Archive for September, 2010
Michael, You’re Running from Something (Part II)
Everyone has a story: This is the second in a three part series written by “Michael Odom,” one of the readers of this blog. If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me.
“Mike, You’re running from something.” Part II
By “Michael Odom”
I told the man in the Cadillac who’d picked me up — and I really believed it — that the first time I would have sex with a woman I would change; I would no longer want to be with a man. So I got married and have two wonderful children, Michael, Jr. and Elizabeth.
During my married life I played around, mostly with other married men. I did not change.
In 1990, my mother sent me a letter telling me that I was the reason for my dad’s alcoholism. She also said that I had thrown my success up in the faces of my brothers. I never had done that. I refused to take the blame for my dad who had been in treatment for alcoholism four times. I never spoke with my mother much after that.
My dad was the first of my parents to die. He had smoked three packs a day and died with lung cancer. He had named me executor of his will. My mom said it was because he trusted me. Wow! That blew me away. My Mom died of breast cancer about a year or two after that.
After their deaths of my parents, my wife told me she felt like I needed to talk to someone because I had a lot of hate built up in my heart. My wife and I got along really well and were considered by others as the couple most likely to succeed. We were living in Dallas at the time.
At first, I told her I had never needed anyone’s help, but later on she convinced me. I was at this time very involved in the Baptist church and serving as a deacon. She set me up with a Christian psychologist.
On my first visit with the psychologist I told him about my dad. He told me that under the circumstances, I had turned out pretty well. I then told him he would hear the rest of the story on my next visit.
On the next visit I told him I was gay and had been living a lie all my life. He told me I had a sexual addiction and that he could cure me. I told him just to concentrate on my. After about three or four months of weekly visits we finished up with my dad.
We then turned to talking about my being gay. He told me that it was an addiction and that he could cure me with this 12-step plan. I told him I knew all about the 12 step plan because of having put my dad in the alcohol dry out center.
Finally, I told him while we were talking about my dad he had been listening to me, but once we started talking about my being gay, he had focused on his Christian agenda. I felt like I was wasting his time and my money, so I quit going.
Not long after that someone told me about a church that allowed a group of men to meet on Tuesday’s at lunch. The men in the group were gay, but married. Some of them were thinking about telling their wives, were in the midst of telling their wives or were dealing with the aftermath.
I started attending regularly when I was in town. I sat amazed as different men told their story. Some of their wives had been very cruel to these men. You could share or you could just sit and listen. It was very eye opening.
My wife and I had always been very close and fought very little. I just wasn’t sure how she would respond. Her dad, on the other hand, had helped build a private school in north Louisiana so his kids did not have to go to school with the “niggers,” [Michael’s father’s word, not Michael’s] I thought my wife’s father might come after me with a gun.
On November 18, 2001, I left the house driving to Austin, Texas, from Dallas. It was a Sunday night, and I had meetings for three days in Austin. Not soon after I left home, my wife called. We got into a rare argument.
Finally, she said, “Michael, your running from something. I just wish you would tell me what you’re running from.” We had not had sex for two years and I kept blaming it on my relationship with my dad.
“You’re running away from something” were the words I needed to hear. I said, “God, be with me,” and I started talking. We talked and cried until I reached Austin, a three hour drive.
I did not get much accomplished while I was in Austin. I talked and cried on the phone with my wife every night. On the drive home I wondered if I would find all my stuff in the yard, but it was not!
We talked after I arrived home, and she wanted me to go to a “Christian” counselor with her. I agreed. We went and this young therapist must have just graduated from college. She had never dealt with anything like this.
Like the first psychologist before, she told me there was a 12-step plan. I told her, “I know all about the 12-step plan, and I am not sick. Until you have sat where I sit and have worn my shoes, you will never know how I feel. Just like I will never know how it feels to be heterosexual.”
She responded, “You don’t want to save your marriage, do you?” I got up and walked out. My wife and I agreed I would stay at home for six months, until the summer. My daughter, Elizabeth, at the time was a junior in high school and my son was in college.
