Segregating the gays from the straights

A friend of mine asked me this today on facebook regarding the recent decisions about Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT).

What is your take on the talk about the whole "thorny issues" coming up since the DADT....like talk of segregating gays from straights in bunks/showers??? WTF? This is going to get way worse before it gets better. How do we stop this?

I quickly shot off an answer:

Wow, deep question. I think it's healthy to have "talks" about how to handle those issues. I try to think about what it would be like if I were straight. I mean, it is one thing to accept, respect and promote equality. It's a whole other thing when you're naked in the showers with one another. Most guys don't want other guys seeing their 'junk' gay or not. I can agree with showers having partitions between the shower heads that only makes sense, even now. But sleeping quarters? not needed. You don't sleep naked or anything.

 The truth is, before I was asked, I really hadn't given it much thought. I always assume that people are going to argue their point, express what they believe and so on. Why not? This is America, this is what our soldiers fight for, right?

So, do these discussions really matter?

Of course they do. It's a given that a lot of dumb things will be said here and there out of ignorance, fear or political agenda. We need to hear it. We need to know what they are saying and thinking so that we can fully arm ourselves against these sorts of blanket allegations.

Yes, they are slandering our community. They are making it sound like all that we do is look at the straight ones in the shower and maybe we'd rape them and all of that craziness. Because, as we all know, there aren't any gay folks in the military right now!

Do we need to shut these people up? No, not really. Not at all. Engage them in conversation, explain things on their level.

Here's my take on the whole thing.

How can you segregate gays in a way that makes sense? The reason, presumably, that men and women are segregated in the military is that they don't want to put people in the same area as potential 'mates'. So, if we put only gays with one another and only lesbians with one another what then do you think is supposed to happen? Now, as a man, I would be in a whole barracks full of other gay men. These would be, for the sake of this argument, my potential mates.

I haven't even yet skirted on what is the true heart of the matter. When I was in the Army, my unit and I formed a bond. We worked together daily as a unit, as a family. Our bond was like a sibling-hood.

I remember once having a friend in the unit (married straight guy) approach me wanting some 'friend sex'. I don't know, the whole thing really irked me a bit. I mean, he was handsome and a really nice guy, certainly someone under other circumstances I might have considered dating. But then and there? He was like family to me. To have allowed it to escalate to anything beyond our unit bond would have been deplorable on my part.

So the question is, what will happen when gays are allowed to serve in the military? The answer is simple, everything will remain the same except that our LGBT folks who are serving now will not be kicked out simply because of who they love.

If it will make you feel safe, by all means, put up partitions in the showers (that should have been done a long time ago anyway) but there's really no need at all to segregate us into different barracks. That makes as much sense as saying that a brother and a sister shouldn't live in the same house together.

Well, that's my two cents on the matter, love it or leave it.

Until next time, I'm OUT!

Joe Solmonese - HRC

In the news:

"We are on the brink of historic action to both strengthen our military and respect the service of lesbian and gay troops,” said Human Rights Campaign President Joe Solmonese. “Today’s announcement paves the path to fulfill the President’s call to end ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ this year and puts us one step closer to removing this stain from the laws of our nation." “Without a repeal vote by Congress this year, the Pentagon’s hands are tied and the armed forces will be forced to continue adhering to the discriminatory ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ law,” said Solmonese. “A solution has emerged: Congress needs to vote to repeal ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ now.”

The only problem with this, Joe, is that they voted now to possibly, maybe repeal it if the military can finish a study within the year and come up with a plan of action for integration.

All the military has to do is fail in completing one or the other.

So again, Obama left his balls along with his backbone at home in his dresser. Congress shit out some patronizing piece of garbage and you opened your mouth up wide and swallowed the whole load!

And these are our GLBT leaders fighting for our rights! If those soldiers you just compromised did their job the way that you do yours, we would have been colonized by the Middle East by now!

I grant you, Joe, you are not all powerful and you can't do it all. But then you release shit like this in support of a compromise? Come on, you're supposed to be OUR mouth piece not theirs.

We are screaming for repeal now, not repeal maybe later if you happen to feel like it. You should be echoing the same!

I'm Excited!

A short explanation of last week's personal struggle:

So, last weekend I wrote a bit about some emotional stuff I was going through in a post titled Love is Not Enough. There's a little bit more to the story though.

If you've been reading my posts, you know that there's a lot of change in my thought process. I am coming from a mindset of "hey I'm in a relationship and it works and that's all that needs to happen" and moving more to "hey, I'm in a relationship and I love him so much but our relationship is not protected under the law the same way that heterosexual relationships are".

Better put, I am going from inactive to activist!

I had heard about the Harvey Milk Day march & rally in Austin! and wanted to participate. My emotional struggle was really a bit around that. Actually, it was more about my own missunderstanding of Mac's feelings on the subject. I don't know why I thought he wouldn't approve, or participate. Even after 6 years and a few months, I am still learning more about who he is, rather who we are as a couple. It took me working myself up into an emotional ball of goo to figure this one out. What is important to me is important to him (I already knew the reverse of that statement).

