Saved by the Dell: The College Years
Interrogating LGBTQ stereotypes for self-realization
Although I didn’t understand or accept I was gay until I was 23 (and came out later that year), in retrospect I realized that from around age 8 or 9 there was an awareness of the physical traits of men that I still like to this day. To fit in as a teenager, I pretended to be interested in girls at school and the female pop and film icons my friends talked about being hot. I could objectively say they were attractive, but something in me knew they did nothing for me sexually, I was just supposed to be into them. I thought if I kept believing I was into them, I eventually would be.
I denied it at the time, but when I was about 13, I knew deep down specifically who and what I fantasized about, and it was not women or girls, or even boys my own age. It was older men like my teachers, some friends’ dads, and coaches. In addition to being ashamed that I was thinking about guys, I also felt weird and defective for being into older men.
Growing up, the only gay adult I knew was the accountant at my dad’s construction business, and while he was not over-the-top flamboyant, he was on the effeminate side. He was in his 50s then and would refer to his ‘roommate’ who we all knew was his partner. We didn’t ask and he didn’t tell (so 90s, right?!), but our family knew. My dad respected him as a person and never judged him for being gay, but this man reinforced the stereotype I had been presented, and I knew that didn’t align with who I was as a person. I talked about these stereotypes and how they still exist in many forms in my previous blog post.
As a teenager, when I would allow myself to think ‘what if I’m gay’, I was scared that I would be a disappointment and never be seen the same by my family or friends. So I’d go back to denying the attractions, convince myself it was a passing phase and that it was just teenage hormones piquing my curiosity. I’d ask myself ‘would a gay guy listen to Wu-Tang Clan and Bad Religion, go in mosh pits, be a football player, or class president’? The answer, based on what I understood at the time, was ‘no’, and that would be enough to go through another week or month of denial.
Now I know so much better about the close ties between punk and hardcore and queer culture. The common thread is in questioning and sometimes rejecting societal norms, and in self-acceptance. Some rappers I grew up on like Common, Fat Joe, and Jay-Z, have publicly come out in support of the LGBT community, despite the genre’s past record of homophobia and overall hetero and machismo vibe. Many younger rappers now feel safe coming out and are still respected in the hip-hop community for their lyrical skills and not looked down upon because of their orientation.
As I finished high school, the path I saw for myself (largely based on messages I heard and what was presented to me) was that I’d go away to college, party and meet girls, and eventually meet ‘the one’, who I would marry and start a family with after graduation. I went to the University of Florida and joined Theta Chi fraternity in my second semester. I was drawn to this fraternity because like my hometown, we were an open-minded and diverse group.
There wasn’t a lot of aggressive or overt homophobia. Still, I didn’t dare let the repressed thoughts form enough to ever believe they were real. I overcompensated so that no one would suspect I was gay, mostly in the pejorative use of the word gay or queer, continuing to feign interest in hot celebrities and sorority girls around the guys. No one was openly gay in my fraternity, but there were always a few brothers who were suspected (again based on nothing more than stereotypes), and I had to make sure I wasn’t one of them. However, the guys who came out after graduation were not treated any differently when they came back for football games, it just wasn’t really spoken of.
There was one big shift from who I was in high school, which I later realized was the earliest stage of self-realization. I was always confident in high school, but in college, something changed and I was intimidated by the idea of meeting girls. I initially thought I wanted a girlfriend and that I was just not the type of guy who was only interested in hooking up. The other thing that contributed to my lack of confidence was that I was starting to lose my hair, and I thought I would be rejected by the sorority girls. My friends assured me that I had a lot going for me and that most girls would probably be interested if I made the first move. The reality was that I just wasn’t sexually or emotionally attracted to any girls I met and was more interested in hanging out with my friends, Gators football games, drinking, and going to shows, (oh, and classes). So I made excuses to stay in denial and was never really at ease in my own skin.
I remember having tearful conversations with my mom (with whom I’m very close) about how I was just waiting for the right girl to come along but I couldn’t seem to get the courage to talk to any girls because of my hair loss, or that I couldn’t relate with southern girls being from the northeast. I was 100% convinced that was my truth.
As college came to a close, I was still denying my attractions, but they were becoming more frequent and harder to ignore. I was noticing men a lot more than women and had developed crushes on a few of my older fraternity brothers and classmates. I’d realize I didn’t have much in common with them, but was always looking for excuses to hang out with them, and put my arm around them like ‘bros’ do. One time, an older brother who I had a major crush on must have picked up on something, because he discreetly said to me one night, “I think you like me.” I laughed it off, but he may have been trying to extend an olive branch that it was ok to talk to him about it. (He is straight so I truly don’t think there was any more to it than that, or that it was an indictment.) I never got the chance to ask him but maybe he’s reading this on Facebook and remembers.
I didn’t act on any of this curiosity because I was scared of what it might mean for me once it became real. The fear of someone, somehow catching me or finding out, or even having an inkling of me being gay made my stomach churn and my heart sink. I felt an immense amount of guilt and anxiety about what would happen if I started down this path of exploration. I was very unhappy, but put on a brave face and acted normal for the most part. I was an angry and bitter person but I wasn’t sure why.
Other than two brief and meaningless relationships with women, I didn’t really date or hook up with anyone in college.
On a very late night my last semester (2001), I got up the nerve to start searching for some terms that described the things about men that I was attracted to (older, hairy, chubby, salt and pepper hair) and learned that there were gay men out there who didn’t fit the stereotype. This was when I discovered the bear community. I read some coming out stories of guys a little older than me that I could relate to and I saw that there were many younger guys into older guys who embraced traits I also loved: body hair, beards, baldness, and bellies.
These traits don’t align with what our culture tells to physically aspire to as men, or what women (or men) should find attractive in a partner. How many ads do you see in a given week for hair replacement, rogaine, ripped abs in 6 weeks, waxing, laser hair removal? How often is the bald guy with a belly in a TV show or movie presented as an undesirable schlub that no one wants to date? Keep in mind, this was a good 15 years before dad-bod was a term, let alone a trend. Dad-bods are not quite the same as bear-bods, but I guess we have to start somewhere, so call it progress.
Because stereotypes presented me with a limited perception of gay men, until I discovered bears, I didn’t realize that a gay guy could also just be an average Joe, unassuming guy-next-door type, a dude at a baseball game with a belly and chest hair, or a coach.
Some of what I discovered was resonating with me but I was still left feeling guilty, confused, and just plain weird about my attractions.
Nauseated at the thought of coming out to ANYONE, and paranoid about someone finding my search history, I was careful to leave no trace of what I had found online, and no chance of anyone finding out. I had a Dell computer that I would wipe clean and then would reinstall Windows, and added an extra password to the BIOS. So I continued to tow the heterosexual line for the time being.
If you enjoyed this post, read parts 1 and 3 of my 3 part series below:
Part 1:
Part 3:
