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My story is complicated, and I'm not exactly sure what part you want me to focus on... so here goes nothing.
I was raised in a small town by a relatively single mother. She and my father divorced when I was 3 years old, and we moved to a duplex on St. Claire Street.
My mother worked as a bartender and did the best she could. She worked long and hard, but she couldn't do everything on her own. She had, what I've come to refer as her concubines, over the years. These guys she convinced herself that she loved, and then moved them in with us.
The first that I remember was my step-father, David. He was young and stupid - 21 years old. He ended up in prison for manslaughter. Then there was Garry, David's cousin, Otto, Mark, Harvey, Mark, and then Marcos. Their names don't really matter, though.
One night, about the time I was 6 or 7 years old, my mother decided she needed a night out. She went to a bar with her friend Linda and left my sister and I with Linda's eldest daughter, Rachel. That night, Rachel raped me. I didn't tell anybody until I was about 14. At that time, I learned that Rachel's older brother also raped my sister. My father was furious.
Two houses down on St. Claire Street there was a boy named Russel who lived with his mother and his younger brother - Christopher. Russel and I did everything together. We caught squirrels, hung out talking, and even knitted dick cozies.
One day, I went to visit Russel (I called him Rusty), but nobody answered. His house was empty. They didn't tell me they were leaving, no card, no phone call, no goodbye. Remember his name - he'll come up later.
We moved again to live on Elmwood - in a quad-plex behind a bar. I went to middle school about a mile away. Meanwhile, mom continued with her concubines and the drugs and alcohol became increasingly common. Every Saturday, though, we'd wake up and drive to the Ohio State Reformatory to visit my step-father in prison.
I wore her clothes to school when none of mine were clean. I took care of my sister while my mother was at work. Every day I'd come home from school and there'd be a note: Be good, don't open the door for anybody, I love you.
Her words were loving, but her actions weren't - at least, not consistently. It was like walking on broken class - you knew there was always a bit of danger, but you never knew quite for sure when you'd get cut.
Between her and her concubines, I received a regular beating - sometimes for things I did, sometimes because of how they felt. I received black eyes, broken ribs, was dragged up the stairs by my hair, and thrown down into the basement. All on multiple occasions.
I had a couple teachers at my middle school, though who picked up on what was going on. They saw the bruises, the look of pain and fear in my eye. They knew my parents were divorced and that I lived with my mother. One day, Mrs. Wright - my home economics teacher - who I view sort of as my guardian angel - planted the seed that changed my life.
She asked me why I didn't go live with my father. Until that time, he had attempted several times to obtain custody of me and my sister, but the courts were of the opinion that any mother is better than any father.
Over the next three years, she and my school counselor helped me overcome the barriers that kept me with my mother. I was operating under the belief that it was my job to protect my sister from my mother, and to protect my mother from herself. They helped me to realize that - in protecting everybody else, I'm hurting myself.
It took a little while for that to set in... but in the 6th week of 9th grade, I made the decision to move in with my father in the next town over. I cried, and cried, and cried because I felt like I was abandoning my mother and my sister - like I was telling them that I didn't love them anymore. But I did.
I started at my new high school and, free from the tyranny that was my mother, I experienced a metamorphosis. I went from a terrified little fat boy who walked looking at the ground, to somebody who held his head up and believed in himself.
In a matter of weeks, I came out. First to a friend in class (my preacher's daughter) who decided I was a terrible person for being bisexual, then to my aunt at Thanksgiving, then my mother. My aunt didn't care. She supported me and still does. My mother was a different story, though.
She made it about here: Oh god, where did I go wrong? What did I do to deserve this? It took her years to come to terms with my sexual orientation. In all fairness, it took me years, too.
When my schoolmates realized that I was gay, the beatings ensued. I was the language fag, I was the singing fag, I was the dancing flag, I was the flag-twirling flag - and that last one was really my downfall. They used my flagpole to beat the hell out of me - on more than one occasion.
Who would have known that coming out in a rural community would have made such a wave.
When I got my first computer at home with a dial-up internet connection, it was the middle of 9th grade - 1997, I think. I went to yahoo chat rooms and found me some dick. Wildly inappropriate dick, mind you, but dick nonetheless.
