I only know that when my hormones started raging at puberty, they did not push me toward the girls. It was difficult to try to act like one of the guys, when all the guys started to talk about getting busy with the girls. So I tried to keep my mouth shut and analyze how this happened.
Although I played shy for the first few years, my true personality rose to the top. I'm fairly outgoing and friendly. I made friends pretty easily. Most often with girls. In my analysis, I just attributed this to the fact that I had spent the first few years of my life with only my sister as a playmate. We lived in rural southeast Texas on the plant grounds, where my dad worked. We were isolated from other children, and she was older. She got to set the mood for a lot of the play, and I got used to playing house and putting on lip-sync shows for my mom. As I grew older and my family moved to a city in northwest Louisiana where there were lots of other kids, my sister grew a bit impatient with my wanting to hang out with her and her new girlfriends. So reluctantly, I started befriending the boys in the neighborhood.
Now that was a bit tough. Each of the boys were rough-and-tumble, and hell, I'd been playing with my sister and her dolls, twirling batons, singing Beach Boys songs and talking with her about Donny-freaking-Osmond.
I tried to analyze my friendships with my childhood male friends. At the onset of my interactions with them, I took a lot of ribbing. They called me names like "sissy" and worse. We would hang with the teenagers sometimes at the park up the road. The teenagers used to get special joy out of telling me that I had a spider on my back.
Being a wimpy little pip-squeak, I would flail all over the place, screaming and clawing at my back, eventually working myself up to a crying jag (I know, folks ... pitiful, but true). My friends would try to help me, telling me that there was no spider. I would eventually settle down and my friends would lead the crying little queer away. They did stand by me, but I could tell that they were more than a little ashamed at the affiliation.
I tried to look at my relationship with my father. It was less than ideal ... oh, to be honest, there was almost NO communication, so there could be NO relationship. (And Dad ... if you ever read this: I understand that you loved me then, you love me now, and you'll always love me. Ditto back to you, big guy). I thought that the absence of a chummy dad might have fueled my need for a loving relationship with another male.
When everything first came out about my sexual orientation, I got a little surprise one day. I was replacing the toilet seal in my bathroom one Saturday afternoon, covering in sweat, dirt, and nasty black wax. I sensed someone looking at me. I looked up to see my sister, who had come into my house quietly. She was just standing there and looking at me as tears ran down her face. "I just heard." she said. "Is it true?"
I just sighed and nodded.
"Was it something I did?" she asked.
"Yeah," I smiled at her. "You hit me too much when I was little."
In the time since that day, I have gotten a better perspective. I tried to date women after the break-up of my marriage ... once. Still, it didn't work. I finally ventured to the larger cities of Louisiana, where there was an actual gay nightlife, making friends and actually running into some old ones (I'll have to write a post on this one day...) I'm on my fourth and (I know) last live-in relationship. I've come out to everyone in my personal, professional and past lives.
Getting to this point in my life. I guess I really don't have to figure it out. I realize now that I'm an incurable: sometimes incurably romantic, sensitive and kind, sometimes incurably rude, thoughtless and narcissistic. But I'm always incurably queer.
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