me, and he was at a university about 45 minutes from where I was living. And, to show you how blessed I was to meet this particular guy, a quick fast-forward to today, November 2006, finds that that same guy is one of my dearest friends and lives just a few doors down the street from me here in Chicago, nearly two hours from where I was living when I first e-mailed him!

When my friend responded to my e-mail greeting, I explained to him a bit of my situation, that I was completely new to all of this and absolutely terrified (I think I worded it as "kinda nervous"). He kindly corresponded back and forth with me several times, but it being May, he was just finishing school and was, in fact, graduating. So, in early June, he moved two hours away to Chicago, before we ever had the chance to meet in person. But, by that point, we decided we did want to meet, and so one day we arraned to have dessert in one of the Chicago suburbs about half the distance between us. I had a great time and was amazed to find a normal, attractive, masculine gay guy who I got along well with! I was thinking that he must be the only one of his kind, and I just got lucky!

That first meeting was followed up only a couple weeks later by the night that would change everything for me. June 27, 2003. Friday night. Pride weekend in Chicago. Exactly one month before my 28th birthday. My new friend invited me to drive into the city and stay at his place. He would then give me a tour of gay Chicago. I had to leave Saturday afternoon for a business trip to Dallas, but I agreed to hang out with him on Friday night and see what it was all about.

Now, try to picture this in your mind. As we left his apartment to head out to the gay clubs of Chicago, I was braced for the most extreme situations I could imagine. Because my exposure to gay people was essentially what I saw on the cover of Focus on the Family magazines, I naturally assumed that my friend and I would be the only two gay guys there who were not dressed in women's clothing, and I was certain that these "gay clubs" would be full of men having sex together. I had never been in any bar or club, so I didn't even have straight clubs to use as a reference point in my mind.

So, when we walked into Spin and Roscoe's and I saw these places full of handsome guys, some of whom even smiled at me, I was completely overwhelmed. I experienced a range of emotions that night that I have felt very seldom to that intensity. It was that same night that I tasted alcohol for the first time, that I was knowingly around more than one gay guy at a time, that I danced for the first time, and that I stayed the night at another gay guy's house for the first time.

It was at some point when I was with my friend on the dance floor at Roscoe's, awkwardly attempting to dance but having no idea how, that I experienced something that probably all of us who have come out have felt at some point. Bonnie Tyler was singing "Total Eclipse of the Heart", a song I had never heard before but knew I instantly loved. And it hit me. For the first time in my life, I was real. This was me. I wasn't suppressing what I knew I felt. I wasn't trying to be what everyone else expected of me just to keep them happy. I was just being who I was. And it was the most freeing, most satisfying, most relieving feeling I had ever had. For a moment, I just closed my eyes, and soaked in the sound and atmosphere, and I knew nothing would ever be the same for me. To this day, when I hear "Total Eclipse of the Heart", I feel a little bit better and smile a bit more.

That weekend began a summer of exploring this new world that had opened up to me. With perhaps only one or two exceptions, I would drive two hours to Chicago every Friday night and go out with my friend, then drive home Saturday evening. I could not have asked for a kinder, more easy-going, more patient friend than he. We got along famously, and he would let me go out and explore on my own, always keeping his door open to me anytime I needed a place to go.

Oh, and I won't kiss and tell and say with whom or when or where, but by the end of the summer, I wasn't a virgin anymore. And I found out I am a big fan of kissing.

Summer began to wind down, and near the end of August, I concluded that I needed to be honest about who I was with the people in my life. The very first person that I came out to was my roommate, a very hot straight guy. If all my other conversations went as well as that, I would have been the luckiest guy ever. My roommate could not have been more supportive. I think he knew the difficult times that were going to be on my path soon, because he went out of his way to make me comfortable and to let me know I could be real around him. He knew that I thought he was hot, and I think he loved the attention. The first time I met his girlfriend was when I arrived home to find the two of them making out on the couch in the living room. My roommate introduced me to his girlfriend and then told her, "Eukolos wishes it was he who was on the couch making out with me!" He would walk around the house after a shower wearing only his towel and say, "Eukolos, I bet you wish this towel would fall off, don't you?"

