I identified that I was gay five years before the Stonewall Riots when I was 19 in the summer between my freshman & sophomore years at the University of Pennsylvania².  To have a clear understanding of what my motivations were, you must understand the social climate in the mid-1960's.  It was very shameful for people to be known as gay at that time in history.  I was able to observe two distinctly different types of gays people back at that time.  One type was the very feminine type including drag queens and men who talked with very strange affectations.  The other type were more masculine but, in my opinion, they were schizophrenic because they had two different personalities.  The schizos were ordinary people just like everybody else during the day and then, at night, they would go to gay places (bars, parties, public gatherings) and behave quite differently from their daytime behavior.

I knew that I was not behaving like the effeminate type of gay man, so I began to explore the image of the schizophrenic type.  That was very painful and deceitful and I did not like living a "double life".  Eventually, the pain of this deceit was so great that I decided to escape the gay life and pursue a life as a heterosexual man.  I dated girls in those years and had some minimal ability to perform with women, sexually.  Six years later, in 1970, I met a woman who thought I was really great and she thought I was one of the few men in the world who could satisfy her. See note⁸ about this picture.

The experience then was vastly different then than it is for people coming out today.  Today, we have in wide circulation, printed gay guide books, gay role models, gay community centers, gay internet sites and guides, gay radio programs, gay newspapers and nearly every day, there's another newspaper article, tv show or movie in the mainstream about gays and our culture.  But in 1964, coming out was quite different than what it is today without all of those resources.

1,000 miles east¹ of my suburban St. Louis home, attending Penn², I walked along Market Street in Center City Philadelphia.  On the corner of 13th Street, across from Wanamakers, I was glancing at the magazines in the news stand.  The muscle magazines were stunning, but the word "Homosexual" on the cover of "One Magazine" caught my eye.  I furtively collected correct change for that magazine and plucked it out of its clip on the display.  The vendor put it in a small, brown paper bag and this broke some of the tension for me.  I bolted for the Subway-Surface car directly beneath the news stand and leapt on the first trolley.  The single seats behind the driver afforded me the privacy that this situation demanded.  To maximize my insulation from the others on the trolley, I contorted my body into a tight ball and began to peer with extreme caution into the paper bag to read some of the revealing words of the magazine.

When I arrived at the 37th and Spruce exit, I made a beeline to my dorm room and locked the door tightly.  I read every word of the little pamphlet and took special note of the address and telephone number of One, Inc. in Los Angeles.  I placed a collect call to my doting grandmother in Beverly Hills.  She was thrilled when she heard my intention to fly clear across the USA to spend my Spring Vacation with her and her husband.  My own parents were stunned but accepting, although they had plenty more to accept in the months that followed.  I had two glorious weeks in Beverly Hills and I waited 13 of those 14 days before getting up the nerve to call One, Inc. at the number on the back of that magazine.

I drove my grandmother's green Ford Falcon to the One Magazine office and I met a kind, elderly gentleman.  Having never seen or heard anything like it before, I became unsettled by his affected mannerisms and speech patterns.  When I phoned for directions, earlier, I had difficulty discerning the location as "Venice and Western" with the syllibant "s" sound impairing his communication with me.  He brought me to his private office which was lined with thousands of gay-themed books and magazines from all over the world.  He urged me to stay or return for the evening's gathering, but I was leaving for Philadelphia the very next morning and I needed to go back to my grandmother's home and pack.  I asked him where I could meet men for gay sex in Philadelphia.  He found a reference guide book and informed me that Rittenhouse Square and City Hall courtyard were two very good spots for me.  He also revealed that I could know that it was safe to go with a man if his eyes locked onto mine with a passionate intensity.

Back in Philadelphia, I entered the courtyard of City Hall heading from West Market Street to East when a handsome man entered from East toward South Broad Street.  There was no instruction manual, so I was perplexed when this handsome man's eyes locked onto mine.  Instantly realizing that he was headed south, I feigned being totally lost.  He saw my sudden disorientation and asked if he could help me find my destination.  I quickly blurted out that I was looking for Broad Street South³. Then, he made it very challenging by asking me "WHERE on South Broad Street?"  After a few very awkward moments, I managed to get into the passenger seat of his car, a ride to his apartment and my very first gay sexual encounter (not counting childhood)! 

