Capricorn
08-28-2014, 07:40 AM
SO… there I was at age 16 with extremely mixed feelings about all this. On one hand, a lot of what I’d just read didn’t make a whole lot of sense. Some of it did. I still couldn’t get over the fact that this was all laid out for EVERYONE to read in a magazine like this. I mean holly f’n CRAP! Now everyone is going to know we exist. A guy won’t be able to dress neatly for fear of being thought a faggot! And god forbid we should forget to glance all horny eyed at girls. And there are so many of us! I sure as hell had NO IDEA about that.
But for me at that age as confused and scared and overwhelmed by all this as I was, in some weird way this article seemed to offer a sense of hope. Yeah, there was all this crazy psychological BS (that I had mostly swallowed hook, line and sinker) but there was also something else.
It was in those *tantalizing* photographs, in the defiance of men who were less than totally afraid to publicly show themselves and what they desired. It was in the idea that there were a lot of us and that we had our own “world” and were organizing to try and understand and help one another.
And, too, for me, it was on the cusp of a great time of change. The adventure of “growing up” was just beginning for me. And right about then I was also beginning to learn about other things through magazines that interested me too. For example some kind of wonder drug called LSD.
A bit over two years after I read all this -- and had forgotten about a most of it -- I would be 18 years old, a college freshman in Chicago. Soon I’d be meeting my first openly gay man through a guy who lived in my dorm, a rugby player I had a total crush on. HE WAS SO CUTE! He suggested this gay guy he knew *might* be willing to take me on my first LSD trip.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Ah, but all that, is a whole other tory for another day
SO… that’s it, that’s my story about this LIFE magazine article and how I discovered I was “gay”.
I think it is fascinating to see NOW how our perceptions of things, including ourselves and our sexual identity, has been SHAPED by what amounts to OPINONS expressed in an authoritative way.
At the very least the world we live in today has “gay” written all over it. Unless you’re growing up in a cave somewhere with no electricity, you *know* “gay people” exist. You know they have been “fighting for their rights” for decades and, if you think you might be gay, too -- however you may feel about that -- you know you’re not alone.
There are even places like this where you can come and ‘meet’ other gay guys without going outside your room or even revealing your true identity. This has both good and bad things about it but the point is, we don’t *have* to feel “isolated.” We *can* ask questions and begin to form *a sense of ourselves* independent of other (mostly straight) people’s opinions.
We’ve come a long way, and there’s still a LONG way to go.
But for me at that age as confused and scared and overwhelmed by all this as I was, in some weird way this article seemed to offer a sense of hope. Yeah, there was all this crazy psychological BS (that I had mostly swallowed hook, line and sinker) but there was also something else.
It was in those *tantalizing* photographs, in the defiance of men who were less than totally afraid to publicly show themselves and what they desired. It was in the idea that there were a lot of us and that we had our own “world” and were organizing to try and understand and help one another.
And, too, for me, it was on the cusp of a great time of change. The adventure of “growing up” was just beginning for me. And right about then I was also beginning to learn about other things through magazines that interested me too. For example some kind of wonder drug called LSD.
A bit over two years after I read all this -- and had forgotten about a most of it -- I would be 18 years old, a college freshman in Chicago. Soon I’d be meeting my first openly gay man through a guy who lived in my dorm, a rugby player I had a total crush on. HE WAS SO CUTE! He suggested this gay guy he knew *might* be willing to take me on my first LSD trip.
:eek: :eek: :eek:
Ah, but all that, is a whole other tory for another day
SO… that’s it, that’s my story about this LIFE magazine article and how I discovered I was “gay”.
I think it is fascinating to see NOW how our perceptions of things, including ourselves and our sexual identity, has been SHAPED by what amounts to OPINONS expressed in an authoritative way.
At the very least the world we live in today has “gay” written all over it. Unless you’re growing up in a cave somewhere with no electricity, you *know* “gay people” exist. You know they have been “fighting for their rights” for decades and, if you think you might be gay, too -- however you may feel about that -- you know you’re not alone.
There are even places like this where you can come and ‘meet’ other gay guys without going outside your room or even revealing your true identity. This has both good and bad things about it but the point is, we don’t *have* to feel “isolated.” We *can* ask questions and begin to form *a sense of ourselves* independent of other (mostly straight) people’s opinions.
We’ve come a long way, and there’s still a LONG way to go.
.
![[-]](https://gayspeak.com/images/duende_v3_local/collapse.png)
