I'm From Driftwood

by Erv

I was always confused about my sexuality. Sometimes I felt straight. Sometimes I felt gay. It would fluctuate like the seasons. I went to school, and got a great job. But I felt confused. And I didn’t want to be with anyone because of that.

Then I felt nothing. I was neither gay nor straight. And I found this was relieving. I didn’t have to worry about hell or what other people think. Or worse yet losing the love of my mom. I also didn’t want to feel different from all I knew. But I wasn’t happy. I started losing the hair on my body and became really tired to the point I slept 12 hours a day.

One day I went into a eye exam. The doctor saw something. He sent me for an MRI. I was diagnosed with prolactinoma — a reoccurring brain tumor that affects the hypothalamus and the pituitary gland. Not knowing the success rate of this condition, I was terrified. My mom came to stay with me as I went through the process of preparing to have a 4.7 centimeter tumor removed through my nose (transphenoidal surgery). She came to every appointment. My brothers called daily. My co-workers came the morning of my surgery and sat with my mother who was all alone. I was terrified but I had to be brave for her.

I woke up 14 hours later, a spinal drip in my back, a catheter. And tubes in both arms. My mom was asleep next to me, her hand on my arm.  I woke her up. She hugged me and told me with tears that something happened. I lost my pituitary gland.

Now for those of you who don’t know, the pituitary gland is the brain of the endocrine system. So, I lost my adrenal function, my thyroid function, and my testes function. Fortunately, I could wear a patch and take medicine.

With the patch I received a normal testosterone level for the first time. I came alive for the first time as an adult. I was 35 and just waking up from a nightmare that I didn’t know existed. Along with accepting a new physiology I also accepted myself as a man for the first time. And for the first time in my life, a full understanding of the gift of my sexuality came alive.

I was Gay. I am Gay.

I didn’t know how to approach this. I never really dated. Because of my pituitary issues, I was as asexual as you could be. But now, things were normalized. And normal meant gay. Gay. Wow. It felt so right. I never even kissed but here I was. I didn’t need to test myself or sleep with someone. I just knew who I was attracted to. And it was great.

I told my mother, and she wasn’t “happy” at first but after everything I had been through, she was okay. Now she is great.

That was five years ago this summer (2010). I am turning forty soon. Everyone knows now. It has taken time to get where I am. I have lost some things, and I have gained some things. And that is okay, for life is about the losing and winning. I have gone through a “second” puberty. And I have learned who my friends are.

I am ready to bring someone into my life. Even though I am nervous every time a man sees my hypogonadism (a result of the pituitary loss). I want to get married, and even have a kid. It will be difficult, but I have been through worse. One day I am going to find the man I love. I know that he is out there. I feel it for the first time that I am not going to be alone without friends, without family, and without a man to love and who loves me.

I know a lot of stories talk about falling in love and realizing who they were and what they need at that moment. Well, that is sort of true. I am a person who finally loved himself. Who finally realized who I am. And that being gay is one of the greatest things about me. I am not saying I don’t have my moments where I get angry about being left out of society. I am not saying that I agree with every gay person on the planet or the country. I am saying, that the rainbow flag has a hue that includes me. And I am proud of that.

So, to all of you out there who are afraid of coming out, I am here to tell you, it’s scary and wonderful. I did it and so can you. In spite of all I have been through and dealt with, I have never lost faith in people and my belief systems. I now know that God wanted me to be here living my life as a Gay man. And I thank him for this.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Nathan Gibson

Bags are packed. Rejected by peers and family members. I take a deep breath as I go through the security line at the airport. At first the obvious questions begin to race through my mind. Did I forget anything in my pockets? I hope I don’t get put in that little side room for questioning. But then I start thinking; I have never been on a plane before. What if it crashes? What if I miss my connecting flight? Which leads to even more racing thoughts: Maybe the ex-gay counselor was right? What am I doing? Why am I moving to New Mexico of all places? I know nobody there. The farthest west I have ever been before is St. Louis, Missouri.