The next situation, however, did not go as well. I knew that, if I was going to be real and stop faking, I would have to change churches, because the church I was attending took a very clear stance against homosexuality. However, I naively hoped that I could leave quietly, explaining to the pastor that I appreciated his kindness to me, but that I needed to move on. Well, after writing a very kind, non-judgmental letter to the pastor, he completely freaked out, and as I mentioned in part 3 of this story, he told me he was going to pray that God would kill me, then he kicked me out of the church.

That was the breaking point for me. In a short time, I had seen unconditional acceptance and kindness from my gay friend in Chicago (and a growing number of other gay guys I was meeting there), but then I had seen flat-out mean-spirited and angry responses from church people. I figured that, since every church experience when I was real about my sexuality had been so bad, I no longer wanted anything to do with church. So in September 2003, for the first time in my 28 years of life, I stopped attending church. And I decided to move to Chicago.

By the end of August, I knew the inevitable could not be postponed much longer. I needed to tell my family. And it happened that our entire family would be gathering in Los Angeles in mid-September for my cousin's wedding. So, since it was only a couple weeks out and my parents and brother and I were going to stay a few days after the wedding, I thought that would be an ideal opportunity to explain things to them.

Well, once again I am a bit long-winded. If I have not built up enough anticipation for this next part of the story yet, I don't know what will. But to do this justice, I will have to extend the story a bit further into another post, which I will attempt to write quickly.

However, if your patience will indulge me a bit further today, let me conclude this post by sharing something that has been foundational in my life ever since 2003.

On September 10, 2004, I got my first tattoo. For many years I had been fascinated with tattoos, and in recent years that fascination had grown into an interest in getting one myself. However, after having observed many tattoos, I determined that, were I ever to get one, it would have to be very meaningful and significant to me, something that I won’t mind having on my body when I’m in my 70's. As cool as I might think it would be to have the Tazmanian Devil on my forearm in my mid-20's, I knew he wasn’t going to make the cut.

As I explained in this post, major life experiences culminated in September 2003, resulting in my moving to Chicago, Illinois, and beginning a new chapter in my life. During the following year, a number of lessons started to gel in my head that would become guiding principles for me in the days to come. At their core, these lessons were about kindness. Beginning early in 2002 and continuing through the fall of 2003, as I grew in my determination to resolve the issues concerning my sexuality and my faith, I saw extremes both of kindness and unkindness. Sadly, much of the unkindness came from those with whom I often aligned in my faith, but gladly, I saw amazing kindness from those with whom I found common ground in my sexuality. While my pastor (whom I had previously considered to be a close friend) called around to “out” me to people he did not even know and told me he would pray for God to kill me, some of my new gay friends surrounded me with kindness and showed me unconditional acceptance at a time when I desperately needed friends. In particular, two or three of my friends in Chicago, all of whom are Asian incidentally (perhaps signs of an incipient rice queen tendency?), helped me make it through that very difficult time in my life.

So, in September of 2004, I decided to get a tattoo to represent and remind me of the lessons I had been learning and the principles to which I would hopefully adhere as I continued on my journey.



I wanted every aspect of the tattoo “experience” to be significant. First, the timing of getting the tattoo was almost exactly one year to the day from when I had come out to my immediate family. I selected a tattoo that included Chinese characters as a tribute to my Asian friends who had been such an amazing help to me. The characters are the word “kindness” which, translated literally (assuming I have been told correctly), is “good at heart.” In 2004, this became the goal to which I determined to be most dedicated--to be a kind person, someone who indeed strove to be good at heart. The tattoo was both a reminder to me of the hurt that can be caused by unkindness and of the help and hope that can be infused by a kind word or action.

In addition to the characters, I included a small rabbit. This was partially a continued tribute to my Asian friends, as I was born in the Chinese year of the rabbit. But also, the rabbit is a symbol of kindness in some Asian cultures, so it seemed to fit with the theme of the tattoo. The location of the tattoo is over my heart, to illustrate to others (and to remind myself) that kindness is something that I endeavor to keep close to my heart.

More than two years later now, I can say that the tattoo has accomplished a good purpose in my own life. Because of its location, I see it every day as I get dressed, and although it may not always be a conscious thought, it is at least a subconscious reminder to me that I should strive to be a kind person. And, although I know I fail more often than I care to admit, I have been encouraged to see that, many times, my natural reaction to a difficult situation (one in which many would tell me to react in anger or to write someone off), is an almost-instinctive urge to show kindness. I say this fully aware that I have far to go before I could consider myself to be a wholly-kind person. But I hope that someday, as I continue this journey, people will be able to look back at my life and see acts of kindness scattered along the way.

