I'm From Driftwood

by Austin Yu

Over 15 years ago, I came out to my parents while in high school. Specifically, to my mom after a heated argument about whether or not I can go play miniature golf with a few friends over the summer. Specifically, with Rob, my cross-country teammate and otherwise blond Adonis. For one reason or another, my mom did not want me to go, and the abridged conversation went like this:

Me: I really want to go.
Mom: No.
Me: But I already told Rob that I wanted to go.
Mom: Tell him you can’t.
Me: But I love him.

And thus began my decade-plus long struggle for us to come to terms with the fact that I am gay, and that they have a gay son.

Through my later teen years and into early adulthood, we revisited the issue a handful of times. Not to say that it didn’t run as an undercurrent through every waking moment of our lives, we just outwardly addressed it a handful of times. Though some conversations may have started out peacefully and even with good intentions, all of them devolved into shouting, tears, and frustration. We approached the topic like a cold war, two diametrically opposed parties with tension brewing just beneath a veneer of calm, ready at any given moment to detonate and scatter the pieces of our quasi-happy existence into the great unknown.

We’d fight, endure a few days of silence, then resume our regularly scheduled repression. Through two significant relationships, I learned rather adeptly how to separate my romantic life from my familial one, how to tend to one while keeping an eye on the other, hoping to never let either know that they are essentially being compartmentalized, quarantined. East is East.

Then, 2008 rolled around.

On one nondescript Sunday towards the end of May, I decided that I would accompany my mom and dad to church. My parents have regularly attended church for years, and I knew that my mom appreciated my company there, even if my faith was conspicuously absent. That morning, we sat fourth row from the podium, right off the center aisle.

Little did I know that I inadvertently stumbled upon an entire “sermon” on the “sanctity” of marriage and how it was under attack by the homosexual liberals and their Prop. 8 shenanigans. How dare we?

I’ve heard enough of this kind of rhetoric to immediately pick up on where it was heading. The light bulb in my head was Pavlovian. The “pastor,” Bill, began talking about Rebecca and Isaac, the miracle of matrimony and childbirth, and how modern day times are constantly trying to reinterpret and redefine these tenets. I was like a dog, salivating at the sound of a bell; I knew what was coming.

I wriggled uncomfortably. My eyes darted around the room to see if anyone was nodding along, as church-going people are wont to do during sermons, I’ve noticed. Finally, it became too much to bear. I stood up, looked Bill directly in the eyes as he prattled on, grabbed by jacket, and stormed down the seemingly endless aisle with my head held high and eyes fixed on the door in the back. I let it slam as audibly as possible on the way out. Very diva.

Knowing I could not walk back into the church without it symbolizing some sort of defeat, I stood by the back door and listened. It was nothing but the usual diatribe, appalling and boring. When, finally, the service ended, I found my parents rather quickly. No discernible expression on their faces, and they said ‘hi’ as if nothing had happened, as if I had not disappeared in a huff just half an hour ago. This further fueled my simmering rage.

Bill walked over and schmoozed with them, and they smiled and laughed in return. The pit of my stomach was an active volcano of ire. Then Bill turned to me, extended his hand, and introduced himself.

I had but two milliseconds (nano, if I want to be dramatic) to decide what to do. Though the issue may be my war, this was not my battle, or my grounds. I could let Bill know exactly what I thought of him, his “sermon,” and my absolute disgust that he would turn a place of worship into his own political platform. But I could walk away from him, never see him again and never feel the repercussions of my actions. My parents, however, would face a different outcome.

So with my hands anchored at the bottom of my pantpockets and a stare that I hoped could melt glaciers, I said, “I know who you are.” His hand lingered in mid-air for a moment longer, and then he awkwardly excused himself.

My parents were livid.

I later discovered through my sister that they were mostly angry because I was rude to Bill. Unbelievable, I thought, though not entirely unexpected. It was safer for them to focus on trees when the forest was a great, and decidedly anti-great, unknown.

I fumed about it to Sam, my partner, that evening. Always the same approach, always the same conclusion. And so, after much deliberation, I decided to try a different tack.

