Gay: In Retrospect

Gushing fan letter to Sylvester Stallone after seeing Rocky.

The only boy in my cabin at summer camp who didn't resist when one of the girl cabins "kidnapped" us and put makeup on us.

Purple was my favorite color until I figured out its gay association.

 

Purple was also my favorite color. Its like liking purple is not so much a choice but your born liking it. All you questioning guys out there ask yourself what your favorite color and if its purple...no more questioning!

 

I love purple too, lol...

When I was a kid, my best friend and I were sitting on the swings and there were also two boys of our class. My friend said that we were the princesses and they would fight the dragon and save us. I was so dissapointed that I didn't get to fight the dragon! Am not sure if I felt left out of the action or if I wanted to fight for her affections too...perhaps both?

Joan of Arc was my favorite historic figure and I loved books about adventures: my favorites being about medieval women (girls) escaping upcoming arranged marriages and living adventurous lives.

When I was a young teen I read in this girl's magazine that you could also send a valentine's card to a friend, so I did. I sent one to my best friend: something along the lines of you're my best friend and I want you to know that (I don't remember exactly)
If that wasn't one big heads up... It's the only one I've ever sent... Of course, I was kind of embarrassed about that later as I realized it had been a 'strange' thing to do.

I like building Ikea cupboards, or fixing something small. As a teen, I had this cassete player/cd/radio all in one and the play button of the cassete player fell through the cracks into the thing itself, so I got a screwdriver, opened it up, took it out, and fixed it. It was super simple but I was pretty proud

 

I remember being very happy when I learned that it was possible to marry a woman. All my worries about never finding a man went away.

When I played with barbies I sometimes just stared at them without clothes on.

I also remember this girl who I would chase around the playground like crazy. I knew she didn't like me, but I couldn't help myself.

 

Apart from my girl crushes...

I've always been a feminist. My family is very conservative. The "Murica" type conservative. I still wonder where I got my feminist ideas from....I used to argue with them in elementary school about these things. Maybe I was just a weird kid. Haha.

Along the feminist lines: In my teenage years, I had a subscription to "Bitch" magazine that my mother found. She even asked me if I was a lesbian. My favorite musician was Ani DiFranco for a long while.

Is color guard a lesbian thing? I was on that, and it seems about half of us have come out as either lesbians or bisexual. I thought that was pretty odd.

I've always built things. I knew how to properly install drywall and electrical wiring before I entered high school. Now I build, reupholster, and refinish furniture. Nothing really fancy, but I do enjoy building and freaking love power tools. If I came into money, I would completely deck out a garage as a workshop. I've always laughed about my hetero marriage because my husband can't hang some drapes without getting pissed and giving up, and I built our bed, our kids' beds, our dining table, our kitchen bar, and am working on a bookshelf now. Apparently we don't obey our gender stereotypes very well.

 

I wonder if they had the term Brony back then? Or did they pretend those boys didn't exist? :icon_wink

Sidenote: I do think it's ridiculous that a whole gender can't like something without a special name for them. My son love My Little Pony too.

 

Unlike a lot of kids (and adults), I seemed to enjoy doing my own thing. A lot of my "play" seemed strangely unstructured, and was hard to explain to other people. One of my favorite activities as a young child was watching street lights coming on and going off. (Seriously.) But another favorite was to put on a Christmas record (no matter what time of year) which featured a peppy instrumental piece played by guitar and flute. And then I would skip - literally skip - around the house and imagine slapping outstretched hands. I'm simply going to assume that, in my imagination, people spent their hard-earned money on tickets to see me skip around an auditorium and hold out their hands for me to slap.

Many years later, I was listening to that Christmas record, and that memory came flooding back. And I thought, wow, that was...kinda gay.

Lex

 

Not sure if this qualifies as gay or not. Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, I have an affection for rain that I'm sure eludes most of you out there. My street was lined with mature Norway maples, and as a little boy, I used to love to crouch at their bases, pulling my big umbrella close in over me, and listen to the rain drops bounce off the black fabric. I felt so safe and somehow comforted.

 

Oh I love reading this thread. It is the cutest thing in this forum I think.

Thanks for sharing all those lovely memories ladies and gentlemen.

 

Im still in the bi now, gay later camp, so may not qualify to post, but for me from the little I can remember it was my hair, bleached and beautiful, but then realised about gayness and closed my shell around me, and no more hair!
I did manage to go to work with pink and blue hair, and eyeliner and mascara recently, whew im a hottie!
Oh yes, fav music in younger years (still love it) is the rocky horror picture show, used to sing it all the time.. Oh and had "danger zone" on my ghetto blaster strapped to the handlebars of my BMX, used to cycle for hour listening to all sorts of what now do seem very liberated tunes. Kate bush rocks.
Still dream about those hardons in the changing rooms ... Yeehaaw! Was soo embarrasing never did pe.