I was 14 or 15 the first time I had sex. I don't remember the guy's name, but it was the first time I ejaculated... and I wondered - am I cumming in his mouth or am I peeing in his mouth?
After that, there was the 29 year old Filipino banker, the 43 year old web designer, the 32 year old alcoholic, the 30-something year old guy on Valentine's day who had to leave to get his girlfriend a present. Nobody was age appropriate - because there was nobody age appropriate was available.
Eventually the beatings at school stopped and I became a little less of a whore. It took blowing half the football team and a quarter of the city to come to the realization than random sex wasn't for me. But one thing hung over my head: my father told me When you graduate from high school, you're out of here.
I had no plans. My high school counselor was shit. I didn't even know what my options were. So I did the only thing that made sense to me... I stopped going to school. About a month later, my father saw a friend of mine at the library; she asked if I was okay and when I was coming back to school. My dad was pissed, but I made up a story: the French teacher told me I would never amount to anything.
My dad let me withdraw from school, but I didn't re-enroll. Instead, I ended up living with my mother - again. There, I completed my GED with what was (then) the highest scores in the state. I took a class on being a nursing assistant and worked at the first nursing home to hire me for about the next five years.
During that time, I went to college to become a paralegal. I also met my first real boyfriend - Steven. He was 7 years my senior and a self-hating fag. He grew up in the Baptist church and had convinced himself God wouldn't love him if he were gay. Suffice to say that two years later, Steven and I separated and he's now married to some lady and pretending he's straight (or, maybe he was pretending that he was gay... who knows).
I went back home (again) to live with my mother - but I couldn't stand her. So I spent most of my time staying at my friend Jay & Craig's house. Shortly after, I met my second boyfriend, Colby. He was a cashier at a grocery store where a friend of mine worked. She introduced us, we had sex, and then decided to make a go of it. I moved in with his family where I lived for about two years before he started cheating on me. And then I left him.
I moved in to live with my best friend's family after that. I studied to complete my associate's degree which I started when Steven and I were together and I practiced as a poverty law paralegal representing indigent clients in administrative law cases so that I wouldn't have to work in a nursing home anymore.
I started my bachelor degree and - about a year before I finished - decided that I really needed a change. Something about my life didn't feel right. I learned about AmeriCorps - and decided to apply for 9 positions in Texas (where I wanted to be) and 1 position in Arizona. I interviewed for several, but at the end, Arizona accepted me before anybody else did.
I packed up my life in two bags, boarded a bus, and moved across the country by myself to a place where I knew nobody. I moved in with two girls - one a teacher, the other an accountant - because they lived close to my service location. But alas, that, too changed.
When I arrived, the nun with whom I was assigned to work told me that the school lost funding and I wouldn't be going there to teach conflict resolution. Instead, I would be split between two organizations - one proving resource allocation and homeless social services, the other directing adult-education services for women in residential recovery from substance abuse.
That lasted a year while I completed my undergraduate degree. In the meantime, I was robbed by three underaged black kids with guns, moved out of the house with my two female roommates, and into a house with a gay male roommate who didn't work and, over the next year, essentially destroyed me financially.
When I finished my obligation with AmeriCorps, I began working as a substitute teacher and attending graduate school. I had just come back from a trip to Brazil where I went to meet somebody I convinced myself I loved, but didn't. Upon my return, I found a new apartment - for 450 dollars a month - and moved there to live by myself.
It was there, there I met my husband online. I found him on a gay bear website and sent him some meaningless message like "You're cute!" or something. He responded and we talked for a while through that website, then we decided to talk through Skype.
The day after his birthday, he got drunk and asked me to be his boyfriend. I said yes. Three months later, still in graduate school, I went to Mexico to meet him in person. He was 6 foot tall and weighed maybe 130 pounds. He was a toothpick; if for nothing else, he needed me to hold him down so that a strong wind wouldn't blow him away.
I visited him every 3-4 months for the next two years. Each time, crying when I left because I felt as though my soul were being stretched between my home and his. He expressed to me once that he wanted to visit where I lived, so I helped him get his visitor's visa. Once he had that, I think, our fate was sort of sealed.
He visited for a week or two a couple times. While he was away, one of my neighbors shot and killed the other. I didn't feel safe living in that apartment anymore, so I moved to another one. My boyfriend (Hector) came to visit again. He said he didn't want to go home. Under the terms of his visa, he could stay for 6 months at a time... so that's what he did.
