On Wednesday’s post, RB commented:

You were coming of age before gay internet. For guys who were 18 even in 2005, the internet/mobile apps made it fairly easy to meet other guys. It seems you didn’t have this advantage. How did you finally connect with other gay guys? How did your first experience with a guy happen? How did you feel about it?

These are good questions, but I didn’t think I could do them justice in a comment. They do limit the number of characters you can use so I decided I’d write a post to answer RB’s questions.

I first used the Internet in 1997 when I was taking an undergrad class on Medieval England. Our professor taught us how to do scholarly research on the Internet. It was still in its infancy. We had to use the university library’s Internet lab for access. Thankfully, the Medieval archives had begun early on to digitize their collections for researchers. For those of you who might be curious, here is a short timeline of Internet availability during the 1990s:

• 1991: CERN introduced the World Wide Web to the public.
• 1992: The first audio and video were distributed over the Internet. The phrase “surfing the Net” was first popularized.
• 1993: The number of websites reached 600. The White House and United Nations went online. 
• 1994: Netscape Communications was born. Microsoft created a Web browser for Windows 95. Yahoo! was created but was not incorporated until March 1995.
• 1995: Compuserve, America Online (AOL), and Prodigy began providing Internet access. Amazon.com, Craigslist, and eBay went live. The first online dating site, Match.com, launched.
• 1998: The Google search engine was born changing the way users engage with the Internet.

As you can tell from the timeline, this was all new stuff in 1997. It would be three more years before I had Internet service, and that was after I moved to Mississippi for graduate school in 2000. Occasionally, I would housesit for a doctor I knew; he had Internet access through AOL. I also had Internet access at work, but mostly I used that to order from Amazon.com which I think back then only sold books. It meant a new world of gay literature to discover as the local Barnes and Noble was somewhat limited in their inventory.

When I was still an undergraduate, the only way to meet gay people in Alabama or Mississippi was online. Well, you could hang out at Oak Park in Montgomery to meet men, but the Montgomery police always seemed to be rounding up gay men there. Montgomery had a gay bar for a short while, but no way was I was going in there. I also had no desire to hook-up with any of the out gay guys at college. There were only a few that I knew of anyway, and they all seemed to work on the student newspaper. The irony is the last girlfriend I had also worked on the student newspaper, but she never introduced me to anyone else on the paper.

My first-time meeting with a man is an unpleasant story. When I was living by myself in Mississippi, 200 miles away from my family, I began to explore the Internet to meet men. I met a guy on one of the websites which I doubt exists anymore. We decided to meet up. I knew he was older; in fact, he was closer to my father’s age. He also lived in the next town. This was before I’d come out to anyone, so I was being discreet. It was the worst date you can imagine. The only way it could have been worse would have been if he’d murdered me. Due to an injury, he had a penile implant, but insisted on topping me. He was also a cross-dresser. I have no problem with transvestites; to each his or her own. It’s just that I am not one of them. Yet after we had sex, he insisted I too put on a woman’s nightgown. And then there was his kissing. They were very wet slobbery kisses. That was bad enough, but he had the gall to tell me I was a bad kisser, and someone should teach me how to kiss properly. Now here’s the thing, I had kissed a fair number of girls by then, and all of them had remarked on what a good kisser I was. He is the ONLY person to ever say anything even remotely negative about any of my oral skills. I was mortified. I never should have met up with this guy. There is so very much more to this story, but I’d prefer not to describe it except to add, it would be over a year before I even attempted to meet up with another guy after this horrific experience.

The first time I went into a gay bar was in New Orleans. A friend took me to one while we were at an academic conference there. She had been the first person I’d ever come out to, and she wanted to take me to the gay section of New Orleans. We went to Oz, which is the club where drag queen Bianca Del Rio, the season 6 winner of RuPaul’s Drag Race, got her start. Sadly, I never saw her perform. At first, we just sat at the bar while my friend put money in the underwear of men dancing on the bar as if she was feeding coins into a slot machine; I enjoyed the eye candy. We then went to dance a bit. I still remember walking into the room where the dance floor was (OZ is smaller now than it used to be thanks to Katrina). The smell of the men in that room was intoxicating; that smell still turns me on. This was also when everyone at my grad school found out I was gay. For about the next week, the news of my sexuality spread like wildfire. It wasn’t that I’d hooked-up with anyone that night. I was just the subject of gossip for about a week. Except for one professor, it was all overwhelmingly positive.

Maybe a year after that, my best friend who now lives in Texas but went to grad school with me, took me to the gay bar near our university. She was a local. When we went in (the bar was never overly busy), she saw some guys she knew who almost immediately began hitting on me; I was fresh meat after all. One was totally tweaked out, so we left him alone. The other guy was nice and had gone to high school with my friend. Before the end of the night, we were making out. That night, I went home with him, and unlike my first sexual experience with a man, this was fantastic. I never knew sex could be that good, nor did I know my legs could go behind my head. It turned out to be a one-night stand, but it was fun. We exchanged numbers but he never responded so I dropped it. Later, I found out sex could be even better than that.