Well, stay tuned shortly for what will hopefully be the last part in this story that is beginning to make Tolstoy jealous for length.

Today's Holiday:

• Travelers with Disabilities Week (Nov 26 - Dec 3)
  

National Survivors of Suicide Day

As I have mentioned previously, on October 13, 2005, I was inducted into a rather exclusive club, one which I had no knowledge of before and which I had no desire to enter; yet membership was forced upon me. When I found my boyfriend dead by his own hand in our bedroom, I became a "suicide survivor."

This term has caused confusion at times, some people thinking a suicide survivor would be someone who made an unsuccessful attempt on his own life. But it actually refers to those who are left behind, the loved ones, relatives, friends who have to try to make sense of a supremely-senseless act.

Nearly a decade ago, thanks largely to the efforts of US Senator Harry Reid (D-Nevada), who lost his father to suicide, the Saturday before Thanksgiving each year has been designated by US Senate resolution as National Survivors of Suicide Day in the USA. It has become a powerful day of information, hope, and healing for people who have been thrust into an unimaginably-painful situation, one in which you find yourself grieving for the murderer of your loved one (I put it in such stark terms hopefully to illustrate the extremity of emotions a survivor must deal with, ranging from anger to grief to guilt to confusion).

I try to keep things from getting too heavy on this blog most of the time, but this is one area for which I am willing to dedicate time and space to discuss on occasion. For most of you, this has never struck close to home. But for many, it may touch someone you know, and I would encourage you to keep both this blog and other online resources in your mind, as you may be able to offer help and hope beyond what you can know to a future inductee into the "Suicide Survivors Club."

For further reading on this topic, see these previous Auto-Gratification posts.

Presidential Trivia Answers

On Sunday, I presented at random quiz on trivia about US Presidents. In case you missed that post, here is the quiz reprinted:

Easy:
1. Who is the shortest US president?
2. Which presidential child has a candy bar named after him/her?
3. Who is the only US president also to serve on the US Supreme Court?
4. Which US president vomited on the lap of the Japanese prime minister during a state dinner?
5. Who is the last US president to have facial hair while in office?

Tougher:
6. Who are the only 2 US presidents to hold all of the five following offices: state governor, US congressman, US senator, Vice-President, and President?
7. Which 3 US presidents won Nobel Peace Prizes?
8. Who is the only US president whose wife was not born in the United States?
9. Which is the longest-married presidential couple?
10. Who is the only person buried directly between two US presidents?

Painfully Difficult:
11. What common English word very likely originated with President Martin Van Buren?
12. Who are the only two police officers to become president?
13. What is the only book ever written by one ex-president about another one?
14. Which president is buried at the top of a staircase in which the number of stairs is equal to the number of that president in a chronological listing of presidents? (i.e. - if it were George W. Bush, which it obviously is not, it would be a staircase with 43 stairs since he is the 43rd president.)
15. Who is the only US president to be elected on his birthday?

Scroll down for answers.



Answers:

1. James Madison, at 5 feet, 4 inches tall.
2. Ruth Cleveland, daughter of President Grover Cleveland. She was the first presidential child to be born in the White House, and she caused quite a sensation in Washington. And, in her honor, a new candy bar of the time was designated the "Baby Ruth" candy bar.
3. Former President William Howard Taft was appointed to be and served as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
4. George H.W. Bush.
5. Willia Howard Taft (had a moustache).

6. John Tyler and Andrew Johnson
7. Theodore Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson, and Jimmy Carter.
8. John Quincy Adams. His wife Louisa was born in England.
9. George H.W. and Barbara Bush (January 6, 2007, will be their 62nd wedding anniversary).
10. Abigail Adams. She is buried in the crypt beneath the United First Parish Church of Quincy, Massachusetts between President John Adams (her husband) and President John Quincy Adams (her son).

