I'm From Driftwood

by Thomas Wicker

It was one of those endless, sunny afternoons that disappear when you get older. I was nine years old and on the cusp, not of adolescence, but of being able to play in the ‘Big End’ at primary school. I’d always envied the older children this part of the playground. While us younger kids had to make do with the ‘Little End’, a narrow strip of concrete as dismal as its name, where it was just impossible to zoom around as Superman, they inhabited the Promised Land – a vast expanse where marbles roamed free and you could get out of breath just by running from one side to the other.

In the months before I moved up a class and was allowed into the Big End I’d begun to hover at the edge of it. Standing on the grate that divided the playground in two was an exciting experience for a pretty solemn and sensible little boy; I wasn’t breaking the rules by stepping over the line, but neither was I quite where I should have been. Behind me my classmates were half-heartedly playing hopscotch or squashing insects for fun. In front of me was everything else.

I was doing what I always did: standing on the outskirts and watching. I wasn’t concerned about the older kids saying anything to me because I knew that in their eyes I didn’t exist. In any case, on this particular day, the majority of them were at the far end playing a game of kiss chase. The girls were giggling and the boys looked flustered, as if they were learning the rules as they played. Even then, I somehow understood that the thrill wasn’t in being caught; it was in the possibility that you might be.

There was one boy in particular whose attention the girls kept trying to get. I recognised him as one of the best at sport, which made him about as different to me as was humanly possible. He looked older than the rest, with a lazy confidence that made him stand out. His shirt was un-tucked and he had taken off his tie. I was fascinated by him. And at that moment, I wanted him to chase me more than anything else in the world. Then the bell rang and the thought drifted away like dust in the air.

There have been bigger events since; landmarks such as coming out to my friends and family. But this careless moment, sandwiched between lessons and playing with my Transformers after school, looms large in my memory. Sometimes I yearn for that little boy’s obliviousness, his innocence, as much as he yearned to grow up.

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by Anonymous

Gay. I’ve considered this word throughout my life, trying to find the place for it and the meaning of it, to me.

Growing up in San Francisco, where the Gay Parade was as synonymous to me as a child as the Columbus Day parade. The stigma associated with being gay never transpired in my field of vision. Where I come from, gays are proud and fueled by their authority and freedom to express themselves. They can lie together outside on the grass or the beach and celebrate their life choice. Knowing that choosing who they love will never be compromised; Man, woman and transgender alike.

What I experienced in those early years is that love is universal. Same-sex love is not a demonic deviation of heterosexual love. Love is love. It comes from the young and old, rich and poor, Chinese and black… it comes from our hearts. Who we give it to is our choice.

So I carried this brilliant piece of knowledge with me on my journey through life. I applied it to every interaction I ever had, like when a friend of mine told me she was gay, but in the closet. I dragged her to every gay bar, party and event I could find. I wanted her to know, as I did, that she could love whoever the hell she wanted. I surely had.

Yet, throughout that coming out of the closet for my friend, I began to wonder what my own true intentions really were. What about the impulses I never had the guts to act on? I have always been attracted to and admired women. Yet, as a woman, I have always masked my attraction, as merely a keen observer who appreciates beauty. If I were true to myself, if I were completely honest, I would say that I long for nothing more than to lie with a woman and stroke her hair and kiss her neck.

I know inside, from the bottom of my heart, that I could love a woman more deeply and passionately than I could a man. My friend is successfully dating now. She is scheduled to have sex this weekend with a girl she met on the internet. Although I am in a relationship, engaged to be married, I don`t know what part of me wouldn’t give it all up for one moment like the one she will have.

I am afraid to admit this to myself, let alone to anyone else.

Gay has been redefined for me, over and over again. I know we are free to love who we choose. But I also know that when we choose it we are not free. I will pretend to have crushes on girls to incite illicit reactions in males but I will never tell them that I would choose her over them a thousand times over.

I will never call myself gay.

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by Terry K.

I already knew I was gay but hadn’t accepted it. I had crushes on friends and knew what attracted my attention at school, on the beach, on the street, at my tennis club, etc.

I remember when I was about 19 and had changed tennis clubs. I arrived early one Saturday and Ashley, a pretty blond boy probably a couple of years older than me and a country boy, asked if I would like to go out to a court and hit.

“Sure” I replied. He hit the ball okay, was a nice guy and yeah, very easy on the eyes.

We played on a back court that bordered the neighbouring house. The fence was not particularly high and it was covered in a flowering creeper.