So Mac is willing to step outside of his comfort zone and take this walk with me.

We have a lot going on today though. We would like to participate in some of the workshops that are going on throughout the day but, we really can't as we have family to tend to and other things. At least I'm excited about the rally.

A bit of a recap of the week:

The week has been weird for other things.

On Monday while in Dallas, Mac's company car was broken into and his personal laptop and work laptop were stolen out of it. He was parked outside of a sushi place. Obviously upsetting to him but, I joke, I told him not to eat sushi!

His trip continued to MO by plane. Thursday he flew in. I stayed in town to do some Karaoke at the Rusty Spurs as his plane wasn't coming in until 11PM. I found out some more devastating news. I totally suck at Karaoke! If I've never seen the sheet music to it, I just can't do it.

So, time to pick Mac up rolled around. I went to the airport. When I pulled up he says "Did you know that there's a huge dent in the car?" Holy crap! So, the passenger side of the car had been hit. I assume it was the parking lot at work though because, well, that's the only place I was out of the car.

So, we've had all of that going on, it's been crazy.

So, after that crazy week, you can see how I'm excited about today and all that is going to happen.

Well, I might blog a little bit about the happenings tonight. We will see how that goes. I'm not the best at keeping up with everything on here.

Until next time, I'm OUT.

I was literally moved to tears

This afternoon:

I tend to think of myself as a fairly level headed kind of guy. I have feelings and passion but, I am rarely (if ever) moved to tears. This afternoon I posted a picture that truly did move me to tears. Even as I type this now I find myself welling up a bit.

The events of the last few months surrounding "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and an all inclusive Employee Non Discrimination Act. Couple these with gay marriage issues. All of these hit home and they hit home hard. I am moved, not by the struggle itself but, by the overwhelming support that I have from friends, family and yes even co-workers.

A co-worker who has no vested interest at all in either of these struggles and a male co-worker at that. How awesome and powerful this world is that we have people like this. Somehow gives me hope in our future.

The picture:

This picture was certainly worth a billion words. I imagined it being a high school function. The power behind what our youth are doing strikes a nerve.

This image speaks to the very heart of the matter. If it weren't for the fact that there is bigotry in our schools, families, churches and in our own government there would be no need for these demonstrations.

The thought moved me so much that I had to write about it. I was not at a computer and doing the research on my iPhone was proving to be a difficult task so, I put out a call to my friends and fans in that post, on twitter and on facebook.

The outpouring of people who rushed to help find the information was absolutely amazing. It spoke to the fact that I was not the only one moved by this photo. Jay (http://www.jaysays.com/) also took on the search. His followers helped to find out where it really came from. And so the information trickled back to me.

And now I know where it really came from.

On April 16, 2010 at World's Fair Park in Knoxville, TN these K-12 students gathered for an annual event called "Breaking the Silence". The earliest post of this picture (with comments) is located on flicker at http://www.flickr.com/photos/75001512@N00/4550427537

There is hope for us yet!

until next time, I'm OUT!

A picture is worth a thousand words

The Gay Struggle:

A co-worker of mine forwarded this picture to me. It was not attached to a story. I wish I knew the background of this photo.


If you know, please let me know!


The reason I felt the need to share this with you all is a simple one.


From 1 single act, the act of announcing to the world who we are, we end one struggle only to begin another.

We struggle, at first with who we are as individuals. We struggle with what the world thinks of us. We struggle with what God might think of us. We struggle with friends trying to set us up on dates with people that we know we will never have an interest in. We struggle to find a definition of what we are.

We try to rationalize and justify thinking to ourselves, "maybe this thing that I have is just a phase".

It takes a lot of courage to be honest with yourself.

At least for me, these are the feelings that I had before I came out. I wondered what my family and friends would think. I wondered if it really mattered if I hid it all or not.

Once we come out (once I came out), I found a lot of support with my real friends and with my family. Some of us are not so lucky.

I have friends who's families completely disowned them. Their fathers deny their existence, their mothers call to lecture them, to shame them, to guilt them.

As a group, we go through a lot. It's difficult to tune it all out. From the pulpit of the church, the soap box of the media and the lack of protection of/from our government.

We are treated as lesser beings. We are protested and picketed against and our government sits up on a mountain top denying us access to some of the most basic rights and protections.

You want to server in the Army? You want to donate blood? You want to marry your partner? You want domestic partner benefits? You want to give a child who is living in an orphinage a home? Denied, denied, denied, denied and denied!

The time has come for everyone to be treated as equals. We constantly call ourselves an equal nation. If even 1 person/group is treated with a different set of standards, how can we ever truly be equal?

Do you believe in God?

Back Story:

I get asked the question about Christianity quite a bit. As with everything I've written to date, there's a back story.

