Connecting the dots, all these years later.
I have always known that I was different (Gay) but I never really knew when the realization hit me what that meant.
Earlier today I was listening to a song (band on the run) and I always had a fondness for that song but really couldn't remember why so I started searching my distant memories and after awhile it hit me.
It was the summer of 1975, we were at a KOA campground in Powell Valley Tennessee (my father & older brothers were there to fish on Norris lake) but fishing wasn't for me. I went to the pool with my sister and we were working on our tans (and playing on the juke box was band on the run) when I noticed a man walking up the trail to the bath rooms/showers. An instant sensation went right up my spine, I looked at him like I had never looked at another man before. I laid their thinking about this man, his blond hair, golden tan, furry chest, and the more I thought about him the more I realized that something was stirring in my swimsuit that was becoming very noticeable. I jumped up and literally ran to the bathroom trying to cover myself with my towel.
When I got to the bathroom low and behold the man I saw earlier was coming out of a shower stall with nothing but a towel wrapped around his lower body. I froze. He removed the towel and started to dry himself off and all I could do was stare (I don't think he noticed me at this time), when I saw his manhood in all his glory I just about fainted!
I ran out of the bathroom and back to our campsite to try to compose myself (I really didn't know what was going through my mind (I was 12 at the time). I knew where one of my brothers hid his girlie magazines so I went and got one and started looking at the pictures. In that moment holding that magazine with the thoughts of the man I had seen earlier still fresh in my mind I realized in that moment that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with a man and not a woman (and that thought scared the hell out of me) I felt dirty and ashamed of the thoughts I was having and knew I would burn in Hell.
This was the start of of my denial of who I truly was for years to come.
Just my little contribution on why it is so important for young people to be taught that they should not be ashamed of their sexuality. I am older and wiser now, but when I look back on how my life could have been at a younger age, it just makes me sad.
As a after thought, I have repressed that point in time in my life until today. Knowingly or unknowingly, who knows.
