Before I Knew What Gay Was I Learned This Lesson

It’s 1979 and Paul Quinn and I are jumping on his bed in our underwear. We’re both excited and we both tentatively touch each other -- our first attempts at exploring a body other than our own. We’re lost in childhood desire, curiosity and innocence. All this stops when Mrs. Quinn throws open the door. "What are you two doing?" she yells. The look on her face is of a deep disgust – a repulsion usually reserved for the murders or pedophiles I see on TV. Paul gets spanked "I’ll give you something to take your pants off for", I hear her say as and I slip past her and out the door for home. I wish she hit me too; the sting of those rapid fire smacks would surely be less painful than the looks of disdain that burned a permanent scar in my head and heart. I don’t know what I did wrong. Whatever it is, I know it’s disgusting. I feel hate. I feel dirty. I’m powerless to do anything about it. What we were doing felt so good, why was it bad? Although I don’t know it then, this is my introduction to the paradox of being gay.
Not soon after my incident with Paul, I get caught again, this time with a girl named Beth Ann. My mother finds me. Here’s when I learn the price of the currency on childhood sexuality. While childhood sexual curiosity may be perplexing and frightening for parents, it’s less frightening when it’s a sanctioned sexual orientation. My mother’s concern is far different from the look of disgust on Mrs. Quinn’s face. I feel my mother’s sense of relief; MY SON IS NORMAL, he's interested in girls. I share in her relief. What I did with Paul is too shameful to name, what I was doing with Beth Ann is normal. My mother sternly warns to, "Never do that again." And while I never do, I never forget her momentary relief that I wasn't messing with boys. She knew what I'd done with Paul -- Mrs. Quinn made sure of that. And I knew she disapproved. No disapproval or expression of disgust or disdain, and certainly not my mother's relief or even my own could sway me from what I knew -- that I preferred boys. I was acutely aware that I liked boys more than girls. They’re smaller versions of my father, and my father looms large in my world. They are a desire, a mystery, a cone I want explained. This attraction and longing confuses me. And although it confuses me, there's a burgeoning liberal in me that simply don’t understand the fuss. I remember thinking "so what if I like boys" but also wincing, as if I was anticipating a smack. Verbalizing that I was gay, the casual "so what", laissez faire shoulder shrug of it all, won't come for years, if ever. Even still, at age six, I can’t understand why liking girls over boys is an expression preferred over the other. Loving boys feels so natural. Later, I find my mother’s Dr. Spock’s Baby and Child Care open to the chapter on children and homosexuality. My mother has been studying my mystery too. The Doctor assures worried parents that a child’s flirtation with homosexuality is just a passing phase. I wait through my teens for that phase to pass, remembering my childhood example of normal as well as its polar opposite. When this phase never passes, melancholia sets in. Loving the sameness of boys was a taboo that loving differentness of girls wasn’t.