Knowing I am going to be asked this question by someone, I have been trying to answer the question myself. Did I run cross country because I was gay?
This has had me doing a lot of self reflection. I mean cross country means being with a bunch of fit scantily clad guys. What more could a gay guy want? Well I guess a bunch of naked fit gay guys. However, the answer to this question is most assuredly no. I decided I enjoyed running and wanted to run in the fifth grade. Well before I ever realized I was gay, and when I started running it was usually alone, not with other boys.
However, that doesn’t answer the question. The next half is did being gay help you keep running?
The answer to this is a little more complex. I was never good at running, and the decent I was, was the result of a lot of hard work. Dropping 8 minutes from my 5K time in 4 years is a testament to that. Yes, I enjoy the personal challenge and fighting myself every step I take while on a run. However, this alone was probably not enough to keep me running.
So the second reason I give for running is the camaraderie. This probably truly is the reason I ran. There is nothing better for friendship than spending 40 minutes a day together with a group of guys with nothing else to do than talk to each other. We were all great friends and would have done a lot for each other.
Yet despite this, you still have the scantily clad fit guys. So did these guys keep me running? In middle and high school, no. Yes, they were a nice perk and nice to look at, but no they were not the reason I ran. I loved most of my teammates like they were my brother, but unless I knew one of them was gay I never would have considered a relationship with them.
I am sure you noticed I included a caveat to my answer to the question. While in college being gay probably did help convince me to run with the running club. I won’t lie, it helped, but it was not the only reason. I enjoyed the challenge of running and fighting myself every step of the way.
This is another continuation of my biography.
Well one day my parents learned I was looking at porn again. My dad confronted me one night about it, and although I don’t remember all of the details about the conversation, there is one particular part I remember. He said “I am afraid. Are you gay”. Well with him talking about being afraid, I answered no. Ever since then I have resolved to not come out to my parents until I had moved out and no longer needed to be dependent on them. Seeing as I am still in college I have not come out to them yet.
It was around this time I was running cross country which many would think that I ran because I was running barely clad with other barely clad good looking guys. And yes the guys were good looking but I ran cross country because I enjoy running.
The cross country team was like a family to me as anyone who has ever run cross country can understand. However, the guys on the team would frequently make some comment or others about gays. As much as I tried to brush them off you never really can. Not knowing anyone who has seemed accepting I started to become depressed and feel isolated and alone.
I began considering suicide or running away. I reached the point I kept a sack of stuff packed in case I ever decided to leave one day. The closest I ever came to running away, I walked out on my mom during and argument and walked around town for four hours. I calmed down over this time but if anything angered me in the next week I probably would have run away. I also began thinking about suicide and it was only my extended family and some of my best friends from cross country that kept me from doing it.
I did make one big mistake among others I want to mention. I never talked to anyone about my suicidal thoughts. I find myself wondering what would be different now if I had talked to someone and they helped me get help and be happier.
This is another installment of my bio. It is slightly out of order and should be a post or two earlier.
I was out camping one weekend and it was the middle of the winter. Most of us were camping in a cabin, but there wasn’t enough room for everyone in the cabin. So two of us slept outside. Well we went to bed that night and my tentmate said “I dare you to sleep naked”. From there it turned into a daring game where the dares ranged from humping a tree, to running around in your boxers, all the way to going outside and walking around the tent naked.
Well the next night some people decided it was too crouded inside and some more people slept outside. Well we all decided to play a daring game that night. Well the daring game didn’t last more than five minutes after the dare was made for two guys to get in the same sleeping bag in their boxers. The two refused to do it and the game was over.
This is another installment of my bio to give you some background before I start current blogging.
Shortly after the move my parents started catching me jacking off all of the time. It seemed I had no privacy anymore as they quit knocking on my door and instead just walking in. There really isn’t a lot to say about this as it is something that almost everyone has to deal with but something I figured I would mention.
I soon discovered gay porn. In my curiosity I started looking for the stuff and knew at that point I was definitely gay. I won’t go into the argument about how the porn industry is evil and will stay out of the politics for now. However, I did get caught.
I was away working at camp for the summer and my parents got into my account. When they got into my account they saw my history and quickly took away all of my computer privileges. I didn’t discover this until the end of the summer and didn’t say anything either as I knew I was caught and didn’t want to get into the discussion.
Well for all my attempts to avoid the discussion after about a month I failed. My parents sat me down one night and started talking. Telling me how everything I did was wrong and bad and could get me arrested. I gave the excuse I was just exploring as I knew my parents were not ready to learn I was gay. They seemed to buy it, but continued to limit my computer access. Or at least they thought they did.
I am quite the computer geek and found ways around their safeguards. When I was home alone it was not uncommon for me to get on the computer go around their safeguards and browse some more. I continued to do that until I moved out.
This and several more incidents are largely why I am still in the closet. I don’t want to explain why until I have covered everything that happened, but I will tell you why I am still closeted.
This is another installment of my bio series giving you a background of my life before I continue into normal blogging.
Well my family was in the process of moving and we had to do an intermediary house as the house we were building wasn’t finished, and the house we used to live in sold. Well during the time we were moving and after the first move several things happened.
I was collecting for my paper route one day and the two boys that lived at the house answered the door naked and came outside. It was nice being able to look at more boys naked, but it was also a very awkward situation. I did my best to get them back into the house. They were too young to understand why they shouldn’t run around naked, and their parents weren’t around the door. Eventually their mom showed up, got them back inside and paid me. When I enjoyed looking at these kids is when I finally started to admit to myself I was gay.
Well we moved and I found a new temporary group of friends to hang around with. We started playing truth or dare together and often times the dares were quite sexual. I really don’t remember what we did, I just remember it happened.
This is a period of my life I don’t remember overly well, but the next installment will be back into my more detailed posts.
This is another installment of my bio trying to give you a lot of my background before I start blogging about every day life. This post covers the ages of 12-13.
I was home alone one day watching TV and ever since I began playing with other kids in my neighborhood in a more sexual way I always wanted to be naked. Hence I took the opportunity to strip. Well, my dad got home early. I heard him put the key in the door and I darted down to our basement grabbing my clothes. Unfortunately for me, he saw me.
My dad is a fairly religious man. He isn’t to the point I would call him zealot, but he is definitely religious and does everything possible to prevent missing a day of church. Well my dad having seen me comes in as fast as he could and yells asking what I was doing. He asked me why I was naked and I refused to tell him.
Well later that night my dad comes over to me and said “We are going on a walk.” Realizing I didn’t have a choice I went with him. On the walk he starts saying he has no idea what I was doing, but he really wants to know. When I responded nothing he asked if I was masturbating. Never having heard that term used before I asked him. Once he explained that it was also known as jacking off and he explained how to do it, I told him no. He told me good and that I shouldn’t do that because it was bad.
He was silent for a few minutes and then asked if I was exploring. Seeing as that seemed to be the answer that would get me into the least trouble I answer yes. Although truthfully I was just sitting around naked because I enjoyed doing that.
Seeing as he explained masturbating and it was something I had never done in the way he explained it before, I started what any 13 year old does and started jacking off all of the time.
We moved about 6 months later and I will pick up my story in my next post.