A New Life

Becoming Normal Again After Coming Out

Life is a journey, one that often takes us down paths we never would have imagined we'd find ourselves on. Along these paths, we learn valuable lessons as we experience everything from heartache to healing, as we experience moments so wonderful we'll cherish them forever and moments so terrible we'll never forget them. The journey often challenges us in ways that test our strength, our courage, our resolve. The way we react to these challenges determines how the rest of our journey will unfold. We can't change the past, and the future hasn't happened yet. It does no good to worry about either. The best we can do is learn from the experiences we've had and use that knowledge to make ourselves stronger and, hopefully, better. Six years after I came out of the closet, four years after I went to my first gay bar, I was faced with a difficult decision. I'd spent four years trying to find my place in a gay community that seemed to have no place for me. By the time I decided to do what I decided to do, I had grown to hate almost everything about D.C., the people, the weather, the traffic, the gay bar scene, the gay bars, the gay men in the gay bars in the gay bar scene, almost everything. At first, I thought it was me. I thought I was the problem. I thought I wasn't trying hard enough, that maybe I needed to adjust my expectations, that maybe I needed to spend more time in the gay bars, that maybe I needed to spend less time in the gay bars, that maybe I needed to make more friends, that maybe I needed fewer friends. I came up with irrational idea after irrational idea trying to understand why I felt that I did not, and more importantly could not, fit in with the gay community of Washington, D.C. After four long years, I finally decided I was not the problem.

An Aside

Before I continue, I think it's important that you know something. I've never really felt like I fit in...anywhere, at any time in my life. Even during the times in my life when I've felt the most connected to others, on some level I still felt that I didn't fit in. When I was a kid, I fit in less with other boys than with girls, mainly because I had little in common with them. I didn't like playing sports, and most of the time, I didn't even like being outside. I also never developed the desire to do the things with girls that my brothers and other boys wanted to do with them. Instead, as I grew older, I realized I wanted to do those things with other boys. I didn't like the constant feeling of being different, and I found the peace of mind I desired in solitude. I realized the more time I spent by myself, the less time I had to spend dealing with the uncomfortable feeling of being different. In the small town where I grew up, and probably in every small town, being different sets one apart from the rest...and not in a good way. Being different got attention, and along with that attention, there was scrutiny and, oh yes, there was certainly judgement. So, I spent my childhood trying to hide all the ways I felt different from everyone else who lived there, and all the things I wanted to do with other boys was at the top of the list. The last thing I wanted anyone to know was that I was different. Now, after four years of trying to fit in with a community in which being different was the norm, I found myself stuck with that same old feeling, a feeling that has followed me through life, a feeling that I still feel today 30 years after deciding I was not the problem.

For me, coming out of the closet will always be associated with coming of age, becoming an adult and taking responsibility for myself, because I came out when I was nineteen years old, just a few months after I moved into my first apartment. That was what we did in my family. All my older brothers and sisters moved out on their own when they were about the same age. For them, I think it was the overcrowding in a household of thirteen children that made them move out at such a young age. With fifteen people living in a four bedroom house with only one bathroom, everyone shared a bedroom with several siblings, there was no chance of ever getting a moment of peace, and it was impossible to use the bathroom without someone banging on the door telling you to hurry up. But the overcrowding problem fixed itself over time. Throughout my childhood, our house emptied out, one sibling at a time, as each of my older brothers and sisters moved out on their own. By the time I started high school, overcrowding was no longer a problem. With only three children still at home, it was a much different experience than my older brothers and sisters had. I had my own bedroom, got all the moments of peace I wanted, and could often take my time in the bathroom. It wasn't overcrowding that made me move out when I was nineteen. It was just what our family did, so that's what I did.