He stayed 6 months, went to Mexico, crossed the border, turned around, and came back for another six months. After the third time he did that, I suggested that we get married, and he agreed.
It wasn't legal in Arizona for gays to marry at that time, so we went to New Mexico with a friend who officiated the "wedding." The witnesses were two friends of mine whose signatures I forged on our marriage license because we didn't know anybody in the area.
When we got home from New Mexico, we began the paperwork to change his visitor visa to a spousal visa. It was another year before he was allowed to work. In that time, I supported us financially. He tried to work under-the-table jobs as he could, but they were few and far between.
After about a year together, he came to the conclusion that I was cheating on him and began pulling away from me emotionally and physically. I didn't know his reasoning until years later. I spent the next five years of my life working as a school counselor - having completed two of my three graduate degrees - and trying to love him as best as he'd let me.
If I tried to hold his hand, he'd pull away. If I tried to hug him, he'd pull away. If I tried to kiss him, he'd pull away. He wouldn't tell me why, though. But I persisted, because I loved him, and if I am to be honest, I still do.
We survived a total of 8 years. Toward the end of our relationship, though, he wanted nothing to do with me. He would tell me "I'm going to Mexico, I'll be back in a couple weeks" or "I'm planning a trip to Europe." When I told him I wanted to go to, he'd say "No - you'll just slow me down."
His statement was true, but hurtful. I have a condition with my ankle where part of the bone between my leg bone and heel bone has no blood supply and has, essentially rotted away. I walk slowly. I also have scoliosis and can only be upright so long before I start to pay for it.
Before his trip to Europe, after having told him dozens of times that I am starving for affection, I told him - If you will not give me the love I need, I'll find somebody who will.
And then he left - for two months - to tour Europe without me. His husband.
In that time, I started dating another person and had sex with them. I told my husband and he was devastated. Mind you - I do not justify or rationalize what I did - because it was wrong. I was a coward. Even though my husband had an epiphany during his tour of Europe and realized that how he had been treating me was wrong, I refused to leave the other person I was dating because he was a good person and I didn't want to hurt him.
My cowardice was in not standing up for our relationship - the one between me and my husband. And quite honestly, that has been the biggest mistake of my life.
He and I are separated now. It has been four years. He lives with his boyfriend (the second one since our separation). In that time, I've gone on four dates with two people - all of which ended in a hug.
When he left, he took away the only thing in the world that mattered to me. I defined myself by my relationship to him. I was his husband, his provider, his nurturer. And then, all of a sudden, I was nothing.
Four years later, I lay here in bed with depression day in and day out, pretending that I'm happy when I'm at work because as a counselor I'm expected to be upbeat. Meanwhile, all around me are the ruins of a relationship that we both destroyed - for lack of communication, for lack of courage.
So now, I have five college degrees - three of which are at the graduate level - a license to practice school counseling, mental health counseling, and substance abuse counseling - a $60,000 a year salary, roughly 4 months off work every year, and a husband who lives with his boyfriend.
I specialize in working with adolescents. Often, they'll ask me when I knew I was gay.
I tell them that I knew when I was 14 or 15 - when I came out as bisexual and later came out as gay.
But that wasn't the first time I knew. I knew when I was sitting on the back porch with Rusty looking at the squirrel in the cage on top of the carport. I just didn't know what it was. I knew when Rachel pulled down my pants and straddled me at 7 years old. I knew when Travis sat on my lap in Mrs. Greene's science class in 7th grade because there weren't enough chairs. I've always known.
I usually tell people I have no regrets - because all of my tragedies and accomplishments have made me who I am today. But I do. I have two.
I don't regret the beatings. I don't regret learning to cook crack before I learned to cook food. I don't regret waiting until I was 14 years old to move in with my father because I wanted to protect my sister. I don't regret moving across the country on a bus.
I regret never looking for Rusty - because, even though I didn't know it at the time, looking back it is abundantly clear that I loved him - as much as a 7-year-old could love. I was devastated when he left.
I was devastated when Hector left, too. That's my second regret: being a coward when all he asked for was courage. I could have put an end to the pain he endured, the tears he shed week after week. When it mattered the most, though, I was a coward. And so, I lost him too.
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