Preoccupied with my racing and anxious thoughts, before I knew it I had made my way through the security line and had already made my connecting flight, with only minutes to spare before I would land in New Mexico. I couldn’t help but think that there is no going back now. This is my chance to begin figuring out what being a young gay man is all about without any outside influences. I could only be so lucky to have a clean slate to work with. If worse comes to worse absence makes the heart grow fonder, right? The plane lands in New Mexico and I take another deep breath and make my way off the plane.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Sam Paxton

Not a lot of people go to the grocery store on weekday nights. A few people duck in after work, grab some bread or a gallon of milk, and zip out of there as fast as possible. Tonight, my lane is one of two still open, not counting the self-checkout machines which are, as always, more popular than we are. I stand under the fluorescent lights and listen to the blandly inoffensive pop music they’re piping in. All the songs are about romance. My depression helpfully reminds me that I’m a 23-year-old virgin who’s kissed neither boy nor beard. I tell my depression to shut up, and fiddle with the cash register. My job is a brainless job, but it’s not so bad. It gives me time to daydream, and think about where my life is headed, and where I want it to go.

If you’d asked any of my elementary school teachers where they thought I’d be in fifteen years or so, I doubt any of them would guess “high school dropout working as a checkout boy.” Up to about sixth grade, I was the star pupil of every class. Straight A-pluses, except when I just got A’s. I didn’t just want to be an astronaut, I went to Space Camp and memorized whole episodes of Cosmosand shocked adults with my in-depth understanding of black holes. I was Hermione Granger on crack.

I’d always dealt with some amount of bullying, but for some reason, it seemed to get worse in middle school. Maybe it was because the school was bigger, so there were more bullies. Maybe it was because I started to realize, deep down inside, that when they called me a fag, they were right. I came out to myself in seventh grade, and told no one, but somehow they seemed to sense it. I don’t know if I subconsciously sent out gay signals, or if their gaydar was so trigger-happy that they got a few lucky guesses along with a whole slew of false positives (that’s a distinct possibility; middle-schoolers call everyone gay), but it felt like suddenly every bully in the school was drawn to me like sharks to blood.

About that time, I started sinking into depression. I dreaded going to school. I’d go into greater detail regarding the bullying, but you all probably know the story by now. The name-calling, the beatings, the teachers’ total lack of concern – you know, the classics. My grades dropped like a stone until I was barely passing anything. By the time I got to high school, I’d completely given up on doing well in school, making friends, or being happy. (Just in case you’re wondering, no, I didn’t go to that Littleton, CO, high school. And for the record, it’s not even technically located in Littleton, so quit blaming my admittedly crappy town for the sins of Columbine Valley.)

Maybe if I’d known then that I could have graduated in three years, or gone to Bard College at Simon’s Rock after sophomore year, or transferred to the hippie alternative school half an hour away, or just hung in there until I could escape to some east coast liberal arts college where everyone is gay or wants to be, I’d have kept going. But at the time, I didn’t know about any of those options. My teachers and guidance counselors told us all, “College will be just like this, only harder” – repeating that exact sentence again and again like it was a mantra. I guess they wanted to scare us into working hard, but it just made me lose all hope in ever escaping the cycle of harassment. It probably didn’t help that my image of college life came from movies like Animal House and Revenge of the Nerds, giving me the impression that the only difference between college and high school was that the bullies would be wearing togas instead of letter jackets. I ended up dropping out and getting a G.E.D. True to form, I got a perfect score on my G.E.D. test. My parents hung my results up on the fridge and left them there for months. I didn’t exactly give them anything else to be proud of me for.

Even though I was now free of the bullies, dropping out didn’t make me any happier. I found I didn’t need jocks to beat me up; they’d obliterated my self-esteem to the point where I’d happily do the job for them. Loathing myself for every perceived fault became like an addiction. Depression is sneaky like that. It’ll convince you to hate yourself for being gay, and when you get over that, it’ll convince you to hate yourself for being too closeted (You’re lying to the people you love!) or too out (You’re making people uncomfortable!) or not perfect enough (You’re making gays look bad!). And when you start to wake up and see the wreckage it’s made of your life, it’ll convince you to hate yourself for hating yourself. (If you were stronger, you wouldn’t be so sad all the time.) But the most sadistic trick it pulls is convincing you it doesn’t exist. I was clinically depressed for years before I sought any treatment, because I listened as it told me, You’re not depressed. You’re just lazy, and you’re using depression as an excuse to not do anything. You just want people to feel sorry for you. You just love feeling sorry for yourself. You don’t need a therapist or drugs; you just need to grow up and be a man.

