So Oprah just did a show today about when was the first you knew you were gay. I got thinking while watching and my story is very similar to her panel’s. I can’t pinpoint a precise moment, but I always knew I was different in some way.

When I was about 10, ‘Battlestar Galactica’ came on the scene. I was obsessed with Starbuck and the actor who played him, Dirk Benedict. He was so cool and so hot. I remember this one picture I had of him in his Colonial uniform and the way he was posed his package was really out there. I just adored the picture. I was so into him that when it came time for my confirmation and I had to choose a name, Benedict was one of the possibilities and chose it, and my mother let me. I suffered a lot of “Benedict Arnold” cracks from the other 4th graders, but the sisters seemed to think it a very good choice. How interesting it is today that the name was very well chosen in that St. Benedict is the patron saint of music, the arts, and philosophy – my huge topics of interest.

Then came the Duke boys. Through my early teens other boys had pictures and posters of Farrah Facet and Charlies Angles and such in their rooms, but on my door was an incredible poster of Bo and Luke Duke from ‘The Dukes of Hazzard’ with open shirts and chest hair showing and in tight jeans. ::SIGH:: All the other boys were into the show too, but they were more interested in Daisy and the car and such. But I think for me it was a cover. When we would role play though, I always ened up being Uncle Jesse. Come to think of it, I always ended up being the old fuddy duddy when we did role playing games.

I always seemed to be better friends with girls than with boys… could just never seem to relate somehow that was not explainable. My first sexual fantasies didn’t include girls, in fact at the time I didn’t even really know that that’s what they were. I found myself jerking off and thinking about other boys that I went to school with… not doing stuff to one another, but just seeing them, and maybe jerking off together.

The first time I heard the word “gay” was while watching an episode of ‘WKRP in Cincinnati.’ The word came up in an episode about a character that was a guest that week. My mom asked me if I knew what that word meant and I said no. She replied, “It means he like men.” I was like… oh… ok.

All through my teenage years and into my 20’s, I still did not think of myself as gay or even call myself gay. I tried to daydream about getting married and having kids and the perfect family life. I tried to start fantasizing about women when jerking off, but it seemed that there was always a guy in the scene that was playing out in my head and it was him that was getting me through it. For the longest time I tried to rationalize it by saying to myself that I grew up without a father, a brother who was absent, and no male friends from my mid teens into my twenties and that I just craved the male companionship and the because men always sexualized things, that made perfect sense to me. What hogwash.