In those months, I met Fred, who was to become my partner. He was from the Midwest, very liberal and had gone through a divorce and coming out to his kids. He quickly became my hero and advisor.
Loren’s comments: Like Michael, one of the most important experiences I had during my coming out process was a support group for gay fathers. The coming out experience for gay fathers is much different than it is for men who’ve never been married. Twenty five years later, many of those men remain my friends.
Gay father’s have much more in common with each other than they do with gay men who have never been married.
From my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story:
The group provided a life-line for several of us who’d been in heterosexual relationships, some of us still married, and all of us with children. Confused, questioning and working our way through the questions about our sexuality, we were mentored by others who were further along in the process.
Ken, Bruce and I were about the same ages, each of us had two kids of similar ages, and all of us had divorced after coming out to our wives. I attended the first few times accompanied by Alfredo, the married man I secretly had been seeing during the last months of my marriage.
The group consisted of several men, all very committed to maintaining their roles as fathers. We were all concerned about finding ways to help our kids deal with the confusion and loss thrust upon them by our sexual declaration.
Had it not been for this small group of men, I would have felt entirely alone after I left my family.
Part III of Michael’s story will continue in a few days.
If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me. If you don’t think you could write it, just tell me the story, and I’ll write it with you.
“Michael, You’re Running from Something (Part I)
Everyone has a story: This is the first in a three part series written by “Michael Odom,” one of the readers of this blog. If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me.
“Michael, You’re Running from Something.”
By “Michael Odom”
I grew up in a small town in north Louisiana. My first fifteen years were in a small town of less than five thousand people. My dad was a mechanical engineer and worked for the paper mill. He was also an alcoholic.
At the age of six – I am now 55 – I began to realize I was a little different than all my friends. You know how Sears use to send their big old catalog in the mail? We would get it and my friends would be looking at the ladies in their bras and underwear, but I was drawn to the guys in their underwear.
That is when the physical abuse from my dad started. He, of course, had no idea of my attraction to men. He would get drunk and either slap me around or use his fist and back me into a corner.
I was the middle of three boys. My oldest brother was my mother’s child but not my dad’s. My younger brother was two years younger than me. As an adult, the only thing I could figure was that my mother would not let my dad hit the older boy because he was not his, and he could not hit the younger because he was the baby. So I became the target.
The physical abuse lasted until I was a junior in high school when he hit me for the last time. I stood up and told him I hated him and that I was moving out the night I graduated from high school. He never hit me again.
I grew to hate my mother because she allowed it. I suppose she was just glad he was not hitting her. He had done so earlier and she picked up a butcher knife and threatened to kill him.
I don’t want anyone thinking the physical abuse made me gay. I was attracted to men before that started. It might have added to my preference in men but it certainly did not make me gay.
My desire for men grew and grew. In the late 60′s the Sean Connery movies would be over for me when he put his shirt on. It was true.
In high school I had my first homosexual experience. It was with my high school head football coach – no pun intended. I was 15 and had had to have knee surgery after I was injured in a game. I was re-habbing in order to play the next year.
I was in the stadium locker room after working out with the trainer. I was going to take a shower. As far as I knew the only one in there was the head coach and me.
I entered the shower and I could not take my eyes off of the coach. He was of stocky build, what I considered old – about 45, very hairy, balding, clean shaven but with a heavy beard. I know he caught me staring at his uncut cock. I guess I had never seen anything like it before.
I immediately got a raging hard on and was very embarrassed. To my amazement he came over and got on his knees and gave me my first blowjob. I know I wanted it as much as he did. After it was over I got the usual “don’t tell anyone” speech. He began taking me to hotels and taught me how to make love to a man.
Not long after that my dad was transferred and we moved to a bigger city in north Louisiana. I got involved in the Baptist church because they had a basketball gym. I would go there after school so I would not have to go home immediately and face whatever my dad had to give out.
