I was exhilarated! I told the nurse of my need and failure to act, and she immediately called the trainer and told him to call me and get started. That worked. We moved from our home community in D. I now live alone for the first time in my life. The changes that have taken place over these last years was very painful, but gradually a new life in me emerged: I recognized that I was gay.
As I began what was for me a crucial quest to find companionship I soon discovered that my only desire for connection was with other men. I had not been a closeted gay man during all those years before. I had a wonderful life growing up in rural Maryland, in the s and s, thoroughly involved in all sorts of school activities with lots of friends.
At Syracuse University it was the same story. I met my wife at the student newspaper, we got married, and I had the most happy experience of my life β the one achievement that will matter most on my deathbed β being able to live with the three sons we raised. And they still talk and argue with each other and myself, another prime goal of my life.
My career in newspapers for more than 20 years never felt like work; I enjoyed my life fully and I had only one partner, my Susan. My psychiatrist describes my experience as that of a latent homosexual, terminology first proposed by Sigmund Freud, as an erotic inclination toward members of the same sex that is not consciously experienced or expressed in overt action. Some gay activists today dismiss such a notion as hogwash, believing that there was real conscious knowledge that I just repressed.
My conscious brain was not able to connect the dots and turn on a lightbulb that showed I was gay. As a result, even though I lived through the s gay revolution as a citizen of Manhattan, and then lived in the Washington, D.
