“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.

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.

Please take a moment and go to the contact page and ask questions, comment or suggest topics. Thanks.

Loren Olson

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.

Ken Mehlman, Former Chairman of RNC

Mehlman was President Bush’s campaign manager in 2004 and a former chairman of the Republican National Committee. He is the most powerful Republican in history to identify as gay.

Many of us who came out late in life, or have yet to do so, can understand what Mehlman meant when he said, “Everybody has their own path to travel, their own journey.”

Although concealment of sexual orientation occurs for a variety of reasons, I know from my own experience that it is possible not to be able to accept it even when there are so many things in our lives that would point in that direction. As someone once wrote, “I don’t want to want what I want.”

Mehlman has found that his family, friends and current and former colleagues were far more supportive than he had imagined. In fact all of us before we come out magnify the potential negative consequences and minimize the potential positives.

Mehlman said, “The process has been something that’s made me a happier and better person. It’s something I wish I had done years ago.” Many of us have felt that way, but a variety of circumstances seemed to interfere with that process.

Mehlman said that he now wants to become an advocate for gay marriage. Because he is well connected to the powers in the Republican Party, he is in a position to influence those in power who offer resistance to it.

Some gay activists will say he is a hypocrite, and he is not welcome within the gay community. But whether you come out as a young man, a middle aged man or an old man, all of us before we came out were hypocrites who lied about our sexual orientation. The only real difference is that Mehlman was in a much more powerful position than most of us. But each of us has the power to change minds about what it means to be a man who has sex with other men.

At the same time we may want to offer Mehlman some understanding about the personal conflict he faced while delaying his coming out, he must still be held accountable for his role in using hatred of gay men and women as a political tool to manipulate voters. Watch this video as Dan Savage addresses this topic.

One of Harvey Milk’s classmates remembered him this way: “He was never thought of as a possible queer—that’s what you called them then—he was a man’s man”.. Milk is said not to have come out to his mother before she died.

Harvey Milk

Mehlman was aware that Karl Rove, President Bush’s chief strategic adviser, had been working with Republicans to make sure that anti-gay initiatives and referenda would appear on November ballots in 2004 and 2006 to help Republicans. I would prefer to believe that Mehlman was tormented by his feeling paralyzed to move against Rove and Republican Party consensus.

Karl Rove had gay stepfather.

I want to believe Mehlman because I want others to believe me when I say I really didn’t understand I was gay until I was forty. Mehlman said. “I can’t change the fact that I wasn’t in this place personally when I was in politics, and I genuinely regret that. It was very hard, personally.”

Mehlman asks of those who doubt his sincerity: “If they can’t offer support, at least offer understanding.” I offer my understanding, and even though I disagree strongly with his politics, I support his new life as a gay man.

Mehlman is quoted, “I wish I was where I am today 20 years ago. The process of not being able to say who I am in public life was very difficult. No one else knew this except me. My family didn’t know. My friends didn’t know. Anyone who watched me knew I was a guy who was clearly uncomfortable with the topic,” he said. I could have said those same things.

To read the entire article in “The Atlantic,” click here.

Yet to better understand the social and cultural dimensions of the disease, and to halt the spread of HIV, it is essential to recognize and understand the culture of men who have sex with men (MSM).

AIDS, Culture, and Gay men (University Press of Florida, 2010. Feldman D, editor, Ginesville, FL)
is a highly readable volume of original essays exploring the cultural dimensions of AIDS among MSM. This book compares experiences from the United States and Australia.

Pope Benedict (Previously Cardinal Ratzinger)

On Ash Wednesday 2006, for example, he wore a robe of ‘Valentino red’ – called after the fashion designer – with ‘showy gold embroidery’ and soon afterwards changed into a blue associated with another fashion designer, Renato Balestra. In March 2007, for a visit to the juvenile prison at Casal del Marno, he wore an extraordinary tea-rose-coloured costume.

Here is a link to the essay.

Excerpt from New York Magazine:

Photo by Charles Cohen

“I think I like a particular kind of guy and when I went out looking I never found him, so I gravitated toward women. I found what I liked on the Internet, but I was already married.”