From age 0 - 7 I was dragged to church (kicking and screaming) by my grandmother. My mom and dad weren't church goers. So, when we moved a little further from my grandparents, I never had to go to church.

By age 8, I had found a decent church within walking distance and would go every Sunday (on my own). I really enjoyed reading the Bible. Over the years I've read it cover to cover probably 6 or 7 times.

I even thought, for a short time, that I might go into the ministry.

I began to realize that I found contradiction between what came out of the mouths of those behind the pulpit and what was actually written in black and white. And when things didn't quite add up, the minister would turn to the original text and try interpreting from there.

The only problem with that is, I could barely trust their interpretation of the English version, how could I trust their interpretation of a completely different language?

My job in the Army actually was a Chaplain's Assistant. While the cool part of my job was that, I learned all of the skills of a body guard (since Chaplains themselves could not carry weapons), the peace time part of my job was as a provider for the multitude of religions represented within my unit.

I gained a lot of perspective about different people, how they worship and how they differ in what they believe (even within the same subset of religion).

It always amazed me how different people can read the same thing and come out with a completely different understanding than one another.

Differing opinions:

I've talked a little bit about Mac and how I feel that we are perfect for one another. We have a very strong bond emotionally. It actually allows us to have differing opinions and beliefs but still function.

As an instance, he goes to church every Sunday. Though I used to go with him, I stopped after a while because, I felt I was living a lie. I could tell that it bothered him a little bit that I was no longer willing to share in that experience with him. I think he took it personally at first.

It took me a while before I was really ready to explain it to him in a way that made sense but didn't sound belittling. After all, I admire that he has faith in God. I simply don't. All of those years when I went to church it was an attempt to find something to believe in. It took me to the age of 28 to really figure out that I was never going to have the one requirement of any religion, blind faith.

Do I believe that there's a God (or possibly even Gods)? Not exactly. I fall more under the belief that it's possible that there is a God but, (if there is a God) no human will ever scratch the surface of understanding the divine and to attempt to is pure futility.

We don't need to understand it to live or to die. There is nothing that we can say or do today that will 100% guaranty that there is an after life, let alone that can ensure us a peaceful one in any interpretation of Heaven. We are all simply too human to have any control over that.

I'm a hypocrite:

If I'm going to be transparent to all of you, I need to make this clear and hope that you can forgive me for this. From time to time, when I debate anything religious in nature, I will take it from the view point of someone who is religious.

In general, the majority of my friends don't know for sure what I believe. Some assume me to be atheist and some assume me to be Christian. The reason for this is simply because, when I debate physical and social issues, I do so using the language of the person I am debating. I tend to find for the most part, those who differ with my thoughts in this area tend to be very religious. So I speak on that level.

I've also been known to take a stance on something simply because it is the opposite stance as someone who brought the issue up, even if I actually happen to agree with them. I do this when I feel the need for a creative discussion that stimulates thought or when I feel like I need to know why they have that thought.

Closing:

If you are not more confused now than you were when you began reading this, you probably read it wrong. So I'll sum it all up and wrap it in a pretty gay bow. I struggle daily with what I believe as far as God goes. The reason I struggle is more to do with my belief in the flaws of man. There are days that I believe we were created by some sort of higher power and days when I think, "well how did that higher power come into existence?". One thing I do believe for sure is, there is no right religion currently practiced by man. I envy those who have found solid faith in their higher power but, I doubt I ever will.

God, if you're reading this, do you need a software engineer? Because, when I die, I'm going to need a job.

Until next time, I'm way OUT!

Life is Random

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Completely Random:

Seriously, as much I think I plan for everything, pretty much randomness ensues. I wonder sometimes how it has been this way but still turned out so well. I am fairly calculating in my actions. I weigh the pros and cons of any drastic action that I feel I need to take, and decide from there. But still, randomness!

The funny thing is, it always seems to work out to my advantage. Don't get me wrong here you've been reading my blog, you know that I've gone through some stuff but, ultimately, everything seems to work itself out. Well, maybe it's more that I find a way to make it work out, the jury is still out on that.

Case and Point:

I am changing the names here, except that Chris's name is actually Chris, the rest of these are too easy to google who they are and I really don't want to invade their privacy, so they all get fake names :-)

After Chris broke up with me (back at FT Hood), I met someone new (Ramon) and we started dating. He happened to be the chief of police of a random small town around Hood.

Ramon lived in Austin officially but kept an apartment near by during the week. He also happened to be an ordained priest of a branch off of Catholicism that is gay affirming.

Through Ramon, I met Drew, an ex priest of the Roman Catholic faith turned realtor. I met Drew only two or three times during the 2 years that Ramon and I were together.

I moved to Austin with Ramon when I got out of the Army. About 6 months after Ramon broke up with me, I started dating a guy named Daryl.

I saw an ad online for a freelance web developer spot. I knew how to build web sites, so I posted for the position.

It just so happened that Drew was the one hiring for it.

Though I didn't know it before this, Daryl was friends with Drew.