11. "Okay". Van Buren was from Kinderhook, New York, and he obtained the nickname "Old Kinderhook." During his campaign for presidnet, "Old Kinderhook Clubs" were established and known as "O.K. Clubs." As time progressed, the abbreviation came to mean "all right" and eventually nearly everyone forgot the word's origin.
12. Theodore Roosevelt and Grover Cleveland
13. Herbert Hoover's book The Ordeal of Woodrow Wilson.
14. Theodore Roosevelt (buried in Young's Memorial Cemetery in Oyster Bay, New York, at the top of a 26-step staircase).
15. Warren Harding, on his 55th birthday, November 2, 1920.

Today's Holidays:

• Loosen Up, Lighten Up Day
• National American Teddy Bear Day
• National Young Readers Day
  

Gerald Ford Becomes Longest-Living US President

For 175 years, John Adams, the second US President, held the distinction of being the longest-living US President (he lived 90 years, 247 days). Then, just five years ago, Ronald Reagan broke the long-standing record and, by the time of his death in 2004, had established a new benchmark of 93 years, 120 days.

However, Gerald Ford, the only US president not elected as president or vice-president, was born just two years after Reagan, and today, November 12, 2006, he passed Reagan's record, now having lived for 93 years, 121 days (and counting). Ford is one of the most athletic presidents ever to serve, having been a football star at the University of Michigan while in office. No doubt his good habits and active lifestyle have contributed to his longevity. The four other living US Presidents have a long way to go to reach Ford's record, as Presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter are both 82 years old, and Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are both 60 years old.

Gerald Ford is also the only surviving member of the Warren Commission, the 7-member panel that investigated the assassination of US President John F. Kennedy.

I'm a huge fan of US Presidential history, so just for the heck of it, here's a little presidential trivia quiz for you. I will post the answers on Tuesday.

Easy:
1. Who is the shortest US president?
2. Which presidential child has a candy bar named after him/her?
3. Who is the only US president also to serve on the US Supreme Court?
4. Which US president vomited on the lap of the Japanese prime minister during a state dinner?
5. Who is the last US president to have facial hair while in office?

Tougher:
6. Who are the only 2 US presidents to hold all of the five following offices: state governor, US congressman, US senator, Vice-President, and President?
7. Which 3 US presidents won Nobel Peace Prizes?
8. Who is the only US president whose wife was not born in the United States?
9. Which is the longest-married presidential couple?
10. Who is the only person buried directly between two US presidents?

Painfully Difficult:
11. What common English word very likely originated with President Martin Van Buren?
12. Who are the only two police officers to become president?
13. What is the only book ever written by one ex-president about another one?
14. Which president is buried at the top of a staircase in which the number of stairs is equal to the number of that president in a chronological listing of presidents? (i.e. - if it were George W. Bush, which it obviously is not, it would be a staircase with 43 stairs since he is the 43rd president.)
15. Who is the only US president to be elected on his birthday?


Today's Holiday:

• I Need a Patch For That Day
  

My Coming-Out Story, Part Three

Note: If you have not already done so, be sure to read Part 1 and Part 2 of my coming-out story so this part will make sense a bit more.

My Coming-Out Story, Part Three: The 28-Year-Old Virgin

The fall of 1993 found me at a compound college campus in northern Wisconsin, about 30 minutes from Iron Mountain, Michigan (which had the closest McDonald's). I make the "compound" reference in good humor, because it was what many thought of the college I attended. What else would explain this large campus in the north woods in a town of about 1,000 people? You may wonder why I ended up at this school, so I shall give a bit of background.

My parents both attended Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina. For those who may not be familiar with that school, it is the place where George W. Bush spoke during the 2000 election campaign which caused great controversy because of their policy prohibiting interracial dating (and what about someone who is from a multi-ethnic heritage? they had to state their preference for which ethnicity they wished to date upon arrival and stick with it through their schooling). It is also a campus that does not allow gay people to enter (with the exception of visiting their sacred art gallery, which is admittedly quite impressive).

When it came time for me to choose a college, my parents wanted me to attend BJU. I knew that there was no way I would attend that school, so I begged them for another option (since they were threatening to give me no support whatsoever if I went somewhere they did not approve). After much cajoling, I convinced them to allow me to attend the Baptist Bible College in northern Wisconsin. The president of the college and much of the faculty were Bob Jones graduates, but they seemed to have left some of the goofier extremes behind (i.e. - no interracial dating prohibition). Still, it was very very conservative and definitely not a place where a gay person would feel welcome.