I called my parents a few days later, and presented the terms as calmly as I could muster: Accept me for who I am, and understand that there is no changing me: I love men. You do not have to accept all gays and lesbians of the world, and you do not have to join PFLAG or march down Market Street in June. But meet my partner. Embrace my friends. Play a part in this part of my life, or you don’t get any other. Should we ever speak again, you must comply.

And thus began a month of silence. Sam asked if I had picked the right battle. I had no other battles. Over the course of 15 years, there was nothing but this battle. Only the stakes have changed: all of me, or none. No more compartments. As bad as this sounds, I felt justified in throwing a tantrum and laying down this ultimatum. It was the right thing to demand.

The stakes were high, though, and the odds were stacked against me (if the past decade and a half were any indication). Yet, I knew that we could not go on dancing around the same bush. If I were to completely cut ties with them, I could do it knowing that I stood up for what I believed in and did the best I could.

A few months later, my parents and sister, along with 5 gay guys including me and Sam, had dinner at Naan ‘n Curry together in Union Square. It was surreal.

Two years later, I turned 30, bought a house, somehow managed to get Sam to buy me a ring without even trying. All within a month. My parents have now met all of my close friends, and they see Sam on a regular basis. They ask about him when he’s not around. We have talked about my being gay and gay issues in general and we’ve ended those conversations with peace in our hearts and a deeper understanding of who we are as people. I have much to be thankful for.

When Sam and I began construction to add an additional bathroom to the upstairs level of our loft, we were told it was a small job, requiring less than a month’s time with minimal disruption to our lives.

But as construction projects go, the scope crept until it disappeared into the horizon, and we were displaced after the second night without a place to sleep. We took my parents up on their offer, moved in with them, and left 40 days later.

It was a rare opportunity for my parents to get to know Sam, and vice versa, and they all developed a level of comfort with each other that may have taken a lifetime to develop otherwise. My mom discovered that Sam likes yogurt, so she went to Costco and bought two 24-count boxes of Activia. My dad made a pan-fried soy and ginger halibut dish that he knew was Sam’s favorite. Twice. After dinners, my mom would brew a pot of jasmine tea, something to which Sam has quickly grown accustomed. And throughout these 40 days, they welcomed him, and us, into their home and lives, and allowed themselves into ours.

On the weekends, I was typically the last one out of bed in the morning. As I would shuffle through the hall and down the stairs for breakfast, I often heard my parents laughing, and Sam laughing, and conversation lobbying back and forth like an effortless round of tennis. I was thankful to have been an outsider during those moments, observing unnoticed, but listening to what I interpreted as family.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Ambrose V.

“Are you gay?”

“I am.”

“That’s so cool!”

So went my most recent “coming out” conversation, with one of the students in my advisory class at the high school where I teach in northern Texas. I had my first such conversation twenty-nine years ago, driving my friend, Trent, back from a high school dance in downtown Juneau to his house near mine in the Valley:

“I want to tell you something, but I’m afraid it could hurt our friendship, and I don’t want it to. It’s hard to talk about, and I’ve been avoiding telling you, but I want to.”

“Okay.”

“I’m gay.”

“Okay. It’s no big deal. Just slow down!” Apparently, my nervousness had caused me to tense up and clamp down, including clamping my foot down on the gas pedal. “Well,” I thought afterward, “that went a lot better than I feared.”

Same thing happened a few months later when I came out to my little clique of friends gathered for a boozy evening at my house while my parents were away on a date. My friends took it in stride, acted as if it were old hat to have one of their own come out as gay—we put a lot of stock in being the sophisticated set at school. But really, we maybe weren’t all that far ahead of the curve: A couple of years later, the younger sister of my friend, Karen, came out to her friends and family, my younger brother’s best friend came out to everyone in her history class and began sculpting nude female busts in art class, and finally, my younger brother came out, too. All to relatively little grief and drama.

It was another story with my mother. My parents came around, but it wasn’t easy with or for Mom.

Anyway, little would I have thought driving down the Egan Expressway with Trent that I would still be having similar conversations, experiencing something like the same nervousness, culminating in the same sense of relief—though not as seemingly earth-shattering—twenty-nine years later. It’s surprising to me, and a little sad, how little things have changed in nearly three decades. To be sure, it’s gotten a little easier for young people—I am no longer very surprised when a student tells me in a journal entry or essay the struggles he or she is experiencing coming out to friends or family—it would have been unthinkable for me to confide in a teacher. But there is still struggle, and not that different from what my brother and I went through.

