The Gay Student Center Web Community and Resource for Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Questioning College Students and Teens

Where to start.....

At 16, I fell madly in love with a boy a couple of years younger than myself. About a year later, and for over 3 years, we began sharing some most intimate times together. As he turned 17, he began to redirect his attentions to others, girls especially. I was devastated. We stayed friends though. After we talked it all over several times, I came to appreciate that I could do nothing but drive a wedge between us if I pursued our former relationship. I so desparately wanted to hang on to him, if not as a lover, as a friend. I remained depressed over losing him as a lover for several years but tried my hardest not to let him know how bad I felt. Although he could not express it, he knew.

Ten years later, I married the princess of all princesses. We had a child, a boy. I told her of my former love and she accepted it fully. My son does not know. She died in 1992 at 38 when my son was 13. Next week, my son will complete his first year away at college.

After all these years, I still hold a special place in my heart for my first love, even though he moved a continent away and he himself married.

I never really came out. I told a few of my friends from high school when we entered college and they took it well, but I maintained a "straightness" in their presence. I never really felt compelled to come out. To me, I was not on any crusade. I did not feel, as some will say, that I was living a lie. My sexual preference is a personal matter between me and whoever my lover might be.

Yes, many years have gone by, I have loved and lost, I shared a rich marriage and had a child, but I still yearn for the warm comfort of a young man in my arms, in my bed. On occasion, I have been able to experience that through the years. I have no regrets for the life I have led. I have only two deeply sad rememberences: Losing Doug and losing Candy.

I guess my point is, every gay guy does not have to come out; every gay guy does not have to stay closeted; every gay guy does not have to wind up turning to suicide for relief. We all must find our own satisfactory way of playing the cards we were dealt. In the end, its not the cards, but how we play them that counts.

Oh, and never forget, the taunting cheerleaders are not in the game, they are merely bystanders to be ignored.