I drifted apart from the few friends I had in school. I came to fear summers and holidays, when they’d come home and I’d run into them, hear about their happy lives at college or their volunteer work or their internships or their exciting jobs, and face the dreaded question, “So what are you doing with yourself?” I didn’t even have a dramatic, Oprah-worthy tale of surviving on the mean streets of Denver by selling my body for meth. I just hung around the suburbs and hated myself for the better part of a decade. I got lousy minimum wage jobs and lost lousy minimum wage jobs. I got on antidepressants and got off, and got on other antidepressants, and switched therapists a few times. Some days I woke up and the first thing that popped into my head was “I hate myself,” and I’d be contemplating suicide by breakfast. (Incidentally, Suicide by Breakfast would make a good name for an emo band.) I never did attempt, though, partly because I was afraid of how much it would hurt, and partly because I knew it would destroy my parents. I considered admitting myself to a mental health facility, but I didn’t do that, either. My six-word memoir: “I thought about it, but didn’t.”

A few months back, I enrolled in community college, which everyone around me applauded as a major step forward. (I’m just embarrassed their standards for me are so low.) I’m almost one semester in, and even though I still don’t know what to major in or what career path I’m working towards, I’m starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel. I’m getting good grades in my math class, which I never thought I’d be able to do. I could transfer to a four-year college, get a real bachelor’s degree. I just might end up going to one of those quirky east coast liberal arts colleges after all.

An African-American guy about my age comes up to my lane and unloads a handful of groceries on the belt. He is a walking greatest hits compilation of everything I find attractive in a man. Tall and slender, with broad shoulders. A dark red scarf tucked into his perfectly-fitting black pea coat. His movements are smooth, gentle. He’s slightly effeminate (not the loud and bitchy kind, more the graceful and sophisticated kind). Rectangular glasses compliment his square jaw and high cheekbones. I’m afraid to look directly at him lest I turn bright red and stammer like an idiot. So my eyes bore holes in his groceries as I scan them and mumble out my script.

“How are you doing tonight?”

“Well. And you?”

I have no idea what to say. He said “well” instead of “good.” No one does that. He asked me how I was doing. No one does that either.

“Great,” I lie, because when you ask your friendly neighborhood register biscuit how he is, you’re generally not looking to hear, “Crippled by clinical depression! And you?”

I continue my mumble-script. Does he have a membership card? No. Does he want one? Of course not, no one does.

SAM: I should flirt with him.

DEPRESSION: He’s probably not even gay.

SAM: Are you kidding? He has to be gay. Look at the way he walks. Listen to his voice. And for God’s sake, I’m ringing up his appletini mix! I should work that in somehow. Cheekily ask him if he needs someone to help him drink those appletinis.

DEPRESSION: Great idea! Then he can stare blankly at you and say he’s making them for a party. Or drinking them with his boyfriend. Or just with someone who isn’t a tangled knot of neuroses.

SAM: I’m getting better.

DEPRESSION: I wonder how many dates it would take for him to figure out what a loser you are? Are you even emotionally stable enough for a relationship right now?

His groceries all fit into one bag. I wonder if it means something that he didn’t go to the self-checkout lane like all the other evening customers? Or is that just wishful thinking? I take a chance, work up all my courage, and smile at him as I hand him his bag. He actually smiles back. I might have a heart attack.

I watch him as he leaves. He strides out of the store like he’s on a catwalk, poised, elegant, confident.

DEPRESSION: He probably thinks you’re racist because you were so unfriendly.

SAM: I smiled at him!

DEPRESSION: After acting really nervous and uncomfortable around him the whole rest of the time.

SAM: He smiled back at me! Maybe he thinks I’m cute. Maybe he’ll come back sometime soon.

