How I came out to my father

Jonathan said to me, during a recent fight, that he sometimes feels like he doesn't know very much about me. He says, to me, "I've been told by [friend] several times that you have one of the best coming out stories, but when I ask you about it you just say, 'I did it in Florida'." I realized, that I hadn't told my "coming out story" for at least a year and a half, maybe more, and I thought I'd scan my blog to see if I could find it. And it's not on here. I figured then, that that I might try to get down as much of it as I can remember while I can. God, I often wish I'd kept a journal like the church leaders always told me I should. :)

Travel with me back in time to December 2007. My relationship with Ishmael (who's name I will keep as Ishmael for the sake of his privacy) was still going on, and he had decided that we were no more to be namelesses, instead boyfriends. We were going to move in together. My parents had come down to Disney World to see me and have a vacation, my father still did not know I was gay. Because of the great big bundle of money I was saving them on the trip, they decided to make it even by spending a bunch of money on me at Ikea, to help me get set up in my new place. And thus, my brilliant plan came about.

"Ishmael," I asked him one evening while my parents were in town, "would you mind coming with to Ikea when my parents take me to get stuff for the apartment."
He was pretty reserved, knowing that I was not out to my father. "Are you sure that you're comfortable with that? I don't want there to be any drama with your dad."
"I'm sure. It'll be fine, I'll tell him I'm just borrowing your car and he won't think anything of it."

Well, the day of Ikea came about, and we took Ishmael's car to get stuff. My mother knew instantly who he was, my father remained clueless at first. There were a few things I had already picked out, but there were many others I hadn't.
"Ishmael, what do you think of this mattress?"
"Ishmael, do you like these towells?"
"Ishmael, how do you feel about this clock?"
By that point, Ishmael knew exactly what was going on and told me he did not like the clock at all, and that maybe I should wait and see how everything looked at my apartment before I got anything else.

I could take a hint, and I backed off. Several days later, after my parents had gone home, I called my father.
"Hey dad."
"Hey son."
"Dad, there's something we need to talk about. You remember the guy who went to Ikea with us?"
"Yeah. Brett, it was pretty obvious you had a thing for him. I want you to know that's totally normal, even I, at one point, had a friend I was really attracted to and I felt like he really understood me, and it's totally normal."
"No, dad, see, he's kind of my boyfriend."
"Oh. I see... Well, you could have done worse. I have to go now, I'll call you later."

And that was the end of that conversation. When I moved back to Portland a couple months later, my father made a real effort to be supportive, giving me advice and encouragement and whatnot, but he always seemed to think that I was going to want to go back to women at some point. It wasn't until he met Jonathan, I think, that he really became OK with the face that I'm gay and staying that way. That was almost two years later. And now, things are good, between my dad and me. It took us a while get here, but I'm glad I told him. I'm glad I'm totally out now, it's freeing very freeing, and I don't think I could have experienced that if I hadn't told my dad.

A Great Day for Gay Rights

As some of you may already know, gay marriage, not civil unions or domestic partnerships, but gay marriage has become legal in Washington DC. Also, within the same 24 hour period, churches in the UK were granted the right to celebrate UK Civil Partnerships if they so chose, a choice which was previously denied to them. And one more whopper, As of today, it's legal in Mexico City. Try that on for size!

The District of Columbia will be joining Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, and Vermont as a place where same sex marriages are preformed. The congressional review period has already passed, and the measure passed in the DC Council with near unanimity. Is this a change in general American opinion? Unfortunately, not really. DC has always been very liberal and moderately pro-gay. But it's still significant. 10% of US States now have legal gay marriage, and now our nations capital city has it too.

Because of the new DC law, Maryland is considering whether it should be changing it's laws to recognize same sex marriages preformed in other states. Meanwhile, this provides great momentum for the 2012 ballot fights in Oregon and California. But what this really means to me is hope.

It provides me with a sense of hope that maybe some day there won't be discrimination anymore. Living in Portland, where with the exception of marriage rights we're treated as equals, it's easy to forget about the plight of Gay people in other parts of the country. Firing somebody, or even being impolite to somebody for that matter, because they're gay is inconceivable here. I look forward to the day when it's like that everywhere. And that's not to say anything about equal tax treatment or employment benefits!