When Daryl broke up with me (after 4 years), I broke off contact with most of my gay friends, well, most of my friends in general. I just needed to sit back and rethink my circle of friends.

I still worked for Drew who, if you haven't guessed by now is also gay. Randomly one night, he said "hey, let's all go to Hooters for wings". As a joke we decided it would be fun to go.

I don't know if he knew it or not, but it happened to be the night of Gorilla Queer Bar (GQB) and the chosen destination that night was Hooters. Kind of random hey?

And so the next chapter in my life begins. Hooters is where I met my current partner.

This random chain of events filled with horrible break ups that all left me devastated and in some cases homeless and sleeping on the couches of friends, the horrible treatment from the Army, the bouncing from job to job put me on the path to meet my now and forever love.

If it weren't for all of these absolutely random events in my life, meeting these random people and riding the wave out, there is no possible way that I would ever have been in the place that I am now.

Completely happy. Completely in love. Completely me.

Kind of gives new meaning to the the Rascal Flatts song "God blessed the broken road, that lead me straight to you".

Ah, life! Gotta Love it!

Until next time, I'm still OUT!

Jealousy!

My Best Friend:

All week, I had been thinking about what I should write about next. This morning it became kind of clear.

My best friend, Robbin. She lives almost 3,000 miles away from me and we don't talk as often as we should. But through all of these years we've managed to stay pretty close to one another. Sometimes we will chat/call daily or weekly, other times we can go a few months without more than a "hello, I hope you're doing well". Even still, I know, if I ever needed anything in my life she would do anything that it took to help me. There's nothing I wouldn't do for her either. It's kind of the beauty of our friendship.

Why, with all of this distance do we have this kind of friendship? First off, we weren't really all that close growing up, not until our senior year in high school at least. In fact, we probably argued more than anything. Even then, she would jump to my defense when my peers were cruel to me.

Beyond that, during my whole time in the service, whenever I needed to talk to someone, she was always there to let me sob through the phone at her when things had gotten emotionally rough for me.

Today we had a little time to catch up via instant messages. I hadn't told her about this blog yet, so she took a look. Somewhere in the conversation, her brilliant mind spits out the following;

In the great and grand history of our country the one consistent thing has
always been this idea of, "let's see what I can keep my neighbor from doing to keep
them from doing that whole pursuit of happiness thingy".

That phrase sums up exactly what is and has been going on in this country.

Jealousy:

As I think back on my military career it puts a lot of context to her statement. When I entered the Army to begin with, I came in with a rank of E-2 (most start at E-1 and work up). I already had an Army Achievement Medal for some work I had been doing with the recruitment office. In Basic training I earned another rank (E-3).

When I arrived at my first duty station, I was already ahead of most of the people that were fresh out of training. Other soldiers would always ask how I got all of that so quick. My answer was always the same, "attention to detail goes a long way".

I was "that guy". The one who was happy with where I was and understood how to pursue more happiness. That, I feel, is part of why everything happened the way that it did. After all, how can a gay guy be happy? He's not supposed to be in the military. He's not supposed to fish, hunt, drink beer or watch football. Perhaps because I was getting accolades and on a track to move up in the ranks it ticked off the few that had heard that I was gay.

Maybe, I should have taken all of that in as a compliment to my character. Except that, I don't. Had I been a different type of person, my life would have been ruined. Lucky for me, I am the type of person who brushes it off and moves on.

I learned a big lesson during all of this. It's the reason why, today, I am myself. I make no apologies for it. I walk through life proud that I am who I am. I believe that my lifetime will see marriage legal for the LGBT community. I believe that, love will be celebrated over hate and jealousy. I believe the time is now!

Today may end up being a two post day. Lunch break is almost over so I'll need to get back to work, but I have some other thoughts that I will be writing out tonight.

Thanks for reading!

I'm out!

Living off the wall

No Regrets:

I've always gone through life with no regrets. I never really saw the point. In general, I am a pretty happy person. I'm not exactly sure where it comes from really. You can put me in any situation. I can think calmly about how to work my way through it.

I am a puzzle guy and I attack life as if it were one big puzzle to solve. I rarely listen to how someone tells me they solved the puzzle. I like figuring it out for myself.

That is why for me, my past is MY past. I embrace it wholly as part of my journey in solving the big puzzle. I own it all. I own the accomplishments, the mistakes and everything in between.

I continue through each step knowing that, should I make a mistake I will learn from it.

But then, I think back to what got me started on blogging in the first place. It makes me think, "perhaps I don't follow the no regrets thing as closely as I think I do".

Remember in my first post, I talked about having a hard time sleeping and how that was the cause of me beginning this blog to begin with? I kept thinking about things in the past and I couldn't shut it down.

There's still so much more to the journey behind me that I haven't shared. I think there is one issue that I've sort of been avoiding. I don't know if I just haven't found it chronologically to make sense within my time line or if there is a bit of guilt, shame or regret mingled in there.