This was not a problem for me, I thought. Because, as an idealistic college freshman, I was convinced that I would now be able to put these gay feelings behind me and live as the heterosexual I was supposed to be. With these grand intentions, I began to unpack my bags in my new room in the all-male dormitory with community showers.

Yes, it took about 2 minutes for me to realize this gay monster had followed me to college. I mean, you can say a lot about the Baptists, but they have some hot guys! Very quickly, I fell into the cycle of jerking off to thoughts of my dorm-mates and then feeling extremely guilty about it. By the time I reached my sophomore year, I was an emotional mess. Here I was with these intense emotions but terrified to tell anyone about them and convinced I was a horrible person for having them.

It was during my sophomore year that I began a journey that was incredibly difficult but, considering my background and years of mixed-up thinking, a very necessary journey. I will summarize this briefly, lest I make this far too long. On four separate occasions during my second through fourth years of college, I worked up the courage to ask someone for help with my "problem." Remember I was still thinking that I had done something wrong to have this attraction to other guys. I went to the Student Body Vice-President, my dormitory hall leader, the Dean of Men, and the Vice-President for Student Affairs, asking each of them for help. In each case, I was disappointed. The first one prayed a prayer for me and never spoke of it again. The second freaked out and told my boss, causing me to lose a campus job I loved. The third was kind but didn't really want to deal with it, so he quickly pronounced me "cured" and moved on. The last became so uncomfortable around me that he never spoke to me again my entire time at the school.

Now, perhaps here is where you will start to get irritated with me, and perhaps I should have caught on, but I graduated from college still trying to figure out what was wrong with me. In desperation, I decided to go to graduate school, and I earned a masters degree in theology. This was followed by my being ordained as a Baptist preacher and working as a missionary in Africa and Europe for nearly 3 years. I kept thinking that, if I did all the good things I could do, this one bad thing would eventually go away.

So I found myself working as a pastor in Europe, nine years after graduating from high school, never having touched a guy the entire time, but having these overwhelming urges and thoughts constantly. Finally, I hit bottom, or so I thought. I felt that, if I did not get this thing figured out, I could not go on any further. So, going to the head pastor of our church, I told him of my dark secret, hoping that perhaps he would show kindness where others had not. Instead, I was reported to the missionary agency through which I was working, fired that day, and told I would receive nothing further from them. So I was stuck in Europe with no job and no way to get home. With help from family, I finally made it home, where I was publicly rebuked in front of my entire home church. I moved to a new town and attended a new church, but when the pastor there found out I was attracted to men, he told me he would pray that God would kill me and had me kicked out of that church as well.

You might be surprised, after hearing all this, that I am not a church-hating, anti-religious gay man. At some point, I will write about my reasons why I do not hold a grudge against those who treated me wrongly and why I still consider myself to be a person of faith. But I will admit, by the point I was kicked out of that church, I had arrived at a place where I wanted nothing to do with church or anyone related to it.

However, during this turbulent time, something else was happening that turned out to be beautiful and life-saving for me. That, as well as my recounting of coming out to my family, will be in the next part of my ever-expanding, yet always-intriguing coming-out story.

Side Note of Interest: Baptists believe that it is God who ordains someone as a preacher (a calling that is for life) while the church merely recognizes that calling. Thus, I am technically still an ordained Baptist preacher, since, if they are consistent in their theology, those churches would have to admit they have no authority to revoke the ordination. So I can still perform marriage ceremonies and the like. Somehow I don't think I will be invited as a guest speaker at my college's chapel services anytime soon, though.

Today's Holidays:

• World Kindness Week (Nov 7-13)
  
• National Animal Shelter Appreciation Week (Nov 7-13, US)
• Pursuit of Happiness Week (Nov 8-14)
• Kristallnacht Memorial (9-10)
  
• Vietnam Veterans Memorial Day (US)
  
• Return Day
  

Enhancing my Geek Credentials

So I spent all weekend re-designing the look of my blog. I have to grudgingly admit that, in spite of their abysmal past performance, Blogger has done some very nice things in the beta version of their next blogging system release (which I am now using for this blog). I will probably continue to tweak things here and there, but I hope you like the new look. At least it will be pretty to look at if I spend all my time making cosmetic changes to the blog but am too lazy to add new content. (Note: Stay tuned shortly for part 3 of the ever-compelling saga of my coming-out story).