 

When I was very young my grandma cleaned out her closet and found a briefcase and an old purse. She said my brother and I could have them and I got first pick. I took the purse, eagerly.

Also, I may have put on my grandma's shoes and walked around in them with some frequency.

Also, I once dumped an entire bottle of her perfume on my head, put on her clip-on earrings and high heels, and marched into the kitchen to announce myself.

Yeah, that happened.

 

Hah, no shoes or purse, but my sister and I once found an awful old fur piece in a box in Grandma's attic, the kind that fastened together via a clip in the mouth of the marten or whatever the animal started out as. (I believe we dubbed her Julia for some mysterious reason.) We took turns either wearing it, or sticking a cigarette in it's mouth and having it make assorted bitchy comments, although we never actually paraded around the house with it, since we weren't sure it was really ours to play with in the first place (and we knew damn well the cigarettes DEFINITELY weren't!).

 

I remember i used to play with teddy bears as a kid.
I also never had a remote interest in sports.

 

Purple, always and forever, never cared when anyone had commentary about it. Never been afraid of wearing pink either.

Teddy bears and stuffed animals in general (particularly dogs and pandas).

Not at all into playing sports, but do enjoy watching some. OK, yes, the athletes more so than game itself. ...how long until the Summer Olympics?

Really liked to watch and learn how to cook from mom even I was too small to see the counter top. She also let me play with her hair curlers and an old housecoat and some clear nail polish, it was either mom or grandma that had a box of old clip-on earrings I'd play with too; dad was not pleased at all when he saw me one day, he didn't say anything to me about it, but I did hear him tell mom not to let me do that again. Funny how shocked they were when I did come out years later!

I remember watching the Super Friends cartoons on Saturday mornings (omg, how old do you have to be to remember Saturday morning cartoons?!) and thinking how cool it would be to be rescued by Superman or Aquaman and feel his arms and chest around me.

Then there was Dukes of Hazard, everyone talked about Daisy Duke but I definitely liked Luke (the dark hair one, but thought he'd be even cuter with a decent haircut) the best and certainly kept that to myself.

There's plenty more that should have been obvious to anyone with functioning eyes.

 

Haha. My Saturday morning cartoon crush (well, one anyhow), was Captain Planet! Whenever he was being hurt by one of the polluters, I wanted so bad to help him.

 

Oh this reminds me, there's another story when I was younger that I forgot until now.

I must've been about 14/15 and I was standing in a group of friends at school. This girl was speaking to us and I remember looking at her eyes and noticing they were a beautiful colour, I'd never seen eyes like it before. I turned to my best friend and looked at his eyes and noticed they were also beautiful colour, and my other 2 friends who again had a beautiful mix of colours in their eyes. I'd never studied eyes this closely before. In awe I said:

"Everyone here has beautiful eyes".

Needless to say I was teased relentlessly by my friends for months to come. Everytime I said something they'd usually end it with a mock impression of me going "You guys have pretty eyes". It was all in good humour though. But even today it makes me a bit embarrassed just thinking about what I said.

 

This thread has brought me so many laughs, and fun memories- which I now appreciate in a way I never did before.

My mother always tells the story of how when I was 4, I would put a sheet on my head and pretend I was the flying nun.

I was also comfortable playing with dolls with neighbor girls. Later, when Star Wars came out, I got the action figures, which were a guy friendly version of dolls. It turns out the friend I played Star Wars with was also gay.

Thinking of these experiences now, I wonder why I was so self conscious about liking them. And how I am self conscious about anything I like. I realized today, I like what I like. It's my life.

 

Okay, so mine:

Aged 5 dressing up at school in a fetching hat, tweed coat and handbag with two of the girls...having great fun dressing up in my mum's old clothes...
Liking purple and pink generally, but don't wear it (probably dark purple/blue though!), thinking Han Solo was sooo hot with that tight white shirt and fitted black trousers, and He-Man too with those fur pants with a MASSIVE bulge in them that, as a 13 year old I couldn't take my eyes off. A love of stage, acting, and generally being a centre of attention. Thinking my Action Man was really cute with his buzz cut fuzz hair, chiselled features and six pack along with his khaki pants...

Think I'd better stop now. The list could go on and on well into my adult life. Why was it never obvious to everyone else?!

 

Around 4th grade, we a cub scout event in the pine room(cafeteria). There was some kind of a performance with 2 people in costumes(i'm not sure who they were exactly), but I remember watching the performance and being en-tranced by this one girl. It made me feel all warm and fuzzy.
Afterwards, when it ended, I was suprised and kinda shocked to see that it was a boy who I was attracted to.
I categorized this person as feminine in my brain, but it was definetely a boy.

It felt kind of like a dream when it was happening.