I think I do have a bit of a regret with it however, I also know for certain that if it weren't for this solitary moment in my life I would not be in the awesome place that I am right now. Seriously, I would not have stayed in Austin and I would never have met the man that I am in eternal love with. As near to perfect as my life is right now, I still can't get that part of my life out of my head. Wondering "what if".

The moment that haunts me:

So, as you are aware (if you've been reading along), I am gay and I was outed by someone to my unit. So, rather than investigate me being gay (because they really couldn't) those in my chain of command, simply put more on my plate than any human could accomplish.

I made a full attempt to complete everything to standard at all times, but fell short on numerous occasions. At first, I didn't want to believe that I was being forced all this extra because they knew I was gay. It wasn't until one of the civilian women in the congregation (remember I was a chaplain's assistant) came up to me one day and literally said, "I pray that one day you will find Jesus".

To which I responded, "What do you mean?".

I was shocked when she said, "Well the chaplain said that you are gay and that you practice Wicca".

Which is actually only half true, so I said "I don't know where he got that idea, but I'm Christian" (which was true at the time) and left it at that. Her jaw dropped and she apologized.

From there, it all just kind of spiraled for me. I mean, here's a Chaplain who is supposed to be providing for the religious needs of the unit, not pushing his on people. Yes, he probably got the idea that I was Wicca from the fact that we had 3 practitioners in our unit who I ordered literature for but that was my job. It would be no different than ordering a Torah for our Jewish soldiers.

I digressed a little by giving you that exchange, but back on point.

So now I'm being given a heap of responsibility and doing my best to accomplish all that I can and failing to complete tasks. This, to the point that I ended up pulling 16 hour days to attempt to keep up because I wanted to be all that I could be. And then knowing the reason for it all, I wanted to prove that they weren't going to put me down.

Ah but they did. It didn't take long for them to find cause to boot me out for being "sub par". I don't even remember the true wording any more. I could have just waited it out and just let it all happen but that was going to be a dishonorable discharge. So, I did my research.

Since the ball was rolling all ready, I couldn't say "you know what I'm gay". Being booted because you admit you are gay actually can be an honorable discharge (at least in the Army at that time). But, trying that once the ball was rolling would not work, they already had me on dishonorable.

So, I did the only other thing I could think of (which prior to was unthinkable). I went Absent With Out Leave (AWOL). Logically speaking (as you know I try to be logical) the discharge for that is a general discharge.

So, it was a chess game for me. I was gone for 3 months and then went to Oklahoma to out process. Simple as that.

I felt and still feel justified in how I handled it. I took the rout that would ultimately be best for me. So why the regret in it all?

Why the regret then:

As I play the whole thing over in my head, I think of what I could have done differently. Maybe I should have never dated guys at all, or at least never soldiers. I could have done what everyone else was doing. Simple anonymous guy on guy action in hotel rooms. But that was never me.

But the biggest part of it is that there are a lot of things that I don't feel justified in.

Currently, there's a big push to end Don't Ask Don't Tell. A fight that I believe in, and I would take up arms but yet, I went AWOL. How can I say that gay soldiers are serving honorably? Even though I know that I did the best that I could with what I was dealt, I took a way out that renders me fairly useless in the fight.

Maybe, just maybe, I should have foreseen that they were going to eventually try to kick me out and claimed gay before they had the chance. I don't know that's not really me though. I'd rather people think that I was a coward than to use my being gay as a crutch.

It's a little bit frustrating to tell the truth. No matter how hard I try to rationalize, I can always think of a hundred different things that I could have done to begin with.

I'll probably never get over it, but there it is.

Now the world knows, this is the single event in my past that has been gnawing at me and forced me to create this blog to begin with.

Til next time, I'm OUT!

How I came out to my folks

Variations on a theme:

There are two questions that people ask whenever they find out that you're gay.

1. When did you first realize you were gay?
2. Are you out to your family?

I think it's interesting. I sometimes think it's rude. I like to turn those questions around on my straight querents. You know, "does your family know you're straight?" and "when did you first realize you were straight?".

That said, I don't mind answering the questions. For me, question number 1 is sort of tricky (as I feel it is for most of us).

I think I pretty much expressed that in prior posts but I may be able to simplify it a little. When I first started seeing Chris, I still wasn't really sure if I was gay or not. I thought "maybe I'm bi or something".

We didn't have sex at first just, you know, a little PG13 stuff for the first few weeks. It really took me a while to own it.

And to question 2, my parents knew about a year after I figured it out.

Coming out:

So, I've told several different versions of my coming out. Well, not really. I find my coming out to have been fairly boring and uneventful, so I usually start by telling a joke version of coming out and then telling the real version.

I kind of use it as a lesson though. I think people too often think that because I'm gay, everything is different and exciting. It really isn't but, here's the story anyway.

Chris and I were having a small party (a few months after I moved in with him) and my mom happened to call.