Getting involved in the gym got me involved in the youth program where I became sort of like president of the youth program. I also got involved in a gospel quartet that traveled a five or six state area. We stayed together for 10 years. I became very involved in the church. I kept my word and moved out the night I graduated from high school.
There was a man and his wife in the church program that became like a dad and mom to me. Whatever they wanted I would have done for them. They have since turned their back on me.
I met my wife in college. I was twenty when we became engaged. That summer before we were going to be married in November, I dropped my soon-to-be-bride off at the dorm and on my way home stopped at a traffic light. There was a silver haired man in a brand new Cadillac stopped beside me.
Our eyes met and we followed each other for a while. We then stopped and I ended up going to his hotel room for the night. That went on for two weeks. The last night we were together he asked me to come live with him. He told me that he would take care of me. He was a self made millionaire.
I told him that I appreciated the offer but I was not the type to be taken care of. Besides, I had made a commitment and there were a lot of people that would be disappointed in me if I did not go through with it. I couldn’t face the shame of moving to Mobile, Alabama to live with a man.
Loren’s comment: Michael’s story of his sexual relationship with his coach brings up the issue of what many social conservatives refer to as “pederasty,” or a sexual relationship between an adolescent boy and an adult man. It absolutely drives them crazy!
They consider it to be a part of what they refer to as “the gay agenda,” an attempt by gay men to recruit young boys into homosexuality. (Most gay men don’t even know what the word “pederasty” means.)
Many adolescent boys have had experiences similar to Michael’s. It does bring up the issue of at what age a boy is able to given consent for a sexual relationship. This issue is quite complex because chronological age is only one measure of a person’s age. Some boys are far more mature and capable of concent at age fifteen than others.
Most would agree that a sexual relationship that results from coercion of an imbalance in power is wrong. But many men, like Michael, have told me that they did not feel coerced or abused. Other young men need to be protected from men who might prey upon vulnerable young boys and adolescents.
It is of note that heterosexual adolescents are also becoming sexually active during there teen years.
From my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story:
Shouldn’t the age of consent be the same for homosexuals and heterosexuals? But is it? In 2000, the “Sexual Offenses Bill” became law in the United Kingdom, equalizing the age of consent of heterosexual and homosexual relationships. Prior to the reign of Queen Victoria, gay sex was punishable by death.
In the 1967 homosexuality was legalized for those of age 21. Homosexual consent was subsequently lowered to age 18 under Tony Blair’s administration.
It was not until 1996 that it was alleged that the different ages of consent for homosexuals and heterosexuals breached human rights. Any change in the law was opposed by the House of Lords in the interests of “protecting children,” leaving sixteen year old boys “prey” to older men.
According to the Kinsey Institute website, 25% of all teens have had sexual intercourse for the first time by the age of fifteen years. By the time adolescents reach the age of nineteen years, 69% have had sexual intercourse.
Gay or straight, sexuality emerges between the ages of fourteen and nineteen. But, in fact, most adolescents receive little advice on how to understand and explore their actualizing sexuality making them more vulnerable to those who would exploit them.
Part II of Michael’s story will continue in a few days.
If you would like to have your story on this blog, please send it to me. If you don’t think you could write it, just tell me the story, and I’ll write it with you.
What Do You Think?
The best way for me to keep this blog relevant is to hear from those of you who are reading it. I would love to know what is on your minds.
Please take a moment and go to the contact page and ask questions, comment or suggest topics. Thanks.
Loren Olson
A Gay Man Who Hates Adonis
The following is an excerpt from my book, Finally Out: Letting Go of Living Straight, a Psychiatrist’s Own Story, due for release January 12, 2011.
Joan Collins once famously said, “After a certain age, you get the face you deserve.”
The majority of negatives about aging come from attitudes about changes in the body. Men who are most deeply invested in their physical appearance seem to encounter the greatest difficulty.