Today's Holidays:

• International Day for Preventing the Exploitation of the Environment in War and Armed Conflict
  

A Plea for Patience

Depending on when you look at this blog over the next few days, it will be either obvious or painfully obvious that I am doing some major work on the layout & design of the blog. I'm trying a few ambitious things that stretch my knowledge of HTML and CSS, and sometimes Blogger's helpful interface just ends up getting in the way. Anyway, my original template is saved safe and sound, so nothing is un-fixable, but just be patient with me as I work on this in my spare time. I am hopeful that the end result will be something very sharp-looking.

Today's Holidays:

• Cliché Day (Great, we need this holiday like we need a hole in the head)
  

Shifting Gears

If you are a regular reader of this blog and happened to miss yesterday's post titled "Fresh Sheets", be sure to take a look at it! Thanks!

My Coming-Out Story, Part Two

My Coming-Out Story, Part Two: Sorta Like a Lesbian Pollyanna

Note: If you have not yet read Part One of my coming out story, I would highly suggest you do so (by clicking here) before continuing. Otherwise, this part will make even less sense than it will for those who have read the first part.

A quick reiteration from the first part of this story.... Lest I appear to have an over-inflated view of the significance of my own coming-out story (since I am dividing it up over the course of four posts and going into extensive background information), allow me to restate that this is the first time I have ever written out my story in a disciplined manner, so I am doing this for my own posterity and will include this in my personal journal. I do hope that you will find it to be entertaining, though, as I share some unique experiences I had.

Part one ended with my ultra-conservative Baptist Republican parents determining that Los Angeles was the Gomorrah to San Francisco's Sodom and deciding to pluck my brother and me from the fire (they didn't notice we were already flaming) and move us to the wholesome, values-driven Midwest.

The way they went about telling us brothers that we were moving from everyone and everything we had known since birth and going to a place where snow fell from the sky was classic. During spring break in 1988, we flew to Chicago to visit some friends who had moved to the northwest suburbs the year before. At least this was the cover story. One day, while my brother and I thought our parents were driving us to lunch, we instead pulled up to a newly-completed house. This, our parents said, was our new home. I kid you not. That was the first inkling we had that we were leaving California. Within a week of our return to California after our "vacation," my dad had flown to Chicago to start a new job, and when school was done a couple months later, the rest of us joined him.

My parents said that the move was to protect us boys from the bad influences of California. Ironically, about a month after we moved to the suburbs of Chicago, I saw a pornographic magazine for the first time. It was a Playgirl magazine, and someone had put it behind the MAD Magazine that I had intended to read. Now, by this time I was in high school and was self-aware enough to realize I felt emotional connections to guys and attraction toward them, but I had never really seen guys naked before. If this sounds unbelievable, remember the first part of my story, that my entire life was centered around the church. The church school I attended frowned upon guys seeing each other unclothed, even in locker rooms, so the few times I saw another guy naked were so fleeting that it didn't register. So, looking at that Playgirl, something clicked in my head that finally made sense. The feelings I felt around guys were physical. And if the mental connection wasn't enough, my body made it very clear, requiring me to quickly hide the porn and buy the MAD Magazine to use as a shield in front of my pants.

Shortly after this, I asked one of my new Chicago friends (who I thought was quite cute) if he had seen guys naked. Turns out that Chicago church people haven't become quite as paranoid, because when I started attending my new church school that fall, I found what my friend told me to be true, that community showering was the norm after Phys Ed class. So there I am, not only just beginning to be aware that I am gay, but also never before having ever been around naked guys, when suddenly my entire class is naked in front of me after getting all hot and sweaty on the soccer field. I thought I would die (and didn't care where I would go). It took almost a month before I could walk into the shower room without a large washcloth strategically placed until I could stand under the coldest water I could tolerate.