There were only guys at this party. Our friend Jerry was talking, very loudly in his high pitched voice. My mom thought it was a girl in the background. I said "no that's just Jerry". Then, jokingly she asks "is Jerry a fairy" (funny, and it rhymes).

We are very honest with one another, so I told her "yes". So then she asks "are you"?

I hadn't planned on coming out to my parents over the phone. I knew it wouldn't effect them much but, out of respect for them, I wanted to do a face to face. I just couldn't lie to her. So, of course, I said "yes".

And then, you know, the thing we all LOVE to hear our parents say "I already knew that, I was just waiting for you to tell me".

Well, I had a party going on so, I didn't really want to take too much time talking about it so I told mom I'd call again tomorrow to talk about it. She says "well, we don't need to talk about it, I'm fine with it but, if you feel like you need to talk about it please do". I freaking love my family.

Of course, I called the next day and said "ok, see if you knew I was gay already, why didn't you tell me that I was gay". And we both had a good laugh. Of course, my mom had already told my dad the night before and he wanted to talk to me about it. He was a little upset that I waited so long to tell them, but was fine after I explained that I wasn't sure about it myself until recently.

I'm out now:

I really think that process helped me in a lot of ways. Today, I pretty much don't care. I tend to lay it all out there. I mean, I'm "out" at work. When we are having an event where spouses are going, I take my partner with me. They all know and love him. When I go to visit my folks I take my partner and his mom with me (my family still lives in NY).

My parents always tought me to be myself. It's kind of been my motto really.

Of course, I didn't extend this outness to the Army. I mean, it was "Don't Ask Don't Tell". It took my ex outing me for all of that drama to begin.

Well, that's that. I do need to get some sleep soon, but just thought I'd put this out there.

Til next time!

The Army and I prt2

Sorting it all out:

After all of that, it was pretty obvious that I needed to figure some things out. It didn't help that, now there was a rumor about me being gay floating around. I really hadn't had the time to consider it for myself and what it all meant. I haven't had a gay date, had sex with a guy or heck, even looked at any gay porn yet.

I already had a lesbian friend in my unit, who I was really close to anyway. I don't know why, she and I just clicked right off the bat when we first met.

I didn't tell her any of this stuff though but she had heard the rumor anyway.

Michelle (that's her name) made it a point to come and talk to me when she heard the rumor. I told her, it was just a rumor and I wasn't sure but, I was really putting some thought to it all.

In my head, I was still thinking about all the things in my past. How when I was younger I gravitated toward the male teachers and I did actually have fantacies of seeing them nude. Or when I would see anything remotely related to sex I would usually be watching the guy more closely. How pr0n with 2 girls and no guy in it never made sense to me and I always fast forwarded it to something else.

Michelle asked if I would want to go to the bar with her. I wasn't old enough to drink but, you just had to be 18 to get in so long as you weren't drinking. I thought about it and said "why not, it's not like anyone is going to force me to do anything that I don't want to do".

At the bar

That Friday we went out to the semi local gay bar. Not many soldiers there but a few I could spot by how they walked and how their hair was cut.

It was actually a really fun night! A lot of guys were staring at me like they were starving and I was the last sandwitch on a lunch tray. That attention was nice, but I still wasn't sure of what all was going on.

I did have a nice long conversation with a guy named Chris. He was also in the Army but he knew he was gay already and had been for some time.

I had things to do in the morning so I called the night fairly early and went home.

Am I a bar fly now?

The next night, Michelle asked me to go back to the bar with her. This time, she was bringing Larry. Larry was another guy in our unit who I was pretty good friends with but didn't know he was gay until just then.

Chris was there again, and laid on a line that I knew was a line but it was cute anyway. "I don't come here often but I was hoping to see you out here again". Brownie points for the compliment, not so much for the transparency of it all. I was confused about my sexuality, not completely stupid!

Ah, but stupid I was. That was the night I decided to ask Chris out on, what was to be the first in many gay dates to come.

First date went well

Our first date was the following Friday. I hadn't been very many places in the surrounding towns of Ft Hood so we took a really nice drive around. We hung out at a park. Browsed the Hastings media store. Stopped for some BBQ.

It was really nice! We ended up capping the evening off at his house (which was off post), where his neighbors (a lesbian couple) and he had a small get together planned so that I could meet some of his friends.

And then, we stayed together for nearly 2 years!

Meanwhile back at the post

Those two years pretty much were hell. Not for the relationship (well, not generally) but for what all was happening on the "work" front.

Don't get me wrong, I was proud to join and proud to serve. I thought I'd do wonderful amazing things. I did everything to task and on time, always.

The soldier myth

Most civilians think that the Army is this well oiled machine forged from hundreds of years of tradition. They think there is a different set of rules and they assume that you signed a contract and took an oath and so on. While that's sort of accurate, there are some deeper issues at play.

How many people at 18, 19 or even 20 years old were actually responsible adults who understood what they wanted or needed in life? I'm purely speculating, it's not that many.

