Hey, how do you get four gay guys on a single bar stool?  Huh?   Do you know?   Turn it upside down!   Love that one…first gay joke I ever heard.  It was at a church summer camp, our councilor or cabin leader…whatever, Ron, was the source.  Forget that we were at a camp to learn about Jesus and you still have the problem of an 18 year old telling this joke to a bunch of twelve-year old kids.   We all laughed, but at the time I didn’t get the joke…I am not sure about the other three.    Stanley, laughed the hardest so I suspected he definitely didn’t get it either.   Stanley was a puffy, red-faced boy dressed in a short-sleeved button-up, a size too small, and a pair of pleated shorts, that with a bit of imagination, you could say matched the top.  I guess I don’t have such an imagination.   Stanly blurted out, “That was the best Ron.  Tell another fag joke.”  And he did.

            “Sure, sure….Why did the gay dude cross the road?  Anyone?  He couldn’t get his dick out of the chicken’s butt!  Get it?!”   More laughter this time. 

I want you to know that I don’t repeat these jokes to offend you but to give you a taste of the disgust my father felt toward me when I came home from that camp and announced that I thought I was gay. 

            “What the hell are you talking about?!  What happened to you up there?!  Some faggot rape you?!  I’ll kill them!”  

He was wrong.   No one touched me that week….Relax they didn’t.  I wasn’t the victim of some horrible tragedy that converted me to homosexualism.  But Dad couldn’t accept that and hired a lawyer that led to a huge investigation into the camp.  All that came out of it was that Ron admitted to a few jokes and became the scapegoat for the entire camp.  He was fired, threatened to be imprisoned for something, though I don’t think bad taste is punishable or there would be so few people on the outside that society couldn’t function.   Clearly, rational thought went out the window as this seemed to settle everyone down.  Seemed plausible to them that I heard two gay jokes and BOOM, I was gay.  Since it is an abomination to God it had to be something…right?   I try to stay out of the whole religion aspect of all that has transpired the past ten years since my proclamation of gaydome.  Seems no one is willing to budge so why try.   I guess in the end we will all get to figure out who is right.  I really hope it is me.   I think it is.    I do know I thank
God that Stanley didn’t come out until he graduated high school or they would have called for an exorcism of Camp Homo…and of poor, misguided Ron, The Fag Creator. 

The story I want to share isn’t the tragic one of a teen who grew up with a father who never accepted him…leading to a strain in his parent’s marriage…leading to divorce…leading to a single mom working two jobs raising a gay kid who she did accept but also secretly sort of blamed because if he was just normal, it might have worked out better for them all.  Okay, not so secret as I actually heard her on the phone one evening about a year after Dad left,

            “It is just so hard.  He is bullied at school and I am not equipped with what to tell him.  I feel so bad that he is hurting but I am hurting too…”   and then, there it was, “I can’t help but think if he were just normal, that things might have worked out okay.” 

But again, that’s not the story I want to tell…for a couple of reasons.  One is that, unfortunately, it is an old, worn-out story.  Gay men would nod their heads in unison and then probably yawn.   Plus, the ungay of the world, the “normal” people would hear it and feel like we all got in a room and, “got our story straight”….funny right?  Straight story for…Okay, how do you get four gay guys on a bar stool…..never mind.

The second reason is that I need to tell the more important story of how I came to understand that I was gay and had the courage to tell my parents at such an early age.  That is the story that needs to be told.   Told for those who share in my…not sure what to call it…my dad would be a thesaurus in a situation like this, “The words you are looking for “son” are; those who share in your: affliction, disease, plight, mistake, disaster, sickness, faggotness, father soul killer, marriage destroyer!”    Sorry, still have some unresolved daddy issues.