There is one difference. For my students now, coming out sometimes involves a boyfriend or girlfriend, even if they don’t often use the words and seem to regard the concept of “dating” as quaint. For them, being gay is about relationships. For my generation, coming out in our twenties was a part of sexual liberation. It was about sex and sexual partners—having a boyfriend or girlfriend was just not much on the map of possibilities.

That’s not really how I wanted it. At some level, I wanted the same kind of experiences available to my heterosexual peers, no more or less “innocent” or focused on sex than for them. I remember one occasion, during the year I spent attending classes at a lycee in France right after I graduated from high school, attending a dance organized at the Protestant Students Hall in Paris where I was staying for a week’s vacation from my school near Lyon. I was taken with one of the other boys and asked him if he wanted to dance, and was thoroughly embarrassed when he laughed and said, “What, you and me?!” assuming that couldn’t be what I had in mind.

I don’t mean to suggest I was a Pollyana. During my first year of college in Portland, Oregon, having my first sexual experiences was high on my list of priorities. During fall break, I scheduled a trip to San Francisco with the express intent of having sex, and abandoned my friend Deborah, with whom I was staying at the workers’ residence hall where she lived, on the first two evenings after my arrival to hightail it to the Castro disco clubs in pursuit of that quest. With some success, I might add. My first conquest was a somewhat tawdry affair in which I went home with a middle-aged collector of cinema memorabilia and starlet’s autographs who interrogated me at some length about my sexual history and any danger I might have of carrying STDs. But, I spent the second night with a tall, handsome, sweet and surprisingly protective Filipino guy just a few years older than me, who truly initiated me into the pleasures of sexual intimacy. Everyone called him David, but to me he confided his real name: Djuwan. It still makes me smile to recall it.

But, having gotten the “having sex” business out of the way, I devoted myself during the second semester to what I really wanted: finding a boyfriend. Surprisingly—especially given the fact that I considered myself an atheist (albeit open to the possibility of a non-theistic “spirituality”)—I came closest to finding him at church. Well, sort of church. Brett and I noticed each other the first time I attended a Quaker meeting in Portland, and he came right out on the walk to the bus afterwards—he had volunteered to accompany me—and asked me if I was gay. We started hanging out and it wasn’t long before he asked me to sleep over in the house he shared with his mom, a lesbian, feminist Quaker. I met her at breakfast the morning after; she seemed to like me and to take it in stride that her son and I had spent the night together in his bed.

Brett and I spent a fair amount of time together in coming months, but I never really considered us boyfriends—he seemed much younger than me, and I probably made too much of the difference between my college life and his life finishing the last year of high school. The next year, the tables turned—I fell head over heels with a boy in the Gay Student Association I helped form at our college, but he was less interested in anything other than a casual sexual relationship. And, during the subsequent few years of college (I was on the extended graduation plan!), I had a number of one-night stands or more protracted flings, often hoping to become boyfriends with boys interested in the sex, but not in identifying as gay, or at least not to the degree that would have been required in “having a boyfriend.” Sure, I enjoyed the sex, but (with the exception of one memorable assignation with the sextant in the Cathedral in Nice, where I was vacationing during a year spent at the University of Strasbourg, or the summer of the following year with a weekend spent on Long Island with a former monk I met at a cinema off Times Square after working for a month as a camp counselor in upstate New York), I kept hoping it was a prelude to something more, and kept on coming away disappointed. As a generation, we were liberated enough to have gay sex, but not to fall in gay love—for most of us, I think, forming permanent, gay relationships just seemed too far beyond the pale.

Before abandoning all hope of that, I gave it one more go—with Michael, a boy I got to know in the Gay Students Alliance at the University of Oregon and through mutual friends. We moved in together too soon, and I tried too hard to fall in love with someone with whom I was not really very compatible, but who was the only boy I’d met since Brett who seemed equally interested in actually having a long-term relationship with another guy. After acknowledging the lack of real love and breaking it off with him, I threw in the towel—decided I would have a go at “going straight.” That was crazy, of course, but I’m an obstinate fellow, and devoted too many years trying to deny my gayness.