Throughout my time in the Army, I saw more suicide attempts (I was a Chaplain's assistant after all), more people going AWOL, more soldiers as confused as I was about everything in life than I ever thought I would. Most of us viewed the Army as if it were a job. I mean, it kind of was.

You could live wherever you wanted so long as, if called you could be at HQ within 60 minutes. You had a barracks room which you could use how you wanted so long as it was presentable for inspection at any given moment.

You're work day starts at 9 and ends at 5, Monday - Friday. The only exception is that, you were expected to go to Physical Training in the morning (usually at 6 or 7 depending on your unit). Also excepting the fact that I was a Chaplain's Assistant, so that means I worked most Sundays as well.

Where the Army is different than everywhere else is that, you can't just quit and they can't just fire you. You can be 'punished' for your actions in ways that you can't in the civilian world. For instance, should you accidently bounce a check from your personal account and they get wind of it, they can make you paint rocks or mop floors on the weekends.

And then, I was "Outed":

That's right, I was outed by someone in my unit who knew for a fact that I was gay. Actually, most people that I was close to knew, and didn't care. To the rest of them, it was just a rumor. They didn't know for sure.

At any rate, you know how if they don't ask or you don't tell, there's nothing they can do? Well, WRONG. I've had all sorts of stuff happen. From superiors piling humanly impossible things on me to them removing my computer from my office to make it look like I stole it. I'm not kidding. I actually had to drag myself down to CID (Criminal Investigation Division) and beg them to give me a polygraph test and to investigate the missing computer!

I literally went through hell with it all but, I kept my head up. I figured I would try to make sure that I did everything that I could. Maybe I was just being tested or something. I wasn't sure, but I would be damned if I was going to let me being gay be the reason why I couldn't be in the Army any longer.

They tried to court marshall me 2 times and failed!

Disclaimer:

I don't think that the entire Army is like this. This was all down to my unit level. I know soldiers in other units who did not go through this problem at all. That doesn't excuse that fact that there were and probably still are units just like mine.

Ok, time to mow the lawn.

Til next time!

The Army and I prt 1

Decisions, decisions

The year was 1996. I was in 11th grade. I remember that morning clear as day! I walked into my highschool with 30 minutes before my first class. As per my usual routine, I made my way toward the music room to work on the piece I was working on for the New York State Solo Music Association (NYSSMA) tials. When out of the corner of my eye, I notice a soldier standing at a table.

Dressed smartly in his dress greens, he had an air of confidence. Deeply engaged in conversation with one potential recruite. My dad was Army, my grandfather Airforce. It never occured to me that I might join, but seeing the recruiter there speaking with such enthusiasm I thought, maybe I could at least ask some questions.

Until then, I knew I wanted to go to college and study music education. I also knew that paying for college wasn't going to be easy and that the Armed forces had some programs to help with that.

So, I made my way over to talk to the recruiter. He told me about the GI Bill and some other programs that the Army had to offer. I took the summer to think about it, researching, asking my dad about his experiences, calling the recruiter to ask questions here and there.

Finally, I made the decision and 'signed up'.

Don't ask, Don't tell:

Obviously, I am skipping some parts here, I did take an ASVAB test. It was uneventful, except for the fact that I scored higher than 80% of the people who took it nation wide. Was offered the job of "Chaplain's Assistant". Finished up highschool.

Cut to July 1997. So MEPS is where they send you through a physical to ensure that you're ok to ship off to basic training. And then, the ultimate part. There's a brief questionaire that you had to fill out. Some of the questions include.

• Have you ever stolen anything?
• Have you wet the bed regularly since the age of 12?
• Did you ever set animals on fire.

No joke, these are real questions that were on this thing.

Then there was another section all about sexual orientation marked out with a big black "X". Obviously, it was the beginning of "Don't ask Don't tell" and they haven't pushed out new forms yet. In place of answering that question, we were sent to a room to listen to a tape. Which roughly said something like "If you are engaged in homosexual acts or think you might be in the future, you should probably go home". I of course paraphrased this 15 minute long recording/warning.

The problem with Don't Ask Don't Tell:

Remember, this is at a time when I was still a virgin. I assumed I was straight, I even had a girl friend at the time.

Which brings me to the problem with Don't ask Don't Tell. At this poiint in my life, I'm 18 years old. I'm pretty sure that I'm straight but I haven't lived enough to figure myself out. It wasn't until a year later that I lost my virginity (yes, to a girl) and another almost year after that before it dawned on me that I was more interested in her dad than I was her.

These are, for certain, the most uncertain years of our lives, and we are expected to know ourselves fully enough to be able to judge that we aren't going to turn out gay?

I lost my virginity:

It was Christmaseve 1997. I had completed basic training and job training in Ft Jackson, SC. I had gone home for a few weeks and am now in Ft Hood, TX. I had become fairly good friends with one of my fellow soldiers. He and his girlfriend were having Christmaseve dinner with her family. I was invited along.

