When did you come out?

[Spida]

Just wondering when you came out? I mean actually decided that you could go to gay clubs, flirt with guys and just live day to day without being gay or trying to figure out stuff, or act as if you were straight. I don't mean when did you take out the full page ad in the Post saying I'M GAY! Just got comfy with it.

 

I was 34 much too old, but there is no reason to look back now, no regrets, I have a wonderful life and have had so much fun, done great things, but now it is even better cause I can be me!

 

Spida.

[eastbayguy]

A rainy, February night in 1979. I had just moved from Kansas to California. Decided to head in to San Francisco, via BART. Inexorable forces drew me to the original Hamburger Mary's on Folsom. After hanging at Mary's a while, I hopped in a cab and asked the driver where I should go for the rest of my evening. The cab driver turned around, gave me a penetrating stare, and took me to The Cafe at Market and Castro.

 

Shortly after entering, many mysteries about life were answered. Made a bunch of new friends that very night and ended up going home with some of them. Haven't looked back.

 

What a wonderful life...

 

--EBG

[Guest jeffOH]

(channeling Sofia Petrillo)

Picture it. A cold snowy night in Sciotoville, Ohio, Dec. 23, 1982.

I was home from college for break and had gone to a Christmas Party at a friend's home. Even though I was drunk, I thought I was fine to drive to my parent's home just a couple miles away. Halfway home, I slid off the narrow country road into a snowdrift. Fortunately, it was in my Uncle Jim's front yard. Woke him up(2am), called Dad who came to get me and take my drunk ass home. Mom met us at the door with the usual, "Is he drunk again/call the sheriff", she asked/yelled? Dad went back to bed. It was at that moment I decided to tell Mom that I was gay. I figured that since she was already upset, why not get it over with. Not exactly the best timing, but whatever. We talked, I told her, she cried, I cried. Needless to say, it wasn't the Merriest of Christmases. She passed the confirmation along to my Dad a couple of months later.

 

My parents had accidentally found out that I'd had sex with a guy when I was a junior in high school. On Thanksgiving Day 1979, after my Mom overheard my end of an explicit phone conversation with him, they FREAKED OUT! They immediately went to see our preacher. They wanted me to go talk to him (I refused!). They wanted to press charges because he was 18 and I was 16 (I told them that I was the one who had initiated the whole thing). They wanted me to go see a psychiatrist. They wanted to take me out of my school and send me to another school. Lots of drama! I played it off as an experimental phase and became very secretive for the next 3 years.

[OneFinger]

I had my first gay experience with my best friend in about 1965. But, I didn't go to my first gay bar until 1977 (and that was by accident - didn't know it was a gay bar). That was the beginning of my coming to grips with my gayness. Finally came out to my family and friends in 1983.

 

For me, coming out was a long, involved processed. Only wish I had done it sooner.

[Rick Munroe]

At 16, I told my friends I was gay after my parents told me I was gay. At 17, I met Derek and fell in love and at 18 I started having sex with Derek many, many, many times a day. I've never been in the closet...except for the time my bully brother locked me in there when I was 13, which was fine with me because that was where I hid my secret stash of Playgirls. ;-)

[FrancoDiSantisxxx]

Richard Gere and Cindy Crawford

 

I never was "in."

 

I used to buy Playgirl magazine when I was about 13. When asked, I always said I liked men. I used to plan my television viewing around whomever was currently hot and in as little clothes as possible (was there any other reason to watch "Manimal?")

 

As an alter boy in a strongly religious, Catholic family, I waited until I was 18 before I went to a gay bar and I was also 18 before I had sex, but I "cruised" my first man when I was 15, at a straight bar.

 

When the drinking age was still 18, it was not hard to get into a bar and some of my older brother's friends were very well put together and hot. Even though it was a straight bar, some heterosexual men also take their shirts off when dancing. Especially when the weather outside is still 80 degrees at night and there is no working AC in the club. This one friend of my brothers kept ordering vodka on the rocks. I assumed "on the rocks" was some sort of mixer, so I asked him to order me one. After a few of those, I asked him if I could touch his chest. He was very cool about it and let me. The next weekend, when my brother drove me home, he told my mother later that her son (i.e., me) was probably bisexual.

[+ Charlie]

I had my first male-on-male sex with a stranger when I was 17, and immediately told my best friend, who calmly told me he had been doing that since he was 12. I didn't come out completely, however, until I was 19, when I told my parents. After that, I didn't care who knew. I became active in a gay lib organization when I was 21, and started living with a partner when I was 22. I didn't lead a televised gay pride parade, however, until I was 33.

[Guest RandyRon]

If the question is when I first had sex with a guy, the answer is at about age 9 (yes 9!). I would put on one of my mother's slips and my playmate would play with my nipples. First oral sex was at age 14 when another buddy and I would trade blow jobs.

 

As for "coming out" to friends and family, there was no big announcement,I just stopped pretending that I liked girls when I was in my mid 20s. Dont' think anyone was very surprised since I brought my friends home and some were not exactly "butch."

 

Most of my nieces told me they knew when they were in high school. Glad to say it hasn't mattered as I've stayed very close to both friends and family.

[Rick Munroe]

>Dont' think anyone was very surprised

>since I brought my friends home and some were not exactly

>"butch."

 

It's funny; I've never understood statements like that because some of the most effeminate guys I've ever known have been heterosexual, and some of the most über-macho men I've known have been gay. Then again, I also have a Chinese friend who sucks at math and a Black friend who can't rap, so maybe I just live in a wacky bizarro world.

[Funseeker 22]

Well Rick,

No stereotyping here. !!

And your rapping and math are ??