As gay men age, fear of the loss of their external, youthful sexual attractiveness is often central to their fear of middle age. As Rebecca Mead wrote in The New Yorker, “The new idea offered by the contemporary culture of cosmetic surgery, is that it is the vessel itself that we must value, rather than the soul or spirit that it contains.”
Because this physically attractive body is the person they presented themselves to be, some have lived behind this façade with little concern about learning how to relate to others in ways beyond the physical. Others may not really have known them. They may become afraid to ditch that previous social persona and be left with nothing.
Stereotypes describe gay men as either limp-wristed and effeminate or obsessed with attaining the masculine body beautiful. The extremes of body image are captured by the exaggerated femininity in the form of drag and the exaggerated musculature of the “gym rat.”
Between these extremes there are an infinite variety of identities and lifestyles, but the unifying element remains the presentation of an attractive, attention-grabbing body.
Some gay men consider their bodies their most significant asset, and they seek affirmation of that through admiration and envy from others. Because of their anxiety about appearing feminine, they attempt to master it by exaggeration of the opposite. Their bodies are their ticket to power and success, and the goal is perfection, however unrealistic that may be.
Continual fixation on body image sometimes means attempting to radically alter the way we look by “having a little work done,” including the use of pectoral implants, steroids and penile enlargers. The enemy isn’t their body, it is their unrealistic expectations of what their body can be, must be.
Showering in a gym is surely as oppressing for a stocky, skinny or an aging gay man as it is for a woman trying on a new swim suit. Chiseled good looks are achieved by very few and remain only a dream for the majority. Not being able to achieve those good looks is sometimes perceived as a lack of commitment to body maintenance, and those who don’t achieve it may be accused of being slothful.
Age is seen as a disease that suggests a person lacks an unacceptable degree of self-control. The body becomes a project, perpetually in need of work and development to prevent it from reverting to its natural ugly state.
If the thin and muscular body beautiful is not attainable, a physically toned body is the next best thing. Our body image is the result of the difference between the perfect body and the way we see our body.
We are satisfied with our body image when we have a realistic expectation about what our body can be and seeing it as it actually is. The saddest and angriest gay men are those who have failed, feeling as intimidated by beautiful gay men as they are by straight men.
When gay men become overly concerned with physical attractiveness, too preoccupied with fashion, they may appear superficial or even threatening to heterosexual men. The American masculine ideal dictates that real men must not be concerned about matters of style and taste, all the while being blasted by images of men re-shaped by computers and wearing Armani.
The advertising industry created the word “metro-sexual” to describe a man who blends an interest in style, fashion and culture while not letting go of ball-scratching and beer-guzzling. These men have always been a part of the lives of wealthy men, but frosted hair and manicures are now more accessible to the average man. In Europe, they exist without a need to create a special category to describe them, but this cross-over is something we’re not yet comfortable with in the United States; it is just too queer.
Knowing someone’s age tells us little about them, but because of the importance of physical attractiveness in the gay community, middle age comes sooner to gay men than to heterosexual men. The work of every day life for a midlife gay male is maintaining the appearance of youth, but the fact that it is work must also be hidden so no one knows how difficult it is.
Harold Kooden wrote in Golden Men: The Power of Gay Midlife that the concept of a linear aging process is misleading. He suggested that gay men have four ages: chronological (clock age), biological (body age), experiential (heart age) and sexual (gay age.)
Kooden proposed that we age in each are of these four areas at different rates and times; chronological age represents only one portion of our authentic age. Another age might be added to Kooden’s list: geographical age. Age functions quite differently in urban and rural communities.
Portrait of the Sculptor Friedrich
Because men who have sex with men are conflicted about their sexuality, their sexual age may lag behind their clock age, body age and heart age. Geographical age may add an additional incongruity; men who grew up in the city may arrive at a homosexual identity at somewhat younger ages.
Men who are struggling with their sexual attraction to other men, may put their sexuality on hold; their sexual age and their chronological age are disparate.