“It’s all about the sex” is something uttered by Hal Sparks character Michael in “Queer as folk.”  Ambercrombe, safe sex, foreign gay movies, circuit bois (bois not boys please) femme guys, drag queens, West Hollywood bars such as Rave or Mickeys with 18-25 nights, straight-acting, gym bunnies, drama queens, butch, leather daddies, versatility, dressing well, sleeping with as many guys as is humanly possible, cute teenagers with older men, dressing “gay”. Gay life is in itself complicating sometimes. Well I am just an average gay guy. I have a job as a counselor and I do the 9-5. When I am not working I like to watch movies and I like to go out and have a good time with my boyfriend. And for the most part I suppose I have found acceptance in who I am: I am 22, I have a good job and I am an all around good guy who has one tattoo and would get more if he wasn’t so picky or if he was more creative. I have 2 piercing in my left ear and plan on getting more. And I have a boyfriend who has a spikey Mohawk. But it wasn’t always this way.

I guess I have to go back to 1997. I was dating Veronica a girl who by most standards was cute and smart. She was a year older than me and she graduated a year before I did. I was still in high school but would see her whenever I had a chance to. People always ask me if I was gay and if I ever loved her. Well I guess there was a time when I did like her. The night I kissed her outside a party at a relatives house I remember lying in the backseat of my moms car as she drove home, and I looked up at the moon and stars and felt good. And one time we had a “romantic” dinner in my garage that included dancing. But one day she told me she liked a girl in the drama class. I panicked. You see I was “programmed” growing up by my abusive stepfather (He was the type of guy who would hit me with a hammer for not getting him the right tool he needed). She then wanted to know if I had any interest in guys. Around this time I was talking to a guy who was also in drama but I didn’t really know what it was. I liked talking to him and I liked being around him but romantic interest was the farthest thing from my mind. It wasn’t untill one day that I walked out of class that I found out I loved guys. Lots of guys can’t pin-point it back to one guy or one occasion but I can. He was the star quarter back. He was walking in my direction as I walked out of class. Gorgeous guy with black hair that went to his ears, wearing a leather jacket. I started seeing him around more and more. Me and Veronica went to the homecoming dance and the quarterback was chosen as homecoming king.  He danced under a spotlight and we ended up dancing too, I checked him out the entire time. Me and Veronica broke up when I started paying less attention to her.

I graduated High School and went to a community college with hopes of moving on from there. I fell in with a good crowd of people. We were cool friends but I was torn up inside. I hated myself for looking at guys sometimes and I tried to supress who I was. They would always talk about girls and check girls out. So one day when one of them asked me why I never did, I told him I was bi.  Things weren’t the same after and so they stopped talking to me. In reality I had no interest in girls and found myself thinking of guys more and more in bed at night. Guys I had seen on the tv, or some guys I had seen on the bus that day, the quarterback from high school. I had to leave college and get a job so I could help my mom with the bills. And one day at work I was on the net and I found that there was another gay guy logged onto a site I was on. We started talking and found that we had a lot in common. That night we talked for hours and agreed to meet that weekend.

He showed up late and we ended up hanging out in Hollywood and then decided to try and get to the Hollywood sign. We had to hike all the way from the bottom and we got to the observatory just as the sun was setting. And on a cliff over looking LA as the sun set I had my first gay kiss. I deluded myself into thinking he was the one. We went on 2 more dates and then he dumped me (He later told me that at the time he was stressed and had a nervous breakdown due to an emotional problem, we still talk now). I was convinced that there was nothing for me and so I decided to just try and live a “normal” life. I fooled around with one of my female friends from high school and was drinking a lot. One day I was with a friend from high school at a local restaurant and he told me that an acquaintance from High School died. The guy that died was a guy who wasn’t in a gang but kept telling people he was and one day he was confronted by some real gang members. They beat him up really bad, and he was diabetic and he died due to the beating. He died because he was trying to be something he wasn’t. This and some tv shows that really got to me (Jack coming out to one of his parents on “Will and Grace”, Sam Becket leaping into a gay student at a military academy in “Quantum Leap”, The late and great “Korel and Andrew” radio talk show in L.A.) all helped me realize who I was. I came out to my sister and she was extremely accepting of it and for a few months I would talk to her about everything I always wanted to. We started checking out guys at the mall and the store and we would talk about guys she was dating, we got really close as a result of that. One day I was going on a date and my mother asked me if it was with a female, I told her to just ask me. She did and I told her I was gay. She cried about it for awhile before telling me that she knew all along. She thought it was a phase and it would pass. It didn’t and as time went on she grew more accepting of it. And as for my dad, he found out a short time later when I told him on a bus I was on. The moral of the story, the point, well I know it might seem like the end of the world at first. And there might be some fear in coming out to your family. But you should be proud of who you are. BTW I found the right guy and for once fell in love, if you want the rest or need someone to talk to you know how to reach me.