As luck would have it, a ball flew over the fence at Ash’s end so he promptly scaled the fence and retrieved it. Upon his return to the court, he swiftly removed his shirt to shake out the twigs, leaves and flowers that had managed to find their way under it.

OH MY GOD! He had the body of an Adonis (how had I not noticed before?). I had never really noticed much about him, or the physique of guys like him, but on this day, the site of him in just his tennis shorts hit me like a lightning bolt.

Nothing happened between us (he was probably a straight boy anyway) and we were never close or anything. I saw him quite a few more times over the season but soon left the town for work and by the time I returned some years later he had moved on.

Although he was a nice guy and fit beyond belief, it was more the site of his abdominals and his chest that flawed me that day. I had never really been affected in such a way by the site of a semi-clad man. This was the definitive proof that a woman could NEVER flaw me in the same way.

Ashley, if you are reading this and you recognise yourself, thank you. You were the final proof I needed.

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by Neil

The words of my mother stayed with me for a long time.

“I don’t want a bent son” she had said when I was twelve years old.

She wasn’t referring to me, much to my relief at the time, but to my younger brother who had done something to incur this comment. I forget what.

Well, she did have a bent son.

I think she had a hard time coming to terms with the fact that one of her sons was gay and I don’t blame her for this. She was a product of the baby boomer generation when the only visible gay people were them likes of Charles Hawtrey and Larry Grayson. They were the definition of what it was to be ‘bent’ or ‘queer’ or a ‘poof’.

I couldn’t have been further removed from that.

I was a fat kid and quite strong, there was no effeminacy about me at all.

But as she made the comment I sat on the sofa, still in my school uniform and munching on some cereal, I remember thinking, “But you have got a bent son.”

I remember growing up in the working classes of Birmingham, knowing I was very different, I was not the ‘norm’. My early teenage years were filled with crush after crush, always on the men around never a fellow pupil or friend. I attended a boys school and if anything was going on I was not privy to it. I remember I had a strong crush on my Science teacher, a big bear of a man with thick legs and a lopsided grin. I didn’t learn much science, I whiled away the lessons imagining being with him, in his arms or lying on his chest the way I had seen women in films and on TV. Sex was an abstract concept, the though of it felt good but I hadn’t yet discovered the mechanics of it.

My attraction to big guys has never wained, perhaps part of the reason that I am a big guy myself.

Looking back, the whole of my teenage years were stifling and I really did not become my own person until the day I left home. I was surrounded by warring parents that included a step father who was constantly being unfaithful to my mother and a father who was nowhere to be seen. Even though he only lived 12 or so miles away he had chosen his new life and children over myself and brother. I would take the bus to school and then later to college, always fantasising about a life that seemed to be out of reach.

When I eventually moved out and moved to London, my life started to change. I suddenly had a few boyfriends and although each one was short lived I was learning how to be with another man both sexually and on an emotional level.

There never was any great coming out moment with my mother. I was living with a guy and she came to visit and over dinner she realised what the living arrangements were. And she cried. Quietly to herself she cried. I don’t know what or for whom she was shedding tears and I have never asked her.

Maybe she was forced to question and challenge her own prejudices, prejudices that had been forced upon her. If that was the case she won. Years later when her gay son got married to another man in front of 60 or 70 family friends, her pride was as immense as her love for them both.

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by Chris Allen Mason

I grew into a young man in the upper/middle class suburb of Houston, Texas known as Clear Lake City. Home of NASA’s Johnson Space Center. My dad scored an amazing job with a NASA sub-contractor at the beginning of the Space Shuttle program so we re-located from Hershey, PA. I never really encountered much true hate living in PA. It was the 70′s, people were less afraid of each other, and my life as I remember it was pretty normal and stress free. Yeah there were bullies in the neighborhood that effed with me but nothing out of the elementary school norm for the time really. But even then I knew I wasn’t like the other guys in the hood.

Upon arriving in Texas, I was quickly introduced to racism. New concept for me. Apparently it was not cool to hang with guys like my friend Scott. Huh? Since I could remember two of my mother’s and father’s closest friends were an interracial couple as I recall, the Johnsons. It was a confusing concept. White folks can’t hang with “black” folks? Um, HUH? Well FML. So, I found myself agreeing to stay in with the kids. Any kids really. Today, I’d be like WAIT A MINUTE NOW. But back then I was like 10. WTF did I know?

So, the Masons settled in, got a house, and got on with our new lives in the South. By 6th grade I had already had my first sexual experience with another guy. It wasn’t until 8th grade that I lost my virginity with a girl. Even then I was totally cool liking both boys and girls. But it was not until high school that EVERYTHING changed. The signs were there long before 9th grade but I was not yet awake as a human being. Not awake enough to know who or what I thought I might actually be. High school in Clear Lake was a thing. A total thing. Parts are blurry, parts are crystal clear. There is tons I remember, tons I do not. Part of that may be because of previous drug use or just selective recall.

