I'm not Gay, I'm Homosexual

Introduction

Why do I feel what I feel?

Why do I like men?

What do I like about men?

Am I a homosexual?

What does homosexual mean?

These were some of the questions I asked myself up to the age of 15 when I finally understood and accepted who I was.

I was a lucky boy in the sense that I was brought up in an environment where I did not hear homophobic comments besides the "normal" jokes about "queer" people and even when it happened it did not happen very often so I cannot say that I felt threaten or intimidated by them.

Another aspect that helped me was that I always was on my own, spending most of the time alone focusing just on three things: studying, reading and watching TV. No time for friends or games. I said it helped me as it protected me from my classmates and from my family.

From my classmates because being a good student sent a signal to everybody that my only interests were studying and do my best about my assignments. It got me the respect of teachers and students, everybody left me alone. Now, many years after I can see there was magic around me as I never was challenged or attacked for being the lonely good student. I was there but I wasn't with them. This allowed me to have my dreams and gave me the small freedom of looking at the boys I felt attracted to without being noticed (By then I was not clear why I was so seduced by the beauty of some of them). I was not feminine so I guess this helped me not to awake suspicions.

It protected from my family as well; when they asked me if I had to go out to play or to parties, or other places I always found in my studies the perfect excuse for avoiding those situations I did not want to take part of. My parents accepted my decision and never pushed me to do otherwise. My mum just kept saying that having friends is important but in a loving way, never as an imposition. I never listened to her and I refused to believe it was true; my only desire was to be on my own living in my world. Years later I finally understood what she meant.

Meanwhile, days passed one after another noticing from my bubble that my feelings of contemplation, admiration, and attraction for some of my male classmates, TV actors, TV characters, was growing and growing. The attraction for the male figure was always there since I was a kid as early as when I was 5-7 years old but by then my eyes were seduced by the presence of certain kind of men, it was admiration, enchantment, not reasoning of why it was happening.

During my firsts years in high school I started to realize that men awoke in me feelings women never did, it was a realization that gave me anxiety, that made me wonder what was happening to me, who I was, why I felt what I felt, I was a bit scared and confused, did not know what to do.

It did not occur to me to share those feelings with friends as I did not have any; with my family? Impossible. I did not have a close relationship with my father and with my mother even when I had a beautiful relationship, I did not feel that was a subject to talk about with her. My siblings were too young. I was on my own.

I remember I was aware that there were homosexuals but somehow, I did not feel I was one of them but I certainly was worried I may be one of them.

Then help came to me thanks to my position of being a good student.

I studied at a very good high school where we had this fantastic library. For weeks, if not months I used my breaks for visiting the library, looking for in books the explanation of who I was, what was happening to me.

I checked encyclopedias, books on psychology, atlas, manuals, etc. and I did read everything I could about homosexuality. I read about the Greeks, I read about the Romans, I read about Freud and I read about the Kinsey reports on sexuality among others I have forgotten now. It was a lot of information that left me with the choice of refusing who I was or accepting it. It did not help me to make my mind but it did help me to understand I was not alone in this, that I was "normal".

One thing though stayed in my mind: In one of the books I read, it said that during puberty there is a period where boys are extremely focused on their own bodies and during this time they even may have experiences with other boys like being naked or touching each other or measuring their penises, etc. Puberty was a sort of hope I decided to have. I thought maybe the feelings I had were part of that phase, maybe they will pass when I reach my adolescence.

Time passed and my feelings instead of diminishing, increased. I was overwhelmed by it all as I have 2 or 3 classmates in my high school that I was totally into. My firsts crush if you want. It was unbearable. I still remember their beauty, their smell, and their faces. Gorgeous young men I never saw again after I finished my studies. I did not have physical contact with any of them although I had special moments, I may share with you another time.

Around my 15th year, I said to myself: Oh my God this Puberty cannot be that long and from that time I started seriously to think I was homosexual but still I did not dare to define myself as such.

At the time I changed my TV interest for movies, so I used to spent a lot of time on my own watching movies, it was then that I discovered a movie filmed in 1982 that gave me the clues for accepting who I was with happiness, hope and excitement: "Making Love" with Kate Jackson (from the famous TV series Charlie's angels), Harry Hamlin and Michael Ontkean.

I remember how happy I was after I saw the movie, it gave me the freedom to be at peace with who I was: a homosexual man. Of course, in my very rational mind I had to define what being homosexual meant to me considering all the information I had accumulated so far, in general terms these were my conclusions:

_It is feeling attracted to another man.

_It is having physical desires towards another man.

_It is falling in love with another man.

_Being a man, I concluded, and being homosexual must mean that we could explore each other's bodies freely and I thought this means I can make love to him and he can make love to me. This must be it as both of us are men and homosexuals. It was so logical to me; pure realization, openness, and acceptance.

I saw all this in that wonderful movie. It was just about the act of loving and desiring a man.

Yes, you may say a romantic was born that day.

I was left, and still, I'm, I need to confess, dreaming about my guy, who he would be, how we would meet, how the first time would be.

In my mind, I never thought about all the conditions that I discovered years later (when I started university) "the gay community" imposed to their community, concepts like "top", "Bottom", "vers", "camp" were so alien to me, putting all of us in niches with strong implications and the stigmas every one of them brings not just in the "straight" world but more importantly in the gay one too. It was like going from jail to freedom and the back to jail again.

During all these years even though I respect the achievements the "gay community" has accomplished in terms of social acceptance I do not feel identified with their categorization, discrimination, machismo, and segmentation among the kaleidoscopic variety of what being gay means for them which has led to the proliferation of roles models that those attitudes have endorsed creating beings incapable of having solid and constructive relationships, for whom self-indulgence and misunderstood fun seem to be the only options and the basic definition of what gay means.

This is why I have chosen the title of this book to be "I'm Not Gay, I'm homosexual" giving my point of view on those believes I have about what being homosexual means to me in comparison to what the gay community feeds and spreads as behaviors proper of being "gay".