Jake’s Life

This post starts the story of not only my coming out, but also the repercussions of it, my development based on it, and overall what I learned from the experience. I am unsure how many parts it will be, but don’t want it to be one or two massive posts that are difficult to get through.

I’m sure that you can relate, but I knew I was gay before I knew what “gay” actually meant. Whether it was the adoration I viewed Billy on the playground with while he was infatuated over Sally or just a feeling of being different, I knew it. While it was natural to me, I had a feeling it wasn’t to others, so I kept my mouth shut about it and in my mind from about the third grade up until the fifth grade when I finally realized what the hell was going on.

One day I saw a friend at school that I hadn’t seen since second grade (I moved away and evidently he moved to the same area, Lancaster, CA, a few years later). He was the bad kid, always in trouble, and now was in the class that would now be termed for at-risk youth. We were never really good friends at our old elementary school but we found familiarity in each other. He didn’t live too far from me, so we made it a regular habit of hanging out. One day my mother wasn’t home (which was often at that age due to her body piercing business in Henderson, Nevada. She would take one-to-two week long trips there at a time) and my first view of another naked body in a sexual way happened and that’s when it really struck me what was going on in my head. It scared me, and I never really saw him again.

The next year in school, sixth grade, I met someone who became my best friend that year before he was taken out of his mother’s custody and placed with his father across the state. That had to be my first crush, and I’ll never forget him. Okay, I’ll admit something to you…we both loved the show CHiPs and we both loved riding our bikes together, so I’ll let you imagine how we looked flying down the street sharing the same lane and taking corners…but we were pretty damn good at it after a couple of collisions!

Next came seventh and eighth grades — junior high school — and gym class. I was always a fat kid and being around bodies I deemed more suitable for attraction was never pleasant for me, not to mention the other…inconveniences…which occurred at that age in the locker room. I made some lasting friendships here, some of which would be part of my coming out process later on in high school.

In high school is when things really started to pick up in terms of my own social development as it relates to my sexuality. Leading up to this point, I never really was social per se: I was never popular, often overlooked unless someone had a fat joke to spit out, and not the cool type kids wanted to hang out with. By this time I had told my best friend, a girl who I had “dated,” and a few other friends that I was “bi.” (I think this had to do with wanting to be at least partly normal even though I knew that I had very little interest in girls). During this time I made an insidious enemy, a chunky girl with red hair, who decided to call my house one day and leave a message on the answering machine that I was gay. I was 14 years old.

Let me break away from the story to give you some background on my family structure. I am an only child and lived in a single parent household. Growing up my mother was all I ever had. She was involved with two main men throughout my childhood, both bikers. One was a “reformed” gang member who was now a surgeon, a man of God, and worked in a halfway home. He was extremely strict, to the point that television was from the devil and we weren’t allowed to watch it, and after dinner I had to read the Bible aloud for two hours. The other was a current gang member and overall mellow guy unless you messed with his money, his brothers, his ol’ lady, or her son. My household was full of interesting things as any given point, and if I wasn’t seeing interesting things at home it was at the body piercing shop that my mother frequented in town (she also owned half of one in Henderson, NV). Needless to say, it was not the most open household to issues such as sexual orientation, race, or religion.

End part one.