Well, the conversation with my cute friend must have caught his attention, because not long later he brought up the subject again. I was so overwhelmed with what was happening, that I honestly do not remember exactly how things developed, but I do know that he and I ended up touching and groping until I came with a guy for the first time. That began ongoing encounters that lasted for nearly 4 years til I graduated from high school. Both of us were so sheltered that we did not know there was even anything to do beyond jerking each other off, but we knew we liked that a lot and did it at every opportunity.

This created a problem. Suddenly, I found myself on the express train to hell. Every time I sneaked away with my friend, I was certain I would drop dead within moments. After all, I was committing the worst possible sin, being gay. I knew there was something horribly wrong with me, but I didn't know what I had done to be this bad of a person. I would daily lie flat on my stomach with my arms outstretched begging for forgiveness and for God to fix me.

If it seems that the answer should have been obvious to me, that I wasn't a person whose evil character brought this judgment of homosexuality upon myself, keep in mind again how sheltered my life had been to that point. All of my life-forming influences had been from my church and parents. My TV-watching was strictly limited, consisting essentially of Little House on the Prairie and Captain Kangaroo. But I had never been confronted before with anything that would make me doubt those influences in my life. After all, the vast majority of what my church and parents taught me was essentially good stuff. It is a worldview that, while sadly blind in certain spots, is overall not a bad system. I was taught respect for others, kindness, honesty, playing fair, being willing to sacrifice my own comfort for the good of others--all things that I try to honor to this day. My parents demonstrated a love for each other that I hope to emulate in any relationship I have--a love that messed up on occasion but admitted fault, asked for forgiveness, and above all, stayed together. Obviously I see the glaring blind spots now, but as a high schooler, all I saw was that my life had been pretty decent compared to others I saw who didn't follow the rules and guidelines I was given.

So I thought the "gay" problem was with me. But, as I finished high school, I thought that going to a Christian college would help me figure out the problem. Surely, this was just a temporary thing, and now that I was going into college, I would find a nice girl who I would be attracted to, and we would have the same perfect life my parents seemed to have. I said goodbye to my jerk-off buddy on graduation day, and I never saw him again. The next fall, I left for school with a determination that I would never do such a thing with a guy again. And, for 10 years, I never did.

But that will be explained in Part Three of my coming-out story. Click here to read.

Today's Holidays:

• National Traffic Directors' Day (USA)
• Plan Your Epitaph Day
• National Men Make Dinner Day (USA)
  

Fresh Sheets

I have thought about this blog considerably in recent days. Since I began my second blog early in August, this, my original blog, has sorta become the neglected stepsister. The great reception many kindly gave my other blog was good motivation for me to give it a lot of attention, to the detriment of Auto-Gratification.

But, my reason for blogging in the first place was not to build up my ego through the praise of strangers; rather, I wanted a forum in which I would be "forced" to discipline myself to be creative and to write on a regular basis. One of my major life goals is to become a published author, but the writing opportunities of my current marketing job (in which I work on the management side of the company rather than the creative side) consist primarily of responding to e-mails about problems with grocery store displays. Not particularly inspiring stuff.

Yet, as things have developed, this blog has become more of a photo collection than a space for me to write, and I find the pictures controlling the writing far too often. Additionally, it just is a very time-consuming process to come up with pictures to post regularly that are not over-used or copyrighted (the latter, of course, being almost impossible to know much of the time). Trying to do that with two blogs has stretched me far beyond the time resources I have available.

So, today I'm putting fresh sheets on this bed. From now on, I may include photos of hot guys when the occasion warrants; certainly, I will try to include something graphical each post to spice things up and keep it interesting. But the focus of this blog is going to return to its original intent: to give me a place to write and interact with others on ideas, to entertain if I am able, and hopefully to give you, my readers, a place to take a break in your day and find something worth reading.

My Asian blog fills a niche that is not found many places on the web; but pictures of guys of other ethnicities are found everywhere. If you're afraid you might miss my pictures, check out the blogs on my links list. I am hoping to update that soon, and I will try to keep it current with plenty of suggestions for you. But I hope you will find this blog to have actual content beyond the eye candy--content that, I trust, will be worth your while to read.

Come back tomorrow for the (far-too-long-delayed) second part of my already-started coming-out story! If you have not done so before, check out the first part for an example of what I hope this blog will contain on a regular basis (minus so many pictures).


Today's Holidays:

• All Saints' Day
• National Author's Day (US)
• National Family Literacy Day (US)