On the rejectionist phase

I realize that many of my readers are interested in issues pertaining to the church.(So much so, that I don't even really need to specify which church!) In order to increase my readership, I should therefore try to talk about issues that affect or are affected by both my homosexuality and the church. Everybody seeing how that works? The only problem is, I really don't think about the church much anymore. It isn't really a part of my life like it used to be. During and since my rejectionist phase, the church has been a matter of relative unimportance. I don't even realize it when it's conference weekend anymore, much to my mother's dismay. :)

So instead, let's talk about my rejectionist phase, how it's affected and is continuing to affect me, and how I think that if I'd taken smaller steps and not got so caught up in "being a good gay" (That's its own post), I really could have mitigated it.

I consider myself to have left the church in late 2007, a good date to put on it, since I haven't been to church since I went to Florida. Interestingly, I didn't really go through rejectionism until the following summer. I think a part of it is which crowd you end up running with. Nobody is really above peer pressure, especially not an 18 year old in a strange place. In other words, I think the reason that I was able to avoid it was good friends and decent boyfriends. But even so, I started building a picture of a life that wasn't really the life I wanted.

So, we'll skip past the part where I still lived a pretty good normal life to the part where I turned into a "bad person" for a while. It was May 2008, and I had moved back to Portland and had a good job. I was dating a person who was not my equal and with whom I had nothing in common, other than that we both liked sex. We came from completely opposite socioeconomic backgrounds, but the real problem was that he was dumb a doorknob, if you'll pardon me for being rude. Even so, I didn't really start making bad decisions until I started dating him. That's not to say that it was his fault at all. I take full responsibility for all of my actions.

It started innocently enough with, "you've never smoked [green substance]?" You guys can figure out what it was from that, I think. I let him talk me into that, and it was all down hill from there. The next one on the list was a fungus. I was way more reserved about that, but I tried it anyway with enough coaxing. We went to his "Doctor's" house. That was an experience like something out of a movie. There were people out on the porch smoking, the house moved with reggae music, a couple of people were banging on bongo drums... There was a guy nobody knew in the back making burritos. Doctor herself was like something out of a story book. She was maybe 4'11", had long dread-locked hair, big thick glasses, and enough [green substance] to provide for the city of Portland. Along with other substances. The whole experience was entirely surreal.

Drugs were only a part of it. Our relationship was pretty much entirely about sex. When we didn't have anything better to do, we had sex. We usually did it at least twice a day, but sometimes way more. When he suggested we have a threesome, I turned him down a few times, but I did eventually give in. If he had known that I would ultimately cheat on him with the guy that we had the threesome with, I wonder if he still would have wanted to have one. We did it twice, and during the second time he got really jealous and upset. That was the end of that. Let me just say, that cheating on him subsequently is hands down the worst decision I have ever made in my life.

The sad part is, ultimately I was the one who left him. He had every reason to leave me, but he was convinced that he was never going to better. What's worse is, I think a part of him thought that that kind of behavior was normal or acceptable. Ultimately, I lead him on for quite a while before I broke up with him. Why he didn't break up with me when he found out is something I can really only speculate as to. But, for what it's worth, we're both in much better places now.

The choices that I made then were bad, and continue to affect me. Jonathan, for example, often worries, when his seasonal depression is particularly bad, that I have/am/will cheat/ing/ed on him. At the same time, he has feelings of jealousy about drugs and threesomes. It makes him feel inexperienced, because he never had a major rejectionist phase. He's also former LDS, btw. At the same time, he has the inhibitions that he should have, preventing him from actually doing those things. And hopefully, those will keep up, as long as I can try to influence him for good instead of for bad.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is, while it's tempting, when you leave the church, to throw away your moral compass, it's dangerous. The other point I'm trying to make is, don't make bad choices for a guy unless you're 1000% certain that he's the one. If he wants you to make bad choices, odds are very good he's not the one. When you finally get to a serious relationship, understand that he's going to want to know about your past, and that seriously bad choices can make for difficulties down the line. Be smart, and like your mom probably told you before every dance, make good choices.

