Am I Gay?

In the seventh grade I hit my growth spurt about a year before my peers. I had an advantage over them in terms of about 11 months. When I was 4 years old my mother had decided to keep me in preschool an extra year since I was a September kid. What must have seemed like an insignificant issue at the time turned into one with profound and long-term consequences most if not all of which were on the plus side. I was a very average athlete, but in the elementary and secondary years, one year makes all the difference.

So at age 12, I was the tallest kid in my class. Whereas in 6th grade I had not made any of the sports teams at my school, in 7th grade I became a starter in soccer, basketball and baseball. With each passing season my confidence soared. Unfortunately so did my ego, but time would abate that. I would proudly wear my yellow and maroon striped soccer jersey everyday before a game. In pickup games of tackle football, I felt like the next Walter Payton. I was faster and stronger than my still developing and much younger friends. I was as tall as I'd ever get in 7th grade at 5'8", but for a year I felt like a rock star. I never would have had that feeling had I not been a year older. Had I not made the team in the 7th grade, which would have been the case since I would have been a year younger, I would simply have given up this hope and pursued other less popular pursuits.

Much like my father, sex would begin to occupy all of my thoughts at age 12, but in my case it was in reference to girls. I never gave much thought to the possibility of being gay. By this age, I had abandoned the innocence of thinking Dad just lived with his best friend. I had no aversion to homosexuality, but I just assumed I would never be gay. Until that is one day when Dad asked me to take a walk with him. We were in one of those pigeon parks in Manhattan and sitting on a park bench. Dad had his favorite coat on - a purple and beige jacket that ended at belt line and had collars he could use to warm his neck. I was paying more attention to the pigeons that seemed so brave in New York City to come right up to you. That was evolution in the making. These birds had simply lost their fear of humans due to proximity and an abundant food sharing program with the citizens of New York.

By seventh grade I was using any excuse I could find not to come into the city. This was partly because I felt I would somehow be left out of some phone call at home from one of the popular girls, or a party when the parents were out of town. Another reason though was that I was still deathly afraid that someone would see me with my Dad and Bert. That fear was growing more and more acute.

I genuinely looked forward to conversations with my Dad. Talking with him was like reading a conspiracy novel where all of your beliefs are turned upside down through superior logic. This epiphany leads to a new outlook on life itself. Dad did that for me on more than one occasion. I thoroughly respected him, looked up to him as someone who seemed to have an innate ability to answer any question without having to resort to blind faith or idiotic cliches. He could talk about anything - the Steelers, the Battle of Troy, you name it. I would never tire of these discussions with him, even to this day, and there was no replacing him.

Dad started by noting that I did not enjoy the trips into see him. He reminded me that there was a time when I really did enjoy them. He was right, that was before I dreamed of being mainstream and "normal." I never liked to answer these types of questions. Part of being a Libra I guess is being non confrontational. The next part of the conversation, though, went somewhere I did not expect. I guess that was also quintessential Dad. He was unpredictable in many ways. He felt he might understand why I was becoming more and more distant and despondent. After a moment of silence where I did not respond, he attempted to console my fears that he thought were leading to my abhorrence of these weekends in New York. In so doing he said what I would not forgot for years to come. Dad said I had nothing to worry about, I was not gay. He could tell by my mannerisms that I had no homosexual tendencies, and homosexuality was not a genetic condition that was passed down for generations to come.

Now any normal pre-teen boy would have taken console with this, at least if he were not wanting to be gay which I was not. I did not see things so rationally, though. This was the first time it ever dawned upon me that I could be gay. Not that I ever had a feeling towards another male, but could that change? Perhaps I would wake up one day only to realize I had lost the desire for the female kind.

For the next few years I would have an almost obsessive fear that homosexuality was just around the corner. Despite not being too keen on girly magazines, a friend of mine pilfered some old editions of Playboy from his father and gave them to me. My mother found them one day in my desk drawer. Interestingly, she let me keep them probably relieved as well.

My fear would eventually subside, probably when I realized that my own heterosexuality and love of women was not something I could control, so how could it somehow change? That fact is images of girls began populating and multiplying in my mind well before I thought I could be gay, and they did not stop afterwards. I had no control over my own heterosexuality much like Dad had no control over his. I could not have changed it had I wanted to. No, I was a straight man, but one that still had some deep seated fears with no rational foundation.