A Quiet Discontent

I had a lot of fun learning to be gay in D.C. but like all good things, it had to come to an end. In addition to connecting me to the gay community, my airline job allowed me to see the world. More than anything else, this helped to make me the person I am today. At the age nineteen, I was able to fly anywhere in the world for free. Over the next several years, I took great advantage of my flying benefits. I flew to more places than anyone in my family and any of my friends. I was traveling to places I hadn't even heard of just a couple years before. I loved it! I was in the prime of my life, young and energetic, eager to see and learn everything, everywhere, everyone. I was very social at that age, and I made friends everywhere I went, in other cities and even other countries. I flew to a lot of places, sometimes just for the day to have lunch with a friend or for one night to go to a gay dance party. On many occasions, I'd travel with a coworker who had become a close friend of mine, and his favorite thing to do was to go to the airport, stand in front of a departure screen, cover his eyes, and point. Wherever his finger was pointing when he opened his eyes is where we would go. Kansas City, Boise, Dallas, and many other such cities became fodder for our veracious travel appetites. We had so much fun on our trips, but we were young and we were poor. One night after flying to Kansas City, we barely had enough money for the hotel room, and when we went out to a gay bar that night, we couldn't even afford to buy drinks, so he came up with an idea. I resisted at first. It was crazy what he was suggesting. But as the bar began to get busy, and everyone started to get drunker, I finally gave in. For the rest of the night, we hung out by the dance floor, casually taking drinks left behind by other people as they went to get their groove on. We ended up having the time of our lives that night. Beyond a doubt, my early 20s were the best time of my life, and the ability to experience different people, different cultures, different ideas was a big part of what made life so enjoyable for me. It made my life exciting.

All of this happened while I was learning to be guy in D.C. As time passed, I slowly became aware of a quiet discontent growing in my mind. It started as a slight feeling of disappointment I experienced whenever I returned home from a trip. As the excitement of being somewhere new seeing things I'd never seen doing things I'd never done faded and the boredom of my regular routine came into focus, I began to notice something else going on in my mind, a feeling that I couldn't quite put my finger on, slightly more than disappointment but definitely less than depression. All of my brothers and sisters lived within driving distance of our hometown. Some of them had never even been out of the state, much less out of the country. Most of them thought I was a little goofy for traveling so much, especially when Virginia had so much to offer. None of them understood that traveling to other places made me realize how little Virginia had to offer. At the same time, I'd grown tired of the pretentiousness of the D.C. gay community. I threw myself into the gay community everywhere I went, drinking in gay bars by night, hanging in gay districts by day. Everywhere I went, people were friendly, engaging, and genuinely interested in what I had to offer as a person. Then I'd fly home and have to deal with the disinterested attitudes that characterized most of the gay men in the D. C. gay community. The more I tried to find my place in the gay community, the more it became apparent that I'd have an easier time of it somewhere else. Eventually, my discontent developed into action, and in 1994, I moved from Virginia to Chicago, leaving behind all my family, all my friends, everyone and everything I knew.

For a guy who had always lived within thirty miles from where he grew up, moving to a huge city by myself was actually a rather courageous act, but my courage was lost on my friends and family. My move came as quite a surprise to them. I had seen more of the world than anyone I knew, and it allowed me to view the world in a way that was altogether different than everyone I knew. I had visited countries where English was not the native language. I understood how the rest of the world viewed the United States and what people in other countries thought of Americans and our way of life. I learned about other cultures, other traditions, and other beliefs. This allowed me to grow beyond my small town upbringing. I understood why my family was happy living in Virginia, but they never understood why I wasn't. So, when I announced that I was moving to Chicago, they thought something was wrong with me. Seriously, they wanted me to see a psychiatrist. My friends were only slightly more supportive. They hated D.C. as much as I did, but they didn't seem to understand why I wanted to move, at least not at the time. In the end, they all moved away from D.C. too. Within a few years, my circle of friends were spread out all over the country.

My last night in D.C. was one of the funnest nights of my entire life. It started as dinner with a few of my friends, but as dinner gave way for drinks and the night grew later, some people were called while others just happened to be in the right place at the right time. As the night progressed, drinks led to dancing, and our group grew larger and larger. It was truly an incredible time, dining until the food stopped coming, drinking until the drinks stopped pouring, and dancing until the music stopped playing. We eventually decided to end the night where my gay life had begun four years earlier, Badlands. I remember being on the dance floor with my friends around me when the Pet Shop Boys song "Go West" began to play. We all sang "go midwest" instead, laughing and crying at the same time. It was one of life's perfect moments, and I wanted it to last forever. But moments like that are not meant to last forever. They're meant to be treasured for what they are, rare occurrences when the energies of several people come together in perfect harmony. That was twenty-five years ago, and I still clearly remember the feeling of elation I felt that night, how good it made me feel. I'll always remember it.