There, I met her sister. I'll call her Christina (because that's her name, but you don't know her so whatever). I didn't really pay Christina any attention, she was 18 and a senior in highschool. I was 19. We talked a bit. It got real late so her mom said I could crash on the couch and spend Christmas morning with them if I wanted.

I took them up on the offer.

I was awoken at around 1 in the morning to, what Ron White calls "a mouth hug" (I just call it oral), and it advanced from there. Christmas 1997 is the day I lost my virginity. Kind of cool and exciting. And we dated for 6 months.

She said what?

I won't go into all of the gory details but Christina was seriously controlling. She had her views of what relationships were and were not. I think I stuck around so long out of loyalty than out of lust or love. The 4th time she said "we should break up, no I take it back" I just let it go and moved on.

She called my roommate and told him that I ws gay. Seriously, I hadn't given any real thought to the fact. Everyone in highschool said that about me (as I explained in my earlier posts) but somehow coming from her, made me think about it. Over the years, how many guys have I looked at just a little too long? And then I remembered that, I always had some sort of strange attraction to guys but never really considered dating them an option.

My roommate asked if it were true, and I thought about it all. Finally I said, "you know what? I really don't know yet".

He was really cool though, "I don't care if you're gay or not, I'd just like to know". And he really didn't care at all, but I really didn't know yet.

So Confusing:

Needless to say, this was a very confusing time in my life. Next post, I'll talk about the when, why and how it became unconfusing. I'll probably talk about my first boyfriend too. Not sure yet, I guess we will all just have to stay tuned.

That river in Egypt

Growing up in Denial:

I never quite got the sense that there was anything different about me. Well, other than the fact that I did all the typical "gay" things as a kid and not very many of the "normal guy" things.

I was in chorus, drama and even wrote for the school literary arts magazine (poetry mostly). You can imagine the taunts. I was called everything from a big girl to a queer.

Things that didn't help my cause much? Well, in 11th grade I had one of the best Social Studies teachers ever (Mr. Lynn). We had a standing assignment. Every Friday we were to have ready a current event from that week and our opinion about that event which we would talk about out loud to the class.

It just so happened that in the state of NY at the time, there were a lot of items in the news about women's rights, gay rights and quite a few other social issues. Even still, thinking I was straight, I would always take the stance that gays should be able to have weddings legally.

Picking the fight

After the first time I did an assignment like that, I think I sought them out more often. I got a real charge out of having a different opinion than everyone else and being able to express it. I still do actually.

It's that charge that made me feel alive. It wasn't really the substance of it all. It was the fact that I had the ability to speak in terms of logic, law and founding documents where the rest of my peers resorted to "that's dumb" and "you're gay" as a defense for their opinion.

But again, at that point in my life, I was straight (well, a virgin but they can be straight right)?

Egypt, it's in the Bible too:

There is that other thing that plays a bit of a factor here too. My parents didn't go to church but I did. Every Sunday, I woke up and walked a mile to church, and then walked a mile back after it was over.

Of course, everyone likes to quote scripture when battling against gay rights. It was the same in school too. Even as a child and a Christian, I understood that debates on government policy and law can never use the Bible as evidence. Even though, obviously, it is used by adults to this day. I really never understood how this basic fundimental can be lost on grown people. I never really understood why there weren't people trying to outlaw cheese burgers since the Bible pretty much said you can't eat those either.

Spoiler alert:

So, I do need to tend to my offline life as well. I think between this post and my last one, you have a basic understanding of what types of things are running through my mind, and how I grew up.

Next time, I'll talk about my time in the Army a little bit and how I lost my virginity. I waited a whole 19 years (unheard of right?). I will have several stories about my Army life in the future because, a lot happened. It's where I really came to know myself.

Until next time!

The beginning

Introduction:

So, I'm not really a stranger to blogging. I've written reviews of everything from software to movies to music events I've attended and so on.

I've created this blog separately for several reasons but, I wanted to tell the story sort of from the beginning.

Last Week:

I couldn't sleep. I don't quite know what it was but, things just kept popping into my head. The more I tried to focus on my breathing or some distant noise in order to get to sleep, the more my brain said, "no, you are going to think about this".

What thoughts were going through my head? Well, it was kind of like I was playing my whole life over and over again in my head. I realized that, most of these were pretty deep and heavy unresolved issues. Some were just random good things that have come up in my life but mostly areas of conflict.

The suspense is killing me:

There are a few things you will need to know about me before getting into this all.

First, I do not write this blog under my real name. Edward is my middle name and Davis is the last name of the person I call dad. We, obviously, do not share the same last name.

Second, I am gay. Some of the biggest points of conflict in my life came about during the time I was discovering this fact which happened to be while I was in the Army. So you can imagine what some of these writings are going to consist of. I'll keep it clean though :-)

Conclusion:

Ok, so there you have it. What will follow in the coming days are some of the accounts of my past and how I grew to be a wonderful human being!
Enjoy!