Curse of the Late Bloomer
I lived a "normal American" life for decades. Married to a pretty girl, proud of my two kids, own my house. My wife and I had a great sex life, with perhaps more than average frequency. When I was 58 and in therapy I remembered being raped by a priest many times. I also remember getting aroused once when he was saying Mass. I remember a boy in 7th grade, and a boy in 8th grade. A few young men in the Navy. My father had explained the world to me. He said, Get out of the Navy with an Honorable Discharge. Take the civil service test (to be a policeman), you'll get 5 bonus points. Marry a girl and get on with life- and that's just what I did. I suppressed the memory of the priest. I suppressed the memory of the boys and men. And then when I was 58, all the locked boxes in my memory opened up. Finding new facts about your youth leaves you questioning the certainty of your self-knowledge, of your personal view of who you are. Am I straight? 30-plus years of hetero ma...