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 marriage and activity would support that. Am I gay? I've got experiences that support that. Am I bisexual? Or is that just an easy answer?

Did the priest pick me because like a good predator he had great senses, and did his gaydar help him to choose me? Or am I gay because the priest affected my development? Which came first (sorry), the priest or the gay?

So now it's 2018 and I'm entangled in a web of obligations and uncertainty. I have commitments and obligations to my wife and kids. I have desires and questions that tug at my mind and heart. My sex life with my wife is barely existent.

I can't satisfy my curiousity without bringing grief and pain to my wife and kids. What if I take the leap and find the gay experience repulsive? Am I seeking who I am, or am I retracting my trauma? Once I blow up the marriage, there's no putting it back together again.

curse of the late bloomer

I feel cursed. I feel cursed by my increased knowledge of who I am. Ignorance was bliss - a limited functionality, a lot of locked boxes, but bliss.

I'm not cursed in the sense that I've done something wrong and now I'm doomed to have painful experiences. I feel cursed to face mutually exclusive choices that bear terrible consequences and being unable to choose.