From then on, I often met guys online. Gay.com, AOL Gay Chat, and Yahoo! Messenger were all ways to connect with guys back in the early 2000s. I have rarely been with a person I did not meet online first. Furthermore, I only saw one of those guys more than once. We became, what you’d call “fuck buddies.” We never really got to know each other; we just enjoyed having sex with one another. I knew what he did for a living, and he knew what I did, but little other information was exchanged. The last time we hooked up, I found out he had a girlfriend and that was the end of that. Once I moved back to Alabama, meeting guys online essentially dried up. I did meet a few guys, but when I started teaching at the private school, I had to be extremely careful.

The few guys I did meet were either on Grindr or OkCupid. OkCupid is where I met the boyfriend with whom I had my longest relationship. Things were going well until I got released from my teaching contract and found my current position in Vermont. When I told my boyfriend I had lost my job, he surprised me with dinner at the restaurant on top of Mount Cheaha, the highest natural point in Alabama. We had taken a vacation there the previous spring break. It was a very romantic gesture.

In the early days of my coming out, the Internet was available, and I used it, but mobile apps did not exist. It wasn’t as easy to meet other guys as it is today. And, there weren’t a lot of gay bars in Alabama or Mississippi. New Orleans and Mobile had gay districts, but they were about two hours away. That’s not realistic for a night out. During my time in grad school, there were a couple of nearby gay bars; when one would close, another would open a few months or a year later. We never had more than one gay bar at a time. I guess you could say my generation and especially my geographic location proved to be a disadvantage. It was also a time when gay bars were struggling because men were meeting other men through the Internet and not at bars. But eventually, I did connect with gay guys on the Internet; sometimes it went well, sometimes not. One of the things I’d like more than anything is a gay friend who lived nearby. I’ve never had a gay friend; all my friends have been straight. My first experience with a guy was an utter disaster and probably scarred me for a long time. I am trying to be more outgoing these days, but with the pandemic, there has been a halt to that.

When I was growing up, I only knew of two possibilities when it came to with whom I would spend my life: I’d either marry a girl or I’d remain single. From about first grade through my senior year, I had a “crush” on a girl in my class. She was smart; I was smart. I thought we’d make a perfect pair. And it didn’t hurt that she was pretty. To a six-year-old, this all made sense. It was what was expected of me. I also thought I’d be a wealthy lawyer, but I ended up changing my mind about that too.

Then came seventh grade. Within the first week of that school year, and it may have been the first day, some of the guys in class started picking on me. I was constantly bullied and called gay slurs. Some of the girls even talked behind my back. But that same year, we got a new boy in our class. He was blond, blue-eyed, and beautiful. The new guy made them stop. When he was around, he protected me from the bullies. Without realizing it, I had my first boy crush from that day forward. I basically worshipped this kid. He was my hero. He was a genuinely good guy.

As I’ve said before, I never contemplated being gay until college although I had fantasized about a number of guys once I’d had my sexual awakening. However, that new kid in seventh grade was the person who almost always fueled my sexual fantasies. Thinking back on it, he probably fueled my whole sexual awakening. I was utterly delusional, though. I had no awareness I was gay. I never, or rarely ever, fantasized about girls. It was always guys, and always the guys who were nice to me. Being kind was and still is a sure way to my heart.

The ironic thing was the new guy and the girl I’d had a crush on eventually became a couple and have been married for nearly 25 years. He’s put on a few pounds but not much, and he’s still just as handsome. They have beautiful children too. The girl hasn’t changed one bit. She still looks like she did all through school. She had a twin sister who went to college with me, and I ended up going out on a few dates with her. She too still looks the same as she did in school. All the other people I went to school with are basically unrecognizable to me when I see them on Facebook. 

Probably the strangest thing in my dating life occurred in my junior year of high school. I knew a girl who had been my best friend since I was five. Even though we lived in different towns much of our school years, we stayed pen pals. I’ll get back to her in a minute. In high school, I worked for a short time at a Subway restaurant. I ended up asking one of my coworkers to go to the homecoming dance. We were an odd pair; she was beautiful and quite popular, and I was the nerdy fag. Some of her friends had nasty things to say about us going to the dance together. My coworker basically told them to fuck off; she thought I was nice. 

