First

Hello everyone from beautiful San Jose Costa Rica!  Today is September 15th which is Independence Day for most if not all of Central America.  Happy Independence Day to all my Central American readers which is probably just one....Oh wait, I don't count since I am typing this and I am a Gringo not from Central America.  Oh well, I will just pour me some wine and start this weeks blog.

I am putting my catty comments aside to day to discuss a couple of subject that is very near to my heart....me.  Just kidding well kind of...The main topics in the LGBT Community is Equality of Marriage, Bullying and the fear some fear and many of us did fear years ago is someone found out that we were different.  I though I should share a pinch of my story with all three of you readers.  Then next week we will get back to back biting bitchiness of me after the Emmy Awards.

One of the funniest questions that most people have asked me over the years is when did I know.  For years, I came up with some story that wasn't true because it seemed people were always looking for a definitive answer.  They wanted to pinpoint that moment when I knew I was gay.  I guess to either confirm they were or not or a loved was or not or to watch out for it with their kids.

The crazy thing is that at some level I always knew.  I know that seems like a cop out.  Many people will be like how did you know when you were so small because kids don't even think about sex which is true.  However, being gay is more than just sex.  It's hard to explain, but I compare it to mediums.  You know you are a medium because you feel it and you experience these sensations that no one else except for a few others can feel.  There are some that can fake it for whatever reason, but the true mediums and true LGBT just feel it and it has always been with them.

I always knew I was different.  I always wanted to be around girls because I felt more comfortable around them.  I was very intimidated by men including my brothers, father, cousins and so on.  I always felt better around my mom, aunts and female cousins.  As a kid, I knew this was odd, but I was very scared of men so I stayed with the womenfolk which caused me even more pain.

Public school was never easy for this awkward kid that was me.  I was very shy, sensitive and well...to put it bluntly feminine.  Looking back, I have to admit I was a little girly.  I wasn't prancing around (well not all the time), but I definitely was not a rough and tumble boy.  I had more sugar and spice than snips and snails.

Because I hung with the girls in school and not the boys and I would cry at the drop of a hat, I was called all sorts of names like sissy, gay, queer, fag, faggot and so on .  When I first heard them, I had no idea what they meant and cried just because everyone was laughing at me which made the teasing that much more harsh.  They were relentless and the farmer and little town boys of Maryville, MO made me think of suicide and worse at the age of ten. 

When I learned what the words meant, it became real for me.  At first, I didn't understand why anyone would call me these names.  Then the few male friends I had and their families tried to help me by telling me to be tougher and stop crying.  Stop hanging around the girls so much.  Stop being a sissy.  I tried but no matter what I did.  The other boys in the school would relentlessly torture me.

I use to pray that someone would kidnap me.  I built a fantasy where I was adopted and my real parents would finally come rescue me from the hell that I was living.  I wanted to run for the hills and never return. I was young and I had just realized that I had fallen in love with my best friend, Mike.

I was ten to eleven when I knew I loved Mike.  He had been my friend since I was six or younger, not really sure.  He lived just a block away from me in little home with his parents, his big sister, Mary, and his younger brother, Paul.  Over the years we had spent the night together at each other's house many times. We had played in the neighborhood running the streets of the small town and riding bikes all over.  We constantly were at the public pool swimming and so on.

The moment I realized I had fallen in love with him is like it happened yesterday.  He was changing clothes and getting ready for bed.  He had stripped to his underwear.  For some reason, my thoughts were x-rated.  It scared the hell out of me.  I never let on that night, but I really couldn't sleep because I could swear he could read my mind.  I knew he would find out and then stop being my friend.  I was in complete terror.  In that moment, I realized that I had to live a lie forever because no one could know.

I couldn't tell any of my friends, because none of them would be my friends.  They would all begin to bully me like all the other kids in town.  I couldn't bear that happening.  Can you tell I was little melodramatic?  I was on my own.  Somewhere in my head I knew something had to change because if it didn't I wasn't going to survive the hell that was my life at that time.

Like most LGBT members, family life wasn't much better.  Don't get me wrong, my immediate family and extended family never really spoke bad about the LGBT community.  The bad views came from the community, television and the church.  It was never really a topic for us to discuss.  However, the closest sibling I had was nine years older than me and you can't really confide in them because they are really like additional parents and instead of listening they want to fix it.  My closest cousin in age was a male cousin, Chuck,  that was exactly like the boys who bullied me at school.

Now Chuck didn't bully me so don't get that started.  He just did things like them.  He got dirty.  He got hurt.  He liked to hunt.  He liked to fish.  I was his complete opposite and he intimidated the hell out of me.  I think I stayed away from him on purpose for several reasons.  We didn't have that much in common.  I was afraid he would start bullying me.  I was also convinced that he knew I was gay and was going to tell my family and then my family would kick me out in the streets.  I really did him a disservice by treating him like the enemy just because he had similar interests of the bullys.  Come to think of it, I owe him an apology because he is pretty neat guy.   

How did I survive this hell?  I was in so much fear of what might happened that I did nothing.  I didn't tell Mike that I loved him.  I didn't tell the bullies and the other kids that yes I was a fag and they could kiss my ass.  I didn't tell my family.  I did nothing.  I took the abuse and lived in my own fear built prison until my parents divorced and my mother and I moved to a different town many miles away where I could rewrite who Jay was.

That is the beginning of my story and maybe I can share the rest with you sometime.  Yes, I did tell Mike that I had loved him many years later and no we are not lovers.  I did tell my family and have love and support from all levels from my parents to brothers to Cousin Chuck.  I did tell my former friends and classmates of years ago and only speak to three of them through social media.

So there is my first; when I knew, the abuse, my own fears and loathing and love.  I hope I didn't bore you too bad.  However, please know that each member of the LGBT has their own story and all of them are different.  Some of them are uneventful and some are ten times worse than mine.  Please be sympathetic and a good friend, sibling or parent and listen to these stories.  We don't tell them to hurt people or drudge up old feelings.  We tell them so we can stop someone else from feeling alone, to inform others on how we can make things better for the next generation and so our voice can heard and used for change in policy like Marriage Equality, Anti-Bullying Laws, Hate Crime Legislation so on.

As promised, next week will be about the Emmys, hotties, reality shows and gossip.  Here's a hottie to tie you over.



  May all your drinks be mixed well and heavily poured.