Always becoming

Like most humans, I developed an identity sometime during puberty. I’m not sure I’d call what happened an epiphany because epiphanies happen fast. My nascent identity evolved over time and with conscious thought and intent. I set about to figure out who I was, what I would do, and how I would relate to other people.

Despite consistent sexual contact with other boys, I never thought of myself as queer or homosexual. That came later; in the meantime I lusted after girls. Identity crystallized as bisexual when I needed a label, and bisexual was just fine. It opened the field and during the 1960s sexual revolution, evinced no shame.

I proudly wore the bisexual label for decades, through a bunch of heterosexual relationships that always failed. In retrospect, I recognize they failed because I was not a heterosexual partner. My mostly unrealized bisexual inclinations kept getting in the way. Call it denial—everybody does—but I still didn’t figure myself for gay.

Now I self-identify as gay. This involves the process of coming out both to friends and to myself. I am gay, I do gay; how do I be gay within the context of my life and who I am? I think about that a lot.

I can be no different a person than the one I’ve been all these years. Yet now there is a new component of identity requiring conscious thought and intent about who I am, what I do and how I relate to other people. Although not my first big rodeo, I expect a few saddle sores.