Three Questions

As I became a fixture in the gay bars of D.C., I began to realize that many of the gay men in those bars weren't so enjoyable. As my gay circle of friends formed around me, there was one thing we bonded over more than anything else, our mutual dislike of the D.C. gay bars and the queens who frequented them. To me, it always seemed like everyone knew a secret but nobody told me what it was, like I was always missing some key information that everybody else had, leaving me one step behind. As it turned out, I was different in at least two significant ways. First, I lived in the suburbs. All urbanites look down on suburbanites. I didn't know this at the time because I had never lived in the city, and the urbanite mentality had not yet entered my worldview. Second, I did not work for the federal government. So many people work for the federal government in D.C. that it was often assumed when you met someone. The gay bars of D.C. were often used for networking. Gay men went out with friends but could still meet other gay men within the federal government who might have the right connections to enhance their career. Because of this, there were three questions you were almost always asked when you first met someone in D.C.:

1. Who do you work for? It didn't seem to matter what you did, just who you did it for. Again, it was all about making connections. The specific names weren't important either. It was all about the federal agency and the person's position within the agency.

2. Where do you live? This question really asked how much money you made, but that would have been too rude, so this socially acceptable alternative was asked instead. Those who lived in bad neighborhoods or the suburbs often experienced a sudden a lack of interest after answering this question.

3. What kind of car do you drive? This was just another way of asking how much money you made. Most guys lied when they answered this question. Owning a car in D.C. was usually more frustrating than anything else. There were multiple parking restrictions on every street in D.C. No parking between 2:00pm and 6:00pm, no parking on Thursdays between 6:00am and 8:00am, etc, etc. Everytime you parked your car, you had to walk the entire block to read all the parking signs. It was nearly impossible to avoid getting very costly parking tickets if you lived in the city and owned a car. But that didn't stop anyone from asking this ridiculous question.

I spent four years trying to fit myself into a social scene I didn't even like. My biggest complaint about living there was the total lack of loyalty from everyone I met, which is ironic since I met all my closest friends there. Everyone seemed to have their own personal agenda, and if you didn't fit with that agenda, there was no need for them to speak to you...about you, maybe, but not to you.

Four years after visiting Badlands for the first time, I decided I needed a change.

Something I'd Never Done Before

About six months before that magical night, something unusual happened, something so unusual it was first for me. I was out with some friends one cold December night, like many other nights cold or not. I ran into a guy I'd had sex with once, and he introduced me to a friend of his. The moment I laid eyes on him, I wanted him. He held out his hand to introduce himself, and I said, "Let's have sex". He seemed to be attracted to me, though I admit he was more aloof about it than I was. I shamelessly threw myself at him all night, chasing him around the bar, wearing him down slowly by slowly, until it was finally the end of the night and there was no other option for him but to take me home with him. Just as I was expecting him to say "let's go", he handed me a slip of paper with his phone number on it. Before we went our separate ways, he told me he was the type of gay man who always got to know the men he slept with, preferring to take it slow rather than rush to having sex with a guy he barely knew. He said it made the sex better. I thought he was yanking my chain. I took his number anyway, already telling myself I'd never call him. Six weeks, several dates, and many long conversations later, we finally had sex. There was no separating us after that, well until I moved to Chicago. It was an intense relationship from the beginning, but we both expected it to end when I moved. As it turned out, we ended up flying back and forth to see one another until he moved to Chicago a year after I did. I hope you understand the irony in this. I spent four years trying to fit into a gay community I just didn't connect with very well. When I finally decided to move away and was simply waiting for winter to be over in Chicago so I could move, I meet the man I'd end up wanting to spend the rest of my life with. We had a very stable relationship, mainly because we were so alike we rarely argued or even disagreed on anything. And our relationship continued to be extremely stable until we broke up six years after we met.

