Losing your virginity isn’t a big deal. Coming out is.
I could not come out when I was young because I was afraid that my family and friends would reject me. Back then, I did not know I could find great company in that loneliness, or that I should never try to commit suicide because of that fear.
In the early 90s, the Iron Curtain was lifted. I spent my childhood years with no information about people like me and felt utterly lonely — as if in outer space.
Floating for days and nights, I raised numerous questions about my identity and fantasized about men. I was still a minor when, at a lakeside, I spotted a stranger in white and felt mutual gravitation.
After a few dates, he explained that we could no longer see each other because he was married, and gave me a glossy magazine with naked Polish guys as a present. Oh, I did not feel lonely anymore.
Should that happen in modern Russia, that man would face legal charges for promoting information about LGBT people to minors. As an adult now, I manifest — I didn’t fall victim to that man. I was and am grateful to him. I would have fallen victim to those who take sexual orientation as something that may be controlled.
I came out when I was 25 and turned the experience into an allegorical novel about gay men as people who experience love and affection. At high risk, I self-published a limited edition of the book in Russian. None of the first readers (my colleagues) knew that I was gay, and the inevitability of revelation about my sexual orientation scared the shit out of me. Some of them told me that the book changed their attitude to LGBT people from negative to tolerant. Oh, I could wish for nothing more!
Fifteen years later, having translated the novel into English, I am coming out again. This time, I am challenging the ignorance of those who, for example, promote conversion therapy in Ireland or restrict minors from access to information about LGBT people in Hungary.
Truth with Ornaments is a gay allegorical novel based on a true story. Two men. One life in exchange for another’s to reset hardships to zero with the aftertaste of first love. More information about the book: https://mrjacobgreen.com/