As I drove home, obsessed with your erotic display, I knew that I would never be 100% heterosexual⁴ no matter how much I loved my wife.  But in my mind, that was the moment I realized that the goal of uninterrupted heterosexual commitment would not and could not be met.  This coming out brought back a memory⁵ from many years earlier which reminded me that I was not the only person in the world who would lead a double life. Fortunately, I knew the gay cruising spots in town from several years earlier. 

I didn't question my options:
...not even when I was sú¢king dî¢ks and fú¢king butts all over Philadelphia, Fire Island and the Indiana St. Beach in Atlantic City, NJ,
...not even when I hated school and nearly flunked out (the year I came out),
...not even when I met my future wife and discovered that it was a major challenge to get and keep a hardon,
...not even when I was a married, traveling salesman getting my rocks off wildly all over the midwest
...not UNTIL she actually left ME after I had been outed by a brother-in-law of a fú¢k-buddy of mine.  Here's how it happened:

My wife and our child were visiting her parents when they were snowed-in by a major blizzard.  I reached into a remote drawer and found an old scrap of paper with the name, address & number of a hot guy I had tricked with previously in the park.  I called the number and reached his answering machine and heard his familiar voice, so I figured I'd drop him a line to let him know that I was still interested in him.  Maybe catastrophes like the one I'm describing don't happen anymore in this age of private email!  (Yeah....RIIIIGHT!!!)

Unbeknownst to me, this young man's living arrangements had changed even though his answering machine was still using his voice.  My friend had been living in this house with his sister and brother-in-law.  Weeks earlier, my friend had exposed the philandering of his brother-in-law leading to a separation in their marriage.  The brother-in-law, angrily evicted his wife and her brother, my friend.  When my letter arrived at my friend's former home, the irate brother-in-law ignored all laws about privacy of the US Mail and opened the letter.  He caught the line in my letter about my wife being away and decided that this would his opportunity to get some revenge for HIS "outing" (about his philandering)!

He called my wife and told her that he had some very important secrets to tell her about her husband.  He told her that her husband was a homosexual.  She didn't believe it and asked, "How do you know?" and he responded that he had a letter from me and explained that it was written to his gay ex-brother-in-law who used to live in his house.  My wife was suspicious and would only agree to meet him in a supervised place (she suggested the local police station).  He agreed and met her there and gave her my letter.  She was shocked!  When I walked home that night, she had already spoken to a divorce attorney and she kept it pretty cool but asked me to identify the recipient of the letter.  I tried to finesse it (even suggesting that it was a friend's DOG) but she didn't buy anymore of my lies and she told me that she would try to learn to accept it and keep our marriage together.  But that turned out to be a ploy while she secretly planned the divorce and did everything she could to wipe me out financially.  While it was reasonable for her to protect her interests and the interests of our child, she was motivated by her "vendetta mentality".

I hesitate to end this story on such a downer, but if you want to see the brighter side of this story, check out the joys of being a gay father, finding a wonderful lover and enjoying a great life on other areas of my websites.  If there is any moral to this story, it's this:

Today, I had a new opportunity to out myself.  I joined a fitness group which calls itself "Optimum Boot Camp" and it meets Monday, Wednesday & Friday mornings on Venice Beach (near my house).  I get up at 5 am to get down there by 6 so that a team of Marine Drill Sergeants can bark their orders at me for an hour-and-a-half.  It's great and I'm getting rid of my "gras de ville" (city-fat) and putting on some muscle and increasing my endurance, too.  We respond to questions with "YES, INSTRUCTOR" or "NO, INSTRUCTOR" to show respect and they shout more orders continuously.

Today, one of my Instructors⁶ made a comment about my burst of energy that enabled me to climb the rope today (for the first time) and posed a question asking whether I had "...made love to [my] lady-friend" recently.  I decided to play the military game with him and responded, "ASK ME NO QUESTIONS AND I'LL TELL YOU NO LIES, INSTRUCTOR!!"  I watched his face to notice that he got an awareness from that interchange.  Thus, even with the ill-conceived and repressive "Don't Ask - Don't Tell" rule, it's still possible to continue to come out⁷! 

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