Brett

P.S.

I found that reading the Confucian Analects was very helpful in reestablishing my moral compass, for what it's worth if any of you are currently going through something similar.

The last year (or so)

Hey all, long time no see. It's been a year and no updates, and on the off chance that anybody still reads this (My StatCounter indicates I get like, six views a month), I figured I'd fill you in on the goings on in my life. I think, at this point, we're safe to abandon the pretext of Stephen. Most of you abandoned your monikers years ago, and I'm formally doing the same. In the last year, so much and yet so little has happened. I think maybe that's more normal than most people like to let on.

My 20th birthday was largely uneventful. In fact, the whole month of march was. In the spring, I took a yoga class amidst my other classes and that was a blast. I think, decently regularly, that I would like to start doing yoga again. I was more at peace while I was doing it; it had a way of relaxing me.

In the summer, I moved to an apartment right next to PSU. Ryan, my roommate, was a real clown, but a good guy overall. The apartment was fun, and I met some nice people. I never really connected with them though. It's strange how that happens.

At the end of the summer, I went to the Caribbean and Florida with my family. It was an awesome adventure, a Disney Cruise. Cruising is surprisingly affordable, and it's bad reputation for being a rich people thing is really undeserved. Upon returning from that vacation, I met Jonathan.

Jonathan and I fell for eachother very quickly. Unfortunately, I moved too fast, and I robbed him of things that he deserves. When I propose to him for the second time, I'll do it right. Flowers, a nice restaurant, an engagement ring. A few among the many things he deserves.

We moved in together officially on New Year's Day, but I'd been staying exclusively at his place for quite some time before that. We weren't even in Portland on the day my old apartment stopped being mine. We were visiting his family in Utah.

Meanwhile, work at FedEx had gotten out of hand. Shortly before we left for that trip, a manager assaulted me. When I filed a complaint with senior management, he was sent home for the night. That was it. So, I stopped working at FedEx, although really I'd been planning on doing that anyway. I never much liked it there to begin with.

Two months later, I'm still unemployed, a fact which is grinding on Jonathan's last nerves. I do have a job lined up, but it doesn't start until late march. Tax return season was very good to us, and things look up right now. Last Tuesday, we bough roundtrip tickets to Bangkok for the end of summer. We're going to take a month and see Thailand and Cambodia. Everything from the Emerald Buddah to the Angkor Wat, and we're going to ride elephants too!

That brings us to the present. I think, it's possible I may start blogging more frequently again. Probably not back to the every day thing, but maybe a bit more frequently than once or twice a year, huh? We'll see how readership goes. :)

-Brett

Clean

For everybody who read my last post, at this point it seems that I'm clean. It's been well over a month and the tests aren't detecting a viral load or any presence of the P24 antigen. Thank you very much for your support. :)

Seroconversion

Seroconversion is the most frightening word I know of. I'm undergoing what's called a scare right now. I've been exposed to the virus, albeit in a manner very unlikely (about 1/4000) to transmit. I've also started PEP via Retrovir and Epivir, a combination which has an 80% success rate in preventing transmission in high risk scenarios. Having said all of this, I don't think I've ever been this frightened in my life. The word seroconversion, whether I seroconvert or not, will likely haunt me for the rest of my life...

Emotional Maturity

A long conversation with Ishmael today revealed a few things that I believe about maturity. You see, I pride myself on being somebody who is "mature," without ever bothering to define that nebulous concept. I should probably start at the very beginning.

Ishmael is not a perfect person. Nobody is. He has his own quirks that could make even the most dedicated of pursuers reconsider his merits. One such is his immense fear of commitment. While it naturally has a roost in a series of difficult life events, it's still remarkably frustrating. It was while we were discussing such things that I had this epiphany about maturity. I once believed that it was placing the needs of another above yourself, and always being understanding.

Now, I understand that that is incorrect. Maturity means looking out for yourself as well, and acknowledging that at a given point, you cannot continue to be understanding; you have to ask for yourself as well. Achieving this balance where you can both understand and be compassionate while still asking and being honestly deliberately forward is what I would call a perfect end goal for emotional maturity, and I hope it's where I'm headed right now.