Go Midwest

Chicago has a vibrant culture that is rooted in engaging people who live in thriving neighborhoods, and there's something to do twenty-four hours a day seven days a week. It's a great city and an awesome place to live, but I admit living in a huge city took some getting used to. When I moved to Chicago, I took my car with me, but as I quickly learned, owning a car in a big city is not the same experience as owning a car elsewhere. You end up spending way too much time looking for a place to park and way too much money paying the parking tickets that always seem to be waiting for you on the windshield. If you're fortunate enough to have the money to pay for a parking space in a neighborhood garage, you end up spending way too much time waiting while the attendant gets it out of the space between two other cars after moving three other cars to get to your car, wasting all the time you might have saved by owning a car. When you live in a city, owning a car always seems to make you spend too much of something you don't have, and it's usually faster to take public transportation to where you're going anyway. After a year of dealing with the headache of urban car owning, I got rid of the car. My primary way of getting around became the rapid transit system, nicknamed the "L" because large parts of it run on elevated tracks that wind through the city's neighborhoods, at times getting so close to the buildings that train riders can see into the windows, allowing them to peer for a second or two into the private lives of countless unknown strangers. It's just one of many small thrills that make Chicago such an amazing city. Another of these thrills is the Lakefront Trail, an 18.5-mile-long path for walking, jogging, roller-blading, and cycling located along the western shore of Lake Michigan passing through and connecting Chicago's four major lakefront parks, several sandy beaches, Lincoln Park Zoo, and many other recreational spaces. Chicago had so many ways to spend the day, you almost couldn't go wrong...as long as the weather was nice.

Every year, there was a day in September when the temperature dropped forty degrees and suddenly plunged the city into its two weeks of fall, when the leaves turned brown, orange, and other dead colors before they fell to the ground and eventually blew away or otherwise disappeared. As the city edged closer and closer to winter, the temperatures would get steadily colder and colder. Then there would be snowstorm after snowstorm, each followed by -100°F temperatures to freeze the snow into blocks that sometimes would not melt until May. At -40°F, the air got so dry it couldn't snow and so cold the hairs in your nose freeze as you breathe the frigid air into your lungs, which almost seem to freeze for a split second before finally warming the air that was inside them. At -100°F, it's unimaginable. There are no words that can describe it. It's just awful. The sky was overcast all winter, and the lack of sunlight caused many people to suffer from acute depression. In March, when the rest of the country got spring weather and allowed themselves to be pleasantly distracted by spring fever, Chicago was still stuck in winter. Sometime around the beginning of May, there would be two weeks of thunderstorms, after which the temperature soared to +100°F and stayed there until the day in September when it plunged the city into the dreariness of fall once again. For most of the winter and most of the summer, it was either too cold or too hot to be outside. Despite this, we both loved living there. We made friends easily and had an active couple's social life. We both loved living in Chicago and would probably still live there, if not for the weather.

After four and a half years, another winter was fast approaching, and the only thing we knew was that we just couldn't deal with another one.

Getting Out in the Nick of Time

We left Chicago just as it was getting dark on Halloween night in 1998. A snowflake fell on the windshield of the U-Haul as it pulled away from the curb, the first snowflake of the season, pure and untouched. Thirty minutes later, we exited I-90, trading its cold, unwavering southern direction for the warmer, more pleasant western direction of I-290, which would eventually take us to our first overnight stop, Davenport, Iowa. The snow was beginning to accumulate. The snowplows would be out soon to keep the lanes of the highway clear and ready for Sunday morning traffic. Chicago understood how to deal with snow, plow it early and plow it often. By the time we left the Chicago city limits, more than an inch of snow had fallen to beautify the lanes of the interstate. I remarked to my boyfriend how nice it was of the Universe to give us such a splendid going away present, just enough snow to make the scenery beautiful and wintery without causing the headaches of a substantial downfall. The snow steadily slowed as we drove further and further west, and when we arrived in Davenport, not even one snowflake had fallen. Five days later, we arrived in San Francisco and called our friends in Chicago. They were agitated and excited when they gave us the news. Our beautiful gift from the Universe turned into one of the worst blizzards in Chicago history. This storm had been unexpected, gaining most of its last minute strength from the lake effect, dumping three feet of snow on the city of Chicago. Drivers of all walks of life were paralyzed in their cars, unable to advance along their chosen paths. Thousands of cars were abandoned along Lake Shore Drive, their battered drivers finally giving up and deciding to get to anywhere they could on foot. Less than twenty-four hours after we left, the city of Chicago came to a grinding halt.

