- Joined
- Jul 31, 2017
- Posts
- 491
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- 47
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- Location
- Nanaimo (British Columbia, Canada)
- Verification
- View
- Sexuality
- 100% Gay, 0% Straight
- Gender
- Male
I've known since forever. Like always. Din't have a name for to, but I knew i was different and that I should keep quiet about it because there was NO examples of people like me anywhere. This is decades before the internet, of course. Back in the 60's, gays din't really exist except as oddities in the big cities. Not out in suburbia where I grew up.
I had crushes on classmates and a couple of specific neighbour boys. It wasn't until several years later that I'd ever heard the term "homosexual" when some dude pushing a book was talking about it on a daytime talk show. I don't recall what his point was but that's when it became known to me that this had a name and that there were others like me. The school library had nothing on the subject, not unexpectedly.
In high school (1968) I checked out the library there and, lo and behold, there was one book (ONE!) that mentioned it briefly as part of a larger topic. This is where I saw first the term "gay" associated with homosexuality. As far as I knew, I was still the only human anywhere within my world who was gay.
It was two years later that I was in the newspaper & smoke shop at the mall where I worked that I came across a news magazine called "The Advocate". Big tabloid thing pinter on newsprint, not the glossy mag most people would be familiar with now. Holy shit! Not only were there other people like me, there were others who put out magazines, had clubs, lived as out people... There were lots of suggestive ads (nothing totally racy of course) and hot illustrations, plenty of fodder for this young fag to absorb.
I had finally found my people, even if just in reading material.
I had crushes on classmates and a couple of specific neighbour boys. It wasn't until several years later that I'd ever heard the term "homosexual" when some dude pushing a book was talking about it on a daytime talk show. I don't recall what his point was but that's when it became known to me that this had a name and that there were others like me. The school library had nothing on the subject, not unexpectedly.
In high school (1968) I checked out the library there and, lo and behold, there was one book (ONE!) that mentioned it briefly as part of a larger topic. This is where I saw first the term "gay" associated with homosexuality. As far as I knew, I was still the only human anywhere within my world who was gay.
It was two years later that I was in the newspaper & smoke shop at the mall where I worked that I came across a news magazine called "The Advocate". Big tabloid thing pinter on newsprint, not the glossy mag most people would be familiar with now. Holy shit! Not only were there other people like me, there were others who put out magazines, had clubs, lived as out people... There were lots of suggestive ads (nothing totally racy of course) and hot illustrations, plenty of fodder for this young fag to absorb.
I had finally found my people, even if just in reading material.