Grown Up Love

When I was young, finding a boyfriend consumed my life — or maybe it was just sex. Either way, mind and libido fought for control of my behavior. Stomach-churning nausea and indescribable bliss defined my young heart. I found innumerable guys to lust after, but love remained gut-wrenchingly elusive while I remained single.

Singles are judged mercilessly and we’ve heard all the refrains: You’re trying too hard/not hard enough/on a unique path; que sera sera; it’s God’s will; Auntie Boopsie knows cousin Poopsie’s neighbor Shapoopie who has a son/daughter; what’s wrong with you?

What was wrong with me? I agonized over the answer because (up to now) my first relationship had been my only relationship.

My summer of ’81 was a summer of firsts: Sam, first lover met on the dancefloor of New York’s The Saint; eating kiwi fruit for the first time; and before its first meager mention in The New York Times, my first discussion with friends about a strange disease affecting gay men. Sam and I lay awake worrying about infection sneakily snaking inside.

At the time, uncertainty became the only certainty, as death loomed and doomed any future fulfillment. For the record, Sam lasted six months — my stretch for relationship experience.

Then, through all the brouhaha about same-sex marriage, I felt excluded because I would never partake, and because other issues void of indecorous display, more publicly palatable and deserving of resources went ignored. Marriage to a man? Not even in my vocabulary. (Critics, I own my discomforts.) I’ve shunned the straight world’s institutions except those required to live in it. In my gay youth, with its alluring secret codes to gain admittance, life was special — and private! Gay life became so public, and brought with it feelings of exclusion from my own special group. Admitting no relationship experience elicited incredulous guffaws and my brief encounter with Sam, clear proof of personal flaws, hidden and suspicious. I knew, though, that in a way, it was true. For decades, my hidden poz flaw stymied desirability. From within myself and my finger-pointing special group, shame sabotaged self-esteem. I didn’t belong to the straight world nor the elite gay world with its status symbols of relationships and HIV-negative test results. Some observations are imagined, projected — but not all.

Gay prejudice appears in all guises.

When poz guys had had enough, groups formed. I joined, trained, and led them, all filled with special men of a different kind. But I remained single, believing I was a lesser gay man, wishing I’d been born lesbian, envying the many, great relationships I knew; or perhaps even straight, yearning for the social ease of relationships taken for granted. Through forty years, I joined the denizens of bars, dance clubs, bathhouses, a church, then the dating upheaval wrought by the internet. And IF, during those forty years, I’d been looking for love in all the wrong places — dear God — where were the right places?

Turns out, the Supreme Court might be one.

Though still a foreign concept to me, their decision electrified my world vision: freedoms for every generation and for future LGBTI tykes! Even the new acronym LGBTI — I for intersex — extends our inclusive definition. Relationships of all kinds will be honored, not by everyone, but everywhere, by freethinkers of every kind. And, maybe someday, mine.

Because at long last, one so-called “wrong” place … turned right. My grown up love brings different challenges, an assuredness missing from my volatile young love, a relaxed happiness. And, I’m still fiercely independent. Ask Neil, my boyfriend of almost three years. I’d tell you more about him, but this good man is truly special. And that’s private.