To read the entire article, click here.

Here’s what Dr. Morgentaler had to say about my book: “Finally Out: provides insight into a hidden population of men who have sex with other men but who may not identify themselves as gay. It is a fascinating account that broadens our understanding of human sexuality. A must-read.”

In reading through the manuscript, Dr. Morgenthaler updated some of the information in the book which I would like to pass on to you.

Concerning Viagra: One of the frequently mentioned precautions in the use of Viagra and other medications used for erectile dysfunction is priapism (a continuous and painful erection that may last several hours). Dr Morgenthaler said the frequency of priapism is “vanishingly low.” In other words, it is much talked about but unlikely to occur.

Concerning Testosterone Replacement Therapy (TRT):

The possibility that TRT might be an anti-aging tonic appeals particularly to older men, whose sexual functioning sags along with their muscles and energy. Testosterone is critical, not only for how the brain responds to sexual thoughts and stimulation, but also for the proper function of the penis, by affecting its ability to get hard, to release the necessary chemical signals and to maintain the proper types of cells that are essential for good erectile function.

Symptoms of testosterone deficiency can occur with normal levels of testosterone, and in some cases, the symptoms may not occur even when testosterone levels are low.

Symptoms of testosterone deficiency
• Decreased sexual function
• Lower vitality
• Loss of muscle mass and strength
• Increased fat mass
• Mood changes and depression

According to Dr. Morgentaler, memory loss is often cited as a symptom of testosterone deficiency, but the evidence supporting this to be a testosterone-related event, and thus reversible with treatment, is weak.

TRT can be administered in several different ways. One of the most effective and convenient forms of treatment is injection of a long-acting testosterone pellets under the skin of the buttocks. This treatment produces good levels of testosterone for 3-5 months.

TRT by injection is given about every two weeks. Injections are inconvenient and therapeutic levels and symptom relief may fluctuate between the injections. Patches are applied nightly. The gel in rubbed onto the skin of the abdomen, chest, arms and shoulders. The gel is less irritating than the patches but it is possible to transfer the TRT agent to a sexual partner, or even a pet, through skin-skin contact. The buccal treatment is a pill that is applied to the upper gums.

Potential Benefits of TRT:
Improved muscle mass and strength
Increased bone density
Thickened body hair and increased oiliness of skin
Improved sexual drive
Increased energy
Reduced depression and irritability

Potential Risks
Possibility of stimulation of prostatic cancer.*
Non-cancerous enlargement of the prostate and difficulty with urination
Testicular shrinkage and reduced sperm production
Breast enlargement
Stimulation of breast cancer if present
Aggravation of sleep apnea
Potential heart problems
Acne

I have made other posts on MagneticFire.com about testosterone and TRT. By putting “testosterone” in the search above on the right, those other articles will become available.

The court found no valid reason to discriminate against gay couples in registered partnerships. Although many think civil unions are equal to marriage, this is one reminder that they are not as the same holds true in U.S. law.

To see the article on GayAgenda.com, click here.

Courts are almost never at the vanguard of social change. In general, they have required sweeping cultural shifts such as school desegregation only when it was clear that a substantial percentage of Americans supported them. So what does this portend for same-sex marriage litigation, which is likely to end up before the Supreme Court eventually, especially in light of recent federal court rulings in Boston and San Francisco in favor of same-sex marriage?

Although it would be mildly out of character for Kennedy to interpret the Constitution to impose the views of a mere handful of states on the entire nation, by the time a gay marriage case reaches the court, several additional states may be permitting same-sex couples to marry. Moreover, Kennedy can read handwriting on the wall as well as anyone else. What better way is there to win the plaudits of future generations of Americans than to author the Supreme Court opinion eradicating one of the last formal barriers to equal citizenship for gays and lesbians?
Michael Klarman is a professor at Harvard Law School and the author of “From Jim Crow to Civil Rights: The Supreme Court and the Struggle for Racial Equality,” which won the 2005 Bancroft Prize.

To read the entire piece, click here