DEPRESSION: Yeah, with his boyfriend. And he’ll tell him, “Let’s not go to that cashier. That’s the racist one.”

SAM: Oh, go fuck yourself. You ruined my life. I’m not listening to you anymore.

My depression tells me that this story is too long, too self-indulgent, too self-pitying. No one will want to read it. The dark humor is too dark to amuse anyone. The other stories on this website are way better. A story that is literally about folding laundry is more interesting than this story.

I keep writing.

Bit by bit, I’m learning that I’m not as worthless as I thought I was. I know that someday, I want a husband, and a house, and a cat. Maybe two cats. I’m starting to grasp that I could make that happen. I could have that, and even deserve it. I just have to go one step at a time. One semester at a community college. One smile at a cute boy. One story on a website.

Someday, somehow, I’ll be more than this.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Sam L.

As I sat on my bed gazing at the television screen watching BBC Parliament for the first time, it occurred to me that I will always remember this day, February 5, 2013, for this was the day in the United Kingdom where the gay marriage bill was either to be declined or accepted by the British parliament. I am just 19 years old and this is the first major change in gay rights I have witnessed or can remember in my entire life. As the news broke that the bill had been accepted I suddenly felt overwhelmed with emotion and joy. I am not the emotional type, in fact quite the opposite but I finally felt as if gay rights were moving on instead of moving back.

I live in a tiny village in Bristol, United Kingdom. We have seven shops and a high school, it’s the type of place where everyone knows everyone’s business and everyone has to air their opinion because there is nothing better to do. High school for me never felt like a school, it felt like a prison. I was held captive from 9 to 3:30 every day, all the time just counting down the seconds. I wasn’t openly gay but being somewhat effeminate I didn’t need to be, I didn’t get to come out of the closet, I was thrown out. There wasn’t a day that went by where I wasn’t knocked down or beaten or taunted, and in the end it became part of daily life.

By the time I was able to leave my high school the confident outgoing personality I once was had completely diminished. What remained was an empty, tired and unstable mess. I had numerous breakdowns including several years suffering from Anorexia Nervosa. Even as a young child I was teased and taunted and what childhood I did have was almost destroyed by the isolation I felt.

But turning 17 changed my life; I got accepted into a prestigious performing college which changed me forever. I met all manner of people, all races, all religions, and all sexualities and suddenly I didn’t feel so isolated. I started to develop a personality, I started to find my feet and become a person. When I turned 18 I hit the gay clubs in the city and met my boyfriend who I have been with for over a year and I started to recover as a person.

So last week it finally felt as if everything was beginning to fall into place, I felt as if my life was moving in the right direction and so was my country and I felt proud. I have never made any announcement of my sexuality to my family members other than my parents, partly due to the initial reaction my parents had as they banned me from telling anyone else. So on 5th February I updated my Facebook status (something I do rarely) to say:

“Today the gay marriage bill was accepted. I cannot help but think in a decade we’ll look back and think that this was a long time coming. Love is not gender, love is not something you control, love is love. Everyone is born to love who they love, we cannot change nor must we. Today something spectacular happened and love triumphed prejudice.”

The status was liked by over 60 people, and within those 60 people were family but more importantly several people that had previously bullied me during my time at high school, and I even received an apology via Facebook message from one individual. I felt as if I were in a daze, a moment of bliss, as my parents had accepted my boyfriend the world was accepting me.

But the very next night as I was stood at a bus stop, a man under the influence of drugs who identified that I was gay after attempting to start a conversation with me proceeded to attack me. Telling me that he ends his nights “slashing people’s throats” I feared for my life as he held me up against the screens of the bus shelter. He threw me into the road in front of oncoming track, and as I got back onto the pavement he once again grabbed hold of me and told me how easy it would be for him to kill me.

With dozens of people walking by I didn’t understand why not a single person intervened, he was just one man and I needed help. Then just as I had given up hope a gentleman appeared and took hold of my attacker to set me free, he urged me to walk away but just as I did my bus appeared and on it I went, the gentleman who had effectively saved me followed me on the bus to see how I was feeling, and he softly smiled at me and said nothing.