But, if nothing else, those years I spent “back in the closet” did bring about the shift in sensibility I’ve been trying to evoke. By the time I regained my senses and “came out” yet again, gays were no longer fighting for just sexual liberation, but for the right to marry, to form families and have their long-term loving commitments acknowledged and respected. Now, I’m happily married (though not according to the laws of my Bible-belt state) to a man who shares with me the responsibilities of raising, along with their mother and her new husband, my two daughters. It’s been a long, winding road from that moment in the car with Trent back in Juneau, but I wouldn’t undo it—I like where it’s finally brought me.

by Rick Clemons

It all started as I kicked out of the womb. No, I didn’t have an epiphany as I ventured down the birth canal. And it wasn’t some stress of being birthed that caused me to be gay. In reality, it was the venturing into the world that launched me into the yet uncharted territory of finding my true self.

Beyond the crib and potty training I embarked into the typical yet atypical life of a young boy. Riding bikes, playing Indians and Cowboys, watching Gilligan’s Island. On the other side of me I was fascinated with art, envisioned myself dancing on stage, and was a veritable fountain of emotions beyond what a “normal” young man should have.

In high school, the yearnings and stirrings led me to tip toe into relationships with girls, enjoying the kissing, heavy petting, and wonderment of what was happening between my legs, yet still not feeling like I was an active participant in the experience. Of course, like most gay men (if they would be honest), I had numerous unconscious crushes on my best friend, the gym teacher, and other guys that I found myself purposefully working my way into any activity that would just get me close to them. However, it was all very unconsciously conscious in retrospect.

In 1982 I was away at college and had 1) been sneaking off campus to take dance classes, 2) cruising around town, finding the few gay bars that existed, yet, never having the nerve to go in, 3) found myself being more and more bold with guys I perceived to be gay in my dorm…yet still not acting on my urges. All of this collided with a phone call home to Mom and Dad in which I announced “I’m Gay!” Not realizing how that conversation would change my life and save my life, I now see clearly that I may have been gay, but wasn’t truly ready to be gay. So back in the closet I went after some therapy and because, quite honestly, it wasn’t my time to be myself.

In 1986, after landing my first job out of college, I met a kindred spirit. This spirit just happened to be a woman. Joy of joys, I wasn’t gay after all. But who was I kidding. Yes we connected – intellectually, energetically, likes, dislikes, etc. I was able to be sexual with her without a lot of effort and before I knew it Mom and Dad were proudly standing for family wedding photos with their son who was no longer gay. Or so it seemed.

The years progressed and the epitome of married with kids prevailed. Nice home, world travel, successful careers, two beautiful daughters, good friends, ample money, yet below the layers of fat (close to 300 pounds on my 6’5” frame) I was miserable and life consisted of drinking, eating, keeping peace at home and sneaking around looking at gay porn and being a cheat. Yes, I admit I was a cheater. Not proud of it and making no excuses. Yet, I don’t believe that “once a cheater always a cheater.” Why? Because when you find yourself and you live your truth, “What is there to hide?” Nothing!

In 2002 on a trip to London, I found myself in the arms of a beautiful Brit, in his hotel room and for the first time I knew what being gay could truly be. We didn’t have sex, we had deep conversation and real intimacy…not sex. This really threw me for a loop! What was this I was feeling? How could this be happening? Who was I becoming? Two days later and a 12-hour flight back to the States I had answered all those questions and was ready to face my truth. A truth that there was no turning back from, or going back into the closet for, ever again.

I had seen what intimacy, passion, communication, and non-sexual life could be like with a man. Even weighing in at close to 300 pounds, this beautiful man had found me attractive, wanted me, and saw in me something that until that moment I hadn’t even seen in myself – a real man, a gay man, who needed to love himself and start living his truth. At that moment, the weight began to drop off of me, figuratively and literally.

Upon arrival at home, I summoned up every bit of courage I had and said, “Frankly my dear, I’m gay!” I’m not going to sugarcoat the rest of the story and say it was a fabulous celebration and we lived happily ever after. However, what I will share is, we (my ex-wife, my two beautiful daughters, my partner, and I) became the Modern Family before it was ever a hit TV sitcom. Did it happen overnight? Hell no. Was it easy? Hell no. Did it take work, compassion, give and take? Hell yes.