That same fall, my earlier-mentioned best friend was dating an older guy who was one of the most handsome guys I’ve ever laid eyes on; he was fucking gorgeous and so sexy. He also had big muscles and a big dick, which I heard about from my best friend. (I knew the dick size of everyone she dated.) He took my best friend to the homecoming dance. Little did my best friend and I know that a few months later, my date and her date would hook up, and my date got pregnant. They literally ended up having a shotgun wedding; her father, with a gun pointed at the guy, forced them to get married. They had several kids and lived somewhat happily for a little while, but eventually got divorced. Then he had a logging accident which left him paralyzed. He eventually died from his injuries. These days, she’s remarried to a much older man and is a successful real estate agent. I’m still friends with her on Facebook; she used to send me housing listings she thought I should look into. I’m pretty sure she used Facebook to get her real estate business up and running. Her oldest two sons, who are now in college, look so much like their father.

By the way, that best friend of mine growing up always considered herself a Republican. These days, she is the biggest Trump supporter I know, and we rarely speak to each other. When we do talk, it’s through Facebook, and it’s only to argue politics. I keep her muted so I don’t have to read about whatever stupid conspiracy theory she currently believes. It’s really disgusting how much she supports Trump. Last Christmas, she wrapped all her children’s presents in Trump wrapping paper. I was appalled to know such a thing even existed. 

I shouldn’t be surprised, though, by her support of Trump. Their morals are about the same. In high school, she had sex with any guy who would look her way. (I don’t say that to slut shame; I’d have done the same thing if I’d been out and had the opportunity.) And yes, that included me, not one of my prouder moments. It was also one of my most traumatic sexual encounters, but that’s a story for a different post. Let’s just say, she could be very manipulative. For instance, she purposely got pregnant by her first husband before they married and were both in high school so he’d have to marry her and not go off to college. I believe she’s now on her fourth husband. She’s been a bit silent on Facebook lately. She’s a nurse at the largest hospital in Montgomery. I wonder if she sees Trump differently because of his disastrous handling of the pandemic. I suspect not.

I know there were at least a half dozen guys I had crushes on in high school, yet I never would have called them crushes back then. It wasn’t until I took psychology in my senior year in college that my mindset about being heterosexual would change. Back then, I thought my crushes were a form of admiration, a desire to be like them. Also by then, I had discovered the internet and gay porn, but I still couldn’t admit to myself I was gay. I thought maybe I was bisexual, but definitely not gay. My world view changed in that psychology class. My professor asked us to submit questions anonymously on any topic related to psychology. He’d spend the last few minutes of each class answering some of the questions. One day, someone (not me) submitted a question asking if there was a way to tell if you were heterosexual or homosexual. This was the late 1990s in Alabama. It was a legitimate question. I could not have been the only person clueless about their sexuality. Someone else had asked the question after all. The professor told the class to consider whether we fantasized or dreamed predominantly about people of the opposite sex, the same sex, or both equally. That could be an indication you were either heterosexual, homosexual, or bisexual. Thinking back on it, he was progressive for Alabama at that time. Hell, he’d be considered progressive for Alabama today. It was then I realized girls were never a part of my fantasies or dreams. It finally began to dawn on me I was probably gay. I was horrified at the prospect.

When you are raised with no alternative to being heteronormative, it can be difficult coming to terms with a sexuality that doesn’t meet that ideal. Anything else is out of the question. Let’s not forget, I grew up in the 1980s and 1990s when AIDS was a scary thing. My mother had me believing all gay men had AIDS. It’s amazing I ever came out at all, but I’d always been more liberal-minded than those around me when I was growing up. Nowadays, I’m considered somewhat conservative in Vermont. Who knew?

I’ve known a lot of men over the years who have been confused about their sexuality. Some even married women. Some got divorced later in life and have since come out; others remained married. I dated one girl in college and when that ended, I never dated another woman. I was still trying to figure out my sexuality, and once I did, I knew I’d never marry a woman. I’ve always believed if I did get married, she’d be miserable, and I’d be miserable. I know that is not the case for everyone, but it’s how I feel about myself. We all make choices in our lives, and for some, those choices work out for the better; for others, it does not. Part of my philosophy on marrying a woman probably comes from the lawyer I used to work for in college. She never married. She once told me she didn’t get married because of a lack of opportunity; she’d been proposed to on numerous occasions. Each time a man proposed to her she considered whether she could see herself getting a divorce. Every time, the answer was yes, so she remained single. She died alone a few years ago from a heart attack.

I’m not crazy about the thought of dying alone. But I’ve decided, if it happens, it happens. Sometimes, I feel I’ve wasted my best years being in the closet. That is why I advocate for people to love their children no matter what and to encourage them to feel comfortable no matter their sexuality. Maybe if things had been different, maybe if my parents and family had been more understanding, maybe if homosexuality had been more acceptable back then… But that is something I will never know. I am happy it is easier today for kids to come out and at a young age. However, I do know that is not the case for everyone: gay people in the South still have a difficult time; Mormon kids may have it the worst. I pray for the day when all expressions of sexuality are accepted, when we can live in a more equal and welcoming world.