To many this event would replay in their minds as a negative, but to me I look back and think of it as a positive. It has restored my faith in humanity, although just one man stood forward, it was still one man, one man who saved another life. Those two days are amongst the most extraordinary of my short life, I don’t think I will ever forget what happened in those 48 hours, and I hope I won’t.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Jessica Marvin

My name is Jessica and I don’t exist. I am a ghost and an enigma. I’m the shadow that stalks my parents and the thorn in the side of my family. I am a transgender and I am happy. I’m not happy that my family finds me distasteful, far from it. I’d much rather have them embrace me and love me now as they once did. I spent the first 17 years of my life as the most unhappy and suicidal jerk you could imagine, my only relief was my love for theater.

Drama drew me because of its freedom and endless possibilities. In my normal life I had to be who the world wanted, a boring and depressed male, but on stage I could be whoever I wanted. On that glorious stage I could be as feminine as I wanted and although I got quite a few unfriendly comments, I was happy. The stage was where I could find peace from my inner demons and where I could embrace my “other side”. It is this “other side” that now is the real me.

I left that stage years ago now and the plays I was in, the friends I made, the laughs I had are all fond memories. It was from that stage that I found out how powerful friends are and although the old troupe has gone their separate ways I owe an awful lot to that crew of misfits. As I said though, that was years ago and I’ve moved onto college now. When I began college I was scared, I knew no one, I was in mid transition and I was going into medicine instead of performing arts. The night before I would attend my first class I remembered a favorite line of mine from a play. “All the world’s a stage.”

So now I don’t need a theater to feel secure. I don’t need the bright lights and the flashy costumes. Now my whole world is my stage and I am my own character.

by Radu Bradu

I woke up one day realizing that I was different from other kids. I didn’t know exactly how at first, but soon it became pretty clear. I still remember seeing a gay pride parade on TV when I was about 12 and then going to my father and asking what “homosexual” means. He said it is a filthy thing and we should never speak of it again. But speak we did eventually.

I came out to my parents when I was about 21 years old and I was really expecting them to understand. I am still surprised they didn’t and still don’t. I mean, it is such a natural thing for me. Love is such a natural thing for everyone, why is it so hard to accept love between two men or two women?

My father went on with the usual anti-gay rant, I really didn’t pay much attention, we’ve never been that close. But my mother told me I was the person whom she loved the most, how could I do this to her? What do I answer to this? I love her very much too and don’t want to lose her. So I’ve kind of postponed my coming out, I told them I’ll try and straighten up for their sake. I’ve lied to them my whole life, what was one more lie. I’m not proud of what I did.

Now I’m just trying to open them up to the idea of homosexuality as a normal aspect of human life, trying to use logic and arguments, but without much success. My mother I think is beginning to open up, but my father is also somewhat religious, and you can imagine how good that does me. My brother is as wonderful as my mother and has accepted me for who I am a long time ago. It wasn’t easy at first, I still remember one day when I was going on a date, he yelled as I was getting out the door: “That’s it, go and suck cock you fag!” Is this what straight people think we do on first dates? Anyway, he’s become really accepting gradually, He gives me hope that people do change and understand. But coming out and the acceptance of one’s family is just one side of the story. It seems clear to me that I must find my other half, or in less romantic terms, a life partner and start a family. But it seems pretty hard to do. Straight people take it for granted that they will find someone and get married and have children. For gays that is like an ideal we have to strive for, we have to work two times harder.

Im really frustrated I haven’t been able to have a relationship until now. I’m 26 and I feel I should be sharing my best years with somebody. But maybe that’s not a strictly gay related problem. I used to find refuge in sex but I realized that is not a very good idea. It’s just empty pleasure that makes you forget for a while what you really need. Unfortunately there’s no easy way to love and trust and intimacy.
I’m grateful for having wonderful supporting friends. Not all of them are gay but most of them are. I’ve always thought we gays should stick together. As accepting as a straight person would be, he can still never understand what gay people have to go through. Maybe I’m being dramatic, but we do have to put up with a lot, I’m just happy to see people or read stories of people who were able to lead wonderful fulfilling lives.
I hope that will also be my story someday.