Is our story a fairy tale? To some it does seem that way. But in reality, when someone comes out of the closet, the first place to start with acceptance is within themselves. You’ve got to be 100% in you, your mind, your heart, and your body as an LGBT individual before you can expect anyone else to love you and accept you. Secondly, just because you’ve been preparing for this for 18, 25, 32, 38, 54 years – whatever your age when you come out – doesn’t mean all the rest of your peeps have had that same opportunity. It’s a bitch slap upside the head for most people when they hear the words, “I’m gay.” At that moment you have to realize you’ve just come out, but they may have just gone in the closet.

I have a theory, and maybe it’s because of the work I do as a coach working with all individuals through the “coming out journey,” that the more room we make for everyone to be in the journey in their way, the sooner we can all continue to live the journey of our lives exactly as we are intended.

Today, I am blessed. Blessed with a loving ex-wife; daughters who are very open-minded and non-judgmental towards others; a fantastic, patient, and sexy partner; parents who’ve taken their own journey and arrived at a space where mutual respect thrives; but most of all, I’m blessed to be doing work that means more to me than my jet-setting life ever did. I’m fortunate to wake up each and every day and work with people to help them cultivate their truth and embrace it.

My story contains pain, hurt, confusion, joy, fear, discouragement, happiness, and a different way of being in the world. In reality, it reflects life. The same life that anyone from any walk of life experiences. I’m thankful that I’ve been able to have this life, this experience, and to now help others grow into themselves with love, compassion, and respect.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Anonymous

Until 4th grade I lived in a town of 600 people. Then through high school I lived 5 miles away from a town of 40 people, about 30 miles from the nearest sidewalk. In college I lived in a town of 12,000 people and it was the largest city anywhere for the next 300 miles until you got to Albuquerque or Denver.

Maybe my region is unusual, but we’ve always had a fairly well networked gay community here. There are picnics, camp outs, dances, happy hours and other social events. People here are also fairly live-and-let-live, I never encountered much homophobia growing up.

I started coming out to my friends and family when I was 20. I moved to Denver when I was 23, but moved back last year for work. I am now completely out to all my friends I grew up with, and also completely out in a ranching community. I have never had a problem. The worst I have encountered is that some people don’t know how to react so they don’t have too much to say. That’s fine with me as I am still treated courteously and as an equal.

I was excited to live in Denver and to be in a larger gay community. It is fairly easy to get to know all the guys out here within a couple of months. Pure numbers game, I guess.

But while I was in Denver I encountered a lot of gay guys who openly made fun of where I grew up. I also had a lot of trouble relating to people who spent their entire lives in cities and suburbs. While I was in Denver I got into a long-term relationship, but ironically, the guy was from rural Wyoming. That showed me a lot about what I wanted in a relationship.

I made many great friends in Denver, but I was always a little lonely there, especially in trying to find my way through the gay scenes there. I think we need to remember that bailing out for a gay scene in a major city won’t always lead us to happiness, especially if our roots are in a smaller area. It is important to give some credence to both environments. Go make connections in the cities, but if it is your home, don’t forget where you are from.

-(Share your story with us!)

by Nancy Ponte

I was only 16 when I realised that I was a lesbian, when a lot of the relationships that I had with guys failed, just because I felt that something was wrong with me.

My lesbian love story started when I was in high school. I met a strange girl in 2010 and we became friends. She also supported me through a difficult period of my life. A year after, we understood that we were in love with each other so we started dating. After a year of a beautiful relationship, one of my girlfriend’s relatives found out about our “wrong” relationship, went to my house and told all the information he knew about us to my parents, plus he added a lot of lies about me, saying that I’m a whore, that I lured my girlfriend to lesbianism and more. My parents were so upset with me because I did not tell them absolutely anything and they supported my girlfriend’s family.

