There are BiSexual People in the Future

I have huge holes in my memory. There's lots of important things I don't remember, or I won't remember.

I've been in therapy for four years with multiple focuses going on simultaneously: a gestalt practitioner, an EMDR practitioner, a family systems practitioner, etc. I've remembered more of my youth.

I remember violent beatings from my father. I remember a priest raping me for three years. In Fourth, fifth, and six grade the parish priest was in my ass and in my mouth. I was 8, 9, 10 years old.

I met a woman and we got married. We had kids. I had one recurring dream for decades about Dan which couldn't be true. But it was true.

Now I remember Dan. Now I remember Allan in 7th grade and Ronald in 8th grade. Now I remember a man in Virgina, and a man in Spain. Now I remember David. At the time, I closed them each into an internal box and put them away; they were inconsistent with what I'd been told I should be. Otherwise: bad boy, and I couldn't face being a bad boy, getting in trouble.

I find myself at sixty years old, with more memory but not complete memory. Why me? Why did the priest pick me out? Could the predator sense I might be gay? Did my becoming excited during the abuse contribute to me liking men? Chicken. Egg. Can't tell. What I can do is recognize where I am.

I don't believe being raped makes you gay.

I was a quiet, bookish, introverted loner who got beat by his father; it feels like the hint of a profile. When you read newspaper stories of abused altar boys, it seems like a disproportionate amount grow up to be gay men. I can't tell. There's no knowing. The priest and my dad, my two fathers, are dead and buried.

In the absence of complete information, what I have is: I've been with several men and suppressed the memory. I've got a wife who believed I was straight, and she married the man I presented. I've told my own kids the story of Me that I told myself. Any response has to include justice for them.

What I can say is: I'm a bisexual man. I have attractions to both men and women. I'm in a monogamous marriage, which is not inconsistent with bisexuality. I wish I'd understood myself when I was 20, and not at 60.

There are some supports. There's an over-sixty gay men's group. Persad and the Pgh Equality Center (GLCC) field questions and provide answers. I'm soon to start in a group session of men in very similar situations. It's both all fucked up, and something I have to figure out and come to terms with.

 

Masthead image is a derivate work from the Post Gazette's photo and story about Jon Rubin's billboard project and Alisha Wormsley's composition of her message, There are Black people in the future.