A Magical Moment

We arrived in San Francisco on November 4, 1998. I vividly remember the moment when the city of San Francisco came into view below us as we drove across the Bay Bridge. It's a beautiful sight to see from that perspective because it juxtaposes the geographical smallness of the city with its majestic beauty. I still remember how happy I felt in that moment. My boyfriend was driving the truck, and I was on the passenger side holding the dog as she hung her head out the window. It was a magical moment for our little family, and it was one of the happiest and most hopeful moments of my life. I remember thinking how life couldn't be more perfect. That was more twenty years ago, and today, so much has changed I can hardly believe I was ever that happy. Our dog was twelve years old when we moved, and she never adjusted to the new environment. She died six months after our arrival in San Francisco. As we struggled to deal with the sudden void in our lives, a much larger problem began to take center stage in our relationship. I had become extremely introspective, reflecting on my experiences of the past and the present. As I tried to make sense of what I was feeling, one nagging thought arose in my mind. Before we left Chicago, a friend told me she had had a premonition that I would break up with my boyfriend after we moved to San Francisco. I laughed a good long laugh when she told me that, but a year later, as my mind began to clear, it became the one nagging thought I couldn't get rid of.

The Beginning of the End

It was a very comfortable relationship. We were a fun couple, had a healthy social life, and rarely ever argued. In the six years we dated, I can count on one hand the number of times we seriously argued. Just a few weeks before we broke up, I couldn't point to one thing that was wrong, yet I realized that I was not happy. I flew to Australia with my best friend for a preplanned three week vacation. There was very little communication between me and my boyfriend during that time because it was too expensive to call back to the United States. This gave me the time and space I needed to contemplate the growing feeling of discontent I was feeling in my relationship. One night when we were out dancing, my best friend bought some ecstasy tablets, and as he handed one to me, he said, "Don't worry, I won't tell." We both laughed. My boyfriend was not a controlling person, but over the six years we had dated, a certain pattern had developed. I usually went along with what he wanted because we were very much alike and what he wanted was never far from what I wanted. This pattern had gotten him used to always having his way in the relationship. When we first started dating, we had agreed that neither of us would ever use drugs. At the time, it was a moot point for me. I didn't use drugs, and I had no desire to ever start using them. But the ecstasy tablet I had just swallowed violated that agreement. As the ecstasy began to do its thing in my mind, elevating my mood, my senses, my everything, one nagging thought entered my mind: why did I have a boyfriend who I needed to keep secrets from? It was a wonderful night. We danced, we laughed, we chased guys around the bar all night. It is a night we both remember as one of the best times we have ever had together. The next day, as we reveled in the fun we had had the night before, that one nagging thought entered my mind again, and it would not go away.

That trip was the greatest bonding experience my best friend and I have ever had. It also turned out to be the perfect environment for me to gain clarity on the feeling of discontent I was experiencing in my relationship with a man who I had to keep secrets from regarding positive events in my life. I had a lot to think about on the flight back home. I had never kept anything secret from my boyfriend. I don't like secrets, and I especially don't like secrets in a relationship built on trust. The more I thought about it, the more I began to realize how little input I had had on how our relationship was structured. I also began to realize how many inequities existed in it. He had gotten his way so often that what he wanted had become the default. From that perspective, it was easy for me to see that never even asked me what I wanted...because he didn't really care. On the flight from Sydney to San Francisco, I had 13 hours to think about this. I realized that, although we got along very well at the time, one day he would wake up and realize that we were not compatible over the long term, and when he did, he would leave me. By the time the plane landed in San Francisco, I knew what I needed to do, and still worn out from jet lag, I broke up with him the day I got home.

Back Where We Began

This brings us back to where this story began. It was a year after the break up that I began to teach myself HTML and web design. From that experience, I developed and published the original version of this website. That seems like so long ago now, like a scene from a movie I saw when I was a kid. There's no emotional attachment to those events anymore, the intensity of my emotions has long since faded away.

Was it a good decision to end that relationship?

I've been asking myself that question a lot lately.

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