As a result, it was forbidden for us to meet, or have any contact ever again, or her relatives would harm my family. That was their last threat. My girlfriend’s mother changed her school, phone number and house, just because she wanted to keep her daughter away from me. My parents did not accept me the way I was, as I never came out to them, so I lost their trust too. I was so upset that I cried almost every moment of the day. All of my friends had abandoned me as they didn’t want to be involved with me and my problems. The only person who stayed with me was our common best friend who was supporting both of us and I’m still so thankful for her!

After all this hell that we’ve passed through, I decided to start my life again without her. I started having love partners just to forget her. That was the most stupid thing that I’ve done in my life, as I started drinking and I regret about it nowadays. I did not understand that I would never forget her. My feelings for her were growing every day more and more and I could not live a minute without thinking about her.

A few months after our breakup, I went to find her when I got the chance to do so. She was shocked when she saw me and asked me the reason of my coming, as I replied to her, “I just wanted to see that you’re alright.” Then her eyes were filled with tears, but our conversation continued to be cold and strict. From that day, we started secretly talking again and I was over the moon!

Two months later, we connected our lives again and from that day we started dating again. We promised to each other to be careful not to be discovered until we finish high school and from that day we never cared about what people said about us. My parents have accepted me for who I am and realised that I am happy with this person. As for her mother, I don’t think that she’ll ever accept our relationship, which breaks my girlfriend’s heart but we have chosen this difficult path by ourselves, so we have to face the difficulties of the society we are living in. Plans for the future and the wish to move to a European country is the only hope that we can have for a better life.

-(Share your story with us!)

holisticsexualhealth:

polyverse:

From this blog:

“The below is a compilation of common assumptions I hear from folks when they are trying to grasp polyamory. 

Group Sex

Yes, group sex can happen within polyamory.. and yes, it can be a heck of a lot of fun. No, it is not the purpose or function of polyamory. In fact, there are several polyamorous folks who have never had a group sexual experience. Group sex within polyamory would require that you have 3 or more people who are all in a relationship with each other, and that’s not always the case.

In actuality, it’s the strength of the individual dyads (2 people) within a larger relationship that gives a larger group relationship potential for healthy longevity. Which means that each pairing, whether sexual or not, needs ample time together.

Lots of Sex

I don’t know that there’s any actual statistical data available on whether or not a polyamorous person has more sex than a monogamous person. But I personally can’t say that this would be true. Sure, a polyamorous person may have more sexual variety in his or her life and more partners. But let’s face it - there are only so many hours in a day and a lot of things to fill those hours. However, it is true that when you’re in a new relationship, it is far more likely to have more frequent sex than in an established long term relationship - and in poly, you have likely hood to have more new relationship occurring. 

Polyamory allows you to create a whole person out of multiple

On a recent episode of the Montel William’s show, this was brought up as a benefit of polyamory.  I personally have problems with this statement, because it assumes that people are pieces to a puzzle to create a whole. Yes, you may indeed find a quality in one sweetie that another doesn’t have (perhaps one likes wine and does dishes, and the other is well read and likes dancing). However, when reality bites, it’s not simple as mix-n-matching your lovers to create a whole.  You will find that each person you’re involved with will have a lot of overlapping qualities. And you’ll also find that some of the qualities you would desire aren’t present in any of your sweeties.  Or perhaps for practical reasons, a quality you really desire in your daily life is only available in a sweetie you get to see every so often. 

The fact of the matter is, it’s best to find completeness in yourself first and foremost. Take responsibility for your own happiness, and don’t continue to frustrate yourself and your sweeties by what they perhaps don’t have. 

It’s easier for a woman

I often hear people tell me that it must be easier to pursue polyamory if you’re a girl, or a couple, or a single or a guy. And that’s simply not the case. Even a hot, attractive single woman will encounter plenty of difficulties in finding relationships. Usually because so many people treat them as a commodity and expect them to just morph into their lives seamlessly. Couples, especially those new to polyamory, usually have unrealistic expectations of how relationships outside of their own will work. Guys usually have a bad stigma, or assume that they can’t do polyamory because guys in other alternative lifestyles (such as swinging) have given single males a bad reputation.  

Magic Formula

Sorry, there is no formula or pattern that you can follow to make polyamory work. Each relationship you have is a unique as the individuals involved. You’ll have to find what works for you and the people you’re involved with. There is no hard and fast right and wrong way to do polyamory. “

This is wonderful