Oh, I'm Gay?

It took me a long time to figure out 100 percent that I was gay. I mean a l-o-n-g time. But that speaks more to my naivete than anything else, because I certainly had clues.

For example: As a seventh-grader living at Eglin Air Force Base on northwest Florida's sugary-white Gulf coast, I'd go to youth-league baseball games with my dad -- not because I was remotely interested in the sport, but because the local team had a cute pitcher who always threw himself out of his shirt. Those glimpses of skin -- along with the Pixie Sticks I'd buy at the concession stand -- sustained me for weeks.

Of course, there were other clues in my early teen years. When pink bellies became a fad, I was in absolute heaven. And what budding Baby Boomer queer can forget TV shows like "Flipper," where kids our own age were running around shirtless for 30 minutes.

Still, I put those feelings on the back-burner. Not only did I have no idea what a "homosexual" was -- though I can still picture the precise moment I asked my parents about the word, which had just come up on a TV show (a rarity in the '60s) -- but I figured I would grow up like everyone else in the official version of Mainstream America and settle down with a wife and children.

Boy, was I stupid.

It began to dawn on me that I was gay -- though, again, that was such a foreign concept in my world that I didn't really understand it -- when I was a junior at Baumholder American High School in Germany. My best friend was a smart, witty, slightly stocky kid named Rich. Never once in the year or two we spent together at BAHS did the words "gay" or "homosexual" cross our lips. But even then, I suppose, my gaydar was finely tuned: I knew he was gay from Day 1. He, on the other hand, apparently was clueless about my orientation. It wasn't until about five years ago that I told him I was gay, too.

Anyway, I remember us going to bars in Baumholder (there was no true drinking age in Germany at that time) and getting plastered. Weekend after weekend. Once, when I stayed over at his house, we were stumbling home and I pretended to be drunker than I was. The reason? Simple: I wanted him to have to half-carry me home, knowing there was no way he could avoid skin-to-skin contact, thanks to a particularly loose shirt. It worked. One of his hands kept me from falling to the sidewalk -- pulling up my shirt in the process -- while the other wrapped around my naked waist. It was a total turn-on for me -- and, I'm guessing, for him.

Pretty strong clue, huh?

Idiotically, I continued to ignore the obvious for years after high school. Now and then, I'd "date" girls. The dates, needless to stay, never ended in sex, unless you consider a back rub to be sex. I think the reason I was so naive was twofold: 1) Although I was a media addict, newspapers and TV in those days pretty much pretended gay people didn't exist, so I wasn't exposed to issues like gay marriage that are now so commonly discussed; neither was I exposed to channels like MTV, which portrays gay folks as completely normal (not to mention trendy); and I wasn't exposed to the Internet, where chat rooms would have shown that there were millions of people just like me around the world. 2) I was scared. The little I read about homosexuality suggested it was a bad thing done by weird people. I was deeply into politics and journalism at the time, so I didn't spend much energy researching the topic. Call me a Sexual Capitalist: My attitude was laissez-faire -- whatever I would become, I'd become. Eventually, of course, it dawned on me that the mainstream media's portrayals were simple right-wing and Christian propaganda.

Slowly, I understood who I was. Slowly, I began dating guys. Less slowly, I began sleeping with guys. And I'm now who I am. But, as a 20something gay pal once told me with deep pity: "Oh, you missed out on things when you were young and cute. " Ouch. So, um, gay kids, don't put off your coming-out parties. You'll never regret being honest with yourself.