I actually started getting crap for being different in 7th grade. By 7th I had already pierced both ears, was bleaching my hair, and being 100% belligerent to anyone who questioned me. No big surprise that when 9th grade came around I fell into the “new romantic” and “punker” crowd. The PIBs. Where I met my first true gays. Well one true gay at first — the late and magnificent Greg Cherry.  He was fearless and flawless. I first met him at Boy Scout Camp the summer before I started high school. We immediately became friends and I was totally stoked to learn we would be in high school together. I really was in love with him from the get go. What a soul. No, that never happened between us. Not that kind of love. Not that I remember. But what Greg did fill me up with was inspiration. He inspired me to be true to myself no matter what. To explore. To discover. And to give anyone who disagreed with or disapproved of us the finger.

At our high school the bullies were widespread. Greg, myself, and all of our buds endured a crap ton of abuse and hate because we had decided to be ourselves. We were a pretty tight bunch for a while there. Even today I still speak to many of my old mates — Carol, Pat, Kim, Ingrid, Kris, Andrea, Michelle and others. Thank the gods for Facebook. Ya know, even the girls got sh*t. It came from both sides. Some just for being friends with “the fags” and others for just being themselves. My dear departed friend Greg had his face smashed in at one point. It was a HATE CRIME. He was beaten down because he was was out, and had no shame. He was so brave. I miss Greg. He was a soldier.

My suffering was never as severe as Greg’s, but it sucked regardless. The running, the hiding, the holding my breath because if they hear me they’ll beat the sh*t out of me (again). That crap got old. My crowd offered an easy escape from the feelings that this torture brought to my head. The cigarettes, drugs and alcohol were all way cool and fun but it was the music and nightclubs I was brought to that really made an impact on me. It was all about the dance floor. I felt completely safe there. For that one moment — high as a kite and dancing my ass off — I completely forgot about Clear Lake City and all of the bullsh*t our peers insisted we go through. About how when I walked through a crowd at school I was pushed, shoved, and called a faggot. Didn’t matter if we went to Numbers or one of the city’s many alternative lifestyle teen clubs  I loved to dance. I remember sneaking out of the house when my folks would head off to the symphony at sunset and returning at sun-up. But once Monday came around and I was back at Clear Lake High, it became all too real once again.

I remember running for my life. Being chased by guys in cars who wanted blood. I remember learning that when thrown at a 7-11 window by the quarterback, I bounce. Walking home from school was always a challenge too. I had to find creative ways to not be seen. I would walk down the bayou behind the school, cut through apartment complexes and people’s yards, and skirt along the edges of the golf course to get to my home. Yeah, it sucked. But I rapidly became awesome at sneaking off campus so cutting class became way easy and habit forming. Because even the staff at the school gave me sh*t. Some of the teachers and principles really had it out for me. Eventually, and in an honestly short amount of time in the bigger picture of things, I got fed up with being pushed around. I had been in rehab twice and the only thing it offered was an escape from my troubles on the streets. I had run away from home a few times too. Today I know what I was running from, back then nobody got it. Not even my shrinks. So, I dropped out of high school. And when I left Clear Lake City I pretty much never looked back. Time and distance became one. Eventually I lost contact with my crew. Made new friends. Found new troubles. I’ll never forget my last day of school. Ingrid was there. We got in trouble for PDA — because we hugged. Those fuckers just had to get the last word.

My point of this long-winded story is that I, like so many other GLBT youth, was bullied. Sometimes for just being different and other times for being who I was, a young bisexual man. Pushed into a corner, I made some rash choices and consider myself WAY LUCKY to be alive to tell the tale. I thought about suicide several times as well. To escape the pain I hid inside. Even tried it unsuccessfully later on in life. Good thing I f*cked that up. For a guy who never thought he’d ever see 30, he is loving his 40′s.

I feel for today’s GLBT youth. I think the pressure they are under in this time and age is much greater than what was going on the 80′s. As adults we think that gay, bisexual, and transgendered youth are more accepted by society today but by their peers it appears nothing has changed. Just because we are represented on TV and in marketing out in the open doesn’t mean folks still like us. More do, but still too many do not. My heart goes out to these kids. These kids brave enough to be who they are. It ain’t easy. I know. I also know that ending it all forever is not an option. These kids have to choose life — or the bullies win. They need to know they are not alone.

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